I am relaxing with my husband and friends at an outdoor cafe in Tel Aviv; we are celebrating our anniversary. It is hot, but the breeze off the Mediterranean is keeping us refreshed. We lift our glasses of water in a toast: "L'chaim!! (the traditional Hebrew toast, "to life!), L'mayim!!! ("to water")." And we burst out laughing at the silly rhyme that represents our past good fortune, and our greatest ongoing challenge.

Years ago, I had become interested in the future of water on our planet. I was living in California, which had been in a drought for years. The New York Times was still in print then, and one day I saw this map that depicted how the fastest-growing populations in the world were in the world's driest areas. Northern Africa and the Middle East were identified as places where populations were expanding rapidly while the ability to grow food was decreasing, with fresh water already in short supply.

I remember thinking to myself then, "It's too bad Israel is such a piranha in that part of the world. I know that it is developing and refining desalination and clean water technologies that could really help a lot of other countries. If only its neighbours weren't so intent on driving Israel into the very sea that could save them!" To me, one of the miracles of Israel's existence had always been the country's agricultural success--its ability to grow an abundance of produce in arid conditions.

When I met my husband, David, in 2009, he was about to invest in an Israeli company called Kinrot Incubator, which was dedicated to water technologies and the preservation of water. David was a serial entrepreneur who moved comfortably back and forth between Silicon Valley and Silicon Wadi, as Israel's high tech world was sometimes called. The rest, as they say, is history.

Today, we sit enjoying our view of the Mediterranean and a bounty of food grown by cutting-edge water reclamation and irrigation technology that we have helped to develop over the past ten years. In a shifting dynamic that has not always been easy, Israel's former enemies have become its customers and business partners. And we continue to look for new ways to make a difference when it comes to addressing the world's water needs.

Alex F writes: It's harvest time. Rachel and I thought we'd be living in a bigger place by now, but after the property markets seized up, it made more sense to stay where we were. We converted the garage into a family room and dug out a nursery underneath. We're the lucky ones - we've got enough garden to subsist effectively. Mum and Dad live in the spare room. They were one of the millions who saw their pensions disappear and had to sell their property at a fraction of it's value in the 2013 Compulsory House Purchase Act. They had nowhere else to go. It's cramped but it works our pretty well - we get childcare and a lot of help with the vegetables, and there's always someone around to attend Residents' Agriculture Meetings if we're out. Our estate is third in the North London League for crop surpluses this year - we saved up to buy a new waste digester and our neighbour Masoud is a master at irrigation. It's strange to think that just ten years ago we didn't know our neighbours. Now we all work together at our new part-time job - growing enough food to survive.

It's a time of plenty in the Millfleet household - the tomatoes have ripened, there are potatoes in abundance, we're salting, preserving and curing as fast as we can. Mum has rustled up a huge frittata which we devour with homebaked bread and some of Masoud's wine. It's a family feast.

Rachel writes: Didn't eat dinner tonight; lifelong, habitual lack of appetite comes in
handy once again. It's partially the medication. Messengers don't get
insurance, even the university educated ones, so medication is all out of
pocket. At least messengering pays comparatively well and doesn't ask a
lot of background questions-just get 'it' there. Apropos in mob city.
Chicago isn't as 'sick' as some other cities and we were already national
leaders in crime so we took the increase in stride. Adverse conditions?
No problem. Adapt, adopt, flee. Nomadicism is in my blood.

I almost feel guilty knowing my medication, all psychological, has gone
down in price as medication for physiological aliments has skyrocketed.
The trend as late as 5 or 6 years ago was to dose up any and everyone
showing the slightest hint of depression (aka insurance coverage). Now no
one who isn't actually crazy can afford it. Those who are crazy, but
can't afford it, are well screwed.

