All Politics Are Local

I thought it appropriate on election day to repeat one of my favorite equations for happiness--a stoic flowchart that comes via Mark Fraenfelder of BoingBoing.  At the end of the day, about half of America will be happy, and half will be dismayed. All we can do is remember that beyond voting, we cannot control the outcome of the election. So a stoic would advise us to not to rail against what we cannot change or affect, but to focus on what we can change--ourselves, and our immediate environment: our household, our block, our school district, our city.

All politics are local and the good thing about local politics is that you can make a difference. For instance you can:

• start a community or school garden
• volunteer to teach gardening or food preservation
• plant trees
• build neighborhood resilience and tolerance
• create bike lanes and walking paths 
• legalize backyard poultry and bees

Not that these local goals are necessarily easy, but they can be accomplished. And they all address resource depletion. By all means go vote today, but let's get together after this mess and work on what is really important.