The future of your food is in jeopardy. Experts in this film estimate “it will hit us by 2013 at the latest, not just as an oil crisis, but actually as an oil and indeed an energy famine.”
You can give up your car, and maybe even heat to your house, but can you give up the oil that has been plowed, planted, fertilized, harvested, stored, dried, canned, frozen, processed and transported by oil?
Folks from Transition Milwaukee are in the initial stages of planning “Power Down Week.” This will be a week of people working, playing and living in community, more or less off the grid. The week starts on Summer Solstice (Monday, June 21) and goes through Sunday, June 27, 2010.
This event is open to all levels of participation. Choose your challenges, or go all the way off the grid. As Sarah Moore writes, “Power Down Week will be a game, a challenge, a dare, a drill. It’s real and it’s play. It will be hard, it will be fun. It’s workshops, it’s a conference of neighbors, it’s the best staycation you will ever have.”
We will bike, walk and bus. We will cook and bake in solar ovens. We’ll shut off our computers, turn our refrigerators into ice boxes, and exchange our cell phones for a 24-hour central communications headquarters. We will attempt to eat locally grown, organic food.
We will call back the spirit of our ancestors and call forth the spirit of a future generation who will discover new ways to power our world, free from our current addiction to oil, coal and nuclear power which are destroying our planet.
We will find better ways. More creative ways. Ways that may take longer, but which build stronger relationships and deeper understanding of the way things work.
You decide how far you want to go: Help with planning, attend or host events, join in on the challenges, or lead others in a tour, a demonstration or a reskilling.
This is a community event. All people on all levels are welcome. The challenge will be living without things we’re accustomed to. The game will be discovering the fun of closer human interaction, of doing things in community, and of learning new skills that will change us for the rest of our lives. These will be experiences to remember!
If you have any area of skill or just an interest, let us know. We are looking for both leaders and learners. Examples include: building solar ovens, knitting, darning socks, weaving classes, broom making, slingshot making, beekeeping, food fermentation, composting, making hand crank or bike generators for radios, mills or whatever.
The heart of the event will happen in Riverwest, but we’ll also be arranging for tours all over Milwaukee. If you have favorite sustainability or natural environment places or projects, let us know.
We will attempt doing all of this without money changing hands, by using the new Milwaukee Area Time Exchange, time for time. Please sign up now.
And last, this will be one long party! Look for the creative side: poetry reading by candle light, human powered fun, yoga, group solar showers, backyard bonfires and drum circles. Planning has just started — join us for the fun of dreaming it up!
Small groups have been meeting over the last several months to explore our options on creating our own local currency.
In the meantime, several other local currencies around the country have sprung up.
Come to a film screening (short), discussion and mutual credit demonstration tonight to find out more.
We’re looking at creating both a local currency* and a mutual credit system* (networked barter). We want to hear your ideas and input.
The film we’ll watch and discuss is “Coming Home: EF Schumacher & the Reinvention of the Local Economy” It’s 37 minutes and a great intro for people to local currency and some of the premises of Transition Milwaukee.
We also plan to do another mutual credit demo, this time with your real skills and needs (can you babysit, fix bikes, walk dogs, prepare vegan meals, or tutor math? Do you need someone to clean your gutters, mend clothes, carpool downtown or install a rainbarrel?) . If you missed the last one, you won’t want to miss this one. It’s fun, fast-paced action and an eye-opening way to show how we, as a cohesive community, have the necessary skills and resilience — but only if we’re networked!
Please bring and invite your friends and join us!
Wed., June 3, 6-8pm
Woodland Pattern on Locust between Fratney and Pierce
*Local currencies and mutual credit systems both support the local economy. One supports the formal economy and the other supports the informal economy.
This Memorial Day, I participated in the Victory Garden Blitz in Milwaukee. We made raised beds and compost bins.
