Now that's a treehouse. Built to straddle four trees, for $250k, in Muskoka Ontario by architect Lukasz Kos.
What's new and important this week:
A Plea for the Protection of Wilderness: Rick Bass in Orion writes a moving and poetic argument for wilderness protection, but also for responsible consumption:
It’s
okay to be an environmentalist and use wood; it’s okay to consume oil,
but to be humble in one’s consumption, and to remember to seek out, and
demand—and use, whenever possible—alternatives. It’s okay to eat food,
seeking out and choosing the healthiest meat, healthiest vegetables.
It’s okay to be alive.
The Story of Stuff: A brilliant little video explains how our economy really works, and why most of what we're taught about our economy is a lie.
How Should a Responsible Male Behave?: Just when I'd kind of written off the whole male gender, one of my readers writes a fascinating article on how the 21st century male (the 'alpha male') should behave.
His list has a decidedly male skew and point of view to it, and it uses
a different vocabulary from the feminine love/conversation/community
language that has recently become my preferred means of expression, but
it's pretty impressive. What do you think?
Love the One You're With (Even at Work):
Perhaps it's telling that my favourite reading in Salon.com has shifted
from Andrew Leonard's How the World Works (the excellent
business/economics column I cite in these pages so often) to the
feminist column Broadsheet. This week Katharine Mieszkowski explains why office romances are an enduring phenomenon of our times, and why they're more hazardous for women.
US Chamber of Commerce Disgraces Itself: HTWW explains they've fallen under the control of the right-wing corporatist oligopolies, and are running ads opposed to carbon emission taxes.
James Kunstler Explains the Disaster of Suburbia: Dave Smith let me know that Jim's 2004 TED talk is now online.
Theory of Community-Based Generosity Economy: Interesting summary of why community-based economies are healthier than import/export based economies, from Regenerosity.
Taking Water from the Air: Reader Craig De Ruisseau points out a new invention that, at least at the community level, could help us cope more sustainably with drought. Another great example of Biomimicry.
A Writer's Writer Shows Us How to Blog: Freelance writer Liz Seymour is one of the finest storytellers on the planet. From the first sentence of every blog post you're hooked.
While I'd love to believe that blogs are conversations, Liz shows us
that they are, most effectively, fireside chats in which we each take
turns telling a story, lovingly, that conveys something of who we are,
and something else important.
Thought for the week, from Rick Bass in Orion:
I
believe intuitively—and the more I learn, the more I believe
scientifically—that any creative solution to the tasks and challenges
presented to us in this century must have as one of its components the
permanent protection of Earth's last wild places.
What I'm Thinking of Writing (and Podcasting) About Soon:
Love, Conversation and Community: I remain convinced that
Whether
you want to change the political or economic system, save the whales,
stop global warming, reform education, spark innovation or anything
else, the answer is in how meaning,
and understanding of what needs to be done, emerges from conversation
in community with people you love, people who care.
So
if it seems as if, these days, I don't write about anything else,
that's why. This week I'm going to write about the essential aspects of
intentional community other than the social aspects (capacities and principles) I wrote about earlier. One of these aspects, I think, is the intention to live a life of Radical Simplicity.
Vignette #8
Blog-Hosted Conversation #4:
I'm going to interview one of the women who's lived in a polyamorous
relationship or circle, and who believes that such communities can work
and are the natural way to live, and love.
Possible open thread conversation:
If you're still working within the political, economic or educational
system in the hope that you can bring about meaningful change to those
systems, if you think it really matters who wins the next election, no
matter where you live, why is that? Why haven't you given up on those
systems? |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
