سبحن الرّزّاق

This following video is from MeccaCentric, which is a great resource for videos about Islam, inshallah. They also have a YouTube page with a bunch of informative clips.

This one is from “Natural Health and the Islamic Tradition” by brother Hakim Archuletta. He has some other videos on nutrition posted on YouTube under another user.

Something I’ve wanted to do for about three years now is to commute by bike to work. Not sure why I haven’t done this yet. But I think it has something to do with not having a bike.

So I’m trying to transform an older bike into a fixed-gear (as shown at right, two Free Spirit fixed-gears).

I came across an old (as me? [the bike has a little sticker that says 83 on it]) Sears Greenbriar Free Spirit for $20.

I’ve striped everything off except for the chain (need chain link remover tool) and the crankshaft, which I’ve learned is called a “one-piece.” Right now I’m trying to tackle removing the pedals, which looks harder than it sounds. I think I need some locking pliers or wrench skinny enough to fit between the pedal and crank arm and a lot of leverage (clockwise on the left side). After the pedals are removed from the crank arms, I will have to deal with a large nut that looks corroded (or galvanized even?) to the what-cha-ma-gig (crankshaft assembly?).

I would be appreciative for any ideas on how to deal with this corrosion and remove this nut. This is crucial. I guess if the bolt is forever galvanized to the crankshaft, I will have to find another bike frame. I can at least reassemble and make this bike a working bike. Inshallah.

Obviously, Im not too sure what I’m doing. But the Internet is a vast resource. And there is always the local bike shop…

Check out this Fixed Gear Gallery for more photos.

Ah, just came across a book I was waiting for a year or more for its release. The authors, who are also the cofounders of The Rhizome Collective, have some urban sustainability training classes coming up in September in Albany, NY, as well. I would go, but the dates fall at the end of Ramadan this year. I’ll have to at least order the book:

The Toolbox for Sustainable City Living is a DIY guide for creating locally-based, ecologically sustainable communities in today’s cities. Its straightforward text, vibrant illustrations and accessible diagrams explain how urbanites can have local access and control over life’s essential resources: food production, water security, waste management, autonomous energy, and bioremediation of toxic soils. Written for people with limited financial means, the book emphasizes building these systems with cheap, salvaged and recycled materials when possible. This book will be an essential tool for transitioning into a sustainable future threatened by the converging trends of global warming and energy depletion.

Topics covered in the book include:

• Aquaculture: ponds, plants, fish and algae
• Microlivestock and city chickens
• Rainwater Harvesting
• Low-tech bioremediation: cleaning contaminated soils using plants, fungi and bacteria
• Constructed Wetlands/ Greywater
• Autonomous energy: bicycle windmills, passive solar
• Biofuels: veggie oil vehicles, methane digesters
• Struggles for land and gentrification
• Humanure and worm composting
• Floating Islands to clean stormwater
• Asphalt removal and air purification
• And much more!

Something about this book reminds me of the 60s’ Steal This Book, by Abbie Hoffman, although that book seemed more like it taught you how to become an annoying leech on the system, whereas Toolbox look smore about developing our own interrelated systems for real independence.

The “weeds” I pulled out of my almost-do-nothing edible garden must be Pokeweed. There’s info all over the net about the plant. But basically:

• It can be deadly if consumed…unless, unless…you get only the young shoots and leaves and boil them in two to three changes of water. I guess our people used to eat Poke Salat (salad?) a lot.
• And the Natives here would use it for medicine and as a narcotic.
• Fermented berry juice used to be used as ink (the U.S. Declaration of Independence is written in Pokeweed berry juice).
• There is research being done now on the plant’s properties that help prevent people with HIV get AIDS.
• There’s also a Poke Salat Festival in Arab, Alabama. I’ll see you there.

For my “work work” today I interviewed Dave Jones, cofounder of The Pond Professionaland a member of the International Professional Pond Contractors Association (IPPCA). The article is about the IPPCA’s Ponditat for Humanity’s project at the Atlanta Children’s Hospital.

