A few months ago, contributor and writer Matt Miles came to visit us. The result was a story in Earth Island Journal about the institute and the ethos behind it. “Small is Beautiful: Seeking simple, human-scale solutions to the challenges of everyday living,” is available on the Earth Island Journal‘s website and print edition for … More Earth Island Journal Story About the Institute, From Matt Miles
I know I shouldn’t be encouraging anyone to watch more television, but sometimes it is raining or dark out. Other times, you’re just tired from weeding the garden in the heat all day. If you’re going to kick back and watch something, why not learn while you do it? I recently watched the BBC Two’s Wartime … More Summer Show Suggestion: Wartime Farm
Last month, research professors Matt Fitzpatrick and Rob Dunn took a look at 540 urban areas and created a tool to help us understand exactly what high- and medium-emissions futures mean for us. As they point out in their paper, “A major challenge in articulating human dimensions of climate change lies in translating global climate … More What Does Climate Change Mean for Your City? Check Out this Useful Tool for Visualizing Your “New Normal”
Whether or not you are ambivalent about industrial capitalism, we can agree that keeping our resources local is a positive thing. Tom Eggert — Senior Lecturer in Business Sustainability at the Nelson Institute — will be presenting options and strategies for regular people to invest in local startups and other avenues in a talk he’ll … More Tom Eggert Talk on Local Micro Investing in Sustainable Endeavors, Feb. 28
Friend of the institute, Lynn L., recently donated two decades–worth of Small Farmer’s Journal to our lending library. Thanks to Lynn for her generosity and thanks also for reminding me to promote these community resources! Resource Library Our resource library can be accessed from any page on our website by going to the “Libraries” in … More Visit our Libraries, Both Tool and Book Varieties!
Hydropower has a mixed environmental record. Large projects like dams that impound entire rivers are coming down across the west, as their impact on fish hatcheries and other ecosystems is now better understood. Furthermore, in addition to carbon-free power, one of the benefits was supposed to be flood control, but we are now seeing that … More Small-Scale Hydropower?
We’ve gotten almost a foot of snow and are in for another dumping this weekend here in southern Wisconsin. It is a good time of year to take care of indoor projects but it is also important to get outside to enjoy the weather. It makes the long winter more bearable if you can find … More Making Wooden Skis — Video Link
Marie Kondo has been exploding across social media and the news since her Netflix show Tidying Up with Marie Kondo was released around new year. January 1st is when so many of us try to start new habits, and the timing of this show was not random. Indeed, at this time last year, I read … More Marie Kondo, Minimalism, and Stuff
I do not like to simply talk about another article and provide a link to it, but this is critical for anyone who bends over (so that’s pretty much all of us). This goes double for anyone who weeds, shingles, chops, uses shovels, or otherwise engages in physical work with anything on the ground. A … More Save Your Back, Bend at the Hips
Google has a fun tool called Ngram Viewer, which counts and compares the relative frequency of words in books they have digitized. This can be a fun way to look at how language changes over time. For example, when did “United States” change from being treated as a plural noun to a singular one? If … More Fun with Google’s Ngram Viewer
