Our Humanure Setup

Paul requested a write-up of our experience doing the humanure thing, so here I write! We've been shitting in buckets for two and a half years now, except for the 6 months we lived at the Portland Permaculture Institute. We're following the system laid out in The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins, which covers pretty much everything you need to know about the topic. Basically, we poop in a bucket, cover our business with sawdust, and when the bucket fills up we dump the bucket in the compost pile and cover the new addition well. We mostly pee in a second bucket and spread that through the yard.

I don't have the skills to build a nifty throne for our shit bucket, and my one attempt at adapting a wooden regular toilet seat lid to a bucket promptly resulted in the lid falling off and breaking (luckily with no messier damage than that). So we still use a plastic toilet seat contraption designed for camping which snaps onto the top of a 5 gallon bucket. (We bought two back in 2005 from the local survivalist shop for $10 each, give or take.)

We used one bucket for poop and pee for a while, but eventually decided to add a bucket just for pee. This allows us to return nutrients to our garden more quickly, reduces the frequency with which I have to dump the poop bucket into the compost pile, and reduces the amount of sawdust we need to use. Enough moisture seems to make it into the compost pile between what urine does go in and the water from cleaning out the poop bucket when I dump it, that the compost pile still seems to get plenty hot and doesn't require extra water in the summer. I empty the pee bucket every 2-3 days (generally when it start to smell, which besides the obvious cue of unpleasantness also tells us we're losing nitrogen to the air). I empty the poop bucket maybe every three weeks or so.

So our bathroom currently has a poop bucket, a sawdust bucket (center), and a pee bucket (left). The standard ceramic toilet makes a fine stand for toilet paper, phone book pages for those who don't want to wipe their ass with trees killed just for that purpose, and candles and incense because Theressa likes that sort of stuff.

Way back when we tore out the driveway in a big work party, I wrote up instructions for how to use our bathroom, just in case it confused anyone. Occasionally when we have normal core folks over we clear the normal toilet off so they can easily choose their preference, but I think only about three people have used the ceramic toilet in the last year.

I haven't measured the temperature of the compost pile. When I shovel out a little hole in the center of the compost pile for the new additions, I put my hand over the divot and always feel some heat, which satisfies me that things are working. We plan to follow the schedule of one year to actively build the pile, then start a second pile and build that for a year while the first pile sits. So everything in each pile will sit for at least one year, and up to as long as two years, which should adequately kill off any potential pathogens.

I don't know what else to say, so I'll leave it at that unless I get any questions!

Liquid gold calculations revisited

David William House replied to my Nitrogen Fixers Vs Liquid Gold post with some alternate numbers for nitrogen content and daily human production of urine and feces:

"One adult on an ordinary diet will produce from 100 to 250 grams of feces per day. On a vegetable diet, an adult will produce from 300 to 400 grams per day. (Respectively, 0.22 to 0.55, and 0.66 to 0.88 pounds per day.) Feces are usually neutral to slightly alkaline in pH, 24% to 27% TS [total solids] (dry weight), with a C/N [carbon-nitrogen ratio] of 6 to 10, nitrogen 4% to 6% of TS, VS [volatile solids] is 85% of TS. Normal values for urine are 1 to 1.6 liters volume per day, average pH 6.0, 4% to 6% TS, with a C/N of 0.8, nitrogen 15% to 18% of TS, VS is 72% of TS. (That's 1.06 to 1.69 quarts volume produced daily). Every liter of urine weighs about 1,020 grams. Every quart of urine weighs about 2.9 pounds." [The Complete Biogas Handbook, p 69.]

Substance	%N	%C	%H20	Comments
feces	4-6		73-75	reported variations
feces	5.0	40.0	74.0	median
mixed	10.9	26.0	92.0	median
urine	15-18		95-96	reported variations
urine	16.5	13.0	95.0	median

Using the median values for the range of urine data means 1.3 liters urine/day (very close to the 1.26 liters I used in my other calculations), with 5% of the urine as "total solids", and 16.5% of that as nitrogen. 1 liter of urine weighs 1,020 grams, so we have 1,020 * 1.26 * .05 * .165 = 10.6029 grams nitrogen/day from urine. (Lower than the 14.112 grams nitrogen/day I used in my other calculations.)

