My mind reeled me back across the decades to packaging up my son and his brother in hats, boots, mittens, and snow pants to be protected from the harsh, Vermont winter.
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Just Enough
“…..we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. ” — – Dwight D. Eisenhow One beneficial consequence that comes from things getting uncomfortable is that it forces change. That is true whether you get a cramp from sleeping in a funny position, or when the recycling market collapsed after China no longer accepted the world’s discarded plastics. As uncomfortable and distressing as it is not to be able to recycle as we did before, we are now forced to acknowledge all that stuff we bring into our homes.…
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Changing Direction
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.” — Thomas Paine, from the introduction to Common Sense. For more than 200, years we have accepted the burning of fossil fuels as the way to power our rapidly changing modern world. For more than 100 years, we have accepted the gasoline-powered car for personal mobility. For more 70 years, we have accepted crop hybridization, chemical fertilizers and herbicides as the means to feed our exploding population. For more than 60,…
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Resilience Today
Resilience is a frequent topic of conversation these days, especially after a major catastrophe or when planning for some future disaster. The Cascadia subduction zone earthquake comes to mind for the latter. We talk about the need for resilience in our personal lives, in our organizations, in our businesses, and in our city, state, and federal governments. We talk a lot about resilience, which is a good thing, since history has proven the value of human resilience. However, there may be another side to resilience that is not discussed An op-ed piece by Parul Sehgal in the December 1, 2015 issue of the New York Times Magazine, opens with the…
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Why We Should Worship the Ground We Walk On
It’s one of nature’s most perfect contradictions: a substance that is ubiquitous but unseen; humble but essential; surprisingly strong but profoundly fragile. It nurtures life and death; undergirds cities, forests, and oceans; and feeds all terrestrial life on Earth. It is a substance few people understand and most take for granted. Yet, it is arguably one of Earth’s most critical natural resources – and humans, quite literally, owe to it their very existence. From the food we eat to the clothes we wear to the air we breathe, humanity depends upon the dirt beneath our feet. Gardeners understand this intuitively; to them, the saying “cherish the soil” is gospel. But…
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The JUNK FOOD Effect
A new and important strain of research on CO2 and plant nutrition is now coming out of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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Homesteading
Today, the western frontier has been settled and most of us live in urban areas, but that doesn’t mean there is no place for the homesteader. Rather than going extinct, the homesteaders of our species have adapted and have re-appeared as the solution to new problems created by urbanization. Thus was born the Urban Homesteader.
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Ready for Anything?
The Latin root of PREPARE means to make ready. I knew that Be Prepared is the motto of the Boy Scouts, but I didn’t know why Robert Baden-Powell chose it so I looked it up. “
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Journey
“So I propose that small cumulative steps do make a difference especially when combined with those of others doing the same thing. Choosing one action to focus on makes it simple. After a while, this becomes a habit and you can move on to the next action.” A few years ago I presented my class “Less is More: Getting to One Can of Garbage a Year” at Northwest Natural Gas over four lunch hours. At the first session, one of the participants said ,“I just don’t know if what I do matters” to which I blurted out, “You’ll feel differently at the end of this class.” Then I thought to myself,…
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Community
“We come to value what we share as much as what we own, what keeps us alive as much as what we exchange.” - Frances Moore Lappé
