(x)

It’s solar and wind and tidal and geothermal and hydropower.

It’s plant-based diets and regenerative livestock farming and insect protein and lab-grown meat.

It’s electric cars and reliable public transit and decreasing how far and how often we travel.

It’s growing your own vegetables and community gardens and vertical farms and supporting local producers.

It’s rewilding the countryside and greening cities.

It’s getting people active and improving disabled access.

It’s making your own clothes and buying or swapping sustainable stuff with your neighbours.

It’s the right to repair and reducing consumption in the first place.

It’s greater land rights for the commons and indigenous peoples and creating protected areas.

It’s radical, drastic change and community consensus.

It’s labour rights and less work.

It’s science and arts.

It’s theoretical academic thought and concrete practical action.

It’s signing petitions and campaigning and protesting and civil disobedience.

It’s sailboats and zeppelins.

It’s the speculative and the possible.

It’s raising living standards and curbing consumerism.

It’s global and local.

It’s me and you.

Climate solutions look different for everyone, and we all have something to offer.

I've often thought this and wondered if maybe I wasn't just a little bit crazy for thinking it's possible to make something good by using the past, present and future... glad to know I'm not totally alone. It's also really nice to have someone put it into words so beautifully. Let's stop telling each other how wrong we are and instead focus on how we can work together to build the future we want.

I just remembered I was chatting with Joan for a while and she made this art piece with me in mind and it nearly made me cry

If Mattel could see this and use recycled materials to make this for everyone.

ABED’S UNCONTROLLABLE CHRISTMAS - COMMUNITY (2x11)

COMMUNITY | “Comparative Religion”

Urban farms: the benefits and the barriers

Nearly a quarter of Indianapolis residents live in what has been termed a “food desert,” typically defined as an urban area where at least a third of the local population lives more than a mile from a grocery store. Of the 208,000 residents without easy access to fresh fruits, vegetables, and protein, the vast majority are people of color. Such circumstances are mirrored in cities across the country, in a phenomenon that might more accurately be described as “food apartheid.”

Urban farms represent one solution to the problem. But farmers and would-be farmers face seemingly insurmountable barriers to getting such projects off the ground. Topping that list of barriers are land access and financing, as well as onerous zoning codes that don’t fully take the needs and desires of local communities into account.

For the mostly Black group of urban farmers interviewed by Miller and her team, the main thing standing in the way of their projects and the subsequent community benefits was an inability to secure and hold on to parcels of urban land. In addition to calling for municipal governments to work harder at removing red tape and cooperating with aspiring farmers—which cities such as Atlanta; Boston; New Haven, Connecticut; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, have already begun to do—Miller and her team identified ways that the federal government, including the USDA and its FSA affiliates, could set about making a positive difference.

One idea: create an inventory of federal land that currently sits unused in cities and make it available to urban farmers through sales, long-term leases, or grants to local community land trusts, giving preference to smaller, community-focused projects over high-end, for-profit ventures. Another idea: provide federal tax benefits for private landowners and municipalities that open up urban parcels of land for use by community farmers.

In Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, Dungy describes her years-long project to transform her weed-filled, water-hogging, monochromatic lawn in suburban Fort Collins, Colo., into a pollinator’s paradise, packed instead with vibrant, drought-tolerant native plants.

It took countless hours of backbreaking work: clearing her garden beds of hundreds of pounds of rock, amending the soil with compost and mulch, and turning the soil with shovel and pitchfork until she was drenched with sweat.

…

She leads me on a tour of what she calls her backyard “prairie project,” which she’s filled with native grasses like blue grama and little bluestem, and with perennials that will flower later in the spring: penstemon, bee balm, baptisia, echinacea, Lewis flax.

Dungy shows me the tall dried grasses that she’s left standing from last season, along with the dead stalks from her milkweed and sunflowers. They stay up “to create winter interest,” she says, “but also a lot of the native pollinators will nest or plant their eggs and larvae under and around many of these native plants. So right now we have a very blonde garden!”

Such a wild, unmanicured garden was verboten in 2013, when Dungy first moved to Fort Collins with her husband and young daughter. The local homeowners’ association had a strict yard maintenance code that forbade anything that upset the homogeneous look of the neighborhood.

