Activist is a culture blog featuring interesting news, events, and ideas. It is run primarily by Bill Erickson, with the help of a few guest bloggers.
If you have something you think we should feature on this blog, send an email to contact@activistnow.com
We’re planning on design 3-4 new Activist shirts. Anyone have ideas for things they’d like to see? We look forward to your feedback!
Update: Initial concepts include: Guerrilla Gardening, Sustainability and Global Unity.
At GardenCamp we decided to start a community blog for local gardeners. Brazos Grows is now up and running!
There’s only a few posts now, but several gardeners in the community will be contributing to the blog.
The video above is some guerrilla gardening done in Downtown Bryan, and is also featured on Brazos Grows.
Instead of house cleaners and body soaps bought from the store, full of chemicals you’ve never heard of, make your own!
Eco-Me specializes in 100% natural do-it-yourself kits that are good for you and the environment, too.
I came across this service when I wanted to send an email to me in the future about the last post.
FutureMe allows you to write an email and set a date for arrival in the future. Want to remember something next year? Email it to yourself.
When you send an email, you can make it private or public (but anonymous). You can go to the public page to see a randomly selected future email.
Kevin Kelly posted about an amazing event held every ten years in Oberammergau, Germany.
In the early seventeenth century, as plague raced across Europe, the people of this small town made a deal with God: spare us and we’ll perform a Passion play every ten years. All of us. The whole town.
True to their word, they’ve done this every decade since. The first performance was in 1634, and ever since it’s been at the turn of the decade. It’s a startling event, because everyone in the town really is involved.
The next one is in 2010 and I’m going to try to go.
In San Francisco (of course), MyFarm is helping those who want an organic garden but don’t have the time or expertise to maintain it.
There are two different offerings: a Personal Installation is enough for their family, or they can have an Owner Member Installation, which is enough for MyFarm to sell to others. It’s this latter option that I find really interesting.
MyFarm founder Trevor Paque envisions a decentralized urban farm in San Francisco, made up of a network of organic urban vegetable gardens where clients in sunny areas grow tomatoes for those in foggier areas, and those in the foggy parts of town grow broccoli and other cool-weather veggies for those in warmer climes.
Very Cool.
There’s an article on MIT News about a new discovery which will make solar energy cheaper and more feasible. Check out the video and read the article.
The American has a great article about the future of energy in America. One interesting point they brought up that I haven’t heard before is the “stickiness” of electricity. Oil can easily be produced and sold on the global market, but electricity is “stuck” to whatever continent on which it is created. If America truly wants to be energy independent, it should focus on electrical energy as opposed to oil.
Edible Estates is a great book about replacing one’s front lawn with an edible and useful garden. Instead of using the backyard, they are expressing their criticism of suburbia’s cookie-cutter grass lawn. It makes passerby’s think about why they use so much water, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and gasoline (cutting the grass) for something that really doesn’t provide them with much value. You can use less water and grow something of value - fruits, vegetables and herbs.
One thing I found interesting was how all the kids in the neighborhood wanted to be involved in it. When you let them help out, they begin to see it as “our” garden and take care of it as opposed to destroying it. It also begins their education on where real food comes from.
Oh and the gardens look AMAZING. It’s worth buying the book just to look at the pictures.
On July 19 we held the first GardenCampBryan. We had a great gathering of gardeners and enthusiasts from around the Brazos Valley. Talks ranged from the basics of gardening to composting to xeriscaping.
Here are a few photos from the event. If you took photos there and use Flickr, tag them “gardencampbryan.”
We’re hoping to do this twice a year, for fall and spring growing seasons. The GardenCamp attendees also thought it would be fun to start a community website to keep up with the group, and so Brazos Grows was born. It looks like it’s still being worked on, but I believe it will be up and running soon.
Hope to see you at the next GardenCampBryan. Not in Bryan? Hold your own GardenCamp!