Using the median values for the range of feces data means 175 grams feces per day for adults on "ordinary diets", and 350 grams feces per day for adults on vegetarian diets, with 25.5% as "total solids", and 5% of that as nitrogen. So for "ordinary diet" we have 175 * .255 * .05 = 2.23125 grams nitrogen/day. For vegetarian diets, double the figure for 4.4625 grams nitrogen/day.

So by these numbers, adults on "ordinary diets" produce a grand total of about 12.8 grams nitrogen/day. Vegetarian adults produce a grand total of about 15 grams nitrogen/day. Using the same assumptions I used the other day, the former could provide enough nitrogen for 3730-4660 square feet of forest garden (for canopy demands of 8 grams/square meter to 10 grams/square meter). Vegetarians could provide enough nitrogen for 4370-5460 square feet.

Obviously we don't have the precision of numbers with any of this to make truly exact calculations, but having numbers from two different sources give us results in the same ballpark gives me more confidence in the general idea: one adult can provide the nitrogen for around 4000-5000 square feet of forest garden.

Seeking seeds!

I've spent the past week organizing my seed orders for this coming year. Before I place the orders, I thought I'd see whether anyone out there has reliable seeds (or even better yet for folks around Portland Oregon, plant divisions!) I could trade for. Most of the seeds I order will probably come in packets with more seeds than what I need, so I could trade those, or trade some of the plants we have around the yard, or the extra plants listed at my Discount Permaculture website. If you have extras of any of the following and want to trade, please email me at scrub@corrupt.net

