For a bedtime story for my son, I told a short version of the Aladdin story, and since I couldn’t really remember how it went, I just had my son make up what Aladdin’s 3 wishes from the Djinn would be. That got me thinking. I used to always daydream about my three wishes (often starting with the ‘I wish for a million wishes’) a lot. Then I grew up. I thought about what those would be now. Something to do with the eco-plex? No, that is way too small, when one could wish for anything – and the ecoplex is only my means to a non-reachable end of a better world. Here are some of my unpolished, 10 minutes until I fall asleep, thoughts: 1: That everyone would voluntarily have 1 or fewer children (or at least that would be the aggregate effect of everyone’s reproductive choices) until the population stabilized at some ideal (less than 1 billion? I’ve read guesses of what this ideal would be – maybe the Djinn would have a good idea what this is…), and (am I allowed ‘ands’ in a wish, or is that cheating?) that all conceptions would be totally desired by all concerned parties. My hope with this wish is to deal with the huge population component to our woes and to ensure a more emotionally stable, secure populous as each child is wanted and hopefully treasured. I happen to think this would help cut mindless consumption and other roots of misery. For full disclosure: under this system my son would not have been born. SO I’m not saying unplanned children can’t be parented and loved well, I’m just saying that would be more likely to be the outcome with planned children. I happen to think that the temporary problem of a top heavy, aging, population structure is more tractable than the alternative. 2: Through whatever means necessary, use of fossil fuels and nuclear are phased out over the next 5 years. Period. With such a weighty condition in place and solid, I have no doubt of humanity’s ability to figure out solutions – extreme conservation, permaculture design of everything, cooperation and sharing, bike commuting, distributed solar, etc. We have the means, we just need the will. 3: Hmm..after that do I need a third wish? I think that would solve most of it in enough time. Maybe some wish against wars and nastiness in the transition years. Buddha-like enlightenment for all? I mean, can the Djinn do so much to human nature? Have I asked too much already? OK, I haven’t

worked out the third wish yet. My son’s three wishes were for Aladdin to have all of Indiana Jone’s gear (we had just seen the movie), for the lamp to be clean, and for Aladdin to be home with his mom. And switching gears – three happy cheap fixes this last weekend: 1: The window on the main entrance door is held on by these plastic, fake – divided light (grill) frames on both sides. The one on the outside was quite broken, with some of the grill part missing. I took it off and the frame fell into 4 pieces, so I went to the home improvement box stores to try and find a replacement. Not available, and no wood trim pieces, or tree branches, or anything would have worked without a lot of routing and other work. So I cut out the grill part of the outside frame, glued it back together with gorilla glue I had, spraypainted it all moss green with some paint I had, and put it back on. It looks much better than before, and perfectly acceptable. And basically free. 2: The lock was sticking on the front door. I naively thought I was going to have to replace it as it got worse. Then (Gil had the same thought on the same day) I realized that I could probably try some WD-40 in it. I asked my dad if that was ok, or if I needed to get that special lock stuff (graphite). He said he has used WD-40 and it works fine. So I sprayed some in and problem solved. Yah, WD-40 is not really clean and green, but better than a new lock! 3: Since January, the shed light and outdoor car plug-ins have not functioned. We tried flicking every switch in the house that didn’t seem to go to anything else, and checking the circuit breakers, and I even dug up the underground cable for a foot or two near the outdoor plug-ins, and had my electrician friend look at the plug-ins. No luck. Finally, while painting yesterday I noticed that a plug-in low down on the inside wall of the entry is a GFCI plug, and it had been tripped. Knowing that I was just about to solve all my problems, which I had anticipated taking money and a lot of shovel work, I pressed the reset. Sure enough, problem solved. I feel dumb for not noticing it earlier. And very happy I did notice it.

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3 wishes and 3 cheap fixes