next Transition Town meeting: July 12

from Heather Thoma:

Thank you to all of you who attended the introductory Transition Town meeting in June, a lot of positive energy and ideas were generated, taking several pieces further after our various winter discussions.

The next Transition Town meeting for our region will be on Sunday July 12, at 5:30 pm, at Café in the Woods. The plan is to start with some discussion for maybe an hour, then break for a potluck, and continue after dinner to finish by 9 pm.

I will summarize the notes from the chart that evolved during the last meeting and send them out before this next meeting, to all who attended in June, and to anyone else who would like them.

Rough goals for this next meeting so far include:

1. clarifying an overall vision;
2. clarifying some initial priority areas for education and/or activity;
3. determining what extent of coordination is best suited and how it will be carried out, and by whom;
4. determining whether ‘Transition Towns’ or some other name/title is most appropriate for the direction/needs of our communities (if in fact any name is appropriate or needed).

This is probably more than enough to start us off, but any other ideas for this, or future, meetings are welcome.

Feel free to pass this info on to others who would like to be engaged in this process. Please RSVP (interwovenness -at- yahoo (dot) com) whether you will be attending, and also if you would like to participate but aren't able to attend this particular meeting.

Here is a brief summary of the intent of Transition Towns, and a few website resources:

Transition Towns are

focused on reducing our community-wide dependency on fossil fuels while increasing local resilience and self-sufficiency in food, water, energy and all other aspects of life, while encouraging community building and wellness. Transition Towns are made possible by regular people in the community taking action towards positive change, and are shaped and guided by all who are able to participate, in whatever capacity they can.

We seek to create as well as to connect, building a new model of grass roots transformation while helping to bring existing groups and individuals together to work towards a common goal of local resiliance in the face of a fragile food and energy system that we recognize as being threatened by economic, political and natural forces.

Links:

1. Transition Towns
2. Transition Guelph
3. Transition Town Peterborough

More on the Transition Town movement

A general description, from Peterborough, ON which was Canada's first TT:

The Transition Town movement is focused on reducing our community-wide dependency on fossil fuels while increasing local resilience and self-sufficiency in food, water, energy and all other aspects of life, while encouraging community building and wellness. Transition towns are made possible by regular people in the community taking action towards positive change, and is shaped and guided by all who are able to participate, in whatever capacity they can.

We seek to create as well as to connect, building a new model of grass roots transformation while helping to bring existing groups and individuals together to work towards a common goal of local resiliance in the face of a fragile food and energy system that we recognize as being threatened by economic, political and natural forces.

Another introductory description can be found at Guelph's Transition site.

Transition Manitoulin: Saturday, June 6

Pardon the lack of activity here lately – a symptom of my personal energy shortage, i guess.

The main relevant event so far in this cold month of May has been the opening of the Farmers' Markets for the season. There are some changes from past years – the Saturday morning market in Mindemoya is not in the Arena this year because of construction going on there, and the Little Current market is now on Tuesday afternoon. I hope to post a more complete schedule here when i have all the information together.

Meanwhile, a potentially major event in the Transition movement on the Island is coming up on Saturday, June 6th. Sally Ludiwig and Chris Mills are coming up from Transition Guelph to give a presentation, starting at 5:30 pm followed by a question-and-answer session. The evening will also include a potluck dinner and time for informal conversation. It's expected that it will conclude by about 9 pm. It's all happening at the Ski Club/Café in the Woods on Hwy 540 between Little Current and Honora Bay. Anyone interested is welcome to come (the venue will hold about 80 people). This will be a good chance to hear what's happening in an Ontario community where the transition has begun to self-organize.

More details coming soon, i think …

From phantom wealth to real wealth

Anyone who's aware of what's behind the current financial ‘meltdown’, as explained for instance in Chris Martenson's Crash Course, knows that all the government bailouts and ‘stimulus packages’ can only make it worse in the long run, by trying to preserve the status quo (i.e. the bad habits which got our society into this mess in the first place). So what can be done to actually improve the situation? This blog is all about what we can do at the local level, but eventually even national governments will have to get with the program, if they're going to survive at all. David Korten's new book, Agenda for a New Economy, explains how the U.S. and other governments could actually do something useful to turn the situation around. Back in January i posted about the release of Korten's book, with a link to the excerpt on the Yes Magazine website. Now that i've read the whole thing, i think it's a welcome addition to our resource library, especially as a follow-up to Korten's earlier book, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community (2006). Korten frames the crucial economic conflict of our time in terms of phantom wealth vs. real wealth, symbolized by Wall Street and Main Street respectively. Wall Street represents the most extreme and toxic development of ‘Empire’, the organized crime syndicate of predatory greed which has dominated civilization for five thousand years. Both of Korten's books bring a global perspective to the transition which is now under way. In another post i mentioned the Transition Culture website. I should have also given a link to The Transition Handbook, by Rob Hopkins, which shows how the move ‘from oil dependency to local resilience’ can be accomplished by rebuilding local community. Hopkins is among the leaders of this kind of transition as it's unfolding in the UK. Heather and Paul at Loonsong have copies of this book for the use of those active in making the transition here on Manitoulin. This book offers a handle on the localization movement which is complementary – and necessary – to the shift ‘from phantom wealth to real wealth’ of which David Korten writes.

Think globally, eat locally

The movement toward building a locally based economy is, oddly enough, a global one. It's a decentralized network of self-organizing communities sharing information about how to live more satisfying lives. Bill McKibben's book Deep Economy is all about this movement. By combining local stories with global statistics in a friendly and personal style, McKibben has written an excellent introduction to it. He makes it clear that localization addresses the urgent problems of climate change, peak oil and environmental degradation – but an even deeper motive for rejecting rampant globalization is that it has failed to make us happy. It has undermined healthy communities, the real source of human happiness. The more connected people are with their neighbours, when it comes to basics like food, the happier they are. There's a big difference between food and information in this respect. Information can be moved nowadays at little or no cost, and it doesn't degrade in transit. Food, on the other hand, is not likely to be either healthy or tasty if it's travelled a thousand miles to your table. The industrial food system has already proved to be a bad habit in most respects, and it can't survive the escalation of energy costs. But the more immediate reason why so many are switching to local food is that it's better food in every way. You can taste it! Chuc and Linda Willson have on DVD a good documentary, called simply Good Food, about the local food movement in the northwestern U.S. It shows what can be accomplished when organic farmers, food retailers and restaurants work together with local consumers. We have the beginnings of such a movement on Manitoulin, and this film offers a lot of ideas on how it could grow. Another localization movement has to do with housing – that is, designing and building dwellings which reduce dependence on power grids and other centralized services. On one of our recent movie nights on Manitoulin, a small group of us had a very stimulating conversation about this kind of localization. It was sparked by a film called Garbage Warrior, which isn't really about garbage or war – it's about one renegade architect's crusade to create highly unconventional, affordable and sustainable housing. It's also a portrait of an artist who's also a social activist and has to battle with government bureaucrats for the right to experiment with new design concepts. We have this lively, entertaining film on DVD and would be happy to loan it out. You may not agree with all the ideas in it, but it's very likely to get you thinking outside the box when it comes to housing. Another resource i've recently come across is the Transition Culture website. The question explored here is how best to make the transition to a post-oil, post-growth economy, while building healthier communities in the process. I would recommend having a look – it's free! All the books and DVDs mentioned above can also be borrowed at no cost, but you might have to wait your turn.