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.
Today is a bit of a Transition Culture landmark. Extraordinarily, this is the 1000th post I have put up here. Since the dim and distant early days of this site in November 2005, I have been leaping out of bed bright and early every morning to bring colour and vim to your lives, thrilling you with tales of compost loos, odd things you can make out of potatoes and the Alberta Tar Sands. I thought long and hard as to how best to mark this momentous moment, and despite expending a great deal of mental energy on the question, have come up with… nothing. Your suggestions for how best to mark it would be much appreciated. In the end, I decided to celebrate by offering a quote from ‘Comet in Moominland’, which I am reading with my 7 year old at the moment, and which we both love. It is a quote which perhaps describes what the Transition process should be like better than anything else I have read (or written during those 1000 posts).
I spent a few days last week at the Sunrise Off the Grid Festival near Shepton Mallet. I had been invited to go and give a talk, and went along with the Hopkins family en masse. It was a small and intimate affair, with some great things; the Transition area in the Tin Village was fantastic, the talk I gave went fine, the weather was mostly kind, and it was all quite relaxed and pleasant. I haven’t been at a festival since 2007’s Big Green Gathering, and there was one key thing I noticed that has changed since then, and which left me feeling very uneasy and with a profound sense of disquiet, so I wanted to give it some attention here. It was the alarming rise of the 2012 doomsters….
Here’s a great 10 minute programme, the first in the ‘Eco Worriers’ series, which looks at powerdown issues from a very particular, and very entertaining, perspective. Definitely worth a watch.
Good to see you again. Had a good break ‘staycationing’ (as it seems to be known, and as about 10% more Brits did this year than last year apparently), in Cornwall, Devon, the Forest of Dean, as well as taking my house to bits and painting it all (not yet finished). Anyway, Transition Culture is back. I thought I’d ease us back in gently, with a list of books with a difference. As regular readers will know, I often write lists of books I am reading (another is pending), but the pile of books that accumulates in my bathroom offers an insight into things I dip into, rather than read from cover to cover, in rare moments of peace and quiet (I believe they are sometimes referred to as ‘toilet books’). They tend to accumulate, and every now and then get cleared out. So I scooped up the current pile, and here they are, for what its worth.
NOTE: This post has been drafted up by me, Ben Brangwyn (benbrangwyn@transitionnetwork.org), while Rob’s on holiday.
Actually, I’m trying to be on holiday too, but had the misfortune of going somewhere that has a reliable broadband connection.
For those people who have seen this movie in one of its previews, you’ll know it’s something a bit special. For those of us who had the good fortune to be involved in it (submitting footage, trying out our best “inscrutable Brad Pitt smile” in the trailer, getting the money together, giving feedback to make it better, making chamomile tea for the director), there’s more than just a little emotion tied up in this production and some high hopes in terms of who it’ll reach and how it’ll affect them. The purpose of this post is to provide the timeline for rolling out the movie for group viewings and beyond, and to state the costs for the group viewing licence.
How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march? This site explores the emerging transition model in its many manifestations
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Today is a bit of a Transition Culture landmark. Extraordinarily, this is the 1000th post I have put up here. Since the dim and distant early days of this site in November 2005, I have been leaping out of bed bright and early every morning to bring colour and vim to your lives, thrilling you with tales of compost loos, odd things you can make out of potatoes and the Alberta Tar Sands. I thought long and hard as to how best to mark this momentous moment, and despite expending a great deal of mental energy on the question, have come up with… nothing. Your suggestions for how best to mark it would be much appreciated. In the end, I decided to celebrate by offering a quote from ‘Comet in Moominland’, which I am reading with my 7 year old at the moment, and which we both love. It is a quote which perhaps describes what the Transition process should be like better than anything else I have read (or written during those 1000 posts). 
