Every Saturday and Sunday (12noon to 4PM), the Friends of the Sanctuary opens the visitor centre on Morrison Road, off County road 2 between Ingleside and Morrisburg. For a modest fee, we offer ski and snowshoe equipment rentals, hot or cold drinks and snacks. There is no fee for using the groomed trails for skiing or the paths for snowshoeing and hiking. You can feed the birds and relax on the open deck, make snowmen and warm up by the…
At the University of Minnesota Dr. Nate Hagens teaches an honours course called “Reality 101: A Survey of the Human Predicament.” Hagens operated his own hedge fund on Wall Street until he glimpsed, “a serious disconnect between capitalism, growth, and the natural world. Money did not appear to bring wealthy clients more well being. ”Reality 101 addresses humanity’s toughest challenges: economic decline, inequality, pollution, biodiversity loss, and war. Students learn about systems ecology, neuroscience, and economics. “We ask hard questions,” says Hagens….
With every news report, the world seems to be careening off the rails. It’s all too easy to slip into despair waiting for co-opted, self-serving governments to act. The antidote to fear and despair is hope and action. We each hold the power to make personal changes that can drive local changes and cascade into large-scale social transformation. This is the guidebook for ordinary people who want to create a new society now. The first section explores the idea of…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1vskiVDwl4&w=560&h=315] When your job hinges on how well you talk to people, you learn a lot about how to have conversations — and that most of us don’t converse very well. Celeste Headlee has worked as a radio host for decades, and she knows the ingredients of a great conversation: Honesty, brevity, clarity and a healthy amount of listening. In this insightful talk, she shares 10 useful rules for having better conversations. “Go out, talk to people, listen to…
This Thursday is Summer Solstice; the longest day of the year and the official beginning of the summer season. It also happens to be National Indigenous Peoples Day, and Cornwall Transition+ is planning events throughout the day to celebrate all three aspects. The events’ head organizer, Susan Towndrow, said the group wanted to plan a day that would help people get back in tune with nature. “This is the longest day of the year so we had this idea of…
Because I am a literary writer, writing about climate justice, people often ask me, What is the importance of the arts in the climate struggle? I turn to Friedrich Nietzsche, the nineteenth century German philosopher. “We have art in order not to die of the truth,” he wrote. So then. What are these lethal truths, the truths that break our hearts, sap our spirits, and turn us to stone? How can art save us in the face of those truths?…
As it turns out, maintenance has gotten a bad wrap. Maintenance is really a form of caring. Modern philosophers bemoan our love of material things. But I believe that we modern, industrialized people do not actually love material things. We wouldn’t treat material things the way we do if we truly loved and cared for them. By abandoning the duty of maintenance we owe to the objects in our lives, we are distancing ourselves from the physical world and essentially…
Essentially we have all these really big stories that we try to engage people with, but they’re distant from us perhaps in space and time. We’ve got more pressing things in our lives. It’s very hard to make that sort of stuff stick unless you can connect it to people’s lives and to where people are. So, start from the individual, start from the personal, and look at what are our connections, as individuals and communities, to those bigger picture?…
These are among the pieces that appealed the most to Transition Cornwall+ readers in 2017. Maybe you missed a few, or worth another read as we head into a new year? #10: The Monster Footprint of Digital Technology The power consumption of our high-tech machines and devices is hugely underestimated. #9: Truly Sustainable Economic Development For those of us thinking about ways to foster local, sustainable, green businesses, here are some wise words. #8: What Kind of Housing Do Aging Boomers Need?…the…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bQLUpctvR8&w=560&h=315] Link to Stoknes’ full TEDGlobal talk HERE>> The biggest obstacle to dealing with climate disruptions lies between your ears, says psychologist and economist Per Espen Stoknes. He’s spent years studying the defenses we use to avoid thinking about the demise of our planet — and figuring out a new way of talking about global warming that keeps us from shutting down. Step away from the doomsday narratives and learn how to make caring for the earth feel…