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Boise: Group takes a “buy local” philosophy to another level
Rachael Daigle, Boise Weekly
… “The local piece is to get people to understand when they make a purchase, the choices they make with their purchasing dollars when they shop are just as important to the economy and to the community as the vote they make on election day,” said Hammel.
However, simply getting a handful of business owners together and handing out fliers isn’t the way to affect change. Hammel’s philosophy revolves around creating localized economic development, and the best way to achieve that, he believes, is to develop entrepreneurship and small, independent business by partnering with cities, counties or states. These partnerships are key, according to Hammel, because a real buy-local movement can’t be funded by the membership fees of local businesses alone. Rather, dues are supplemented by foundations, government programs and grants.
As for the “why” behind all the fuss to support local businesses, Hammel’s advocacy takes a two-pronged approach.
“I try to make the economic point, and I try to make the relationship point,” he said. “First, I say there’s a sweet spot here because when you support a local business, you’re not only making it more profitable and more effective and serving the needs of the community, you’re supporting the community and the economy itself because you’re circulating dollars.
“The second thing is that I always want to support my neighbors and I want to know who I do business with.”
(17 September 2008)
Long article. Many articles are talking about local food; this is one of the few that describes a local model for business in general. -BA
Aussie Web site urges moms to swap, not shop
Pauline Askin, Reuters
Why shop when you can swap? An Australian bartering Web site is targeting moms keen to live the good life despite the economic slowdown, and their children.
The Web site, mumswap.com.au, was launched last month by a Melbourne-based mother, for women whose household incomes took a battering because they had kids or because they left their jobs to become stay-at-home moms.
… “I see us as a solution to give mums the chance to have it all,” she added. “The cost of living is high and society has created pressure on us to have everything but reality bites when you have a child and you lose an income.”
Touting itself as “the smart, stress-free way to have it all,” the site offers users the ability to swap a range of goods and services that include doing the ironing, babysitting, business and hobby-related know-how, vacations and fashion.
(16 September 2008)
Changing the World from Home: The Relocalization Movement (audio)
Business Matters
From climate change to food shortages to high energy costs, globalization is proving itself to have a negative impact on our world. There’s a group who believes that thinking locally is not only the best form of protest–but the only sure-fire way to survive. With Post Carbon Institute’s Celine Rich, Path to Freedom’s Jules Dervaes, and Small-Mart’s Michael Shuman, leaders of the Relocalization Movement.
(29 August 2008)
Scroll down the page to find the August 29 show. About Business Matters.
The Gathering Inn: bed, breakfast, and beyond
Carolyn Baker, Speaking Truth to Power
… If you’re watching the state of the world and are up to speed on the collapse of civilization, and if you want to take a vacation or just get away for the weekend, where do you go? Do you want to hang out with folks who haven’t noticed that “normal” is over and that a new paradigm is foisting itself upon us whether we welcome it or not? If that’s you’re only option when planning your getaway, you may lose your motivation to pursue it-unless you could escape to a place where you’d be surrounded by people who know what you know and are willing to talk about it with you.
Tim Bennett and Sally Erickson, creators of the powerful documentary “What A Way To Go: Life At The End Of Empire”, now own and operate the Gathering Inn in Hancock, Vermont-a lovely bed and breakfast on 2.5 acres of gorgeous land between two stately mountains on the southern portal of the Mad River Valley of Central Vermont. In addition to a lovely setting and lots of TLC, the Gathering Inn’s cook, Kathleen Byrne, creates a variety of scrumptious palette-pleasers for guests, seasoned with love and many years of culinary expertise.
Fall is has arrived in Vermont, and soon the brilliant colors of foliage season will grace our hills and valleys. It’s a short season, but a perfect time for a weekend escape to the crisp, clean air and the magical, serene beauty of the Green Mountains in autumn.
I caught up with Tim and Sally a few days ago and had the privilege of spending a couple of hours asking them questions about their new venture, and a lengthy dialog ensued. It became so extensive and rich that I felt we needed to present it in two segments.
CB: What are you guys up to these days?
SE: We’ve done this really “crazy” thing-we’ve gone into debt buying an inn in Vermont in the midst of a resource crisis that will never end at a time when tourism and the hospitality business are likely to take a huge dive as we stumble over the threshold of a Second Great Depression.
CB: Well, I’m laughing at this somewhat black humor, but I’m also wondering how do you feel about that.
SE: I feel alternately really grateful and excited, and occasionally kind of terrified. We had gotten ourselves debt-free, and it was a big thing to step back into a mortgage.
