Environment
Economics, Food&Health, History, Governance, Transportation, Farming, Politics, Environment, Energy, Common Assets
When the French nobleman Alexis de Tocqueville toured the newly founded American republic in the early years of the nineteenth century, he encountered plenty of things that left him scratching his head. The national obsession with making money, the atrocious food, and the weird way that high culture found its way into the most isolated backwoods settings—“There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare,” he wrote; “I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin”—all intrigued him, and found their way into the pages of his remarkable book ...
Food&Health, Farming, Politics, Environment, Energy, Common Assets, Sustainability, Transition Towns
The wonderful thing about food is you get three votes a day. Every one of them has the potential to change the world. ~Michael Pollan~
The earliest humans were hunter-gatherers who never knew exactly where their next meal might be coming from. In fact, their “meals” were probably eaten on the run as they stalked enough prey to constitute an actual meal, but it is unlikely that their meals were regular or even eaten daily. Given the conditions under which they secured food, it was impossible for them to take any of it for granted. Every morsel was hard-won and therefore, exceedingly precious....
Activism, Economics, Food&Health, History, Governance, Military, Politics, Trade, Environment, Education
The aggressive campaign against vaccine choice that continues this year despite the 133-6 house vote to keep our medical freedom of choice in 2012 reminds me why last year's anti-corporate personhood bill was so critical. It also reminds me of the story of Semmelweiss, a doctor who (in his day) was villified and committed to bedlam by experts who rejected his work on advocating for handwashing to prevent infection...
The more rational a culture seems to be, the more irrational will be its underside when the dark times come, the veils lift, and more is revealed than most want to see.~Michael Meade, Why The World Doesn’t End~
For most modern human beings, it is difficult to imagine that the Western world was essentially dominated by religion from approximately the fourth through the fifteenth centuries. For more than a thousand years, humans functioned in a world without a scientific perspective and with little that resembles what we know as scientific exploration in the...
In something of a stealth maneuver during the 2012 holiday season, the U.S. Department of Energy set about to give every American a little more radiation exposure, and for some a lot, by allowing manufacturers to use radioactive metals in their consumer products – such as zippers, spoons, jewelry, belt buckles, toys, pots, pans, furnishings, ...
Food&Health, History, Governance, Farming, Elections, Military, Politics, Trade, Environment, Education
The Vermont Commons News Cooperative is bringing Democracy School to Waitsfield May 4 and 5. Contact Rob Williams to get the details and sign up.
The Daniel Pennock Democracy School is a stimulating and illuminating course that teaches citizens and activists how to reframe exhausting and often discouraging single issue work (such as opposing GMO's, gun control, militarization, compulsory vaccination, etc.) in a way that we can confront corporate control on a powerful single front: people’s constitutional rights.
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Activism, Economics, Food&Health, History, Media, Governance, Politics, Environment, Energy
Activism, Commerce, Economics, Health, Governance, Foreign Policy, Politics, Trade, Environment, Energy
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Burlington- Despite a period of bitterly cold temperatures, Vermonters and other New Englanders are keeping the heat turned up on a variety of issues dealing with human rights and climate justice. Arriving in force at the State Capitol; organizers from the Vermont Workers’ Center continued to apply pressure in Montpelier as Governor Shumlin made his annual budget address to a joint session of the Vermont legislature on Wednesday.
In their counter address that preceded Shumlin’s, the red-shirted...
History, Media, Foreign Policy, Transportation, Farming, Elections, Military, Politics, Trade, Environment
The gentlemen and ladies of the meme-o-sphere, where collective notions are birthed like sleet from clouds, have decided lately that the USA has entered a full-on broad-based bull market - a condition of general happiness and prosperity as far advanced beyond mere "recovery" as a wedge of triple-cream Saint-Andre cheese is advanced over a Cheez Doodle. It has become the master fantasy of the moment, following the birth of some junior memes such as... we have a hundred years of shale gas and the "housing sector" (i.e. the suburban sprawl-building industry) is "bouncing back." What a sad-...
(This isn’t Sherry’s kitchen. But it is the feel she describes.)
The kitchen is the heart of my home. It’s the hub of the domestic wheel. Since it’s where the woodstove is, this time of year, it’s where everyone gathers. And, everything of any importance takes place there: meals get prepared, recipes shared, bills paid, horse grains mixed, tinctures made, messages exchanged; kombucha brewed, coffee sipped and books read.
Sometimes I take for granted that the kitchen is the living heart of my home. That is, until someone reminds me. And, invariably, that reminder comes in the form of them telling me how “old fashioned” or “...
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