Act: Inspiration

Peak Moment 126: A School Garden Brings Learning to Life

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Come along on a tour with team-teachers Glenda Berliner and Jeralyn Wilson, as they show us their elementary school garden bearing many fruits. It’s an important part of the curriculum: children make mason bee boxes, grow colonial medicinal plants, learn of other cultures, and put science to work.

Unconventional Thinkers: Michael Shuman (interview)

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What has changed in the economy to cause such a surge in the number of microbusinesses that are staying micro over the last decade or so? Why, if there is so much evidence that microbusiness development work better than smoke stack chasing, do policy makers and economists still dismiss the smallest of businesses? What could President Obama do that would be a better use of taxpayer dollars than throwing them at huge corporations?

Peak Moment 139: The Transition Movement comes to America

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One response to the global crisis that is gaining enthusiastic momentum is the Transition Towns movement. Jennifer Gray, a pioneer in the Transition Initiative in the UK and cofounder of Transition US, describes it as “a community-led response to the twin crises of peak oil and climate change. It’s … positive, pro-active [and] engages the whole community in building resilience into their world.”

Peak Moment 124: Creating Our Own Neighborhood – Bellingham Cohousing

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Kathleen Nolan was a co-creator (with 5 others) of Bellingham Cohousing, based on a neighborhood design of private homes and shared buildings, managed by residents in participatory decision making. Their 5.74 acre plot originally had one farmhouse, which they modified to become the shared community building with dining, kitchen, laundry, craft, office, guest, and other rooms.

The pond at the center of the universe

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Three generations of our family have worked, played, fought (the only verb that properly describes our hockey games), picnicked, swum, camped out, made out, and celebrated holidays around The Pond. Most of all it has been a haven where any of us could come when the need to be alone hit us, to sit and slip out of the consciousness of self and into the arms of a little wilderness that thrums and hums with enough activity to keep a naturalist occupied for a lifetime or two. It is not an accident that Thoreau gained inspiration for his best nature writing on the shores of a pond.