Around Town: ‘The St. George Sharing Library’

I was biking along the 10th Ave bikeway the other day and noticed this neat lil library hanging on the fence in front of a house. So I stopped and snapped a picture of it. The ironic thing was when I went online later in the day I turned up an article looking at community based pop up libraries here in Vancouver! It even had a section covering this one. Here’s an excerpt:

“The two-tiered structure on East 10th Avenue, near St. George Street, was assembled by George Rahi and his roommates. Previously an old shelf found discarded in an alley, it is now stacked with dozens of books, free for the taking – a little library made by, and for, the community. Recent offerings include textbooks, novels and children’s books; a notice board is covered in hand-written thank-you notes. (“I have found quite a few little gems at your library hot-spot, and for this, I am grateful,” reads one.)”

(Source: Globe & Mail)

I’ve got more photos here if you’re interested.

Related:

• ‘How to Create a Pop-Up Library’ (Shareable)
• ‘From Clothing Swaps to Tool Libraries, Sharing is Not Rocket Science’ (Treehugger)

Grow your own: ‘How we can eat our landscapes’ (Video)

From TED Talks via YouTube:

What should a community do with its unused land? Plant food, of course. With energy and humor, Pam Warhurst tells at the TEDSalon the story of how she and a growing team of volunteers came together to turn plots of unused land into communal vegetable gardens, and to change the narrative of food in their community.

Pam Warhurst cofounded Incredible Edible, an initiative in Todmorden, England dedicated to growing food locally by planting on unused land throughout the community.

(Photo source: Incredible Edible)

Resilient Communities: ‘Brixton in Transition’ (Video)

From Al Jazeera English:

In the last part of earthrise’s economics special, Russell Beard travels to the inner-London neighbourhood of Brixton to meet a community trialling an alternative economic model - one that values people and planet, as well as profit. Brixton is part of the growing Transition Town movement - a worldwide network of people who are re-shaping their local economies to cut carbon emissions and build stronger communities.

Residents have started a local currency - the largest in the UK - to stimulate sustainable, local production and help make their economy more resilient to financial shocks. The Brixton Pound can only be spent with independent businesses in the area and is now accepted in around 200 outlets.

They have also begun to generate their own energy through the UK’s first inner-city renewable energy co-operative. So far Brixton Energy has installed 152 solar panels on the roof of a council estate, funded by over 100 local people. Profits from the electricity generation are shared between investors and a community energy efficiency fund for residents of the estate.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Related:

• ‘Planting the Seedstock, Vancouver’s New Currency’ (The Tyee)

From The Vancouver Sun:

More than two dozen volunteers worked in the hot sunshine Saturday to transform a dusty parking lot in the Downtown Eastside into a vibrant micro-farm and compost hub.

By noon, the volunteers with Projects in Place, a not-for-profit organization, and the Strathcona Business Improvement Association were put-ting the finishing touches on eight sheds at the Strathcona Green Zone Resource Park site on East Hastings, west of Clark Drive.

Some of the sheds will be used for recycling while others will house com-posting systems capable of processing 40 tonnes of food waste a year.

…

The resource park is designed to help local businesses divert food, reusable and recyclable waste from landfills.

However, organizers also wanted the hub to be a place for members of the community, so they’ve included a gar-den and a mini public park facing East Hastings Street with benches so people can sit and eat lunch there.

Organizers say by next spring they could begin growing food on 36 raised planters to donate to local shelters.

…

Starting in the fall, the association will collect food scraps from businesses in Strathcona for a small fee to cover costs of the program. Agbonkhese said 21 businesses have signed on so far. The cost will be an estimated $5 per pickup, with one to three pickups expected a week.

Check out the rest of the article here. 

(Photos: Strathcona BIA)

Christian Parenti, author of ‘Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence’, in the conclusion of his article, ‘Why climate change will foster strange bedfellows’. You can read the rest of it over at CBS News.

(Photo credit: CBS News)

From Crosscut:

Sandwiched between 15th Ave. S. and the play fields at the SW edge of Jefferson Park in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle are seven acres of lonely, sloping lawn that have sat idly in the hands of Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) for the better part of a century. At least until this spring, when the land that has only ever known the whirring steel of city mowers will begin a complete transformation into seven acres of edible landscape and community park space known as the Beacon Food Forest.

The end goal is an urban oasis of public food: Visitors to the corner of 15th Ave S. and S. Dakota Street will be greeted by a literal forest — an entire acre will feature large chestnuts and walnuts in the overstory, full-sized fruit trees like big apples and mulberries in the understory, and berry shrubs, climbing vines, herbaceous plants, and vegetables closer to the ground.

