This morning a friend brought my son home from a birthday party. Her sons had also attended the party and our house was on their way home, so bringing them all home together significantly reduced the carbon emissions. In other words, it was a good move for sustainability which we all value. But that isn’t... Read

In October 2011 in this part of Massachusetts, we had an unusual snowfall. Leaves were still on the trees, but big, fat flakes of wet snow fell from the sky. As the snow kept coming down, there was an increasing chance that snow-laden tree branches might fall on power lines and cause an outage. Now... Read More

Let’s talk resilience! That’s what I’ll be doing at the Regional Cohousing Conference this year and I hope you all are coming and want to dig in to that concept. What does it mean for our communities to be resilient: economically, ecologically and socially? I’ve been playing in the domain of community for a couple... Read More

I love to see communities reusing old stuff in a unique way. Recently when visiting Greyrock Commons in Fort Collins Colorado, I had the pleasure of touring their common house. Not only do they have the absolute-most-coolest-ever-indoor-kids-play-area, but they had lovely wooden floors in their dining space. It turns out that I have a long... Read More

The Cutting Edge Resiliency session I co-led with Bryan of Caddis bloomed into a thriving discussion about what strides we all realistically need to take to seriously combat climate change. We agreed that yes, individual numbers are important, but the power of the collective in community living is where cohousing offers the biggest opportunities. (And... Read More

Cohousing can be a lab for trying out the latest innovations to help us live lighter on the planet. The goal of this year’s National Cohousing Conference was ambitious – building resilient, sustainable communities – yet I felt a universal reaching; so many of us wanting desperately to learn how to be even more climate... Read More

We hear advice on how to live “green” tossed around a lot these days. “Sustainability” is equated with so many different products and actions, it’s hard to wade through the noise to figure out what’s most doable, and has an impact that truly matters in our communities. It can be a challenge to separate green-washing... Read More

For more and more people, the debate is over. Climate change is real. Wealth inequity is a problem. People need to stop killing each other. I grew up in the 80’s, when Reagan was still managing to convince most people that everything was okay. I remember my radical parents being in a state of perpetual... Read More

Reprinted from Communities Magazine Spring 2017 “I want to do something about climate change,” my 12-year-old daughter insisted. The immediacy of her feelings, and her earnest belief that she, personally, could do something momentous left me momentarily speechless. I remember that same urgency in myself as a teenager, before I realized the complexity of the... Read More