Abelmoschus manihot	Edible hibiscus
Acorus calamus	Calamus
Acorus calamus americanus	Calamus
Adenophora liliifolia	Ladybells
Adenophora liliifolia	Ladybells
Adenophora pereskiifolia	Ladybells
Adenophora pereskiifolia uryuensis	Ladybells
Allium canadense	American wild garlic
Allium carinatum	Keeled garlic
Allium fistulosum	Scallion / welsh onion
Allium pendulinum
Allium perutile	Everlasting onions
Allium sativum ‘ophioscorodon’	Rocambole
Allium senescens	Ballhead onion / German garlic
Allium suaveolens
Allium ursinum	Ramsons / Wild Garlic
Amphicarpaea bracteata	Hog peanut
Anredera BASSELLOIDES	Madeira vine???
Anredera cordifolia	Madeira vine
Anthriscus sylvestris	Cow parsley
Apios americana	Groundnut
Apios fortunei	Fortune's groundnut
Apios priceana	Price's groundnut
Aralia cordata	Udo
Aralia racemosa	American spikenard
Asclepias speciosa	Milkweeds
Asclepias syriaca	Common milkweed
Asclepias tuberosa	Pleurrisy root / butterfly weed
Asphodeline lutea	Yellow asphodel
Astragalus pictus-filifolius	Painted milkvetch
Atriplex canescens	Saltbush
Atriplex halimus	Saltbush
Atriplex sp	Fat hen
Balsamorhiza deltoidea	Deltoid Balsamroot
Balsamorhiza sagittata	Balsamroot sunflower / Oregon sunflower
Beta vulgaris maritima	Sea beet
Brassica oleracea alboglabra	Gai Lon / Chinese Broccoli
Brassica oleracea alboglabra	Gai Lon / Chinese Broccoli
Brassica oleracea ramosa	Branching bush / perpetual kale
Brassica oleracea var. acephala	Western Front Perennial kale
Brassica oleracea var. acephala	Tree collards / Walking stick kale
Brassica oleracea var. botrytis	Nine Star Perennial Broccoli
Brodiaea coronaria coronaria	California hyacinth
Brodiaea sp.
Bunium bulbocastanum	Earth chestnut
Callirhoe involucrata	Purple poppy-mallow
Campanula portenschlagiana	Dalmation bellflower
Campanula rapunculus	Rampion
Campanula sp.	Bluebells
Campanula versicolor
Canna edulis	Achira / Canna
Canna indica	Canna lily
Capsella bursa-pastoris	Shepherd’s purse
Cardamine hirsuta	Hairy bittercress
Ceanothus prostratus	Mahala mat
Cephalotaxus fortunei
Cephalotaxus harringtonia drupacea
Cephalotaxus sinensis
Ceratophyllum demersum	Coontail
Chaerophyllum bulbosum	Bulbous-rooted chervil
Chenopodium hybridum	Maple-leaved goosefoot
Chrysoplenium americanum	Golden saxifrage
Chrysoplenium oppositifolium	Golden saxifrage
Claytonia cordifolia
Claytonia lanceolata
Claytonia megarhiza
Claytonia megarhiza nivalis
Claytonia rosea
Claytonia virginica
Cnidoscolus chayamansa	Chaya
Coccinia grandis	'Sterile Perennial' cucumber
Colocasia sp	Taros
Conopodium majus	Pignut
Cryptotaenia japonica	Mitsuba
Cymopterus montanus	Mountain spring parsley
Desmanthus illinoensis	Prairie mimosa
Desmodium dunnii
Desmodium oldhami
Desmodium oxyphyllum
Dichelostemma capitatum	Bluedicks
Dichelostemma congestum	Bluedicks
Dichelostemma multiflorum	Bluedicks
Dichelostemma pulchellum	Bluedicks
Dichelostemma volubile	Bluedicks
Dioscorea bulbifera	Air potato
Dioscorea japonica	Jinenjo yam
Erythronium californicum
Erythronium grandiflorum	Glacier lily
Erythronium montanum	Avalanche lily
Erythronium oregonum
Fagopyrum dibotrys	Perennial buckwheat
Fritillaria affinis	Chocolate lily
Fritillaria camschatcensis	Kamchatka lily
Fritillaria pudica	Yellow fritillary
Gaultheria hispidula	Creeping snowberry
Gaultheria procumbens	Wintergreen
Glycyrrhiza glabra	Licorice
Glycyrrhiza lepidota	American licorice
Heracleum sphondylium	Hogweed / Cow parsnip
Hibiscus acetosella	Cranberry hibiscus
Ipomoea aquatica	Water spinach
