Other Projects
Here are a handful of my recent projects, assignments, and articles; discover them here for the first time, or fall in love with them all over again.
“Zero-Mile Diet Blooms in B.C.”
“Against a backdrop of global food shortages and the spectre of five dollar lettuce at the checkout, there are signs that more Western Canadians are tearing up their lawns this spring to plant vegetable gardens. It’s still early in the planting season, but the region’s organic-seed distributors report a dramatic increase in business. ‘We put out the catalog at the beginning of January, as we always do’ says Jeanette McCall, a sales representative at West Coast Seeds, based in Delta, B.C. ‘Then, boom. We had many, many, many more orders than we anticipated. [Our computer system] simply couldn’t handle the load,’ she adds. ‘It just sort of crashed.’”
(”Zero-Mile Diet Blooms in B.C. , ” The Tyee, May 14, 2008)
“Delicious Rain”
A conversation with Dominique Kluyskens, who sources all of his household drinking water from the roof of his home. One of an occassional series of segments I am doing on green living for BowenTV, our community’s home-grown YouTube channel.
(Bowen TV, April 12, 2008)
“Letting Go of Cool”
“I can’t put my finger on precisely when I lost all love for conspicuous consumption — when the last of the frisson and allure drained from shiny new consumer goods and fashion, red-hot destinations, and canned neo-luxury experiences… My gut tells me that I’m part of an invisible, but growing, psychographic. I’m in a segment that nobody wants to target because I’m opting out of as much of all this promised joy as possible. I still live and work in the real world; I’m not naive about my place in the system. Now and then, I still write for some of those magazines. But to me, the good life isn’t where the marketing mavens keep insisting it is.”
(”Letting go of Cool ,” The Tyee , March 17, 2008)
“Buck the System”
What happens when a self-described “child of suburbia” decides that the picturesque deer sleeping in his backyard could, in fact, be dinner? In an effort to relocalize my food and thumb my nose at what I call the “gourmet markup,” I recently schooled myself in the messy business of killing big game with a bow and arrow. The result: “Buck the System,” a 26-page mini-book and three-part podcast. Bowen Island Journal calls it “a moving piece of work and a phenomenally told story.” Released under a Creative Commons copyright license, it’s free for you to enjoy and share.
PDF Version:
Buck The System [.PDF, 6.9 MB; note, if possible, please print double-sided]
Podcast:
Launch iTunes and go directly to the Buck the System podcast page