“In those early years,” Dungy writes in Soil, “a woman walked around the neighborhood with a ruler, measuring too-tall grass and what she considered unwieldy or weedy vegetation, reporting homeowners to the HOA board for review and possible censure.“                    

Now, those rules against “non-standard landscaping” have been eliminated: Fort Collins currently has an active initiative to encourage diversification of the landscape. “I was lucky,” she says, “in having moved to a town that created a space for that embrace.”

Dungy’s garden, in its glorious variety, attracts bees, butterflies, and all kinds of birds – goldfinches, pine siskins, nuthatches, chickadees – as well as mountain cottontail rabbits who nibble on her plants. (Her solution? Plant much more of everything.)

…

In Soil, Dungy draws a connection between diversifying the plant life in her garden and diversifying the canon of nature writing. There is, she writes, “a pattern in nature writing that confounds and annoys me.” Dungy mentions writers such as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir and Edward Abbey, as well as Annie Dillard and Mary Oliver. “The (nearly always white) men and women who claim to be models for how to truly experience the natural world always seemed to do so in solitude,” she writes. “Just one guy – so often a guy – with no evidence of family or anyone to worry about but himself.”

As she thinks about that pattern, “I wonder who is excluded,” Dungy says. “These are all writers who are important and fascinating and write really key texts, and yet the absence of family and community troubles me.”

For Dungy, building a sustainable world necessarily involves family and community, not just a solitary meander through nature.

…

As she nurtures her garden, Dungy – a Black woman living in a predominantly white city – says that thinking about land is, for her, inextricably linked with thinking about this country’s history, and about race. She’s constantly reminded of the labor of enslaved Black people who were forced to work the soil, and of the Native Americans forced from their lands.

“I can’t dig in my garden,” she writes, “without digging up all this old dirt.”

Yet that same act of digging in her garden also provides Dungy with welcome relief. For a politically-engaged person, “a garden can be a balm,” she says. “A garden can be a place of rest and beauty, and a retreat from that persistent, difficult work. But a garden also teaches me patience, and teaches me that … the work of a politically-engaged person often requires true patience. And the garden supports my belief that that patience can very frequently pay off.”

Since yall went so wild over those solar farms here some more--

^^some theoretical usage of colorful solar glass

^^Here's some as artwork

^^ some canopy ideas for over plazas/markets

^^And some hybrid Solar/water catching structures as well

this is my holy trinity

They require a login so I did my best to get around it by some copying and pasting below. Did not get everything but hopefully enough to get a gist, as this is VERY interesting:

How a derelict countryside bloomed into an ecoparadise

Rural Spain has been losing population for decades. Now, new idealistic communities are moving in.

Prada de la Sierra, in northwestern Spain, emptied out in the seventies as people migrated to cities. In more recent years, about a dozen newcomers have moved in and restored some of its buildings. Residents won a court order in early June to have the village recognized again.

Where one person sees emptiness, another may find promise. That was the running theme for Dutch anthropologist and photojournalist Sanne Derks as she documented the lives of people who have moved into abandoned homes and villages in the sparsely populated Spanish countryside.

“I’d been working on a story about European citizens developing initiatives to resist climate change,” says Derks. She became fascinated by ecovillages—sustainable cooperative communities—which inspired a larger project.

Marta Haro López, Sara Vallejo Sarden, Mauricio Noel Strübing, and Yule Argüello Navarro have breakfast in a house they built in isolated Matavenero, in northwestern Spain. German hippies resettled the deserted village in the 1980s; now it’s home to around 50 permanent…Read More

During 2020 and 2021, she explored seven Spanish hamlets that have been “repopulated,” including not only ecovillages but other types of living arrangements. Derks found the residents shared a common outlook. “Almost all of them are doing it from the conviction that things have to be different in today’s world,” Derks says. “They believe that the city is no longer the place to live.”

She christened her photography project Rutopia, a blend of “rural” and “utopia,” which explores two questions: What compels someone to pack up and move to a village in ruins, and what challenges do they face once there?

Hannah Brüderer is one of the founders of the community at Matavenero. Her son and grandchildren still live here. “Most people stay around 10 years,” she says. One of the challenges is earning money from the remote location; people often move when their children…Read More

The sustainable community concept may have existed for centuries, but the term “ecovillage” is relatively new. Founded over 30 years ago, one of Spain’s oldest examples is Matavenero, a remote mountain outpost in the León Province. The deserted village, which can be reached only by foot, was settled anew by a group of German hippies in the late 1980s, and today has about 50 permanent residents. According to the Global Ecovillage Network, a volunteer organization, Spain has about 90 ecovillages, far more than most countries in Europe.