Ipomoea batatas	Sweet potato 'Beauregard'
Ipomoea batatas	Sweet potato 'Beauregard'
Ipomoea leptophylla	Bush morning glory
Ipomoea pandurata	Wild potato vine
Lactuca perennis	Perennial lettuce
Laportea canadensis	Wood nettle
Lathyrus linifolius montanus	Bitter vetch
Lepidium peruvianum	Maca
Lilium columbianum	Columbia tiger lily
Lilium sp.	Lilies
Lilium superbum
Linum perenne	Perennial flax
Linum perenne lewisii	Perennial flax
Linum usitassimum ‘Omega’	Omega flax
Linum usitassimum ‘Omega’	Omega flax
Lomatium cous	Biscuitroot
Lomatium dissecta multifidum	Fernleaf biscuitroot
Lomatium macrocarpum	Bigseed biscuitroot
Lomatium nudicaule	Pestle parsnip
Lomatium utriculatum	Common lomatium
Lupinus perennis	Sundial lupine
Malva moschata	Musk Mallow
Medeola virginiana	Indian cucumber root
Megacarpaea gigantea
Megacarpaea megalocarpa
Microseris lactiniata (M. procera)	Yam daisy
Mitchella repens	Partridgeberry
Moringa oleifera	Moringa
Moringa stenopetala	Moringa
Nelumbo lutea	American Water lotus
Nelumbo nucifera	Sacred Water lotus
Neptunia oleracea	Water mimosa
Oenanthe javanica	Water celery
Oenanthe sarmentosa	Water dropwort
Orogenia linearifolia	Indian potato
Osmorhiza chilensis
Osmorhiza claytonii	Woolly Sweet-cicely
Osmorhiza longistylis	Anise root
Osmorhiza occidentalis	Western sweet-cicely
Oxalis acetosella	Wood sorrel
Oxalis deppei	Iron cross plant
Oxalis violacea	Wood sorrel
Oxyria digyna	Mountain sorrel
Peltaria alliacea	Garlic cress
Peltaria turkmenia
Perideridia gairdneri	Yampah
Perideridia oregana	Squaw potato
Perideridia sp	Yampahs
Petasites frigidus	Coltsfoot
Petasites japonicus	Fuki
Phaseolus coccineus	Scarlet runner beans
Phaseolus lunatus	7 Year Lima Bean
Phaseolus polyanthus	Cache bean / Botil
Phaseolus polystachios	Wild bean
Physalis heterophylla	Perennial groundcherry
Pimpinella saxifraga	Burnet saxifrage
Plantago coronopus	Buck’s-horn plantain
Plantago maritima	Sea plantain
Plectranthus esculentus	Livingstone potato
Plectranthus rotundifolius	Sudan potato
Podophyllum hexandrum	Himalayan Mayapple
Podophyllum peltatum	Mayapple
Polygonum Bistorta	Bistorta
Potentilla anserina	Silverweed
Potentilla pacifica	Pacific silverweed
Psophocarpus tetragonobolus	Winged bean
Reichardia picroides	French scorzonera
Rumex acetosella	Sheep sorrel
Rumex alpinus	Monk’s Rhubarb / Alpine dock
Rumex patientia	Herb patience
Rumex scutatus	Buckler-leaved sorrel
Schizandra chinensis
Schizandra sp.
Sium sisarum	Skirret with non-woody core
Sium suave	Water parsnip
Smallianthus sonchifolia	Yacon
Smilacena racemosa	False Spikenard
Smilacena stellata	Star-flowered lily of the valley
Smyrnium olusatrum	Alexanders
Stachys affinis	Chinese artichoke
Stachys floridanum
Stachys hyssopifolia
Stachys palustris	Marsh woundwort
Stellaria jamesiana
Streptopus amplexifolius	Wild cucumber
Streptopus lanceolatus curvipes
Streptopus roseus	Rosybells
Stuckenia pectinatus	Sago pondweed
Tilia americana	Linden / basswood
Tilia cordata	Linden / basswood
Toona sinensis	Fragrant spring tree
Toona sinensis 'Flamingo'	Fragrant spring tree, maybe variety chosen for food?
Trapa natans	Water chestnut
Triteleia grandiflora	Wild hyacinth
Triteleia laxa	Grassnut
Triteleia peduncularis	Longray tripletlily
Tropaeolum tuberosum	Mashua 'Ken Aslet'
Ullucus tuberosus	Ulluco
Valerianella locusta	Corn salad / Lamb’s lettuce
Xanthosoma atrovirens	Tanniers
Xanthosoma maffafa aurea	Tanniers
Xanthosoma robustum	Tanniers
Xanthosoma sagittifolium	Tanniers

