Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
When change unfolds, people want real solutions more than they want to hate. Our work helps people get focused on practical action, brings emotional rewards of connection and common purpose. Transition is an inoculation against human breakdown. It is inoculation against hate.
In America, the spiritual journey starts with an active, conscious, personal rejection of I Consume, Therefore I Am. Life is precious, but new shoes, especially when you’ve already got perfectly adequate footware, are not.
It’s only in imaginary worlds — like those inhabited by today’s mainstream economists, for example — that every animal you will deal with as a gardener is a source of value to you. The key to dealing with those that aren’t, once again, starts with a grasp of the principles of ecology. The Archdruid explains.
What is the nature of “independence”? We talk about it like it can actually be achieved and that it’s a good thing. What if neither is true?
Darrin Nordahl, the author of Public Produce: The New Urban Agriculture, has chronicled the growing movement to put edible plants in public spaces–like Vermont’s vegetable garden on its State House lawn. Also, Ray Shadis, a consultant to the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution, will respond to the question: “Can the state of Vermont regulate Vermont Yankee without falling foul of federal preemption law?”
“There are enough people talking about growing food, but not enough growers.” Suddenly, my mostly sedentary Brooklyn life was filled with kale planting, chicken feeding, delivering produce to restaurants via bicycle, and picking up buckets of coffee grounds from local cafes for composting.
Here, there and everywhere, I plant little edible gardens. You might find one in a pot at the front door, trailing into a walk way, acting as ground cover, or exploding out of a patch of former lawn. I seem to have a driving, primal voice pushing me on to replace ornamentals with beautiful and yet nourishing stand ins.
I live because we live—in reciprocity. Me, you, the farmers, the politicians, the merchants, the animals, the vegetables, the minerals, the trees and oceans, the Earth. These are my pals. These are my suppliers.
John and I take a trip out to visit Woody and Zoe at nearby Cuckoo Farm to see their gorgeous straw bale house, which has been plastered to meet health and safety regulations, and which now looks like an ancient thatched cottage. Over cups of tea I hear about anaerobic digesters and how simple a system they are.
– a Look at the Example of Detroit
-Lessons From a Low-Impact Week
-Free Geek – Computers for the Community
We are running out of time. By 2018, converging food, water and energy shortages could magnify the probability of conflict between major powers, civil wars, and cross-border conflicts. After 2020, this could result in political and economic catastrophes that would undermine state control and national infrastructures, potentially leading to social collapse.
To some people, planting a tree is the epitome of the environmental cliche. Planting a tree seems so simple, so easy, so… low-technology.
