Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Been a fascinating few days here in the UK in terms of the weather…It had been so long since we actually had a really actual snowy winter that thick snow has become the stuff of legend, banished to Doctor Who Christmas Specials and the top of Christmas cakes. Then it snowed, and boy did it snow, and almost immediately all the headlines were of ‘misery’ and ‘chaos’.
…Our society likes big shiny solutions. It likes answers. It likes to focus on THE SOLUTION that makes everything better, and we tend to think that anything less than THE SOLUTION is giving up and copping out. But sometimes there isn’t a THE SOLUTION and even when there is, while some people are looking at THE SOLUTION, a bunch of other people have to be on the ground fixing what’s happening already.
-Changing the lifestyle package
-The fifth story
-Consumer Hell
The corporate capitalist system is destroying people and the planet. Can we imagine alternatives? Ravi Logan and Jason Schreiner’s model is based on valuing our interrelatedness and interdependency within the natural world. It replaces profit-driven with cooperative enterprises, and emphasizes a balance between local self-reliance and bioregional networks, with some global structures to meet global needs like telecommunications.
Ten years ago this moment, America was awaiting the inauguration of a new President. We knew that the new Bush administration would bring at least four years of darkness, but we had no idea how dark, nor that a second hijacked election would follow the first, nor the extent to which the influence of Bush II would extend into the future. Certainly, we had no inkling of 9/11 and that terror-both a politically and psychologically would overshadow every day of the coming decade.
When visitors ask what our main crop is on our little farm, they look a bit startled when I reply “wood.” They look even more startled when I say the reason wood is important to us is that it brings tranquility to our lives.
This is the beginning of a multi-part series on agricultural education, the farming demographic crisis and the question of who will grow our food – what the problems are, how we will find new farmers, how they will be trained. To me, this is one of the most urgent questions of our time.
KrisCan visits Eric Toensmeier in his Holyoke, Massachusetts home garden that was transformed from a bleakly barren backyard into a thriving oasis of year-round, productive perennial fruits and vegetables.
It was the pivotal international conference of the new century. Tens of thousands showed up, including heads of state, officials at all levels of government, representatives of environmental organizations, and ordinary citizens from nearly 200 countries. Scientists had warned that, without a strong agreement to reduce carbon emissions, the consequences for civilization and the world’s ecosystems would be cataclysmic.
If we’re to seriously critique the wardrobe of the emperor, we’d better have explicit plans and options for a whole new wardrobe to articulate, otherwise perhaps being quiet and working on said plans is a better idea.
Attitudes toward food change constantly, and perfectly edible food that is shunned in one era might be highly prized in another.
I suddenly realized that my sense that I had time to do my end of year wrap up was rapidly becoming incorrect – New Years is tomorrow, of course, but somehow it snuck up on me.
