Dawn Allen is a freelance writer and editor who is passionate about sustainability, political economy, gardening, traditional craftwork, and simple living. She and her husband are currently renovating a rural homestead in southeastern Michigan.
In the last couple days, I talked about ways that individuals and collectives can act to reduce the threat of climate change. This is not new information, and a lot of it is rather obvious when you think about it for a couple minutes. And yet, we go about our days changing very little. We
In Part 1, I laid out some ways we can mitigate climate change by investing radically in local food production and especially in our soil. However, not all the changes we need to make are as easy as these. This is where we get serious and talk about making the hard choices… or not. Just
Climate change is really happening. We’ve had “500 year” storms every couple months lately. People are having to relocate whole communities because of rising water and erosion. An old, radioactive military base is melting right out of the ice. Even mainstream outlets like Rolling Stone are talking about climate change. Sure, there are deniers, but the
Our infrastructure, as Hillary Clinton pointed out recently in her economic plan, is old. We’re “living off the investments that were made by our parents and grandparents’ generations,” and many of those investments are starting to show their age. The functionality of municipal sewer systems is increasingly questionable: they’re falling apart because we don’t maintain
Our two main presidential candidates (and their political tribes) have very different visions for the future of immigration in the United States. Clinton favors a path to citizenship, while the more xenophobic Trump claims he’ll build a giant wall. Both sides fail to perceive why we have a schizophrenic situation where migrant workers are simultaneously
An article by Angus Hervey in Medium recently made the bold claim that war is on the decline throughout the globe. A ceasefire between the Colombian government and rebel groups meant that war is over in the Western hemisphere, leaving less than 1 in 6 global citizens in war-torn areas, mostly in an arc of
People go to amusement parks and county fairs to experience harmless thrills in relative safety, but several recent news items have left me even less likely to want to go to the carnival the next time it rolls into town. These three high profile accidents make it seem that amusement rides are scarier than clowns, which is
If you’re a gardener, you know the struggle against weeds taking over your plot. Weeds take space and resources away from the plants you’re trying to grow, so each one extracts a cost in terms of garden productivity. If asked what the optimal number of weeds in their garden would be, most gardeners would probably
Education has been a hot-button issue lately, mostly because of the varying demands placed upon the educational system by different factions. Should schooling be about acquiring job skills needed in an increasingly technology-based economy? Or is education more about becoming a more well-rounded individual who is able to draw upon a greater base of knowledge
The Satanists are coming! Some schools in Florida will soon be hosting an after school program run by volunteers from the Satanic Temple. Of course, the good people of Florida are all in a tizzy, what with the Prince of Darkness being associated with evil and mayhem, but there are times when Satan is the