Act: Inspiration

Introducing Fairbnb.coop – Q&A with Damiano Avellino

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Fairbnb.coop is a platform co-op whose name precedes it. Everyone’s heard of the venture-capital-backed alternative that’s putting hotels and traditional B&Bs out of business, and Fairbnb.coop is the antithesis of that – a platform co-op which puts ethics back into home-sharing.

Q&A with Regi Haslett-Marroquin on The True Cost of Food: The Bill Is Already in the Mail

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Working with the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance in Minnesota, Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin is the architect and engineer behind the regenerative poultry system, one of many farm operations at the 100-acre farm in Northfield, through the Main Street Project. His approach to regenerative agriculture involves a biodiverse system of symbiotically connected livestock and perennials, with no chemical inputs, building soil, cleaning water and delivering economic benefits to the community.

The Last Crop Before the Desert

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“I’ve never seen barley looking this great before!” El Kbir Safraoui couldn’t hold back his excitement about the crop growing in his fields. And he had seen a lot of barley in his lifetime of farming in central Morocco.

How Books and Bookshops Improve our Mental Health – and Why we Must Protect Them

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In fact there’s a wealth of evidence to support the idea that books can help to boost good mental health. ‘Bibliotherapy,’ a term first coined by American essayist Samuel Crothers in a 1916 issue of Atlantic Monthly, means the art of using literature and reading as a healing activity. It’s widely accepted as a way to enhance wellbeing.

If We Plant Billions of Trees to Save Us, They Must Be Native Trees

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“Forty-eight billion trees may seem like a high number to reach but there’s a simple way to get there: just take the first step and keep going,” she writes in her most recent book To Speak for the Trees.

But planting native trees won’t do much good if we don’t stop current rates of deforestation in the Amazon and Boreal forests or reduce fossil fuel consumption at the same time.

North Carolina Group Aims to Promote Local Food

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To empower under-represented farmers in Western North Carolina, address local food insecurity, and reconnect the community to the land, Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture (BRWIA) is advocating for a rejuvenated food system in Appalachia.

Ohlone Park, the Urban Space Created by Commoning

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It’s worth remembering how acts of commoning can have lasting consequences, including legacies that we may not even remember. Bernard Marszalek, who has lived in Berkeley, California, since the 1980s, brought to my attention the near-forgotten history of Ohlone Park in his city. The park is a fairly large patch of greenery that a forgotten corps of enterprising commoners in effect gifted to later generations.

Coronavirus, Synchronous Failure and the Global Phase-Shift

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And as this global phase shift accelerates, as this civilization built over the last few hundred years slides deeper into chaos and uncertainty, it is that capacity which will provide us the strength and resilience to weave the foundations of a new emerging system that is adaptive to, not dysfunctional with, the web of life.

What did Sisyphus Dream of?

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I feel right now as though we are at, or very close to, the tipping point on these issues, nearing the moment where the gravity begins to change. I have felt, since Extinction Rebellion and the School Strikes began, since Greta began her strikes, as though deep beneath our feet the tectonic plates have finally begun to shift. Slowly and imperceptibly at first, but definitely shifting.

Milpa in Mexico: Defending a Way of Life

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Defending the native corn is a matter of life or death. To say that we are a people of corn is not a pretty metaphor, but rather, it is the state of things. Our life is associated with corn, and not just as a source of food. It defines a way of life and an affirmation of our relationship with Mother Earth.