… TB: It came to make sense to us to put ourselves on the edge of a village. The phrase “be on the edge of a village” kept coming to us. When we looked at more rural places far off the main road, it just didn’t feel right-they felt too remote and isolated. The inn is right on the edge of a little village and right on a main state highway. There’s something about that that feels really good in terms of going into the future. It’s a place where life is happening on human scale and where we can join in that.
SE: And as for “why an inn?” we had the option of just getting a little house on a small piece of land, but there was something that didn’t feel big enough about that. It’s like the movie “What A Way To Go” and having a conversation at the end of a screening-people can wake up and have breakfast with us, and if they want, they can continue the conversation with us. But we want to go into the conversation in deep and profound ways. To just have a house that didn’t have any sense of a public place or purpose or interface–that didn’t feel big enough. So when we walked into the inn it felt like “this fits; this is right.” It was really very intuitive, and we realized that this was a way that we could open ourselves up to continuing the conversation but on a very intimate and local scale, both with our local community and with people who come to stay at the inn. The first thing in the morning, a person can have coffee with us, and we can talk about the state of the world in quiet, thoughtful ways. Something really felt right about that.
(17 September 2008)
Preparing for Energy Descent… A genuine, traditional village
Jack Santa Barbara and Jürgen Heissner, Atamai Village Council
The world is changing rapidly and as a civilization we are ill prepared for what is coming. The decline of the fossil fuel era will trigger profound changes to the way complex societies function. Employment, industry, economic activities, government functions will all change as oil, gas and coal go into terminal decline. While it is impossible to predict how quickly and how dramatically the decline will be, there is no question that the near future means less energy available to perform the many functions which complex societies now take for granted. …
Climate change will impose yet a further challenge to maintaining our current levels of societal complexities. It is no longer an issue as to whether climate change is occurring, but rather how severe and how widespread it will be. …
In addition, global consumption patterns are creating shortages of many essential resources; and increasing species extinctions will have many unanticipated effects.
For those who are aware of these challenges the big question becomes, “What to do”? How do we rearrange our lives to mitigate the unpleasant consequences of these changes? How do we prepare our homes, modify our employment, secure the basic necessities? How do we ensure the well-being of our family and our community into this uncertain future?
Recent blogs, discussions and posts on Energybulletin and on other sites regarding the ‘History moves at slow speeds’ idea, have answered this question by implying that preparation is not urgent or should only be through long term planning. This view is based on the belief that life on the individual scale does not change fast enough to warrant either a sense of urgency, nor implementation of decisive adaptations.
We disagree with this view. We believe the current situation requires urgent action. The uncertainties inherent in climate change and energy descent encompass scenarios of rapid change – be they ecological, social, political or economic – or one or more of these areas concurrently. While we cannot be certain of rapid change, nor can we rely on gradually change; the threats we now face are unprecedented in scale and complexity and destructive synergy. In addition, the preparations required to increase resilience will take time. A sound risk management approach suggests an early start to preparing, especially if the preparations have value in and of themselves regardless of what threats occur.
… The question ‘What to do’ in the face of escalating volatility and uncertainty must involve resilience. Human settlement patterns that optimize resilience will be the ones that endure and provide the most security for their inhabitants.
One of the key themes that has emerged in exploring answers to these questions is that of relocalization – returning to local living – ensuring self sufficiently as much as possible at the local or regional level, strengthening community supports, travelling less, and if at all possible, not commuting.
… The idea of recreating a traditional village settlement is different from and complements such relocalization initiatives as Transition Towns. Transition initiatives focus on working with an existing settlement and transforming it to make a transition to a post-carbon, altered-climate era. Establishing a new village is starting de novo to prepare for the coming changes. Whatever planning and design activities go into developing a new village, they can provide useful information for a Transition initiative, and vice versa. Having neighbouring settlements involved in Transition initiatives provides more security and diversity for a new, sustainable village.
Just such a situation is now underway in the north part of New Zealand’s South Island. Nelson, the largest city in the area, and Motueka, a small town of about 6000 some 45km along the coast, have both recently begun Transition initiatives. The neighbouring settlement of Golden Bay has had a similar initiative underway for some time. In addition, Motueka is the location of what may well be the first sustainable village being specifically designed to provide a resilient community for the post-peak oil, climate-altered future.
The sustainable village is being developed by Atamai Village Council, a registered charitable trust . The trust now owns approximately 30 hectares of land zoned for rural residential development, and has the opportunity to acquire or lease an adjoining 69 hectares, parts of which are already being incorporated into the village.
(September 2008)
Much more information available at the Atamai Village Council website.
