-
Sandi Brockway
- Female
- Cambria, CA
- United States
- Share
- Blog Posts (13)
- Discussions (103)
- Events
- Groups -- Come on! Let's Collaborate! (6)
- Photos
- Photo Albums
- Videos
RSS
Loading feed
Sandi Brockway's Groups
-
One Million Gardens
42 members
-
Purposeful Permacultur...
30 members
-
Building Transition Co...
22 members
-
Transition California
22 members
-
Transition Solutions W...
9 members
Sandi Brockway's Discussions
INTRODUCTION
Replied May 18
Sandi Brockway * Macrocosm USA
Profile Information
- How are you currently involved in the Transition movement?
- I started to generate sites for remaining states for USA and use my networking experience to populate them where possible. I got as far as Michigan, Minnesota, and Tennessee, and hope to remake them into the perfect model for transition networking. I am advising on other sites too. I have remodeled the Transition California site.
I set up a specialized google Transition Custom Search to assist others in regional networking, campaigning, and coalition building. It covers all transition ning sites, idealist.org, and wiserearth.org - plus detailed recommendations and assistance. Please check my MI, MN, and TN blogs for advice on how to use software and effectively network with sympathetic regional entities or individuals. See custom search box on those sites too under UTILITIES or TOOLS. Any more suggestions gratefully welcome?
I have setup and designed an Transition Culture artwork site on Picasa.
I have offered to donate all or any of the work Macrocosm USA has done over the last 18 years, my networking background, and services. If you need my help on anything in particular let me know. Please be as detailed and precise as possible when communicating with me please.
Unfortunately we live in a sexist, racist, classist world where the truth is a gift most people fear and reject. The truth is more likely to get one in jail or marginalized. No good deed goes unpunished.
Demonstrating improved and healthy ways for people to coordinate and evaluate is usually unpopular. Codependency is deeply ingrained - and competition highly addictive due to its enticing array of artificial rewards. I can only advise: Be brave, even while you are crying, and seek out friends who are kind, cooperative, and compassionate. Kindness in thought is really great wisdom.
I am committed to non-hierarchical systems and real grassroots empowerment, where authentic initiative and ability is rewarded over status and pretense. We must shed our ancient patriarchal authoritarian proclivity towards identity, labels and categories for more democratic spontaneous models. This requires discarding the insidious entrenched privileges and entitlements that everyone takes for granted as the norm. Sadly, most people are incapable of self scrutiny, so we are almost doomed to repeat history.
The gatekeepers of these power myths are all around us and within us. It is hard to escape the rigid confining expectations and ambitions of others. Fear and reluctance make it difficult to exorcise the past. Just think of the powers we could unleash if we just got out of our own way?
These new forms of social collaborative online software, alongside the rising awareness for the need for dramatic change, provide a tempting promise for synergistic possibilities and solutions. It is with a precarious hope that many of us reach out with creativity and cooperation.
There is danger, yet fragile opportunity, in the current zeitgeist - I am humbled by and respect its vulnerability. I encourage everyone to fully explore their potential, talents and skills and take initiative - because it just might be our rare moment.
- In what ways do you identify with the Transition movement? Why are you interested?
- I have my degree in Social Sciences with an emphasis on Cultural and Historical Geography, Sociology and Anthropology, with a minor in Psychology and Film from Humboldt State University 1976.
I never forgot when Carter said that weaning ourselves off oil was "the moral equivalent to war" and diagnosed the country as suffering a malaise after he read THE CULTURE OF NARCISSISM.
I have been doing work with a similar objective since about 1982. Our paper was called APPEAL TO REASON OF SAN LUIS OBISPO. Our directory was going to be called WORLD CONCERN DIRECTORY. By 1990 it was renamed MACROCOSM USA: POSSIBILITIES FOR A NEW PROGRESSIVE ERA, An Environmental, Political, & Social Solutions Handbook with Directories.
TRANSITION? Now I must bore you with how I got the Al Gore blurb for Macrocosm USA: Possibilities for a New Progressive Era. We had an associate that worked in Marilyn Ferguson's office. She recently passed away October 19, 2008. In 1991 she was best friends with Gore and privy to Jerry Brown.
A brave mutual associate, Gregory Wright, crashed her party and placed a copy of our original database in Brown's hand. When our handbook was published, a few boxes of books were smuggled into the Clinton Gore Transition Team's offices.
At the next Eco Expo, we encountered people who been Brown's campaign staff. They claimed that our database was responsible for getting Gore selected as VP. They asked me to sign copies of the handbook for them. They believed Brown won so many states due to his environmental platform, using my daily database recommendations for his travel itinerary, and this became the reason Clinton appointed Gore.
