Transition Culture

An Evolving Exploration into the Head, Heart and Hands of Energy Descent

Transition Culture has moved

I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blogs, and the work I am doing researching my forthcoming book on imagination, on my new blog.


5 Jan 2009

Transition Culture: back, bigger, and needing your help

Since it was launched, Transition Culture has grown its readership rapidly. Until recently it was hosted by the wonderful Oxford-based LumpyLemon, but in the weeks running up to Christmas, the scale of the traffic we have been generating led to their server crashing on several occasions (as you may have noticed). It reached a stage where they could no longer host a site of our size, and so we have had to move home, to a more commercial server. As a result, this site, which has no financial income or support, is now having to pay £20 a month just to exist, and so I’d like to invite your support.

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Discussion: 17 Comments

Categories: General


5 Jan 2009

Why You Should Never Take Me Christmas Shopping

When viewed with detatchment, there is something profoundly sad about the annual deeply stressful and financially impoverishing orgy of Christmas consumerism, as distinct from the far more enjoyable aspect of it, the time at home, time off work, seeing friends and family and so on. My thinking this means that I must be a dreadful pain in the arse to take Christmas shopping.  What follows is an account of my forays into the world of the Christmas shopper….

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Discussion: 15 Comments

Categories: General


20 Dec 2008

One Last Thing… Transition Training Tour: Blog Post 2

A Tale of Two Cities… well three actually….

The first was NYC. We had a quiet night at The Bridge Winery in Brooklyn. Several people turned up, young mostly, and turned on -a good group. We had a small conversation about TTs; they listened and asked good questions and we had a dialogue. Two things struck me.  Firstly the audience was young. That’s unusual, and that probably reflects my daughter, who organised the evening. The other was that of the 7-8 million people in NYC only 8 could be bothered to show up.

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Discussion: 7 Comments

Categories: Transition Training


19 Dec 2008

That’s All Folks… see you next year

It’s that time of year when the laptop gets turned off, put in the drawer and when family, friends and not getting up at 6.45am to write Transition Culture posts come to the fore.  Thank you so much for all your support, comments and hard work during 2008, the year that, I think, will go down in history as the point when the Great Unravelling really began, and when the seeds of the Great Turning began to grow with phenomenal speed.  What an extraordinary time to be alive.  Sharon Astyk has made her predictions for 2009, my only prediction to add is that by the end of 2009, very few people, especially those in positions of authority, will still be talking about “when things get back to normal”.  Anyway, have a great break, and normal service will be resumed at Transition Culture on January 5th.  See you then.

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Discussion: 5 Comments

Categories: General


19 Dec 2008

Two great tools for keeping Holmgren’s Permaculture Principles in your mind all year round

This fantastic image and the following text come from the Permaculture Principles calendar;

Jim Walsh and his giant schnauzer Tom doing an easy 40 km/hr. “Tom and I have reached a maximum recorded speed of 64.8k/hr in this cart.  On a cool day he has pulled me around for 6 hours in one day and, like most working breeds, he loves doing it.  How great it would be if carparks were replanted with useful trees where happy dogs might rest before taking their owners home at the end of the day”.

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Discussion: 1 Comment

Categories: Permaculture