Wendell Berry: good neighborliness & technology
Kentucky farmer, grandfather and educator Wendell Berry is a winner of a Guggenheim
Foundation Fellowship, a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award and a Lannan
Foundation Award, all for his writings. He is the author of many books, including
What Are People For?, The Gift of the Good Land, The Hidden Wound, Another Turn
of the Crank and The Memory of Old Jack.
Greening Away the Urban Blues: An interview with Marcia McNally
Green City Project interviewed Marcia McNally of Urban Ecology to learn more about
their publication, Blueprint For A Sustainable Bay Area. They talked with
Marcia about her favorite projects, ways we can all engage in sustainable practices,
and how the Bay Area can become a more environmentally and socially just place in
which to live.
Restoring
Your Local Watershed: An Interview with Freeman House
“Many areas of the West have already been exploited and abandoned, leaving local
people to cope with the aftermath. In northern California's Mattole Valley, an eight-year-old
restoration project is now beginning to pay dividends -- both for the watershed and
the consciousness of the people. Freeman House, one of the prime movers of the Mattole
Restoration Council, explains how they have approached such restoration and the philosophy
behind their work.”
"Geography
of Nowhere" Author James Howard Kunstler
“What "makes a civil place" is the "connective tissue" of
traditional town and city layouts. Instead, architects are designing buildings with
little relation to nearby buildings or the street, often presenting blank, unfriendly
walls, "terrible buildings that degrade the street...(designed as if) "buildings
are TVs. The only important side is the front."
"The outside doesn't matter. That is the principal idea being sent by architects
to people in this country." The message this conveys to people, he added, is
they do not matter either.”
On
creating a sustainable regional future
A dialogue with Northwest Environment Watch founder Alan Thein Durning
“Three years ago Alan Thein Durning left Worldwatch Institute in Washington,
D.C., to return to his native place, Seattle. Durning had two prime reasons for his
move. First, he sees the source of planet-transforming change coming from the roots
of bioregion and community. Second, he views the Pacific Northwest as having unique
potential to build a regional sustainability model of planetary significance.”
Toward
a Ritual, Story and Culture of Ecological Restoration:
An Interview With Bill Jordan, the 'Poet of Restoration' By Patrick Mazza
“I really do believe restoration can be the flagship of a new relationship with nature.
I think that is happening. The job really is to build a culture. We are trying to
build communities with cultures that are capable of negotiating that nature-culture
relationship. Our culture has deficiencies in that area. It doesn't interest me very
much to say we've blown it. The relationship between nature and culture has always
been a problem for people. It's a problem for us and we're thinking hard about it.
I think we're going to do something about it. Restoration provides us with an important
means.
We've been very weak at having the means to negotiate the nature-culture relationship.
We haven't had the kind of dealing with nature in the physical sense on which you
have to ground a relationship. Even a generation ago a lot of people lived on farms.
Before that a lot of people were fishing and hunting. We do that less now. Restoration
is a way to get back in the woods, and to get back in a way in which one is a real
participant in the ecology of the woods or wetlands as was a hunter or fisher or
gatherer, the classic ways in which people have lived in the landscape. But the sign
of the relationship has been shifted from consumption to creation. So that means
there's room for a lot of people in that landscape, the more the merrier really.
Because they're out there rebuilding it.
That provides a base in experience for building a relationship. It also provides
a base for the invention of rituals that we need to negotiate that nature-culture
contract. That's how you add to you culture that valence that can help you connect,
so the culture becomes capable of negotiating that relationship. Restoration is a
key. We're beginning to see little subcultures that have managed to reinhabit the
natural landscape through this experience and this ritual.”
Energy, Climate Change, and
Ozone Depletion
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Parks,
Open Spaces and Streetscapes
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Economy and Economic Development
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Environmental Justice
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Municipal Expenditures
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Public Information and Education
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