Further down the path an edible arboretum full of exotic looking persimmons, mulberries, Asian pears, and Chinese haws will surround a sheltered classroom for community workshops. Looking over the whole seven acres, you’ll see playgrounds and kid space full of thornless mini edibles adjacent to community gardening plots, native plant areas, a big timber-frame gazebo and gathering space with people barbecuing, a recreational field, and food as far as you can see.

The entire project will be built around the concept of permaculture — an ecological design system, philosophy, and set of ethics and principles used to create perennial, self-sustaining landscapes and settlements that build ecological knowledge and skills in communities. The concept of a food forest is a core concept of permaculture design derived from wild food ecosystems, where land often becomes forest if left to its own devices. In a food forest, everything from the tree canopy to the roots is edible or useful in some way.

“If this is successful,” explains Margarett Harrison, the lead landscape architect for the Beacon Food Forest, “it is going to set such a precedent for the city of Seattle, and for the whole Northwest.”

She may be understating it. There is no other project of Beacon Food Forest’s scale and design on public land in the United States — a forest of food, for the people, by the people.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: Crosscut)

These strategies come from a chapter written by leading urban sustainability expert Warren Karlenzig for the Post Carbon Institute’s excellent ‘Post Carbon Reader’. You can check out his blog and work here.

(Photo credit: Seed Magazine via Urbanism.org)

The final paragraph of Steven Cohen’s current article in the Huffington Post, ‘Sustainability, Politics, and Consumerism’. Cohen is the executive director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City. 

(Image credit: UWO)

This Saturday, September 24th: “Moving Planet: A day to move beyond fossil fuels!” 

Check out the event website to learn more about the global happening and find or create an event in your community. Oh yeah, and don’t forget to invite your friends and family! This is gonna be fun!

From Richard Louv:

1. The more high-tech our lives become, the more nature we need. We have a human right to a meaningful connection to nature, and we have the responsibilities that come with that right. Few today would question the notion that every person, especially every young person, has a right to access the Internet. We should also have access to the natural world, because that connection is part of our humanity.
2. Humans are hard-wired to love and need exposure to the natural world. Researchers have found that regardless of culture people gravitate to images of nature, especially the savannah. Our inborn affiliation for nature may explain why we prefer to live in houses with particular views of the natural world.
3. We suffer when we withdraw from nature. Australian professor Glenn Albrecht, director of the Institute of Sustainability and Technology Policy at Murdoch University, has coined the term solastalgia. He combined the Latin word solacium (comfort — as in solace) and the Greek root – algia (pain) to form solastalgia, which he defines as “the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault.”
4. Nature brings our senses alive. Scientists recently found that humans have the ability to track by scent alone. Some humans rival bats in echolocation or biosonar abilities. Military studies show that some soldiers in war zones see nuances others miss, and can spot hidden bombs; by and large these tend to be rural or inner city soldiers, who grew up more conscious of their surroundings.
5. Individuals and businesses can become nature smart. Spending more time outdoors nurtures our “nature neurons” and our natural creativity. For example, at the University of Michigan, researchers demonstrated that, after just an hour interacting with nature, memory performance and attention spans improved by 20 percent. In workplaces designed with nature in mind, employees are more productive and take less sick time.
6. Nature heals. Pennsylvania researchers found that patients in rooms with tree views had shorter hospitalizations, less need for pain medications, and fewer negative comments in the nurses’ notes, compared to patients with views of brick.
7. Nature can reduce depression and improve psychological well-being. Researchers in Sweden have found that joggers who exercise in a natural green setting feel more restored and less anxious, angry, or depressed than people who burn the same amount of calories jogging in a built urban setting.
8. Nature builds community bonds. Levels of neurochemicals and hormones associated with social bonding are elevated during animal-human interactions. Researchers at the University of Rochester report that exposure to the natural environment leads people to nurture close relationships with fellow human beings, value community, and to be more generous with money.
9. Nature bonds families and friends. New ways are emerging to make that bond, such as family nature clubs, through which multiple families go hiking, gardening or engage in other outdoor activities together. In the U.K., families are forming “green gyms,” to bring people of all ages together to do green exercise.
10. The future is at stake. The natural world’s benefits to our cognition and health will be irrelevant if we continue to destroy the nature around us, but that destruction is assured without a human reconnection to nature.

Check out more from the writer of ‘Last Child in the Woods’ and ‘The Nature Principle’ on his website.

(Photo credit: Daily Green)