Here’s the compost bin. It’s built of cedar and wire, and is attached with hooks and eyes instead of screws. It’s lightweight, and with the hook and eye construction, it’s fast and easy to move. The wire construction allows for more airflow, and makes the wood longer-lasting. The wood is untreated, so no chemicals will find their way into your food. I have one that I built over 15 years ago. I think the metal will rust before the wood rots.
Here’s a 4×4 bed, just built. The lumber is hardwood, white oak, a true 2″ and can be made 10″ or 8″ high. It will last much longer than pine or other woods. It’s also untreated.
Here’s that same bed, partially planted. You’ll want to fill it with clean topsoil. Most soil in the city is contaminated, which is why we build raise beds. When you put your bed on the ground, you’ll first want to lay a few layers of overlapping newspapers on the ground. They will help kill the grass underneath, while still allowing the worms to find their way up into your bed. Worms are good for your soil.
Here’s a 4×8 bed partially planted. Using 10″ boards, it takes a cubic yard of soil.
I’m making and selling these now. I can make custom sizes for both the beds and the bins. The bins can be made with doors as well. They can be picked up or delivered and installed on location. Call 263.1513 or email me for prices and details.
What are you passionate about? What are you working on? Come and tell us!
7th Annual St. Pat/St. Brigid All City Gathering of Activists, Artists and Culture Creators at Club Timbuktu
Join us for music, dancing, poetry, puppetry and all kinds of soapbox moments! This is an opportunity for you to showcase your ideas, projects, movements, hopes, organizational work and art to hundreds of the city’s most active and engaged people. You will have only 2 minutes (120 seconds) to present. Because the place will be crowded and distracting, we encourage presenters to be engaging and demonstrative. Think of this as an opportunity for Show and Tell .
There will also be a lit table available. Feel free to bring something to share.
***IMPORTANT***
If you want a 2-minute soapbox moment, please email at sura@suraforchange.com a.s.a.p. (instructions below).
7th annual St. Pat/St. Brigid All City Gathering of Activists, Artists and Culture Creators
Tuesday, Mar. 17, 5-10pm
Club Timbuktu
520 E. Center St.
Donation requested ($5 or 1/2 -1 hour registering people at the door)
Changes this year
We are going to be watching the time (and we’ll have a gong or cane. watch out!). Please time yourself, so that we don’t have to.
While we hope to accommodate everyone, we are unable to guarantee late inclusions. Please sign up ahead of time if you want a sure spot.
To be included in the soapbox moments:
. If you are representing an organization, movement, group or idea, we need the name of that org, etc. along with the name of the person presenting.
. If you want to do a creative piece , i.e. poetry, music, dance, performance, etc. send us your name, what you want to do, and time requested. We may be able to allow for more time on some of the creative presentations.
. What time slot do you want to be in? We haven’t exactly determined them, but generally: 5:30 – 7:00, 7:00 – 8:00, 8:00 – 9:30. Please give your first and second preference. We will send out the schedule after we have you plugged in, and you’ll need to register your arrival at the door.
“What a stretch of 7 years since this sweet event began! Let’s call the meeting to order!” – Olde Godsil
Have you heard of the Transition Movement? or the Transition Handbook?
There are Transition Towns all over the world, but very few in the U.S. Folks in Milwaukee are working to change that.
Essentially, TTs are a way to create a thoughtful, deliberate transition to the world we are now facing, the one that’s post-peak oil, that is experiencing greater climate change. It is creating change on a very local level, so our community can become resilient in facing upcoming food, water, transportation, economic and other problems.
TTs build and thrive on community.
From Wikipedia:
Central to the Transition Town movement is the idea that a life without oil could in fact be far more enjoyable and fulfulling than the present “by shifting our mind-set we can actually recognise the coming post-cheap oil era as an opportunity rather than a threat, and design the future low carbon age to be thriving, resilient and abundant – somewhere much better to live than our current alienated consumer culture based on greed, war and the myth of perpetual growth.”