Spain also has something other European countries lack. “Spain is much more spacious than, say, the Netherlands or Belgium,” Derks says. “On top of that, there has been a great deal of migration to the coastal cities and to Madrid since the 1970s.” According to the Spanish government, 70 percent of the country’s land is occupied by just 10 percent of the population, a phenomenon commonly referred to as España vacía, or empty Spain. The exodus is so extreme that many rural villages are now complete ghost towns.

In addition to a desire for a lifestyle change, Derks observed that people moving into these sparsely populated reaches were also spurred by the strict lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic and a series of economic and housing crises. “They are turning away from capitalism, from consumerism—and seeking some kind of utopian mini-society,” she explains. But Derks discovered that this ideal has more than a few imperfections.

Left: Felix Franco Escobar and Guillem Mateu Prat barbecue in the ruin where Franco Escobar lives in Aguinalíu. The building, a former stable for animals, doesn’t have any windows or doors, but he’s content with his home…Read More

Right: Barchel, an off-grid village in the province of Valencia, stood empty for 40 years. Seven years ago, new residents moved in. They’ve organized in a communal style, rotating daily tasks like preparing dinner, working in the garden, and herding the goats. Those who hol…Read More

Jürgen Pluindrich, who lives in Matavenero, was given his house in exchange for three weeks of labor for another resident more than 20 years ago. Originally from Germany, he says he has a sense of belonging he couldn’t find in the urban jungle.

Shangri-blahs

An unreliable phone connection. Getting snowed in during the winter. Not being able to survive on just the harvest from your own vegetable garden. Before she began her reporting, Derks expected the challenges of the countryside would primarily be found in the hardships of an isolated, self-sufficient life. “Those do play a role, of course,” she says. “But after I visited a few places, I realized that most of the problems in the communities by far had to do with internal conflict.”

A bad brew of NIMBY and gossip could spoil the espirit de corps. “You have a nice tree but it casts a shadow on someone else’s place. Or you are very happy with your berry bush, but if you don’t prune it in time, the neighbor children will scratch their legs on it,” she says. “Or suppose your romantic relationship breaks up. That can suddenly become a big issue in such a small community.”

In La Garrotxa Volcanic Zone Natural Park, in the Catalonia region, Dídac Costa bought 70 hectares (170 acres), including four abandoned structures in a hamlet. (The park includes municipalities.) He’s put his money into renovating this house, but his dream is to cr…Read More

Even venerable Matavenero couldn’t reach perfect harmony. “I expected that community to be a success story because it has already lasted multiple generations,” Derks says. “But the problems turned out to be at least as severe as in other places. In one case, someone even set someone else’s house on fire.”

Communication seemed to be a perennial challenge, and a person might even be expelled from the group because of a conflict.

One nascent community in Girona Province was completely free of interpersonal conflict—because it has only a single resident. In La Garrotxa Volcanic Zone Natural Park, an idyllic landscape of tree-covered extinct volcanoes north of Barcelona, Derks visited Dídac Costa. With money inherited from his father, he had purchased 170 acres of land in the park, including several ruins in the hamlet of Ca l’Amat in order to found a community.

Hailing from Barcelona, Dídac Costa has four cats, three dogs, two donkeys, and 35 goats. But apart from the animals, he hasn’t yet been able to find any like-minded residents for the aspirational community he calls Ecovila Amat. “What Dídac has in mind is politically…Read More

“He completely renovated one house. He lives there now with three dogs, four cats, two donkeys, and 35 goats.” But apart from the animals, he hasn’t yet been able to find any like-minded people for the community he calls Ecovila Amat.

“What Dídac has in mind is politically complicated,” Derks explains. “In order to live with him, people have to share his anarchistic convictions. And candidates who are sufficiently eco-libertarian/pacifist/hippie, “often don’t have any money to invest,” she says. “So he’s been living there alone for years.”

No matter how idyllic the setting, there’s no such thing as a conflict-free social group, Derks says. It’s “the price you have to pay if you want to start a community with diverse personalities.”