Why we love the N-fixers anyway

So in most urban lot forest gardens, you probably don't need nitrogen-fixing plants for their nitrogren input if you're recycling your urine. I'll throw out some reasons to keep them around anyway:

• Long-term stability. If something happens to change your urine-recycling contributions to the forest garden, nitrogen fixers will still keep the nitrogen flowing if you've designed them well. Crack-down by the neighborhood association on renegade pee-ers-in-the-night, exodus of your housemates on whom you depended for their piss, or selling your property to mainstream squeamish folks could all leave your forest garden without the nitrogen inputs it needs for optimal performance.
  
• Ongoing slow release of non-messy fertilizer. For patches where you're growing salad greens you want to harvest frequently, n-fixers provide a much cleaner nitrogen source than splashing your piss around.
  
• Frees up your nitrogen for application elsewhere. Knowing that you have ample nitrogen available at home, you can gleefully fertilize wild patches of vegetation, injecting helpful nutrients to partially compensate for the abuses they suffer from civilization. I find it a lot easier to go pee in the woods and grow a Goumi at home than to plant and tend a goumi in the woods and pee at home.
  
• Other uses. Many nitrogen fixers have other uses which warrant their inclusion in your food forest regardless of their nitrogen contributions. Off the top of my head, I can think of nitrogen-fixers which also provide or act as ground covers, fast growing cover crops, tea, human food, wildlife food, chicken forage, bee nectaries, foot-tolerant steppables, and dynamic accumulation of phosphorous and other nutrients.
  
• Learning about particular plants through direct experience now. When we move to a rural area and start growing quarter acre food forests per person, we won't be able to fertilize the whole area from which our food comes. I feel glad that we're currently growing Elaeagnus, pea shrubs, black locusts, and various herbaceous nitrogen fixers which I expect to use in our larger systems in the future. If you ever design or give input for project for squeamish neighbors or friends, or for public demonstration gardens where the public "ick" factor precludes urinal input, then having experience with n-fixers will allow you to do a better job of integrating them into a system which actually needs them.
  

Further thoughts on liquid gold

A few thoughts on factors which would reduce the amount of coverage one person's urine could theoretically fertilize as number-crunched in last night's post:

• Not peeing at home 100% of the time, pretty much unavoidable unless you live the life of a recluse
  
• Composting urine in a humanure pile. As I understand it, some nutrients unavoidably leach out of compost piles. I don't know how much you lose how fast, but presumably the more urine you put into the pile, the more rain that falls on it, and the longer the pile sits before being used, the more nitrogen you lose.
  
• Loss of nitrogen to the air as ammonia. We primarily pee in a bucket (though of course some goes into the humanure bucket with our poop). If I wait too long to dump the bucket outside, an ammonia smell develops indicating nitrogen loss to the air. Again, I don't know how much how fast you lose nitrogen.
  
• Inability of plants to use the nitrogen supplied. I mentioned yesterday my assumption that plants can't fully use the nitrogen supplied in winter during the dormant or at least slower-growing season. I made up a number of 25% efficiency for 4 months out of the year. I assume the same situation can occur even in the active growing months, where too much nitrogen in one spot at one time will lead to leaching of excess nitrogen. Careful application of water-diluted pee over large areas should avoid or minimize this problem. Still, I wonder how much nitrogen plant roots can grab how quickly and just how much square footage you need to cover with say a gallon of urine to make sure your plants can use it all...especially in our quick-draining soil at our house, or in soils with low organic matter content to help bind nutrients. I guess with a mature forest garden the deeper tree and shrub roots and rich soil should catch almost all the nitrogen applied, but younger immature plant communities with mostly shallow roots might require more careful application.
  
• Even if you carefully apply your pee to a large enough area each time you fertilize, you still have to make sure you rotate your applications evenly throughout your whole food forest. If you never apply pee to your patch of perennial greens which you harvest every day for salad and don't want to contaminate, then you can't really count that square footage as part of your coverage. Maybe you could apply extra pee to other areas nearby and have the overstory tree(s) capture the extra nitrogen and eventually return it to the perennial green patch via leaf litter. Or maybe your extra nitrogen applications elsewhere will leach away and get lost. Or maybe you apply the soil from your completed humanure compost piles in those spots.
  

I don't feel too worried about quantifying the loss of nitrogen efficiency from the factors above. I think that with some care to avoid obviously wasteful application of your wastes (haha), the square footage coverage shouldn't decrease by very much, so we can still use the numbers from yesterday as ballpark figures. For our purposes, I'll assume for now that the extra nitrogen from our poop via the humanure pile offsets the losses from inefficiencies in our urine application, and use the numbers from yesterday as the total recycled nitrogen.

