Huddlebury is sponsoring a potluck and talk on Transition Towns, led by Ruah Swennerfeld, a Quaker activist, writer and founder of Transition Town Charlotte:Resilience Through Relocalization, Re-Skilling and Networking". Here's a link to the website:https://www.transitioncharlottevt.org/
Ruah will bring china, silverware,glasses and napkins with her, and take them home to wash them, so that our event can be zero-waste ! It will be held at the Weybridge School, with a potluck at 5 pm, and presentation from 6-8 pm. Come with your friends,family and neighbors, and bring a dish to share!
People do Transition for all sorts of reasons:
- to get to know their neighbours;
- to feel like they are making a difference in the world;
- because the world's huge challenges (climate change, social inequality, economic decline and so on) feel more manageable if addressed at the local scale (as one person put it, "Transition changed my relationship to the problems");
-to catalyse all manner of new projects, enterprises and investment opportunities;
-to learn new skills;
-to feel like they are creating a new story for their place;
- to feel connected to other people and to something historic and exciting happening around them;
- because they feel it is "the right thing to do".
George Owen, of Transition Cheltenham, Pa. said "I was attracted to the Transition Movement because of its emphasis on positive vision and its community focus. I did not see hope in working to change big govt. because it is so corporatively controlled. TT offered a positive alternative and it encourages our doing the work joyfully. Bringing joy to what we do is a central piece of what we do on earth.......All of this is learning to live with conflict. The core vision is radical acceptance and compassion, and the 'economics of happiness'.
It all starts off when a small collection of motivated individuals within a community come together with a shared concern: How can our community respond to the challenges and opportunities of peak oil, climate change and the economic crisis? This small team of people began by forming an initiating group and then adopting the Transition Model with the intention of engaging a significant proportion of the people in their community.
What if people in towns got together regularly for local foods potlucks, discussions about sharing resources and building resilience, listening to speakers, watching films, sewing, knitting, making music and having fun? Can we imagine bringing people together who are from different political viewpoints,different economic conditions, different cultures, different races, different educational backgrounds and different religious beliefs? How can we strengthen community, and share the practical wisdom of age, knowledge, experience and living? Who can weld? Who sews? Who can fix engines? Who grows wheat? Who grows vegies? Who has animals? How can we help each other? How can we live together, and tread lightly on the earth? Our planet is in crisis – what can we do?
Transition Towns are all over the world, and thriving. Transition Humboldt held a weekend of "Learn and Share Skills", including composting, cheese making, foraging for wild mushrooms, beekeeping, soil analysis, gray water systems and storytelling. Transition Houston has staged five Permablitzes , allowing Houston members to share in the creativity of building resilience in each other's yards and learning Permaculture principles. In Zarzalejo, Spain, a group held a Future Scenarios project , in which the community gathered together to reimagine and to dream the place they'd like Zarzalejo to be in the future.
What will we dream for our towns?
"It is better to plan and be prepared, than be taken by surprise."
Bethany, for Huddlebury