Building Community

Survival 101: They don’t teach that in most colleges, and there’s a dilemma

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Can a young person risk going to college these days?
If you’re 18 and college-bound, you may be skilled at computers and driving a car; know how to take the second derivative of a quadratic equation in calculus and have learned about electron orbits in chemistry; and may be able to discuss Shakespeare and “To Kill a Mockingbird” intelligently. But do you know how to kill and dress a chicken, or find and prepare wild edible plants in every season, or keep a goat healthy so it produces milk and meat?

“Plan C” Conference – survival strategies for the energy crisis – Oct 31-Nov 2

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ROCHESTER, Michigan – On Halloween weekend several hundred community activists, sustainability educators, and lifestyle change advocates will convene here at a three-day conference to learn about ways to cut their household energy use and create resilient, sustainable communities that will be able to weather the coming economic and ecological storms.

A teaching garden in our National Mall in Washington D.C.

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Recently, going through some old papers, I found the design for that long-lost garden. It never got built because in 1980, Ronald Reagan became President and appointed Earl Butz Secretary of Agriculture and that was the end of that. No money for organic research, and especially no “teaching garden” for the National Mall. Heaven forbid people learn that there’s an alternative to big chemical ag.

Solutions & sustainability – September 8

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Love, Schmove – Just tell me how to build community with the guy who mows his lawn in his speedo!
Oil prices, technology, and the cost of ignorance
Meet the greenshifters
It never hurts to be prepared for Armageddon: Be to go-to gal
Is it better to lease, hire or borrow than to buy?

Responding to various critiques of Transition

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[In] much of the alternative/protest movement… we take up a position outside of mainstream culture, use language, dress codes, behaviour and forms of protest which at best bewilder and at worst enrage mainstream society, yet we expect them to see the error of their ways and the validity of ours and embark on a radical decarbonisation. What failed to come through in [these approaches] was any sense of humility, any sense that the answers might be found anywhere other than in their fondly held beliefs.