All Blog Posts (445)

Back in 2008, the price of gas and oil was steadily climbing, and there was some openness in the community about the idea of "peak oil."  A task force to study the issue was unanimously supported by both the city and county councils. 

As the task force was going about its work, the economic crisis hit, and the price of oil dropped.  As prices declined, so did the level of concern about the peaking of world oil production.  Few connected the dots to realize that high oil prices…

There is a distinction made by John Michael Greer in his writings about the difference between a “problem” and a “predicament”.  I have really enjoyed his view on this.  A problem is something that has a solution that can be solved and gotten past. A predicament is something that you have to deal with but cannot solve in the sense that you can implement something that will make it go away.  Both climate change and peak oil are predicaments for humans and not problems that can be solved. …

The Winter of Eating Locally just sort of happened around my house. No plans, no resolutions, no rules about only sourcing from within the state or 100 miles, no soul searching about coffee or bread wheat, no life changing decisions. It was life changing anyway. The Winter of Eating Locally was a by product of a great gardening year followed by a long season of underemployment. Good thing that I planted a winter garden.

In addition to my home garden, Krista Rome (the Bean…

Tax time is here again. Many people have already filed and already received a refund. A large number have filed and wonder where their refund is. The short answer is... delayed. The IRS put out the word that they wanted everybody to e-file. Mostly, folks did. The computers promptly crashed and the IRS is still digging out. 

Refunds go to people who paid too much in taxes, or to people who are due what is called a refundable credit, a credit that exceeds the tax paid in. The major…

I have been living with some unexplained major health issues for almost two years now.  The most recent trip to the American Medical establishment for some new tests has yet to produce clarity as to what is going on.  I am starting to feel better than I have for a year and a half which is nice.  At this rate it may go away and I will never understand what was happening.  It is interesting at my age when one asks questions the answer often is well these things show up with aging.  It is a…

A New York Times article from the sunday edition today is highly relevant to the Transition Movement. Michael Kimmelman writes about parking lots and other parking spaces as holding potential for much more democratic uses than enabling consumers to find convenient access to marketplaces, and dwellings to have spaces for tenants.

This is relevant to…

http://www.newsinenglish.no/2012/01/02/warmest-and-wettest-for-100-years/

The website given above provides the facts.   In 2012 temps averaged 2 deg C above normal through the entire country.   This is truly alarming.  It doesn't take a genius to conclude that a decade or two of this would make many of their glaciers but a memory.   Consider the effects if this phenomenon were…

www.goodfoodworld.com/2011/12/organic-dryland-farming-eastern-washington-and-northwestern-montana,fantastic article about grwoing heirloom varieties ,sustainably,feeding our friends,also do look up camelina sativa,now allowed in poultry feed 10%,better omega 3 than flax,a dryland crucifer with tiny seeds  grown in NE Europe for 3000 years,lets grow some as green…

After spending a number of months without passing south of Burlington a trip to eastern Washington provided me with a number of realizations. 

Communities throughout the US are making great steps towards local resiliency, food security and addressing an uncertain future.  But the intensity and innovative energy present in our corner of the north-north-west-west goes above and beyond the current standards of our nation.  Our civic leaders are pushing the envelope of green development. …

The garden catalogs are arriving, seducing the gardener with glossy food pornography of next year's harvest. Now is the time to sit down with pencil and paper, recipe notes and old shopping lists and think through what you are going to eat next year. We are conditioned to think in terms of a week's shopping. Stop for a moment and think of a year's eating. Most people have family favorite dishes, repeated several times throughout the year.

What do you need to grow to have the makings…

Wow we are approaching the shortest day of the year and official WINTER. I go for a walk at 6am three days a week with a friend in Whatcom Falls Park. We do not use any lights and this time of year it is sometimes a challenge to see where we are going. We refer to it as walking by brail. It is clear that we slow down some because of this and that reminds me of what the natural world is doing, slowing down and resting getting ready for another summer. It often brings up questions for me about…

I am currently part of a small study group using material from the online "PDC+++" course on the "People Care" module.  Last week's class looked at why groups fail, and also discussed some communication strategies.  One of the things that came up in our discussion was when we think of…

In my childhood, people the age that I am now would double over at rubber chicken jokes. Some geezer on the Art Linkletter show would pull out a rubber chicken, a lovingly painted rubber likeness of a plucked and eviscerated chicken with the head and feet still attached, and my greying babysitter and her skinnny sister would start laughing. Merely waving the chicken around would cause them to have difficulty holding on to their glasses of beer (no lady drinks beer out of the bottle.) With…

          Thanksgiving is my favorite "American" holiday. It is a celebration of life, of the harvest, of the power of people coming together, of remembering. Although it wasn't a holiday until Lincoln made it one, the story it tells is powerful mythology. Early European settlers fleeing persecution in Europe, for their ideals, would have died out but for the help of local Native American communities. Thanksgiving Day commemorates their profound generosity, the neighborliness that resulted,…

As we make our way to a lower level of cheap energy use we need to find ways to increase our energy for our own personal Transitions. Daily life can sometimes drain our energy for doing the hard work of Transition- with new worries about the economy, climate change, the growing rifts in our culture (just to name a few) we can end up finding ourselves to drained to make progress on thew tasks we need to do to prepare.

I have found that making the time (and saving the energy)…

I knew when I decided to run for County Executive that I would give up most of my income making capacity to do so. I also knew from past experience running for election that it would take all of my focus and not allow me to seek consulting clients for my business. Well all that was true and so when I lost in the primary I had a wonderful opportunity to look at the last couple of years of being self employed critically and make a decision as to whether this was going to work going forward.…

Published Nov 9 2011      by Post Carbon Institute,       Archived Nov 10 2011

A funny thing happened on the way to the occupation

The multipettaled blooms of delicate daisies,

shower us with wonder and calmness.

Richness in powerfully, and subtly scented herbs…

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 danger in commenting about the Occupy movement, is that so many of us seem to have a desire to project own own ideas onto the movement, kind of like a Rorshach ink blot.

Initially blacked…