Transition Towns

How will our towns adapt to climate change?

A local group I help organize - Green Drinks Naperville - is addressing this question through a series of monthly presentations this year focused on promoting our local green economy.

It started with the idea of Transition Towns and adapting our local community and economy to the changes that climate change will necessitate.  This idea, promoted by the Transition Network, is based on the ideas of permaculture, but grew beyond food to address holistic climate change adaptation for local towns.  The program provides a framework through which local communities can figure out what the needs of their community will have and help draft a strategic plan to address them.

Goals of the Transition Town include:

• liberate our time (consumers to producers)
• triple bottom line (job sharing, telecommuting, less hours)
• generosity and sharing over hunkering down (collaborative consumption, barter)
• currencies that favor connection and community over hoarding and lack
• economies that consider community well-being as new definition of success
• spirit of "enough for all" rather than "winner takes all"

Initiatives our town will hopefully employ include addressing production and distribution of local food, energy (and resource) harvesting and storage, business and economy, education, building and manufacturing, transportation, government, health/well-being, heart and soul/spirituality, arts and crafts, waste, etc.

Reference:  Green Drinks Naperville lecture on Transition Towns by Jodi Trendler

"Birth"

My only sister had her first child the day I created this piece, so birth was on my mind.  When I thought of the phrase “life creates conditions conducive to life,” I was drawn to the idea of life creation and the cyclical nature of the phrase, beginning and ending with “life.”  I thought about the intricacies of our bodies and how every condition must be ideal to create and sustain life.  I reflected on how most life begins with an egg, either inside or outside of a mother’s body, and I thought about how an egg is an oblong circular shape, ideal in shape and strength to protect the fragile life within.  For these reasons, I chose to represent mother and child as humans cocooned in an egg.  I then gave the piece to my sister, Sarah, to commemorate the birth of her son, Ambrish.    

Biomimicry PCP 2011 Cohort

Garden Song

"Grain for grain, sun and rain
Find my way in nature's chain
Till my body and my brain
Tell the music of the land."

- Garden Song by David Mallett