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What do educational alternatives bring to the arena of public policy? At first glance, taxpayers, legislators, and those who work in public education would seem to have little reason to consider the relevance of homeschooling or independent schools. Let a small minority choose those options and pay for them, they might say; it is the public schools that serve the needs of our communities and most of our young people. 

He’s still a wee foggy, having only two days ago come detached from his motorcycle at a fair rate of speed, necessitating a night in the hospital with the fat, clucking nurse shining a flashlight into his eyes at two-hour intervals. Pleasant.

But then, he couldn’t remember the name of his second-born, nor could he come up with the proper word for the wide sail of fabric they’d gently tucked around his shredded skin (blanket! Yes! That’s it!). So he supposes he got pretty much what he deserved.    

The May 11, 2009 New Yorker offers a profile of Green Dot founder Steve Barr by Douglas McGray. The technical aspects of accessing this article turn out to be of some import. New Yorker subscribers could obtain a digital version a few days before the magazine arrived in the mail, but this version had no cut-and-paste function, so to get parts up on my website I had to retype. Later, I discovered one can see the article online for free--and with cut-and-paste available--by going to the New American Foundation:

“We’re going to build a green home that’s totally sustainable.”   

I listen to the voice on the other end of the phone.  He continues: “Everything my wife and I want to do there is going be green… the roof is going to be covered in solar panels and the building is going to be airtight…”     

The educational alternatives movement is inspired by many visions of cultural renewal. Because standardized schooling embodies many of the destructive qualities of the industrial/technocratic worldview, such as hierarchy, competition, and reductionism, it breeds dissent and mutiny among all sorts of sensitive people who are exploring various cultural and philosophical alternatives.

As I said in my previous post, interest in homegrown food is taking off. One barrier to getting started in gardening is access to tools. If you've never gardened before, it can be a significant investment to get the set of tools to turn over some sod and get started. Especially if you invest in good tools. If you're turning to gardening to save food dollars in the short run, it's little consolation that good tools are the least expensive ones in the long run.

Some of Vermont's libraries have stepped in to help out. Ruth Hare has an article in today's Times Argus and Rutland Herald, describing the wealth of non-book items that libraries in Vermont lend out, including gardening tools.

Baldwin Memorial Library in Wells River loans out a four-person tent, five pairs of snowshoes, a couple of fishing poles (it's BYOL — bring your own lures), a posthole digger, garden rake, seeder for planting, gardening fork and more...

In Vermont's largest city, Fletcher Free Library serves the community's many storage-challenged apartment dwellers by lending an assortment of yard and garden tools. Safety counts here, too.

"We try not to have any tools that are hazardous," says Lorrie Colburn of the circulation department. That means no chainsaw, no matter how often people may ask for one.

Instead, the library maintains a collection of rakes, push brooms, cultivators, posthole diggers, trowels and other items — "anything that helps beautify and clean up the city," says Colburn. They're attractively arranged behind a picket fence tool stand with artificial flowers.

The collection also includes snow shovels, and people have been known to borrow them in the winter to make a little money clearing driveways and steps, she reports.

Kill-a-Watt digital electrical meters, useful for tracking down where your household or business has the biggest opportunities to save electricity, are also stocked at many libraries.

How about calling up your local library and seeing whether their collection includes gardening tools? And, if not, why not suggest they buy the basics?

People have been eyeing the State House lawn in Montpelier for a long time, envisioning food production there. Joseph Kiefer of Food Works has given me a Montpelier Food Policy from 1988, prepared by Roger Crowley's 6th grade class at Main Street Middle School, that envisions growing food on the State House lawn.

Now the White House is preparing to break sod for a food garden on the South grounds. They've been getting pressure by many food-related groups to grow food there.

A group formed as part of Transition Town Montpelier is now in advanced discussions with state officials about planting a food garden on the State House lawn this year. The climate is milder in DC, and the White House will probably plant before the State House, but there's a chance we'll be the first State House in the nation with a food garden growing on its lawn.

Watch this space for details. 

by Jane Dwinell and Dana Dwinell-Yardley

A fabulous book has moved through our house in the past week — The Long Descent by John Michael Greer (New Society Publishers, 2008). We’ve read other peak oil books and find Greer’s argument and suggestions to be less apocalyptic, and, well, more full of common sense! He — and we — know there will be less energy (electrical and petroleum-based) in the future, so the time to learn how to live with those changes is now.