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The bicycling horticulturalist
Peak Moment
Ryan Nassichuk builds food gardens for people. His bicycle and trailer are the sole transport for himself, tools, and materials - including soil and plants! This horticulturist also builds container gardens and composters.

Tour a backyard garden in which a 6-week class of students filled raised beds with soil, compost and fertilizer, did succession planting, and built a low-cost composter. Recently Ryan has added free seed-sharing to his wisdom-sharing, while continuing to propagate food gardens throughout Vancouver. This man has a low ecological footprint -- or should we say bike tire tread? Episode 117.
(3 July 2008)

Gardens Save the Day in ‘WALL-E’ and America’s Cities
Olga Bonfiglio, Common Dreams
The feature film, “WALL-E,” is a must-see for urban pioneers, environmentalists, teachers and community organizers because it reflects what can happen when citizens take control of their own lives - and plant gardens.

The film opens with a scene of a lifeless earth devastated not by war or natural disaster but by trash. The piles upon piles of trash are so overwhelming that the people have left earth to live deep in space and wait until life on earth returns. The people, who are so overweight they’ve forgotten how to walk, spend their days lying on floating couches and sipping liquid food while robots tend to their every need.

Meanwhile, back on earth a lonely, trash compactor, WALL-E, (the acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifters, Earth-class) is left to clean up the mess left behind.

WALL-E is a very industrious and curious robot. When he finds an interesting item, he takes it “home” and displays it on his shelf. One day he stumbles on a small plant and puts it in an old work boot.
(12 July 2008)

The happy minimalist
Peter Lawrence, XLibris
“We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.” - Henry David Thoreau

Too often people think that the grass is greener on the other side - always wanting more and more. But in these days where human activities are altering the world’s climate, it is time that a more prudent and sustainable approach be taken in the use of our resources, personal or global. Author Peter Lawrence touts the joys of minimalistic living in his book The Happy Minimalist.

With useful tips on how to live simply, The Happy Minimalist maintains that the life of a minimalist does not have to be deprived. It is simple living focused on what is truly needed to make you happy. It can be filled with enriching experiences, as demonstrated by the author’s life.

Of humble beginnings, Peter is currently financially independent-not through winning a lottery, inheriting wealth, or joining a start-up. In this book, Peter poses questions, provides facts, and shares his personal experience. It is a timely call to examine one’s life, to achieve financial independence, to attain good health, and to create a better planet for all.
(July 2008)
New book from a young man who has achieved financial independence at an early age. When I met with author Peter Lawrence about a month ago I was shocked. "You're too young to be retired!" I thought. But he has demonstrated with his onw life that it is possible.

Excerpt from book
Order info
Publicity YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VypdY6x5brA
-BA

The outquisition
Alex Steffen, World Changing
The other night Cory Doctorow and I were talking over coffee, and we got going on an idea that's been rattling around in my head ever since.

We were talking about the slow-motion collapse here in America, the looming climate crisis,the futility of survivalism; and we began to play with the thought, what kinds of heroes would actually do some good for the communities that get hit hard?

Because if the ruins of the unsustainable are the new frontier, and if, as is already happening, the various economic and environmental transitions we face will leave many people unmoored from their familiar assumptions at the very least and, at the worst, cut loose from their jobs or driven from their homes, a huge number of people are going to need help forging new ways of life.

... What would it be like, we wondered, if folks who knew tools and innovation left the comfy bright green cities and traveled to the dead mall suburban slums, rustbelt browntowns and climate-smacked farm communities and started helping the locals get the tools they needed. We imagined that it would need an almost missionary fervor, something like the Inquisition (which largely destroyed knowledge) in reverse, a crusade of open sharing, or as Cory promptly dubbed it, the Outquisition.
(12 July 2008)