Power Down Week: Save the Date, Save Some Energy by Sura, February 3

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!

To get involved call (263.1513) or email Sura, or Sarah Moore (372.3824)

3 Feb 2010 | 11:36 am | DIY - Do It Yourself, Environmental Sustainability, Events, Streets, Bicycles, Pedestrians | No comments yet - Add your comments

Transition Town Milwaukee by Sura, December 17

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.”

17 Dec 2008 | 4:31 pm | DIY - Do It Yourself, Environmental Sustainability, Water | No comments yet - Add your comments