Society

Transition, Permaculture and Peoplecare: an interview with Looby Macnamara

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Looby Macnamara is a permaculture teacher and author of ‘People and Permaculture: caring and designing for ourselves, each other, and the planet‘. According to the publishers, it is “the first book to explore how to use permaculture design and principles for people – to restore personal, social and planetary well-being. People & Permaculture widens the definition of permaculture from being mainly about land-based systems to taking it right into the heart of our own lives, relationships and society”. I caught up with Looby via. Skype, and started by asking her how she came to the work that led to her writing the book (you can either listen to this podcast, or the transcript is below).

What enables people to survive great hardship?

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I was recently re-reading Mary Pipher’s excellent book from a decade ago The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community. The book is in large part stories of refugees and a guide to helping them navigate their new world – encouraging members of the community to act as “cultural brokers” and guides to the newest and most vulnerable Americans…As I was re-reading it, I also noted her list of the attributes for successful endurance and adaptation to a new culture – a list that seems both applicable to those (some of us) who might have to leave their native place and become refugees literally or metaphorically (whether we leave our country or our neighborhood, climate change is likely to drive many of us from our current homes.) It also applies to those of us who may find ourselves living in place – but in a world that is radically different and new to us, and at times frightening.

How a gift economy powers education in rural Nepal

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In recent months, I have worked a lot with currencies, as I’m involved with Dropis, a team of developers, researchers, and designers dedicated to creating a currency for the sharing economy. So, when I came across “Love is our Currency,” a TEDx talk by Manjil Rana, cofounder and president of Maya Universe Academy, my curiosity was piqued…

Wet feet, cold baths and lukewarm soup – resilience in Lancaster?

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There’s something about resilience that makes me think of cold baths, wet feet and the distant prospect of lukewarm vegetable soup.  And the word, defined first in the dictionary as "the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation," only adds to the depression.

Why sex?

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A lot of readers have emailed to ask why I’m writing a book about sex. Have I given up writing about energy and environmental issues? Have I dumped big issues for small ones – instead of writing about how we should live in this new world, offering suggestions for the best sustainable dildo? Am I selling out?

Slow train to Hebden Bridge

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This month is all about time. I have been running up against a major deadline with the new edition of the Transition Free Press and haven’t had a minute spare to write any posts. Ironic then that this week’s report should be an introduction to Playing for Time -a collaborative handbook about Transition and the Arts, authored by Lucy Neal. Last year we set off to Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire to visit the house where the main part of the book will be created.

Starting down: seven deadly sins

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For those of us who live in countries where we use many fossil fuels, we have been shielded from the consequences of living badly. But that age is ending. Now that the Mayan Baktun 13 calendar has passed, we begin the era of the Gaian calendar. We “will eventually have to reduce either our populations or our living standards (emergy use) by 80 to 90 percent” (Odum & Odum, 2001, p. 170)

Idle No More rises to defend ancestral lands—and the planet

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I don’t claim to know exactly what’s going on with #IdleNoMore, the surging movement of indigenous activists that started late last year in Canada and is now spreading across the continent—much of the action, from hunger strikes to road and rail blockades, is in scattered and remote places, and even as people around the world plan for solidarity actions on Friday, the press has done a poor job of bringing it into focus.

Bittman, Beyoncé and Cool Memes

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Mark Bittman, Food columnist for the New York Times and bon vivant travel franchise for public television, has made more than a few enemies for criticizing the choices celebrities make in their food and beverage endorsements. Said Bittman, “[Beyoncé] Knowles is renting her image to a product that may one day be ranked with cigarettes as a killer we were too slow to rein in.”

What is this Resilience, anyway?

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Change doesn’t come easy to us humans. We like to know what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next year. Sudden change can be severely upsetting; a death, unemployment or illness has the ability to turn our lives upside down for weeks, months or even change it completely. Most of these unexpected and unplanned changes are therefore unwelcome and a lot of people would find it difficult to discover silver linings in these kinds of challenges.