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We’re planning the future here!
File this in the category of occupying-the-land-with-things-that-were-meant-to-be-on-it-in-the-first-place. As some of you may have heard, a couple of days ago a coalition of local residents, farmers,...
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Soil is the Solution, or the most important environmental story I’ll ever write
I first published this post as part of the the Climate Change SOS Blogathon on Daily Kos, featuring a lot of prominent thinkers in the climate movement like Bill McKibben, Michael Mann, and Richard...
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GMO OMG WTF are we eating?!?!
So there’s a proposition — Proposition 37 — on the ballot in California that would make the state the first in the nation to require the labeling of food products containing genetically modified...
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The Seeds They Are A-Changin’
The Matador Travel Network just published my piece about my German ancestral roots in the seed trading business and how it relates to California’s narrowly defeated Proposition 37 which would have...
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Talking trash with PBS NewsHour
A few weeks ago my partner-in-muse Deb and I welcomed Spencer Michels and his crew from the PBS NewsHour to our house. To be more specific, to our kitchen. The reason we got to scramble eggs in front...
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The Good Food Revolution Goes Vertical
This is a story about something that is right in this world. It’s a story of inspiration and real world solutions, a down to earth celebration of the most basic yet profound connection we have to the...
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Eco triptych: Compost giveaway, corporate breakaway, and climate rideaway, in...
Last Saturday was one of those days on the calendar that seems to magically attract all the cool happenings around town. Usually with multiple invitations on the same day you end up having to make some...
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The end of the world as we know it: New York City to compost food scraps
If you thought bike sharing was going to be the definitive end of the world for New York’s old guard elite, wait till they get their fingers on Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to require food composting in NYC....
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Six extraordinary people who are giving voice to the voiceless and hope to...
The 2012 Goldman Environmental Prize recipients: photo courtesy Goldman Environmental Prize Africa: Ikal Angelei, Kenya Asia: Ma Jun, China Europe: Evgenia Chirikova, Russia Islands & Island...
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The Dark Side of Consumerism: What Landfills and Nursing Homes Taught These...
Glamorized consumer culture has serious side effects—and to help people in remote Indian villages understand this, one filmmaker brought them to the West. Here’s what they thought of the dark side of...
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How I Learned to Stop Wasting and Love the Trash
Each year, Americans generate 389.5 million tons of municipal solid waste, 69 percent of which gets landfilled. As Edward Humes breaks it down in his eye-opening opus Garbology, that’s about 7.1 pounds...
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A solstice message from ancient roots
It is quite puzzling that cultures across much of the northern hemisphere have chosen the season when the earth’s tilt provides for much darkness and quiet as the time to be out and about, shopping for...
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Village Bottoms, Vol. 3: Getting a taste of what it means to be Black
Why not come to West Oakland to get a taste of what it means to be black? These were the words of poet, artist, and community builder Marcel Diallo as he led us, a group of planners, developers, city...
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To Pollanate a Berry
Last night I had the great privilege to see and hear two of the most influential and inspiring figures in the sustainable food movement in conversation. While Michael Pollan has become a household name...
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Justice in the Bottoms? You be the Judge
Some of you may be familiar with my diaries about the Village Bottoms neighborhood in West Oakland and the African American community’s struggles and efforts to rise from the ashes of urban blight....
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A Happy Home
A Resilient Community issue The Fall issue of Yes! Magazine features an article I wrote entitled Resilient Ideas: A Hand-Built Home about a cob house built from scratch by Brian Liloia at Dancing...
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Movement in the Bottoms: Operation Canned Spinach!
Starting a grassroots urban farm with little means on a small plot of industrial wasteland with soil so toxic you can’t put any seeds in the ground is no small feat. However, for a small African...
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What if God is a Mushroom? (A magical mystery fungal photo tour)
On a recent reunion trip to Schroon Lake in Northern New York, my friends and I took a day hike along the northern end of the lake toward Pharaoh Lake. I don’t know if it was just that time of year or...
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The Watsonville Files: Everyone is trapped in a vicious cycle of failed...
There are tens of thousands of children and young people in America who came to the United States as babies of parents who worked in the fields, or on construction sites, or in hotels or restaurants....
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Six extraordinary people who are giving voice to the voiceless and hope to...
The 2012 Goldman Environmental Prize recipients: photo courtesy Goldman Environmental Prize Africa: Ikal Angelei, Kenya Asia: Ma Jun, China Europe: Evgenia Chirikova, Russia Islands & Island...
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