Category — COMMUNITY

Spread Peace Radio featured renowned philanthropist and leader in the industrial hemp industry, Bruce Perlowin, CEO of Hemp, Inc. (OTC: HEMP), has announced his plans to fund and build a 500-acre Kins Domain in Arizona.

During the talk radio interview, broadcasted last week, Perlowin enlightened listeners on what initially inspired him to create self-sustainable communities and the social-economic benefits Kins Domains provide. Inspired by the book series “The Ringing Cedars Of Russia,” this 500-acre Kins Domain “Project” encompasses one 2 1/2 acre (one hectare) lot, surrounded by a living fence, trees (2/3), a pond, organic gardens and fruit trees, a natural beehive, a family tree that stays on the Kins Domain for future generations and an all-green home to create a high frequency, natural energy microclimate. (more…)

Citizens can take action

Thirty-two years ago, Marx moved out of New York City to the end of a long dirt road, beyond the reach of power lines. The retired literacy teacher and gardener bought a couple of modest-sized, 20-year-old solar panels and times his use of appliances to coincide with topped-up batteries.
Yet he says he’s only recently become anything like an environmental activist. The 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of “corporate personhood” (in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission) tipped the scales.
“It was really bothering me. I was getting angrier and angrier,” Marx remembers. “I tend to shut down when I’m angry, so I walked up the hill with May (his dog). I said to myself, ‘Wait a second — corporations have rights. We gave them rights; I gave them rights’ — I mean, I vote; I accept responsibility. It means that corporations can do whatever they want, but the Earth can’t. And that was it.
Everyone had been saying ‘We can change this,’” Marx continued. “And then it came to me: We can’t change this — no one’s going to change multinational corporations. But maybe we can make it an even playing field. It became something positive, instead of a negative.” (more…)

Look around you, how many grey and white heads are nearby? If you are lucky, you will have at least one, if you are very lucky you will have multiple to choose from. Why is it so fortunate to have older folk around? Simple, beneath all that gray and white hair is a plethora of knowledge and experience. This is a valuable resource, and one that is dwindling each and every day. Often the biggest feat is to find those who lived through the great depression and still have their mental faculties and are willing to sit down and talk about their lives, that’s the trifecta!

These folk grew up during a time when most things were done by hand, black and white TV was something for the wealthy, that’s if they had electricity. Lighting was often candles and kerosene lanterns. Some lived on farms and had to get up before dawn to take care of farm animals before eating breakfast and heading off to school. These folks grew up in circumstances that most of us can’t even imagine. (more…)

Alapines community event

Across America, there are around 100 off-grid communities where anybody saddled with a Y chromosome is forbidden. Welcome to America’s Womyn’s Lands. These largely lesbian communities started life in the 1970s when a cluster of revolutionary women founded a camp on the beach in St Augustine, Florida. Today, one of the largest Womyn’s Lands is found in rural Alabama, in a camp called Alapine Village. (more…)

Carving a pair of skis from a tree trunk

As a film-maker, Herzog’s constant theme is Nature – the “vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger,” he once called the Ocean, but the description could apply equally well to the Siberian tundra. His new movie, “Happy People: A Year in the Taiga,” documents the lives of Siberian fur trappers who live and work in extreme conditions. (Buy it in the UK). Deep in the wilderness, far away from civilization, 300 people inhabit the small village of Bakhtia at the river Yenisei. There are only two ways to reach this outpost: by helicopter or boat. There’s no telephone, running water or medical aid. (more…)

Currently the top story on the Daily Mail web site is a plug for off-grid living, featuring Emma Orbach who first came to prominence when she was described in my British book How to Live Off-Grid. The book is about my trip around the UK meeting off-grid dwellers, and the time I spent with Emma at Brith Dir Mawr in Wales is one of the most inspiring sections. She was lucky enough to be part of a group that bought a huge fertile piece of land and moved on in 1995, before the backlash against this way of living. you can see film of Emma and many other off-gridders at my YouTube channel. (more…)

The Global Eco-village Network is a network of sustainable communities.

It offers invaluable knowledge and experience from the most successful sustainable communities around the world. In this video, founder Kosha Joubert talks about the GEN, her experience in this movement, how an Ecovillage helps to change a whole region, and the rising interest from mainstream media.

An example of famous ecovillages that are part of the network are Findhorn Ecovillage in Escotland, Auroville in India and The Farm in the U.S.

All off them are true laboratories for Off-grid living, energy technologies, low Carbon footprint building methods, new economics, alternative currencies and much more.

A New York hipster-blogger tries living on his perfect piece of land in Kauai. Good premise for a film.

With his lovely wife and beautiful three month old daughter. That moves it from a gadget show to something a bit more human. Oh, and please could he have $150,000 for a container full of audio and video equipment and solar panels so a film crew can document his every move and post it on the Web. Sure, why not? (more…)

With the latest mass shooting event last week, something that I feel terribly sorry about, it should have never happened, there has been a backlash of politicians and left leaning folks who are marking and targeting preppers as crazy people and they want something done about these prepper types, they are using this tragedy as an opportunity to classify preppers as a threat. It would seem that putting up food for hard times, having the means to defend and protect yourself, and being more self reliant & independent among other things makes you a threat to the powers that be. I just read a great article written by Daisy Luther (bio and website link at the end of this article) explaining it as well if not better than I could. (more…)