Promised to meet a friend for a 'meal' tomorrow, some sort of
protein/calcium supplement drink and then as much vodka as we can handle.
You know, to cancel out the potential benefits of our 'meal.' Probably at
the home of an immigrant friend: safer and more intimate than the bars
plus they always give me real sweets. I can't find any good sweets now;
with the trouble in Israel people aren't real friendly with Jews (not that
they ever were) and my relatives bakery and deli have closed. At least as
a halfie I can pass.

When I was in university I had a feeling I would die young. Youngish.
Around 40. I didn't tell many people that, they were already convinced I
was suicidal, though I kept telling them I didn't have the attention span
for it (ADD cancels out suicidal feelings of Major Depression? Sweet,
still avoid bridges though). I'm 29 now so in 23 years (the
'coincidental' magic number) I'll be 42. Dead at the meaning of life. My
friend's a mathematician, and since everything revolves around numbers now
he'll be paying tomorrow. Psychology and art don't pay and he knows it.
Maybe he was right about the 'soft' sciences. I'm lonely.

Take the amphetamines before work tomorrow and the stimulants after so I
won't be tired nor completely wired. Agreed to do some survey work for a
private client friday, retouched images and film due to the 'zine next
monday, tutoring tuesday. Going to try and slay insomnia with good old
fashioned literature now; I'm drowning in musty old books, I just can't
read off a screen. If that doesn't work, and it usually doesn't, I'll
just draw until I pass out on the table.

MKH writes: The food shortages... sucked. I mean, we're like the richest country in the world, and suddenly, bam! Kids who can't find Florida on a map suddenly figure out where all their fruit comes from. I guess I had it easy. We lived on a "hobby farm" when I was younger, so we knew how things went. You see outside there? Yeah, corner lots are great. The short plants are potatoes--hey, we're Irish--and the switchgrass is for rotation, plus we feed it to the goats. We've got some fruit and stuff too, but that's all fenced off... neighbor kids get tired of their own stuff, I guess. Yeah, we've got a good set-up here. I mean, it's not like we're self-sufficient, but... you can get stuff from the neighbors, you know? Here in the northwest people were pretty quick to turn lawns into "war gardens", and you can buy pretty much whatever you need. Collapse of industry? Please. Yeah, I won't deny that east of the mountains they've been having trouble--all those migrant workers feel like natives now--but land's land, you know? As far as this local-economy thing goes, sure, the semi-urban spots are nice, but the dirt that was good for apples will still be good for apples. We just can't afford to ship them all over. I heard that on the Torling farms--you know, the riots were in the news, the workers couldn't feed themselves--they just took over. Split up all the land. Now they're looking for work and living off apples, apples, and whatever you can plant between apple trees. Sounds about right to me. It's kind of funny, you know, how all of these privileged white people start looking to the working class and the chicanos for help. Knowledge workers my ass, they can't even figure out how to stick seeds in the ground on their own. You know online, though, right? I mean, I heard that it's not so big back east, but.... Daisyslist.org is where you go when things get tight. Everything's there. Daisy... Gutierrez? Some second-generation immigrant software worker chick started it. Fantastic. Internet's cheaper than gas... everything's mapped out so you can comp prices and distance, all right there. People grow a little extra, have something to sell... I mean, I'm a woman of simple tastes, but sometimes you don't want to churn the bloody butter yourself. They don't, I mean--I do it every day. So they go online and they see--"Hey, dairy and stuff, down the street!" I think the furthest anyone ever came was from Centralia up north. The kid was lactose intolerant or something, and his mom wanted him to know what all this stuff tasted like, so they had to find someone with goats, and it turned out I was closest. Geez. Like, what, fifteen years in and we're already getting nostalgic? It's just calories, calories and nutrition. Oh, yeah, you gotta be careful. I know people who try to live just off their own stuff, end up with scurvy. That's on Daisyslist too, you know--all of the instructions on how to set up, some warnings and stuff. Mostly people like me who put it up there. I think this is really what makes the difference--it's all still money. You drive through one of the Daisyslist neighborhoods, and it's like you're not in Kansas anymore--or you are in Kansas--whatever. But these people, we're just normal people, you know? Like my grandparents did back in the war. I'm a bit more hard core than most, but I still only spend maybe two, three hours a day on it. And people still buy real food--you know, processed food--all the time, if they want it. It's just money. With the droughts, and biofuels, the ReDS zones, and the costs to transport... it's just cheaper to grow your own now, even with the time expenditure. Not like we're going back to some Indian barter system.
No, I'm doing all right. We'll pull through.

