community
-
Friend of a farmer: Why small-scale ag needs community
Photo courtesy of the USDA archivesTucked into the end of a recent New York Times article about young farmers were two frank paragraphs about a quiet reality many of us face: Ms. Oakley said young farmers rarely discussed that lack of community, adding that she had seen the isolation break up marriages. At their Three […]
-
A DIY bike lane in Mexico City
Tired of waiting for the Mexico City government to deliver on a promise to build 186 miles of bike lanes (they've managed 14), a group of residents decided to take matters into their own hands. Eighty people from local pedestrian and bike organizations built three miles of priority bike lane in eight hours. These bike lanes […]
-
What can trick-or-treaters tell you about the health of your neighborhood?
When my brother and I were little, around this time of year we loved to watch The Halloween Tree, an animated feature based on a Ray Bradbury book of the same name. The movie opens with Bradbury himself narrating: It was a small town by a small river and a small lake in a small […]
-
Jon Bon Jovi opens pay-what-you-can ‘soul kitchen’
Does anyone else remember those Ben Stiller Show sketches where Bruce Springsteen would, like, deliver a baby? Jon Bon Jovi is basically that, but for real. He's opening a community kitchen in New Jersey where patrons pay what they can afford -- or, if they can't afford it, they can get gift certificates in exchange for volunteer work in the kitchen, the kitchen garden, or elsewhere in the community. (And don't act like you're too good to work in the kitchen. You know who works in the kitchen? JON BON JOVI works in the kitchen. No fooling, he washes pots and stuff.)
-
Use peer pressure to make your friends go green
Peer pressure gets a bum rap -- you hear it and you think of vaguely threatening junior high schoolers going “come on man, what are you, chicken?” But it’s not always bad news. For instance, peer pressure works to change the environment -- when people see their friends and neighbors going green, they’re more likely to change their habits. This infographic gives a taste of how that works; for more instructions on the science of peer pressure, check out the whole thing.
-
Experiment in (e)co-habitation gets the green light
It looks like a hippie commune. It smells like a hippie commune. But the Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage is not a hippie commune!
-
SolarShare bonds let citizens make money by financing local solar
You’re an earth-friendly person and want to go solar, but a large tree shades your house; or you’re a renter; or you don’t have $20,000 to drop on a solar power system. Or maybe you just want to get more than 0.5 percent interest on your savings account while getting a piece of the clean […]
-
Can cash payments win over wind farm opponents?
This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. A 50-turbine wind farm in Goodhue County in southeastern Minnesota has met with stiff local resistance, a frequent tale in the wind industry. Recently, the project developer won a key court case to move forward, after […]