Why Blog? Why not Blog?

I wanted to use the sharing component of the internet not only to share my experiences on my journey into self-sufficiency as part of my work to save humanity and the environment.
I have been using the internet to research different things related to gardening this season and as I signed up for different newsletters the magic of the web pulled me in different directions of knowledge.
I looked up how to build a raised bed for a vegetable garden and found a keyhole raised bed used in developing countries at schools to grow food for students. http://www.cowfiles.com/african-gardens/keyhole-gardens The keyhole garden is a circular raised bed built up of stones or rubble with a pie slice cut out to allow you to get to the centre of the bed to place compost and grey water which then nourishes the garden. I thought about how a raised bed could be built in small suburban yards tended by children and seniors. A keyhole garden could be built near apartment blocks, schools, community centers, jails, hospitals or any communal institution.
One ‘subversive’ magazine http://www.bust.com/ sent me a newsletter about their blog about hearing about a group trying to figure out how to grow food in apartment windows using a suspension system with plastic pop bottles. http://windowfarms.org/ Then there was the group of fellows growing vegetables in the back of a truck. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGGUfYFdFrc All this going on while I am hearing about people living in tent villages because they had lost their jobs and were now poor; I kept thinking about how people in the United States are going to be hungry and how cold they will be this winter.
I looked up how to tell if my potatoes were ready to harvest and found out about chicken coops. The chicken coop designs were cute and compact and then I started researching raising chickens for eggs. http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/Raising-Backyard-Chickens.aspx This brought me to the political debate about allowing backyard chickens in my city which then led me to a fellow who introduced me to his chickens. He talked about the right to food as a human right and how it overrides a city bylaw.
I picked up a gardening magazine that a friend got me last winter and in it was an article about the program Plant a Row, Grow a Row, http://www.growarow.org/indexENG.htm in which gardeners plant a row of vegetables specifically for their local food bank. Not only will I go local with my own produce but I can go local with charities.
I am part of a women’s circle in which we meet to discuss the Sacred Feminine. The premise behind the Millionth Circle is that once there are enough groups getting together to work for some sort of betterment of mankind, we will reach Gladwell’s described ‘tipping point’ and there will be a paradigm shift for the better. http://millionthcircle.org/About/vision.html
So the blog is not just a discussion for me about how to plant a garden or how to save money on energy and saving the environment, but for me, the pull is to do this because I feel it is the necessary next step for the betterment of mankind and as a way to save the planet. It is so cliché to say that I want to work toward world peace, but from what I have noticed through the internet, is that I am not the only one working toward world peace, and that I want to be part of the wave of change that is working toward this goal. Although there are still terrible things that are happening in the world, I think that this is the time when we as a global society know a lot about human behaviour, about technological efficiencies.
In Here Comes Everybody, http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/ Clay Shirky says something like:’Love can have a profound effect on a small group of people’ (I am still looking for the exact quote). He talks about how caring family groups can be and when people do get together, there can be a lot of love and a lot of good work brought about. I think that especially with the internet, our world is smaller; we do not have the barriers of geography to see or talk to someone in another continent. We can meet up with people who are similar to and we can form friendships across oceans. We can feel sorrow seeing images of people like us undergoing hardships and know that it could be us and we can actually help them.
I invite you to visit my blog and check out the links to these exciting projects and ideas. I hope that you can make a change today or even just feel like you can do something and feel the hope that things can get better. I invite you to send me stuff you have found or tell me about your projects so we can further inspire people. I think the future is going to be really fun once we clean up and start caring for each other.
Okay, so this blog is really over the top on hope and there is the cynical editor in me that is just shaking my head-get over yourself. But really I am an optimistic person and when I get organized, I can get a whole lot done. Okay, everybody, let’s go.