One more complicating factor: Obviously not every pee contains exactly 5.6 grams of nitrogen, and I don't know what level of water dilution Crawford used for that figure. Piss clear as a stream? Dark yellow? Presumably somewhere in between, but where exactly? And I assume the nitrogen content varies based on how much food you're eating, since urine disposes of the excess nutrients. So if you live an active lifestyle and eat a subsistence diet, you'll have less nitrogen in your urine than if you overeat and sit around all day. (The book Dirt by David Montgomery mentioned historic Chinese farmers in a certain area who had healthy land which yielded more food than in other areas; those farmers regularly gorged themselves on the excess food to recycle the nutrients back into the land via their wastes.) But I don't know how to quantify any of that so I'll just run with Crawford's 5.6 grams figure.

Nitrogen-fixers vs liquid gold

Every book and article on forest garden design stresses the importance of including nitogren-fixing plants in your plantings. Very few give any pointers as to how much nitrogen-fixing capacity you need. And even fewer talk about, let alone quantify, the nitrogen recycled by returning your own urine to your garden.

I've designed four food forests in the last two and a half years, and included nitrogen-fixing shrubs and understory plants in all the designs on principle. I knew in the back of my mind that pissing in the garden must help a lot with nitrogen, but only this past week have I sat down and penciled out the numbers based mostly on data from Martin Crawford in Agroforestry News, Volume 3 Number 3. He categorizes overstory canopy plants (trees and shrubs) by their nitrogen demand:

• Very demanding: require 10 grams nitrogen per square meter of canopy per year. Chestnuts, Citrus sp, Plums, Walnuts, & blackberries
  
• Demanding: require 6 grams nitrogen per square meter of canopy per year. Apples, Apricots, Bamboos, Filberts, Hazelnuts, Medlars, Mulberries, Peaches, Pears, Persimmons, Quinces, Blackcurrants, Gooseberries.
  
• Slightly demanding: require 2 grams nitrogen per square meter of canopy per year. Cherries, serviceberries, Cornus sp, Elderberries, Yellowhorn, Raspberries, and many others
  
• Undemanding: need no extra nitrogen. Figs, Spice bush, Pines for nuts, red currants, hazels for poles, and many others.
  
• Ground covers: 1 gram nitrogen per square meter of canopy per year. Doesn't specify whether ground covers actively harvested for leaves or fruit would need extra nitrogen or whether the figure already takes that into account.
  

Crawford also mentions that one pee, which he defines as half a liter, contains about 5.6 grams of nitrogen.

So I crunched the numbers to figure out how much forest garden I can fertilize each year with my very own piss! I used the following assumptions/number bases/conversions (I don't do British math):

• An average person pees about 1/3 gallon urine per day
  
• 1/3 gallon = 1.26 liters
  
• 1/3 gallon contains 14.112 grams nitrogen
  
• 1 square meter = 10.764 square feet
  
• 28 grams = one ounce. 16 ounces = 1 pound. 1 pound = 448 grams
  
• Our forest garden canopy at our house here demands an average of about 8-10 grams/square meter for canopy areas. (In the heaviest demanding spots we have walnut or chestnut overstory with hazelnut understory, with ground cover beneath the hazel, for a total of 17 grams per square meters. Most areas have a demanding overstory with ground cover, for 7 grams per square meters. Many areas have even lower demand than that.)
  
• I assume that nitrogen returned to the garden in the winter does not fertilize as effectively as during the more active growing season, and that some of that nitrogren leaches away or otherwise goes to waste. So I assume that 8 months of the year, 100% of the nitrogen gets used, but during the other 4 months of the year only 25% of the nitrogen gets used. So effectively you have 9 months worth of useful nitrogen.
  
• According to this random website, vegetables typically remove 30-100 lbs nitrogen er acre, which is 13,440 - 44,800 grams Nitrogren / 43,560 square feet = 1249 - 4162 grams nitrogen / 4047 square meters = .3 - 1 gram nitrogren/square meter. So even assuming the heaviest demand, and more intensive gardening than standard far-spaced monocultures, 2 grams / square meter seems a reasonable high end guess for annual bed / open area nitrogen demand
  

Crunching the numbers for an average nitrogen demand of 8 grams per square meter gives the following:

1 day of nitrogen (14.112 grams) feeds 1.764 square meters of canopy.
9 months (270 days) of nitrogen feeds 476.28 square meters of canopy.
476.28 square meters of canopy = 5127 square feet.

