In Resilience Reflections we ask some of our contributors what it is that inspires their work, and what keeps them going.
Read more Resilience Reflections here including Sandra Postel and Dan Allen.
Former newspaper editor Brian Kaller wrote his first magazine cover story on peak oil in 2004, and since then has written for the American Conservative, the Dallas Morning News, Front Porch Republic, Big Questions Online and Low-Tech Magazine. In 2005 he and his family moved to rural Ireland, where he speaks to schools and churches, and writes a weekly column for the local newspaper.
Brian introduces his Restoring Mayberry blog by saying "Let’s say we’ve lost most of the self-reliant skills and classical education that our forbears posessed. Let’s say we have replaced them with a culture of buying and discarding things we don’t value, and staring at glowing screens. Let’s say you want to try to rediscover an older way of life, believing we will need such things again. And let’s say you have a daughter."
“Most of the inspirational people I’ve known aren’t in the public eye.”
Who/what has been your greatest inspiration? And why?
Everyone names famous people as their inspirations, but the more famous someone is, the more I wonder if they should be. We remember the generals but not the soldiers, the CEOs but not the secretaries, the billionaire who contributed millions to a cause and not, as the parable goes, the widow who contributed her last penny.

“if you look at the world’s situation right now and feel a measure of grief, it doesn’t mean you’re sick, it means you’re decent. That feeling is why our species deserves to be saved.”