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    Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream
    Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream
    Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream
    Audiobook8 hours

    Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream

    Written by William Powers

    Narrated by Andrew Eiden

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Why would a successful American physician choose to live in a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot cabin without running water or electricity? To find out, writer and activist William Powers visited Dr. Jackie Benton in rural North Carolina. No Name Creek gurgled through Benton’s permaculture farm, and she stroked honeybees’ wings as she shared her wildcrafter philosophy of living on a planet in crisis. Powers, just back from a decade of international aid work, then accepted Benton’s offer to stay at the cabin for a season while she traveled. There, he befriended her eclectic neighbors — organic farmers, biofuel brewers, eco-developers — and discovered a sustainable but imperiled way of life.

    Here, Powers not only explores this small patch of community but draws on his international experiences with other pockets of resistance. This engrossing tale of Powers’s struggle for a meaningful life with a smaller footprint proposes a paradigm shift to an elusive “Soft World” with clues to personal happiness and global healing.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateApr 16, 2019
    ISBN9781721348732
    Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream
    Author

    William Powers

    An author, speaker, and expert on sustainable development, William Powers is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute and an adjunct faculty member at New York University.

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    Reviews for Twelve by Twelve

    3.5/5

    63 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 4/5
      Very thought-provoking. Sometimes it was a bit too intimate with the author's thoughts, but there were also times of good insight. Worthwhile reading.
    • 4/5
      Admittedly, Powers is in a perfect position when he puts himself into the 12 x 12 position---an accomplished author---with enough savings so that he can actually separate himself and try this experiment. I agree with a lot of his thinking but is it possible, with a world that is quite full of billions of people for much of the world to move in this direction as fast as it probably needs to? Maybe, especially where the populations already live a "simple" life successfully, as long as the corporations of the world don't ruin them. I'm curious to read his new book, New Slow City. To what extent, and, what would happen, if suddenly everyone DID live this way....is it possible or only to degrees. I guess the truth is that without living that way to some degree, there is a very tough future. Hmmmm---just reading some of the other reviews, I must agree with some of their comments. I decided to ignore his relationship with his child---it's a tough sell.
    • 3/5
      Although I do not see myself as willing to go this far off of the grid, I did appreciate the opportunity to reflect on the beauty that I often miss in the hustle of life. Perhaps that is why old folks are perceived as being wise, they have of necessity slowed their lives.
    • 1/5
      I found this book far more annoying than edifying. The authorial voice drips with entitlement and inexpertly concealed superiority. I should be right smack in the center of the target audience for this book, as it's an extended meditation on values and stewardship of our precious resources.

      However, Powers failed to engage me on a visceral level and lost me entirely when he revealed, after almost 200 pages, that he'd left his 2 year old daughter behind in Bolivia while he jetted around gazing into his navel and helping the downtrodden. I understand that there are all sorts of ways to make a family, and any number of models of same. But I can't take seriously some overprivileged sprat who natters on and on about the way love transforms his life while his only child is growing up without him, thousands of miles away. The fact that he moves back to be near the child at the end of the book made me feel a little better. Not that it's my business, but it sure colored my opinion.

      The revelations that Powers has while living in a small space in the US strike me as pretty banal, especially in view of the fact that he's one of those flying-to-disadvantaged-areas do-gooders. It felt disingenuous that he got all these insights during the 40-day time frame he claimed. I also felt like he talked down to the reader throughout. And he didn't give Annie Dillard credit for being the author of a book he discusses at some length- which is a small quibble, but a valid one in my eyes.

      Here's the bit that made me realize I didn't *not like* the book, but I actively *hated* it (italics mine):

      "Beside [the woodpile] was the first all-terrain-vehicle, or ATV, I'd seen in Pine Bridge. He told me excitedly that it was the first of two ATVs their grandma was sending them from Florida. She'd traded a Bobcat- evidently another kind of machine- for the ATVs."

      Seriously? Kid's worked in South America (or as he calls it, The Global South) and Africa for 15 years and has never seen or heard of a Bobcat? *snort*