Costa feeds his animals in front of his house in the hamlet of C'al Amat. He doesn’t see his attempt to start a community as a failure. “Even if you never reach the destination, it still gives direction to your life,” says Derks. 

But now and then she found herself in places that felt pretty utopian. In Barchel, an off-grid village west of Valencia, Derks immediately felt right at home. A group of young idealists were converting a vacant farmhouse there into their new residence. Until they arrived seven years ago, the place had been deserted for four decades.

“There is an enormous vegetable garden, and they have a lot of fun together,” she says. “They’re highly motivated to develop the village based on their values.” For one, Barchel has no hierarchy. The residents make nearly all of their decisions by holding a meeting. “Who will milk the goats? Who will work in the garden? Who is taking care of lunch? Who is making soap? It’s kind of like a perpetual school camping trip,” she says.

Derks realized that she wasn’t cut out for communal life. “That was perhaps the greatest challenge of this project,” she says. “I embrace many of the ideas that make up the foundation of such a village, such as sustainability and minimalism.” But her individualistic side tugs more.

“You have to set yourself aside in a certain sense for the collective goal of building a sustainable future together,” she says. “It’s fantastic that they do it, but I couldn’t do it myself. Holding a meeting for each little decision? I don’t have the patience for that.”

Andrea Martín Moreno, Duende del Parke, Lalo Arracíl Coca, and Miguel Martínez, who have been living in Fraguas, in the Castilla-La Mancha region, take an afternoon break at the communal house and outdoor kitchen. The barrels constitute their preparation for…Read More

Rural reinvention

Although a utopia in the Spanish mountains may not be for everyone, many people do flourish. Jürgen Pluindrich, originally from Germany, has been living in Matavenero for 30 years and raised a child there. “He told me he wouldn’t be able to find his way among the asphalt and consumerism of a city,” Derks says.

In Aguinalíu, a mountain village in the Aragon region, she heard a similar story from Guillem Mateu Prat. He bought a place for a thousand euros and wants to renovate it using only recycled materials. He’s found an inner peace he was missing in his earlier life. “He felt lost in the city,” says Derks.

She also met people who had grown up in an ecovillage. “Once the children go to school, the parents often move to a village nearby that has facilities,” she explains. “But when they’re grown and want to start a family themselves, many of them go back to the community. It gives them a warm feeling.”

Even Dídac Costa, still searching for those like-minded residents for Ecovila Amat, doesn’t see his community of one as a failure. Derks expresses Costa’s mindset: “Even if you never reach the destination, it still gives direction to your life.”

An early morning view over Fraguas. About 15 newcomers hoping to start a self-sustaining community rebuilt the abandoned structures. The local government has since ordered the group to dismantle the buildings or pay for their demolition. After that, the land mi…Read More

Pioneer pains

She sees the value in the paring back one’s possessions. “When I worked as a tour guide in South America, I saw people in my groups with trekking poles, 17 pairs of shoes, convertible pants,” she says. “Everyone thinks that they need all that stuff. When you learn how to tear yourself away from that idea, in a certain sense you are more free.”

Felix Franco Escobar, a Paraguayan Derks met in Aguinalíu, embodied that spirit. “Always in good humor and completely satisfied, although he owns practically nothing,” she says. “A master of minimalism.” Escobar can usually be found sipping maté tea. He lives in a former sheep pen, made of stone and without a door or windows, where he sleeps on a bed without a mattress.

“He works in construction but is in no hurry at all to renovate that cottage,” Derks says. As for the lack of a mattress, he maintains it’s good for your back. “I’m not saying that everyone should go and live that way,” says Derks. “But you could reflect on what you really have to have.”

In a manner of speaking, the small Fraguas community in the forested hills of Guadalajara, northeast of Madrid, takes minimizing possessions to the extreme—according to the local government they have no right to live there. Derks recalls its fruit trees and berry bushes in bloom during her visit. “Very idyllic, but there is a good chance the people will be evicted,” she says.

The inhabitants consider repopulation to be their right, but the Spanish government holds a different view. The settlers, labeled as “squatters"—Spain has a complex history of squatting, which originated in the post-Franco era—have been entangled in a legal dispute with authorities for seven years, partly about violating property rights.

Recently a court ordered six members of the Fraguas community to pay 110,000 euros to demolish the town they rebuilt or go to prison for more than two years. They’ve announced they will appeal the decision. “They can’t pay, after all, because they have nothing. Now some of them have a prison sentence hanging over their heads,” says Derks. “That’s a high price for a utopia.”

