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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage.
Glenn Beck embraces simplicity
Glenn Beck, YouTube
(7 December 2010)
From Story Of Stuff who calls it “A Holiday Present from Our Number One Fan 😉 “
We’re with you, Glenn! We think you’ll love “No Impact Man” and “In Transition.”. -BA
21 Holiday Gift Ideas for the Permaculture and Guerrilla Gardening Activists in Your Life
Permaculture Media Blog
As you’re out prowling for holiday gifts, consider supporting some of these incredible artists, journalists, activists, and entrepreneurs. It’s hard to pay the bills doing what you love, and I know these folks would be thankful for your support (and so would those receiving what they’ve made!).
So, here are 21 gift ideas for your activist friends:
* Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community – Plant “guerilla gardens” in barren intersections and medians; organize community meals; start a street theater troupe or host a local art swap; free your kitchen from refrigeration and enjoy truly fresh, nourishing foods from your own plot of land; work with children to create garden play spaces
(December 2010)
The Beekeeper Next Door
Kristina Shevory, New York Times
Mike Barrett does not have much of a yard at his two-story row house in Astoria, Queens. But that fact has not kept him from his new hobby of beekeeping — he put the hive on his roof. When it was harvest time this fall, he just tied ropes around each of the two honey-filled boxes in the hive, and lowered them to the ground.
Eventually, Mr. Barrett loaded the boxes into his car, took off his white beekeeper suit and set off for a commercial kitchen in Brooklyn. There, along with other members of the New York City beekeeping club, he extracted his honey, eventually lugging home 40 pounds of the stuff.
He was happy with his successful harvest, but he also reaped something he did not expect. “I was surprised how much I really care about the bees,” said Mr. Barrett, 49, a systems administrator for New York University, in reflecting on his inaugural season as a beekeeper. “You start to think about the ways to make their lives better.”
Until last spring, Mr. Barrett would have been breaking the law and risking a $2,000 fine for engaging in his sticky new hobby. But in March, New York City made beekeeping legal, and in so doing it joined a long list of other municipalities, from Denver to Milwaukee to Minneapolis to Salt Lake City, that have also lifted beekeeping bans in the last two years. Many towns, like Hillsboro, Ore., have done the same, and still other places, like Oak Park, Ill., and Santa Monica, Calif., are reconsidering their prohibitions.
Nationwide, hives are being tucked into small backyards and set alongside driveways; even the White House has installed some. Beekeeping classes are filling up quickly, and new beekeeping clubs are forming at the same time that established ones are reporting large jumps in membership.
(8 December 2010)
The UK Crash Course… now available free to all UK Transition initiatives…
Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture
Chris Martenson traveled to the UK for a series of talks and meetings earlier this year. While he was here we asked him whether he might be up for doing a new version of his famous Crash Course, but tailoring it for a specifically UK audience. We also asked him to make it shorter than the over 3 hour Crash Course, as we felt that would be more useful for Transition initiatives.
As a result, a 45-minute UK version of the Crash Course has been produced and is now available free online. Spliced into 6 parts, the 45 min UK version can be viewed on Youtube and part 1 is below.
Thanks to some generous sponsorship (Thanks Matt!), we are able to offer a limited number of copies free, one each to every official UK Transition initiative. You only need to pay £2 for post and packaging. Not bad eh?
Order yours by clicking below. Please include the name of your initiative along with your order so we don’t get confused.
Seasons Greetings from the Transition Network! If you are not an initiative and would still like a copy, they can be ordered online here for only USD$10.
(3 December 2010)
Why not eat insects? (video)
Marcel Dicke TED Talks
Marcel Dicke makes an appetizing case for adding insects to everyone’s diet. His message to squeamish chefs and foodies: delicacies like locusts and caterpillars compete with meat in flavor, nutrition and eco-friendliness.
Marcel Dicke wants us to reconsider our relationship with insects, promoting bugs as a tasty — and ecologically sound — alternative to meat in an increasingly hungry world
… “People hate bugs, but without insects we might not even exist,” he says. Dicke’s PR crusade began in the 1990s, as a lecture series. Then his team made world headlines when they convinced 20,000 people to attend an insect-eating festival in Waginegen. Today, Dicke leads what he says is fast-growing research into insect agriculture, and predicts that insects will be on Dutch supermarket shelves this year. And does the former vegetarian eat bugs? “At least once a week. Locusts are nice cooked with garlic and herbs, served with rice or vegetables.”…
(9 December 2010)
Via Holly Richmond at Grist (Why you should eat insects instead of meat.) -BA