Patrick writes: Tired. Long day. My favorite part of late summer...vine ripened tomatoes
from the garden along with some fresh basil, a little fresh garlic, sea
salt, and a touch of old wine turned vinegar. How great the weather is
in late September here, the first break from the 12 weeks of oppressive
North Carolina heat. Hurricane Sam made a mess of the yard, but somehow
the garden survived. When Booker and Sofia cleaned up the fallen
branches the tomatoes and strings they set up were all intact. My
teenagers are so damn proud of what they've grown and Janet and I are
too. Proud rents. They did it all, from compost to fruit. And these
are perfectly delicious. How a tropical system sucks away the summer
humidity. It's nice to be able to spend time outside again, particularly
for Sofia and I. Tired of this luggage someone called "respiratory
distress," distress? Asthma. that drug in 2005 that left me nearly dead
and with a permanent case of severe asthma. But Sofia? Where'd she get
it? Was all that outdoors play at the Waldorf School actually bad for
her? I've done all the literature mining and deduction and re-mining
and modeling on asthma anyone could do; hell, I'm lucky to have ever
gotten some Brazilian investors to finally build this beast to pull it
off. Lots of suggestions of course, none good at all, none coming out
with any explanatory power. My years at Duke, the 09 crash, the five
year economic gutter. Reform came much too late. Thank god Janet was in
health care, about the only job to be had, that nursing shortage seemed
to just about stick around the whole time. Funny. Me, trading labor for
a doctorate, no salaries at the university, just medical care, but I
held onto my most precious inventions instead of building them out at
work. Amazing no one else thought of these things that whole time. Well
guess no one ever did go broke underestimating the intelligence of the
American people. But this system works now, fifteen years after
designing it, just so amazing I can't believe it is real. How slow
we've become for technological advance, all that money pumped into the
richest 100 US pockets as a golden parachute before the collapse. Almost
a trillion dollars. And then suddenly those dollars were worthless;
they dumped those dollars for gold, swiss francs. They knew it was
coming and they ran for the gold-lines hills. So did I; luckily I
dumped and moved for materials and us-independent currencies in 08. So
the rest of us be damned. We didn't need those jerks anyway; they were
such greedy laggards, trying to rerun another energy bubble before they
went broke. We told everyone in 2008 that the Chinese had already
eclipsed US in terms of technological policy and achievement, how all
those citations were lagging indicators, lagging behind the truth of the
matter, that it was writ large through the whole global research corpus.
All those blank stares. Truth somehow survived, even in our simulators.
You can't sim these tomatoes, that's for sure. The sim never got it
quite right, never does, never can. The future is part what you make it,
obviously, part how you're making it, and always visible from the gut,
but only if you consume as much information as possible and internalize
it, digest it quietly, beat it around, rearrange it. It just pops out.
I remember just before my brother died he said, "time doesn't exist."
He was the best economic forecaster I ever did see. "It's already
happened." Tomorrow I gotta give another talk about our cognitive
attachment to apocalypse again, blah blah, how it's fixed to any model
using language, how apocalypse is a fancy word for denying the
realization we're all going to die, and most likely, quite alone.
Fearing the apocalypse, fearing an early death. It's quite reasonable as
a fear, frankly, but still, in some ways, just another way to separate
people from what few resources they have. Damn good tomatoes. At this
point, I don't care about the soil contamination warning. I'll be
damned, I am damned, I love these tomatoes. I'm 48 now, and after this
last decade, 50 is the new 80, so I'm feeling pretty good that we made
it this far. The end. It's after the end of the world, and these are
damned good tomatoes.

