Building Community

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…

Elephants: Involuntary Simplicity

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Although I admire the Voluntary Simplicity movement, when I was asked to write about simplicity and the economy, I was at first stumped. I can certainly see the grace and benefits of living a simpler life. We already grow much of our food, buy most of our consumer goods used, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without,” try and keep our energy use down to below 1/5 of the average American’s, and depend heavily on community, barter and sharing. At first glance, although we’re Jewish, not ”Plain” our life evokes a simpler past with the wood cookstove that heats our house, the jars of home canned food, the milk goats and our carefully managed budget.

Recession and less holiday travel: the Earth and I are lovin’ it

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At this historic juncture many of us are not only aware of financial insolvency, but geophysical limits to growth as well. It’s all related. We hold that the consumer economy and its ecological support system are in such dire shape that another cycle of material opulence may not happen.

Restoring food security and a dying way of life: Getting to know your local farmer

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The U.S. financial system is in collapse, and energy costs are likely to come back again next spring and summer with a vengeance that we can’t imagine. This will make the price of food, already off the scale, skyrocket even further. We must all get to know our local farmers, or better yet, become them. In the moment, we have the “luxury” of low energy prices, and it is during this time that we should be making food security our top priority.

Survivalism: For peak oilers and ecotopians too?

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It seems that many of the peak oil heavyweights, including Richard Heinberg and Dmitry Orlov, in particular, despite their own ingenious contributions to analyzing our current predicament, seem to blithely dismiss survivalism. They apparently do not understand the basic technical constructs of survivalism…