Food & agriculture – July 13
Newsom’s fresh idea: mandates on healthier food
A Geodesic Greenhouse — Year-Round Gardening at 6000 Feet
Announcing the Release of ‘Can Totnes and District Feed Itself?’
Act: Inspiration
Solutions & sustainability – July 10
David de Rothschild: Saving the world, one adventure at a time
Before We ‘Save’ Journalism
Auto-ban: German town goes car-free
Transition Towns – July 9
Book Review: The Transition Timeline
Insights on Resilience from the Recent History of Totnes. 1: Back garden food production
Tooting Catches Carnival Cash
Deep thought – July 9
World at Gunpoint – Or, what’s wrong with the simplicity movement
The Malthusian insult
New book looks at economic devastation in an Iowa meat-packing town
Food & agriculture – July 9
Eat What You Grow, Grow What You Eat?
Coming Soon: ‘Local Food’, a Transition guide, and an interview with the author
Pelosi buys off agri-business to advance climate bill
Grief made in America is not “good grief”
This morning as I was gathering news for Truth to Power’s Daily News Digest, I opened Sharon Astyk’s blogspot, one of my very favorite, to find her caustic commentary on the death and funeral of Michael Jackson. As her comments distilled in my mind and body, I realized that I have even more to say about this cultural phenomenon-no desire to say it better than Sharon because who could (?), but hopefully to embellish her inimitable incisiveness.
MuseLetter 206 – June 2009 (French translation)
Ce mois-ci, la Museletter réunit deux articles qui partagent un thème commun : l’Humanité est-elle capable de réaliser les changements nécessaires au sauvetage de la planète et par la même occasion à son propre sauvetage ?
Imagining the impossible
While living modestly, these peoples’ lives were filled with sumptuous dreams they worked to transform into reality. While they certainly suffered from bouts of frustration and dismay over the years, none of these greats surrendered to what we call today ‘political burn-out’—or worse, just plain jadedness. … If environmental activists evaluate their work in terms of immediate efficacy and pragmatic ‘do-ableness’, they often collapse after five to ten years (sometimes far less) under the weight of abject disappointment. They resent themselves, their movements, and the world, for not changing fast enough.
Deep thought – July 6
Bugging Out
How Politics Works and Why Activism is So Important
Risk Assessments: Playing the “What If?” Game
The Future of Transport
Dopamine Returned on Energy Invested (DREI)?
Tällberg Forum 2009
One Second After: A Book Review from a Prepper’s Perspective
Ruins of a Second Gilded Age
Pediatrician sees three-year-old on cell phone
The long-term consequences of young children already taking their gaze away from living people and constantly-changing nature to look down into and be captured by static machines concerns me. Who benefits and what is lost? What is appropriate technology use? What induces obsessive/compulsive/addictive behavior?
Responding to Sharon Astyk on permaculture and Transition
Sharon concludes: “All that matters is that the work gets done, as well as possible, that the floods are as small as we can make them, and that the suffering is as little as possible. That’s honestly all I care about.” Indeed. That is the task to which we all dedicate ourselves, whatever we choose to call this work.
Housewifely virtues: handwork
Handwork is not and should not be a gendered province – all of us have time when we must sit and listen, or time when we want to converse. As times get more stressful, we may find that we have more of this time, not less – for all that we have more work to do when we must make do with less money and energy, we also often have more of this time. That is, unemployment, a more seasonal life, less television, fewer nights out and fewer long car trips may mean more reasons to sit, and be quiet together. If the power does go out, or get too expensive, handwork makes the evening hours productive, artistic, graceful – and the movement of fingers enables conversation.
