Act: Inspiration

Apeakalypse Now

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The culture shock I felt upon my return from Thailand was so severe I was in a stupor for a month not knowing how to direct my life. I did not feel safe sitting in a house with a mortgage. I did not feel safe in America itself. I saw a nation of people carrying massive amounts of credit card debt and few practical skills. They had less of a safety net than a Thai farmer. … Just as the tide going out reveals an awesome array of flora and fauna living in hidden tide pools, so too did the economic crisis reveal an amazing array of creatures I had no idea existed.

Guerilla Gardening: Eating The Suburbs

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The Age recently had an article on the emerging practice of “guerilla gardening”, taking a look at the “Gardening guerillas in our midst”. This concept seems to have steadily increased in popularity in recent years (admittedly from a very low base) as the permaculture movement’s ideas have been propagated through the community.

Unlike the usual approach taken when trying to grow food in the suburbs – converting spare land on your own property (as discussed by aeldric previously and, more recently, in Jeff Vail’s series on A Resilient Suburbia) – guerilla gardening involves cultivating any spare patch of urban land that isn’t being used for another purpose, which could provide a substantial addition to the food growing potential of suburbia.

State legislator promotes neighbors helping neighbors

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Do you know your neighbors? If you don’t, get to know them soon because none of us knows when we might need them or when they might need us.

Several weeks ago I attended a meeting in Montpelier, capital of Vermont, in which that city’s Mayor, Mary Hooper, and Vermont State Representative, Patricia McDonald (R-Berlin) outlined detailed preparations being made by concerned citizens in Montpelier and Berlin to assist the most vulnerable folks in their towns with surviving the cold winter. While this kind of effort may be popular at the neighborhood, city, or town level across America, it is rare that a state representative signs on to it as passionately as McDonald has…