If you assume the forest garden uses an average of 10 grams nitrogen per square meter, you knock off 20% of the coverage you got with 8 grams, so you get: 4101 square feet.

If you were only fertilizing open area using 2 grams nitrogen per square meter, you'd multiply by 4 to get 20,508 square feet, almost half an acre!

So between Theressa and me, we should be able to fertilize 8200 - 10,250 square feet of forest garden, without even taking into account our large open sun vegetable area. And that doesn't even take into account the nitrogen I bring into the yard each week in coffee grounds, and dumpstered bread and bins of produce scraps for the chickens. Nor does it include the nitrogen in our poop in the humanure pile. Not only do we not really need nitrogen-fixers, we may have an excess of nitrogen in the yard! Anyone know if an excess could occur in this situation, and whether we might harm the water table with nitrogen leachings?

In general, it seems urban lots don't need nitrogen-fixers for the nitrogen if the house inhabitants recycle most of their urine. Interesting!

I'll post later with a few redemptive reasons to keep including nitrogen-fixers in your designs. And I'll probably post a summary of Martin Crawford's recommendations for how much nitrogen-fixing plant canopy to plant for a given design.

---

Note: I wrote a few follow-up posts related to this one:

• Further Thoughts on Liquid Gold
  
• Why We Love the N-Fixers Anyway
  
• Liquid Gold Calculations Revisited
  

Portland Q&A with Derrick Jensen

As I posted way back when, Derrick Jensen writes really really well about really really important stuff. I neglected to mention that he also speaks really really well about those really really important stuffs. And lucky for us around here, he will speak at a Q & A session in Portland on December 19!

So, if you don't have the time to read 1000 pages (Endgame) bashing hope, bashing civilization, bashing pacifism; and inspiring passion for reconnecting with and restoring your landbase, you can still get in on some Derrick Jensen wisdom! I highly recommend coming out for the event, whether or not you've read his books. See you there!

Derrick Jensen Comes To Portland!

“Civilization is not and can never be sustainable.”

This is the first of fourteen premises in author Derrick Jensen’s revolutionary book Endgame. For the last decade Jensen has written articles and books concerning the problems of civilization and what we must do about them. In Endgame Jensen challenges the values and tactics of some of histories most influential pacifists, the sustainability™ movement and the painful games we play with those in power while trying to save what is left of our environment. The last time Jensen came to Portland, the Q and A went late into the night and ended with many questions unanswered. This time around Jensen is throwing out the reading and going straight to the Q and A!

Mythmedia Presents: Q and A with Derrick Jensen
Wednesday December 19th, 7pm @ Disjecta (230 E. Burnside)
Advance Tickets $15, Door $18 (tickets @ www.mythmedia.org)

His most recent work, As The World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Stay In Denial, is a hilarious graphic novel that he co-wrote with Stephanie McMillan, author of the popular online comic Minimum Security. This new book will be available for purchase at the event.

MYTHMEDIA was founded in 2002 by a group of high school dropouts who all agree on one thing: that civilization is going out of style fast! Our mission is to facilitate provocative and innovative ideas for a sustainable future using cutting edge media. www.mythmedia.org

DERRICK JENSEN, activist, small farmer, teacher, and philosopher, is the author of A Language Older Than Words and The Culture of Make Believe (a finalist for the 2003 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize) among other titles. Jensen’s writing has been described as “breaking and mending the reader’s heart” (Publishers Weekly). He writes for The New York Times Magazine, Audubon, and The Sun Magazine, among many others. His works have received praise from authors such as Howard Zinn, Ward Churchill, Terry Tempest Williams, and Winona LaDuke among others. Jensen’s speaking engagements in recent years have packed university auditoriums, conferences, and bookstores across the nation.

For more information on Derrick Jensen go to:

www.derrickjensen.org

www.endgamethebook.org