These communities grapple with so many conflicts, Derks believes, precisely because they are pioneers. “They’re experimenting with anti-capitalist models, something that seems totally impossible in a capitalistic world,” she says.

Ideological commitment is a common denominator of the places Derks visited—whether that’s residents who want to reduce their ecological footprint, live with fewer possessions, or experiment with new political and economic systems.

“That’s exactly where the utopia lies, I think,” says Derks. “I started to admire the fact that they dared make such a conscious choice. Because no matter how small it is, they are doing something.”

This story was adapted from the Dutch edition of National Geographic.

troy, abed and betty white rap in community

COMMUNAL IDEAS TO CHANGE YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD

The Covid-19 crisis has effected people in many ways, financially being one of the most prominent. The concepts below won’t solve food/financial insecurity, but they can change somebody’s day for the better. I do believe acts of kindness can change the world.              

The Little Free Pantry

The Little Free Pantry was created by Jessica McClard in Arkansas May 2016 to help combat food insecurity. They are made the same way as the popular Little Free Libraries are! 

Things to Donate: non-perishables, school supplies, personal hygiene products  Include: diversified options for different ethnicities and people with diet restrictions (e.g. vegan, gluten free, allergies, etc.) Tip: some creators are omitting/removing the doors for extra safety precaution for Covid-19

Image Credit

Givebox

The Givebox was created by Andreas Richer a decade ago in Berlin. It is a closet or shed that is made out of reclaimed items (like old windows, doors, or wood) that holds once beloved items or things that you never really use, for people to take for free. 

Tip: Decorate and make signage to help passerbyers not confuse it with a garbage bin/area

Image Credit  

Community Produce Stand

This idea was created by Mark Dennis, who was inspired to do something about food waste. If you have a garden that yields extra food, you could start a Community Produce Stand in your neighborhood. Here is a guide how to set one up! 

Foods Accepted: fruits, vegetables, eggs and baked goods (label day you baked/gathered eggs)  Foods Not Accepted: cooked food 

Image Credit

COMMUNAL IDEAS TO CHANGE YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD

The Covid-19 crisis has effected people in many ways, financially being one of the most prominent. The concepts below won’t solve food/financial insecurity, but they can change somebody’s day for the better. I do believe acts of kindness can change the world.              

The Little Free Pantry

The Little Free Pantry was created by Jessica McClard in Arkansas May 2016 to help combat food insecurity. They are made the same way as the popular Little Free Libraries are! 

Things to Donate: non-perishables, school supplies, personal hygiene products  Include: diversified options for different ethnicities and people with diet restrictions (e.g. vegan, gluten free, allergies, etc.) Tip: some creators are omitting/removing the doors for extra safety precaution for Covid-19

Image Credit

Givebox

The Givebox was created by Andreas Richer a decade ago in Berlin. It is a closet or shed that is made out of reclaimed items (like old windows, doors, or wood) that holds once beloved items or things that you never really use, for people to take for free. 

Tip: Decorate and make signage to help passerbyers not confuse it with a garbage bin/area

Image Credit  

Community Produce Stand

This idea was created by Mark Dennis, who was inspired to do something about food waste. If you have a garden that yields extra food, you could start a Community Produce Stand in your neighborhood. Here is a guide how to set one up! 

Foods Accepted: fruits, vegetables, eggs and baked goods (label day you baked/gathered eggs)  Foods Not Accepted: cooked food 

Image Credit

[ID: A screenshot of a tweet by @/RodericksTruth that reads: DOOMSDAY PREPPING: --Learning the names & trades of your neighbors --Sharing tools, skills, and resources --Establishing community gardens --Learning to sew & patch clothing --Self defense + First Aid NOT DOOMSDAY PREPPING --Filling a bunker with guns and beans /end ID]

[ID: A screenshot of two tweets. The first is by @/tiredgenerally and it reads:

The second tweet is a reply to the first. It's tweeted by @/WarrenJWells at 4:48 PM on 8/22/21. It reads:

/end ID]

Brian the retired Dublin gentleman spent his evening making 50 tubs of curry for the homeless, every single night. Living on a pension and paying for this himself. (i.imgur.com)

submitted on reddit by anetk