    • 2/5
      Our book club likes to read certain categories of books at least once a cycle. So when the non-fiction selection month was available, I jumped on it and chose this book. Not only was the premise fascinating to me, but it takes place in our state so I thought it would be perfect. Unfortunately, I think my choice earned the unanimous rotten tomato award for the year and I'd have to agree. There was so much promise left unfulfilled and that, combined with the fairly sanctimonious tone, was the kiss of death.Powers, an ecological activist long worried about his own carbon footprint, hears of a doctor living in a 12x12 home completely off the grid. Intrigued by her lifestyle, he is offered the opportunity to move into her home during a time period when she is out west protesting and he jumps at the chance to live the life of a wildcrafter. But this leap is inauthentic at best, while musing on nature and this back to the earth lifestyle, Powers never embraces the life fully, falling back on his girlfriend's car, apartment, and the local wi-fi enabled cafe. He glorifies the tiny carbon footprint of living 12x12 and while his point that we should all do more to reduce our carbon consumption is valid, he also ignores the problems of living as Dr. Jackie has done. A major reason she's chosen her lifestyle is her disagreement with tax money being used for war. A legitimate ideological stance but neither she nor he addresses anything worthy that tax money is used for though, such as education. Opting out of taxes through living small means not supporting your local library or local schools, etc. And many of Power's neighbors during his sojourn in Jackie's home aren't truly living in 12x12 homes. Multiple 12x12 buildings to work around the taxation issue is just plain cheating.And perhaps these issues wouldn't have been so off-putting had they been addressed in the text. Instead, Powers came across as sanctimonious, certain of his righteousness and superiority, and frankly just plain pedantic. The writing was overloaded with unrelated musings and recountings of his past experiences, including his past relationship which resulted in a daughter. Very little of this had any bearing on his living in a small 12x12 structure. Actually, very little of the book indeed, had much of an account of his daily living there. While this is not intended to be a how to guide (and nor did I expect such), including more of the realities and challenges of a life so different from what most of us generally live would have made for a more interesting read. Simply condemning technology for technology's sake left this reader bored and came off as rather disingenuous given Powers' continued reliance on the technology of which he approves but simply removed from Jackie's homesite.We do need to be more mindful of our impact on the environment but this book ultimately didn't even detail the author's striving to be mindful. A disappointment all the way around.
    • 3/5
      I really thought that I would enjoy this book more than I did. I've been interested in off the grid living and having less reliance on possessions, and I must admit that the thought of living in a 12 x 12 cabin in the woods is both intriguing and a little terrifying to me. Maybe the book would have been more interesting if it had been more about Jackie instead of William. Jackie seemed like a very deep, spiritual person who had a story to tell. But instead, she only makes a few cameos in the book after the first chapter, and it's mostly about the author's musings on his own life and path. Which, really, I would have been fine with if it had been more in the vein of Walden.The first half of the book was similar to Walden, I suppose. William gets to know his (Jackie's) neighbors, and he makes observations about his new life in the 12 x 12 cabin. But he has a tendency, especially in the second half of the book, to go on these long and rambling tangents that had little, if anything, to do with the living in a 12 x 12. I'm a liberal person, but William's liberalism was on a different planet than mine. He kept throwing around words like "ecocide" and equating it with genocide. No. He reminded me of the "hippie kids" in college who just kept praising themselves about how intellectual they were. Sure, William walks the walk more than those kids did (he has helped people in war zones, has traveled extensively for the UN, etc), but in the end, I felt like this book was more of a pat on the back for the author, like he was justifying himself in his eyes, and the book was an exercise to do so. I really can't recommend this book, which is a shame, for it does have some really good moments. But it's not a Walden, and it's not a keeper. I'm glad that I checked it out from the library instead of buying it.
    • 5/5
      William Powers, the author, whose life's work includes having helped to create rain forest protecting municipalities. Jackie, Stanley Crawford,the Thompsons, those who were living their dreams and loving planet earth with their gentle presence on her soil. These gentle spirits are seeking a way to live more intentionally, with awareness. This Twelve by Twelve: A One-room Cabin Off the American Grid and Beyond the American Dream is a story of a journey. A journey to to find the beauty of living in a cabin that is indeed 12x12. Jackie Benton lives there. She is a physician who chooses to live off the grid. She is a modern day Thoreau who finds her answers to life's most difficult questions in nature. Powers hears about her from a family meber and is offered the opportunity to live for four weeks as she has been living. Jackie is a wildcrafter. Wiki definds wildcrafter as "the practice of harvesting plants from their natural, or "wild" habitat". It is also a lifestyle that protects. Protects the earth and her creatures from the abuse that the rest of us lay upon her day after day. Smoke, chemicals, ripping oil and coal and more from her without a second thought, in order to meed what we call our needs. This is a spiritual journey as well as one of self discovery, of transformation. Powers introduces us to the people he has met in his life who have steered him toward following this path, to understanding that there is more within the less. They are inspirational and simple in their less is more culture. Raul is a Mayan whose family hosted Powers during a time when he was volunteering to build houses, and even mine silver. He and his people know that there is a time to work, and a time to rest. The porters from Africa who refused to go another step after walking briskly for two days. They said they had been walking to quickly. They needed to wait for their souls to catch up. So different from our days, and the days of those around us. Cell phones in our ears, working "vacations" and long days that stretch from sunrise to sunset filled with stress. Always connected by electronics but disconnected from the things that really matter. Be still and listen. Close our eyes and feel. Don't just look, but see. These are things my grandmother taught me. She brought the knowledge in with her to this life, I think, and it has stood me well. These exact words are not in the book, but their intention is. Recommended.