Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Foraging was the first and most important skill I have learnt with Transition, my first connection with nature and something that will stay with me for life. Part of the staple knowledge and diet of generations past, it is a re-emerging practise, even in in the urban environment of London.
The American spirit is rooted in the belief of a better tomorrow. Its success has been due to generations of men and women who toiled, through both hardship and boom times, to make that dream a reality. But at some point over the past several decades, that hope for a better tomorrow became an expectation. Or perhaps a perceived entitlement is more accurate.
In the face of incessant climate-change related natural disasters, severe economic contraction, energy depletion, escalating violence, resource wars, and a burgeoning loss of civil liberties, many communities throughout the world are responding resiliently to the unprecedented challenges of our time in ways we could not have imagined even two or three decades ago. Relocalization movements, community land trusts, gift economies, cooperatives, tool libraries, community clothing swaps, and seed-lending libraries are but a few examples of building community resilience among people who have come to understand that the global economy and the consumerism that sustains it are rapidly descending into the dustbin of history.
If you visit John Michael Greer’s Amazon Page you are likely to be incredulous when you discover how many books he has written, and you’ll soon discover that collecting all of his articles online is nearly an impossible task. A voracious reader, a prolific writer, a brilliant thinker whose work is intermittently sprinkled with delightful humor, Greer has become one of the most prominent and credible voices among those articulating the collapse of industrial civilization.
Monbiot, Mann, McKibben, various Transitioners and others on what to do if your Transition initiative comes under attack…
KMO welcomes Kathy McMahon, the Peak Shrink of PeakOilBlues.com, back to the C-Realm to talk about the psychology of predictions…You may be braced for a sudden, sexy collapse, but do you have the gumption to endure the sucky collapse?
“The external growth of a budding economy is over. The focus on growth now needs to be on the inner world.” Carolyn Baker’s Navigating the Coming Chaos is a toolkit to prepare emotionally and spiritually for the collapse of industrial civilization now underway. First build an “internal bunker,” she suggests, to begin healing the fear, grief and despair that immobilize many people in our “culture of numbness.” From that foundation, she invites us to look at who our allies are — people, places, possessions. Carolyn observes that many people experience a level of joy by doing this work (Episode 225).
Looby Macnamara is a permaculture teacher and author of ‘People and Permaculture: caring and designing for ourselves, each other, and the planet‘. According to the publishers, it is “the first book to explore how to use permaculture design and principles for people – to restore personal, social and planetary well-being. People & Permaculture widens the definition of permaculture from being mainly about land-based systems to taking it right into the heart of our own lives, relationships and society”. I caught up with Looby via. Skype, and started by asking her how she came to the work that led to her writing the book (you can either listen to this podcast, or the transcript is below).
I was recently re-reading Mary Pipher’s excellent book from a decade ago The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community. The book is in large part stories of refugees and a guide to helping them navigate their new world – encouraging members of the community to act as “cultural brokers” and guides to the newest and most vulnerable Americans…As I was re-reading it, I also noted her list of the attributes for successful endurance and adaptation to a new culture – a list that seems both applicable to those (some of us) who might have to leave their native place and become refugees literally or metaphorically (whether we leave our country or our neighborhood, climate change is likely to drive many of us from our current homes.) It also applies to those of us who may find ourselves living in place – but in a world that is radically different and new to us, and at times frightening.
Was it just my imagination, or was the New Year’s celebration just past even more halfhearted than those of the last few years? My wife and I welcomed 2013 with a toast, and breakfasted the next morning on the traditional good-luck foods—rice and beans, corn bread, greens and bacon—that I learned to enjoy back when I was studying old-fashioned Southern folk magic. Outside our little house, though, the midnight air seemed remarkably quiet; the whoops, horns, and firecrackers of New Years past were notable mostly by their absence, and the next day’s hush seemed less a matter of hangovers than a not unreasonable dread of what 2013 might have in store for us all.
It seems that when it’s time to go about reflecting on life as a farmer and modern-day homesteader, my mind wonders to the dreamy romanticism of the things on the farm that have very little to do with planting, hoeing, harvesting and washing. Instead, I get caught up in that all-consuming thought that so much of our toil and digging is wasted. Rather than worrying about pesky thoughts of debt and drought and diseases on the tomato vine, it might be easier (and superior) to spend my time letting the land feed us with what it already produces.
•Welcome To The New Normal: Poor, Not Special, But Here And Not There
•Feed the Hunger
•The Cloud: What are we doing to our minds?