Frederic writes: It's the summer of 2019. You're you, but you're a decade older. Where are you having dinner, what are you eating, what are you thinking or talking about?

(and check out other players' dinner stories in the comments of our Superstruct announcement! http://www.iftf.org/node/2098)

I am dinning with my wife… we manage to find Panga fish in the market, it is expensive but it grows in water and have the guaranty of non-cancer additives.

she’s smiling. I manage to find some nuts and apples for dessert while spending the week end in the countryside. I still know the places to find natural food…-lucky we are-

We still live in Normandy and close to the sea.. nice and quiet place.. the electricity is cheap here thanks to the law for solar panels… but for transport..

The web wall is currently showing images of the north pole conflict: the Russian government has threatened USA for the third time; petrol war again and again…

Hopefully Europe union is upon to leave the petrol energy … nuclear plants and alcohol for transport... My wife is smiling again as they show the birth of a lion cub in a Spanish zoo

–surprising-

Our son work in Paris, he is chemist. He is working in the GLR (Global Life Research) program – we are proud of him- He has called us last week, keep telling us that they advanced on their work.

Their theory to explain why the sterility began to touch all the species five year ago is about to be reveal to the public. A mix between air pollution and rivers infected with medicine recharges. Modification of the seaweeds, fishes, birds … and humans beings.

“ It’s a wonderful world” someone said… my neighbor keep saying it is a divine revenge... funny isn’t it?

My wife has found a worm in the apple.

Everything is not over,

what do you think honey?

Liz writes:

Superstruck!

"You came all the way from Philly on that rickety old bike—amazing! Run into any trouble? I've heard the people who farm the medians on I-95 rough up any strangers they can catch. Oh, you were too quick for 'em. Glad to hear it.

Care to stay for dinner? I've got chipmunk stew, poke salad and raspberries. Nothing like a good old Virginia chipmunk. Of course it's not like the old days when I could just run down to the store and buy dinner ready-made. I guess you're too young to remember much about grocery stores.

What happened?! Only the biggest land grab in the history of the world and nobody told you!

I always thought the Republicans would do it, but it turned out to be the space aliens.

Those rheumy-eyed aliens wanted to take over the earth, but they'd watched enough Star Trek episodes to know that we Earthlings are adaptable and wily. Well, they came up with a plan that enabled them to use those very qualities—adaptability and wiliness against us.

In those days, everybody was playing games all the time. No. Not like checkers. Computer games. You've heard of computers, haven't you? Anyway, there were these games and the computers were all interconnected so that you could play against people who lived anywhere, even on the other side of the world, if you wanted to. They called that global playing field "cyberspace."

You couldn't see the person you were playing against, so the aliens pretended to be people who'd invented a special game that was designed to save the planet. They'd put sections of their master plan for conquering the earth—plagues, economic collapse, food shortages, energy shortages—online and ask people to find solutions to the problems. Once people submitted their solutions, the aliens would plug up the flaws in their strategy and come up with a scourge twice as nasty.

This went on for quite a while, but finally people ran out of solutions. When the last gamer had admitted defeat, all the computer screens in the world showed the following message:

'Greeting Earthlings,

We are aliens from a galaxy far, far away and if you do not surrender to us instantly, you and your planet are toast.

Have a nice day."

P.S. Jane writes: Liz, I promise we're humans ^_^

Lisa writes: I'm sharing my kitchen with my friends. Over time we've decided that the
safest place for us to eat is in our own homes. Together we've found and
shared grass-fed beef, mercury-free fish, and nutrient rich fruits and
vegetables. On occasion we've made butter and cheese, just for fun, but most
of the time we just get together to catch up as friends and feed our
families healthy food. The Slow Food movement in 2005 was just the
beginning. Fast food and fast casual restaurants have all but disappeared
from our neighborhood. Supermarkets have returned to just "market" size, and
most of the grocers share their space on the weekend with "craft" farmers
like my friends and I.

