Transition Whatcom

1000 Members and Counting!

On October 16, Transition Whatcom achieved the milestone of having our 1000th member join our social networking site!  The new member just happened to be Bellingham Mayor Dan Pike, who joined us after participating in our Election Forum on October 14th.  Welcome Mayor Dan!

Other elected officials who are members of this site include County Councilman Carl Weimer and Bellingham City Councilman Stan SnappLloyd Zimmerman, candidate for Ferndale Mayor is also a member. 

We are now up to 1009 members, and we'd also like to welcome new members Brittany Keeton, Pala Molisa, Joanna Bailey, Hal Lavers, Dani Sheldon, Fay Venus, Jessica Williams, Daniel Myers, Craig Loftin, and Beth Sartain!

 

A New Bookstore!

Transition Whatcom is now a proud Village Books affiliate. This means that you can support both a local bookstore and Transition Whatcom while buying buying your favorite books! When you purchase a book after following a link to Village Books from our site, we get a small commission. The money will go toward supporting Transition Whatcom projects. Support your local independent bookseller and TW, building community one book at a time.

You'll find the Transition Whatcom Bookstore as a sub-tab under the "Resources" tab at the top of the screen.  Or bookmark this URL: http://transitionwhatcom.ning.com/page/bookstore.

 

Literature Live: The Transition Companion!

And speaking of books.  The long awaited Transition Companion is here! Rob Hopkins has updated the approach on "how to do Transition" after 5 years of on the ground experience.  We'll launch the book at Village Books Literature Live on November 16th!  If you missed Rob Hopkins' greeting to Whatcom County at our Great Unleashing in 2010, here's your chance to see it, and find out about the new "Ingredients" approach to Transition (sometimes referred to as "Transition as Cookery").  Hopkins says "The Companion is a completely reworked, far more up to date evolution of what was in the Transition Handbook, that far more accurately reflects that Transition has now become."

 

The Transition Ingredients Directory and Card Game
A Revolutionary Leap Forward in the Transition Model: Hopkins writes on his blog: "As well as being gathered together in the book, the ingredients have also been put online in an interactive, interlinked, technologically dazzling kind of jamboree.  Our Transition Network webmeisters have excelled themselves with this, their finest creation to date.  You will notice the homepage now looks rather different, with the ingredients as a major theme.  All the ingredients, and all the tools, are now online, each with space for comments and feedback.  There is also the “Transition Ingredientator”, otherwise known as “Add your own ingredient”, which will give you the opportunity to draft any that you feel we have neglected..."
Find the Directory here:http://www.transitionnetwork.org/ingredients

And..."the wonderful Marina Vons-Gupta has produced a set of beautiful cards which you can download for free, print out (instructions are provided) and use.  Some games are suggested, but they are made available on the basis that you are invited to create you own games and share them, so that in the future we can update them.  They should hopefully prove to be a really useful resource.  You’ll find the cards sat awaiting your downloading here.

 

Recommended Reading

The Occupy Movement by David MacLeod

I'll limit myself to 3 articles (followed by a few more links). The first is inspirational, the second is realistic and practical, and the third is an eyewitness account from the Post Carbon perspective.

 

Subsidizing Local Wheat Production in Egypt by Walter Haugen

You may remember that some months ago, I came to the tentative conclusion we are passing the tipping point of global hunger due to poor distribution tipping over into global hunger due to lack of production. Lester Brown later said the same thing in an audio interview on Eco-Shock. Just as we weren't really able to place the peak of global oil production in 2008 until after the fact, so we won't be able to state conclusively we are now in a global production problem until after the fact. The smart thing is to subsidize local food production. Egypt gets it. The US is still subsidizing corn for ethanol.

 

Celt's Garden: Bellingham's Blue Sweet Corn by Celt Schira

Bellingham Blue corn was given its name by the elder who showed up at the First Annual Bellingham Seed Swap in 2009 and shared the treasure that he had saved in his backyard for decades. It's blue, a deep blue-black, it's small (the ears are 3" - 7" long), and it grows on bushy 4' - 5' plants with 2-3 ears per plant. The blue tastes a bit different from white or yellow sweet corns. Bellingham Blue is early, always a good trait in corn in these parts, and it's open-pollinated, so you can save the seed. It makes a sweet, blue cornmeal that is great in cornbread.

 

The TWOG Blog: The Poetry of Life...a Bit from Me to You by Kyler Boyes

The multipettaled blooms of delicate daisies,

shower us with wonder and calmness.

Richness in powerfully, and subtly scented herbs alike,

brings delight to our sometimes dull minds.

The dirty streets carry our trampling weight uncomplainingly,

yet it is most common to not appreciate the truth of it.

The planet asks for care not in complaints and lawsuits,

but in bearing the burden and displaying the results.


I commit in the name of my ancestors to taking steps each day to bring my values into alignment with those of the laws of nature.

I commit to learning each day something new, something good.

My genetic inheritance should not be squandered, lest the point of it all comes to naught.

Others commitment strengthens me, so thank you all for all you do.

In the name of the father sky and mother earth, I commit!

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