Later I heard that Brown, instead of causing a ruckus at the primary convention as he had promised his constituency, suddenly became reticent for a reason. He had been given Gore in exchange for keeping his silent acceptance.
Gore was just fresh from publishing EARTH IN THE BALANCE. There are a lot of really stupid rumors that Gore did not write that book, but they are rumors from very stupid people who believe every conspiracy theory they read. Gore is a very educated intellectual man, capable of writing many similar academic books.
Is anyone heard any news regarding JERRY BROWN FOR GOVERNOR Campaign? Please sign this fledgling endorsement. It could be quite interesting having Governor Moonbeam running California again.
When I first designed my website about 13 years ago, I used some very primitive CGI programs and pieced them all together in a rather crude way - but everything was there from directories, form mail, and forums. But today, these new content management programs, many good ones are free, do this seamlessly and are easily customizable. I worked tireless years redesigning the old programs so they would be broken down into many categories, from cities, phone numbers, states, organizations, or individuals - assisting people to organize locally yet find information across a wide spectrum of organizations.
In 2005 I experimented with a current content management program to form our GLOBAL VILLAGES INFORMATION PORTAL (dedicated to self reliant communities and decentralized renewable energy models, post petroleum, post carbon, global waming) after completing it, the Katrina tragedy hit, so I converted it to a support site. It has now being rededicated to another use. Has anyone used Joomla before? It is like nothing I have used before so I am lost.
It was during the Katrina experience that I learned further what mercenary people run MoveOn.org. I will never go there again, and suggest no one else does either. They took millions of dollars, and canned their successful Katrina project in 60 days, all because their high priced lawyers were afraid of liabilities, but then they would not share the database with other nonprofits trying to help victims.
- How can you help the growth/acceptance/vitality of the Transition movement? What can YOU teach us? What can your GROUP teach us?
- I will design a collaborative Google map to catalog all sites or locate someone who can do it. It should be set up on a regular RSS feed. I have located an eco mapping group who showed an interest in collaborating with Transition sites. There is also another mapping service that also is discussing a custom map based on a feed.
Could you still use any aspect of my nonprofit? Macrocosm has been fundamentally inactive for almost three years. When I first started Macrocosm USA it was with the idea that any region in the world could become a sustainable self reliant entity. The end of the Cold War showed great promise to me. Macrocosm France, Macrocosm New York, Macrocosm Australia, etc. etc. I also enlisted the assistance and cooperation of as many other directory resources I could find in order to get the broadest results and to insure I was not duplicating efforts - while giving my readership the greatest number of resources.
By cataloging grassroots and community activists, volunteers and networkers, making them searchable by regions and keyword indexing, I was in hope this might form stronger regional coalitions while cross pollinating. Think globally, act locally.
- Your Favorite Books/Websites/Blogs/RSS Feeds for Information about the Transition Movement
- Too numerous to post here, but I will attempt to integrate many into the several state websites I am currently improving and enhancing. Wiseerearth.org and idealist.org. Go to my website at macronet.org for other useful networking directories - including our own, Macrocosm USA, of nearly 7000 entries. Some or outdated, but many are networking gems that are updated through Google currently.
- Your Personal Website (if you have one)
- http://www.macronet.org
- Official Voice Communication: Skype from http://skype.com/download Add LSquiresSkype to your Contacts.
- ginawolfe
- Suggestions you have for improving our Registration questions. Getting to know you better.
- My latest suggestion is that we should generate all states was finally granted! Now we need a logo header. I have created a UTILITIES or TOOLS Tab in Michigan currently, with access to carefully selected art catalog that can be utilized to design an amazing logo - which you can also contribute your favorite artwork.
I can custom generate regional lists and prime each site by personally inviting many to join and participate - and some of my older associations. If anyone would like some regional assistance locating custom catalogs of their states' or regions groups, let me assist you. We could, with help of volunteers here or there, continue to graze for sympathetic organizations and invite them to participate and report on exceptional local initiatives and programs via many other resources.
One of Macrocosm USA longtime associates in Vienna is starting a TRANSITION EUROPE.
Onsite searches @ WISEREARTH.ORG & IDEALIST. ORG get more refined geographical results. WiserEarth Proxity Map generates lists within any size region. Highly recommended.
Return to Transition US Home Page
Sandi Brockway's Blog
Bll McKibben, Wendell Berry, Gus Speth, Adrienne Maree Brown + many more planning to get arrested
According to the twitter record
http://twitter.com/climateaction
Today there is supposed to be a huge climate change demonstration.
http://twitter.com/climateaction
Today there is supposed to be a huge climate change demonstration.