Our dinner conversations are lively and multifaceted. We're each an "expert"
in something and we use the time to consult and share with each other. We've
got an expert each in politics, health, business, economics, and the arts,
and whenever we. The national press has changed, and rather than combing
through ten similar news channels, there's now one of "each" leading topical
news, and balanced by commentary from other pubs.

But hey I've always been a big fan of entertainment, so I don't imagine my
life being so cerebral all the time! I can indulge in my love of film, food,
and home décor by "traveling" the world from my home. What GoogleEarth built
way back when is now real time, and I can "talk" to my "travel docent" as
she shows me whatever I want, whenever I want. I've "visited" vineyards and
learned from vintners, "shopped" at the greatest food halls, and "studied"
rug weaving from Pakistani craftsmen.

Bill M. writes: Three friends and I are eating at our favorite vegetarian restaurant,
The Rising Tide built on the new floating platform on the New
Embarcadero in San Francisco, the water level is several feet higher
than it used to be, hell at least a foot higher than last year alone.
Much of the old Embarcadero is in danger of becoming unstable within
three years, and the city council was thinking ahead.

We're talking about the Gilroy tissue farms, where in vitro meat is
now grown, right alongside the garlic. Me, still a veggie purist--but
everybody else seems pretty excited about the dozen new varieties of
NuFish, which has fueled a comeback in Sushi bars--feels creepy to
me, but have to admit its a good thing ecologically...

Samantha writes: We had a bit of a dinner party tonight. Nothing special, just the usual suspects. It was a bit of an event, though, because it’s the first time we’ve made a proper dinner party type meal with all our own produce. Impressive, no?
We’ve come a long way. God, I remember when we first got the allotment. The brambles were over my head and it took a while to clear, and that first year all we managed were a ton of potatoes and a batch of onions. The bastard slugs ate my beans. Cut to ten years later and we’ve got three plots, growing enough stuff to actually feed us. Proper Tom and Barbara style.
We even had chicken tonight. I couldn’t bring myself to kill it, so my bigdamnhero stepped into the fray. I’ve got to say, the bird was good. They don’t have as much room to move as we’d like, but it’s enough to call them free range, just about.
I did a butternut squash soup to start - the squashes are a pain to grow, with all the water they need, but they’re lovely and sweet. Then the chicken, roasted with some of the wild garlic I found up on the Downs and brought back to the east plot. It’s really good. Not quite like cultivated garlic, but tasty. With the garlic and some rosemary (out of the garden, not the allotment). We had roast tatties and root veg on the side. And some nice green beans - the bloody slugs don’t get them any more. And then a berry compote and home made ice cream for afters. Ok, so I cheated slightly on the ice cream - we don’t exactly have the space for a cow, so I bought the milk. Everything else was grown with our own little, hands, though.
The wine wasn’t. I’ve never managed to get grapes growing properly, but I’ve found a nice little Sussex vintner who does a good drop. We finished off with a little of my homebrewed blackberry brandy, which was pretty damn good.
Good food, good company, and with everything being from the plots it got us talking about the old chestnut again. Self-sufficiency. We’ve being talking about it on and off for years - ever since Mongoose and I got the first allotment, really. We weren’t exactly going to live on the potatoes and onions we were growing back then, but I’ve always sort of loved the idea of just setting up a Pacific Dome in some secluded spot up on the downs with a sea view. A couple of wind turbines and maybe some solar panels to power it, so I wouldn’t have to worry about the power grid or the insane costs of buying electricity. A nice big veg plot, maybe with a greenhouse or two. Fresh, organic veg right on my doorstep. It’d take a lot of work, of course, but just think of it.
The simple life.
Tom and Barbara style. Except that I’m more Margo.
Mongoose would still be up for it, I think, and could probably twist Mr Mongoose’s arm. She was always organic this and food miles that. Still, even ten years on, I guess it’s mostly a pipe dream. I mean, what am I going to do, drop my life in town and just go off to live in the wilds. Can you get broadband in the wilds?