Neighborhoods

Climate Change Action: From Joke to Symbol to Reality

 

It is nice to be in a town that has a mayor who is willing to speak to the zeitgeist.  Feeling it also, a couple of months ago I created these designs ...

The last one has been printed on t-shirts if anyone is interested in partaking in some t-shirt activism ... now to show your support for our mayor's courage.

Changing our town's name by October 24 could turn an April Fools joke into a symbolic gesture to be heard throughout the world in a time when action on climate change is dangerously overdue.  Can the joke go to symbol  and then to action? 

Community Book Forum: Small is Possible: Life in a Local Economy

The Carrboro Cybrary and Carrboro Recreation & Parks invite the community to read Small is Possible: Life in a Local Economy by Lyle Estill. Lyle is a founder of Piedmont Biofuels and he will be leading this discussion along with Michael Tiemann, a founder of the Open Source movement, and William (B.J.) Lawson, PLENTY Revitalization Board Member. This book is focused on the local economy in Chatham County, and will be valuable to anyone interested in sustainability, co-ops, biodiesel, whole foods, slow food, technology, small business, and more. Copies of the book can be borrowed from the Cybrary.

Book Description:

In an era when incomprehensibly complex issues like Peak Oil and climate change dominate headlines, practical solutions at a local level can seem somehow inadequate.

In response, Lyle Estill’s Small is Possible introduces us to “hometown security,” with this chronicle of a community-powered response to resource depletion in a fickle global economy. True stories, springing from the soils of Chatham County, North Carolina, offer a positive counterbalance to the bleakness of our age.

This is the story of how one small southern US town found actual solutions to actual problems. Unwilling to rely on the government and wary of large corporations, these residents discovered it is possible for a community to feed itself, fuel itself, heal itself, and govern itself.

This book is filled with newspaper columns, blog entries, letters, and essays that have appeared on the margins of small-town economies. Tough subjects are handled with humor and finesse. Compelling stories of successful small businesses, from the grocery co-op to the biodiesel co-op, describe a town and its people on a genuine quest for sustainability.

Review:

One of my favorite ideas in this book is the idea of open source. Once you let go of this idea that everything must be copyrighted, everything must be owned and protected in order to make money, you become free. Open source ideas quickly foster a more open community, a more open and honest society. A gropu of people or organizaitons all start working toward a common goal rather than all working against one another. Beautiful, isn't it?

Another beautiful idea is that a community needs a variety of people and businesses to thrive. And that as you begin living locally- and begin working toward a healthy community - people and businesses find their niches. And when you find your own niche within the local economy, your own happiness rises. Your sense of well-being increases when you realize your positive and necessary contribution to society.

As we go further into debt and economic security throughout the world, nurturing our small, local, sustainable businesses and infrastructure will become increasingly important. I recommend this book.
~ Melinda from The Blogging Bookworm

More reviews are linked from:
http://lyleestill.com/blog/?p=9#more-9

Date: 

Friday, June 5, 2009 - 2:30pm to 4:00pm

Location: 

Carrboro Century Center, 100 N. Greensboro St.

Approaching March Madness by air

Was there a major basketball game this weekend?  Did it mean heavier use of Horace Williams Airport? This graph from flightaware.com covers the most recent weeks' air traffic per hour. 

HWA usage 3/09

This is old news for most people, but thought it might be interesting to see it represented this way.  Still convinced that this airport will remain open indefinitely - because the RDU project may be suspended indefinitely, because funding for CN continues to be a major issue, and because even if closing it might save the University (and taxpayers) some money, users will never allow closure. Not as long as UNC is in the running for March Madness, anyway.

Preserve Rural Orange meeting on solid waste transfer station

From the OrangeChat blog:

UPDATE: Preserve Rural Orange HAS POSTPONED tonight's meeting on plans for a solid waste transfer station due to the weather.

The meeting is NOW scheduled for 7 p.m. SUNDAY MARCH 15 at the White Cross Recreation Center, 1800 White Cross Road west of Carrboro. 

Speakers include Orange County Solid Waste Director Gayle Wilson. At citizens' urging, the county is now looking at alternatives to a transfer station such as hiring a contractor to haul trash to another area outside the county and possibly exploring waste to energy technology, although offiicals have previously said the county did not generate enough trash to make that feasible.

 

Date: 

Sunday, March 15, 2009 - 3:00pm

Location: 

White Cross Recreation Center, 1800 White Cross Road

CAROLINA NORTH INPUT SESSION - WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4

Please share this information
CAROLINA NORTH
Public Input/Information Session
3:00 - 7:00 pm, Wednesday, March 4  * Extraordinary Ventures, 110 Elliott Road, Chapel Hill *
 
A Public Input/Information Session on Carolina North will be held at Extraordinary Ventures, 110 Elliott Road.   Please note that in response to feedback from the public, the times have been modified and the session is now scheduled from 3 pm – 7 pm.
 
Carolina North is expected to be contained within about 250 acres of the Horace Williams Tract’s 1,000 acres and be built in phases over the next 50 years, as proposed. The property lies just to the north of Estes Drive adjacent to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.   The Town and the University are now engaged in the preparation of a new zoning district and a Development Agreement for the initial phase of Carolina North, expected to be 133 acres to be developed over approximately 20 years.  
 

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