But the interview started to really arouse my interest as it got into the sustainability features of man-made ponds. According to Jones, it turns out man-made ponds have some real environmental and health benefits:

• Surprisingly, an area of a running pond uses less water than the same area of irrigated turf grass.
• A pond can bring more aesthetic value (and possibly monetary value over time, as Jones suggested) to a property by attracting diverse wildlife.
• A shaded pond actually cleans the air.
• Running water is meditative and relaxing.
• A running pond cuts down the mosquito population.

Jones said the pond industry is now experimenting with the ancient method of using man-made bogs to filter water. The pond at Atlanta Children’s uses a small bog filter before it enters into current filter technology. He says the industry is also experimenting with designing ponds that use bogs to filter harvested rain water from roofs and grey water.

I told him about my own sustainability aspirations and my interest in filtering grey water through man-made bog systems. He had some real encouragement and said, as one architect I talked to earlier this year said, that design and environmental professionals will be interested in giving me feedback on my plans for a sustainable property and home—particularly now, with all the green talk in the media.

I plan to e-mail him soon with specific questions, specifically: can a bog filtration system for grey water work in the freezing temperatures of Ohio?

An excerpt from Jone’s other Web site, www.bogfiltration.com:

The purpose of this website is to explain this under-utilized but ancient form of filtration. Ancient, you say? Of course, China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Rome, the list goes on and on. Well then, if it’s so old, how can it be something utilized in the 21st Century? The simple fact is, water filtration has been based on the same principles for eons, and it’s still the same today, despite glitzy adds and marketing, high tech shapes and materials used. It boils down to bacteria and media. In other words, Nature has the final say so, and is what makes 21st Century methods the same a 1st Century. Just different equipment to make it work.

In my small do-nothing garden yesterday I found some gooseberries ready to pick and pulled a onion and cut some Asperula (I think Sweet Woodruff).

The gooseberries were tasty and not as tart as people said they would be raw.

The onion I threw into some long grain rice for lunch. And I made tea with the Asperula, which wasn’t bad, just plain. Probably should use the flowers as well to get a better taste.

I’ll have to say this isn’t totally do-nothing: I did pull out huge “weeds” with red stems and tuber roots. Looked like they were about to take over the whole garden. I might’ve left one in there. I’d like to find the benefits of this plant. I took the material I pulled out to the compost pile.

I also had Catastrophic cut slots in the top bars of my top-bar hive with his new table saw. The only thing left to add to the hive, other than a swarm of honeybees, is a bottom. Not sure if this should be a screen or a solid piece of wood. There are benefits to both, and I may be able to think of a way to use both. The board will be needed in the winter months, but the screen lets the mites that the bees pick off fall outside the hive.

After about three years of thinking about buying The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka, I finally just ordered the book online. I heard (read) about him and his method online while looking through permaculture pages. As I read through this book, I’ll post some excerpts and commentary here on SubhanaRazaaq.

A bit from the backcover:

Fukuoka demonstrates how the way we look at farming influences the way we look at health, the school, nature, nutrition, spiritual health, and life itself. He joins the healing of the land to the process of purifying the human spirit and proposes a way of life and a way of farming in which such healing can take place.

This book—an all-time classic—is a clarion call to all of us to abandon modern agriculture and its destructive methods and poisons, and to return to our far richer heritage of working closely and simply with the land.

Masanobu Fukuoka, Do-Nothing Farmer

As-salaamu alaykum to the muminun and hello, hola, salut, etc., to the others.

May we all benefit from this blog.

All praises due to the Supreme, the One without a second. Peace be upon all the messengers of the Supreme and Most High.

I got the inkling to do this blog after watching a brother get going on his own at www.runsiddiqrun.com (of which I’m now the ex-Webmaster). (I am running another site, www.coopgroups.com, which, inshallah, will come into play with the content of this blog.)

I think the general direction of this blog will be toward religion and healthy lifestyle/environment, which I think go hand in hand. I’ve found that there are a lot of pagan ideas about environmentalism, looking at nature or her different parts as gods and goddesses. I hope to bring some pure monotheistic teachings to the environmentalism idea.

I hope to also post some photos of and info on different projects I might be working on, as well as some other hum-drum daily entries.