Posted on March 2, 2009 at 7:13am —
Ask Obama to Plant a Vegetable Garden on the Whitehouse Lawn
Posted on February 10, 2009 at 12:28am —
Why An A**Hole is Always in Charge
Why An A**Hole is Always in Charge.
Greg Palast for SuicideGirls.com
Sunday 25, 2009
John Thain is the guy that looks like a Clark Kent doll you saw grinning from page one of your paper Friday morning. Thain was just fired by Bank of America because the square-jawed executive demanded a $30 million bonus after losing $5 billion in just three months at the bank's Merrill Lynch unit. In addition, Thain spent over a million dollars redecorating his office - including installation of a $35,000 to… Continue
Greg Palast for SuicideGirls.com
Sunday 25, 2009
John Thain is the guy that looks like a Clark Kent doll you saw grinning from page one of your paper Friday morning. Thain was just fired by Bank of America because the square-jawed executive demanded a $30 million bonus after losing $5 billion in just three months at the bank's Merrill Lynch unit. In addition, Thain spent over a million dollars redecorating his office - including installation of a $35,000 to… Continue
Posted on January 26, 2009 at 3:14am —
Post Carbon Institute Announces Partnership with Transition US Network
Submitted by Andrew Calvo on January 15, 2009 - 10:29am. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Post Carbon Institute Announces Partnership with Transition US Network
(January 15, 2009, Sebastopol, CA) Post Carbon Institute today announced a partnership with Transition US to inspire and support communities across the United States to shift quickly away from dependence on fossil fuels.
"The enormous challenges our communities and ecosystems face as a result of peak oil and climate change require all the… Continue
Post Carbon Institute Announces Partnership with Transition US Network
(January 15, 2009, Sebastopol, CA) Post Carbon Institute today announced a partnership with Transition US to inspire and support communities across the United States to shift quickly away from dependence on fossil fuels.
"The enormous challenges our communities and ecosystems face as a result of peak oil and climate change require all the… Continue
Posted on January 18, 2009 at 12:17am —
Alternative Energy
Zacks.com
Alternative Energy
Tuesday January 13, 2:49 pm ET
By Jon Kolb
Assuming that GDP growth is slightly negative for the next 3 to 4 quarters while the credit markets gradually strengthen, let's consider the outlook and opportunities for the Alternative Energy industry over the next 6 to 12 months. Many companies engaged in the solar power market offer profitability with strong average long-term annual earnings growth expectations of approximately 40%, stock price valuations… Continue
Alternative Energy
Tuesday January 13, 2:49 pm ET
By Jon Kolb
Assuming that GDP growth is slightly negative for the next 3 to 4 quarters while the credit markets gradually strengthen, let's consider the outlook and opportunities for the Alternative Energy industry over the next 6 to 12 months. Many companies engaged in the solar power market offer profitability with strong average long-term annual earnings growth expectations of approximately 40%, stock price valuations… Continue
Posted on January 14, 2009 at 8:46pm —
Birthdays
Birthdays Tomorrow
Nominate Your Favorite Quote
"Money is like blood," says NEF researcher David Boyle. "Local purchases recirculate it, but patronize mega-chains or online retailers," he says, and "it flows out like a wound."
"Holding each other in the highest future intention" ~ Theory U
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. ~ Margaret Mead
Be Yourself. Everyone Else Is Taken!" ~ Charles Shulz
"Holding each other in the highest future intention" ~ Theory U
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. ~ Margaret Mead
Be Yourself. Everyone Else Is Taken!" ~ Charles Shulz
© 2009 Created by Michael Brownlee
Comment Wall (22 comments)
You need to be a member of TRANSITION U.S. SOCIAL NETWORK to add comments!
Join this social network
we'll stay in touch. im really new to TT ... just getting my feet wet here. so be patient with me and i apologize cause i used the wrong words ... hope my email clarified sufficiently.
Pls let me know if you have contacts for people/ organizations who might be interested in helping to fund solar cabins (low cost focus) and/or solar homes (varying size /cost). I am very passionate about getting houses off the grid and into sustainability...brainstorming for more ways to make this happen in practicality, especially here in Midwestern states.
Yes, I posted the KC event on the Missouri page under events. I posted that same event in the food work group as away to show ideas of a possible event/speakers/meeting for those with a strong food interest in their area.
I know the Missouri page needs some organization. I was going to follow up with Les or someone to see if my limited experience was enough.
View All Comments