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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>If
you’re interested in the Transition movement but haven’t had time
to read The Transition Handbook or visit the Web sites, you can thank writer
Jon Mooallem and the New York Times for a terrifically reported, detailed and
erudite article, “The End is Near! (Yah!)” (love the title) that
provides a comprehensive portrait of this burgeoning movement.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>Many, many
provocative jewels here. Pros and cons fairly presented and questions raised
(and we should always be asking questions!). Lots of food for thought in the whole
magazine issue too, which has a green focus for Earth Day, but this story in
particular reminded me of what good journalism is and can be … a
reflection of society to educate, provoke thought and stir our souls. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>Money
quotes:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;line-height:150%;
mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-family:Symbol'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><i><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>What
Reuter said he felt was wonderful about the Sandpoint Transition Initiative was
how quickly it was rejuvenating people’s faith that the changes they
craved were worth working for. “To say the group has only created a
community garden so far really isn’t sufficient,” he told me. <b><u>“It’s
something really more substantive: they’re bringing people to the process</u></b>.”
… The movement wasn’t going to unify everybody in Sandpoint, he
said: “I know that’s their dream, but I just don’t see it
happening.” <b><u>But it was inspiring for Reuter to watch the group
emerge as one fervently turning gear in the larger mechanism of
self-governance.<o:p></o:p></u></b></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;line-height:150%;
mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-family:Symbol'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><i><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>…
as Reuter saw it. “</span></i><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>Government</span><i><span
style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'> used to be the place in our
community where people came together and made civic decisions,” he told
me. “That’s what we should do again, and that’s what’s
going to bring us back together: not having government be this force somehow
outside of us, that’s bearing down on us or annoying us, but as a force
that we actually embrace and want and that does what we want.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;line-height:150%;
mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-family:Symbol'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><b><i><u><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>For
a wide range of not-always-consistent reasons, people in Sandpoint decided that
Transition could help them build the world they wanted. And now, only because
enough people stepped forward and made that decision,</span></u></i></b><i><span
style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'> <b><u>Transition actually looked
like a good tool for the job. They were picking it up by whatever handle they
grasped. They were swinging it as earnestly as they could.</u></b><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>More highlights
from the story: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;line-height:150%;
mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-family:Symbol'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><i><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>But
those living on the land, whether out of a left- or right-wing ideology, do
have a lot in common, including an astounding amount of resourcefulness.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;line-height:150%;
mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-family:Symbol'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><i><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>When
I asked her later what she made of the exercise, Hellar told me: “First
of all, I’m not a good-feelings, touchy-feely kind of person.” She
added, “People wanted to talk about where we can put community gardens,
how can we make our downtown more viable.” John T. Reuter, a Republican
city councilman a few seats over, told me that when Berta told them to hold
hands, he was looking around the room, counting up the people he knew
Transition just alienated.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:
.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-.25in;line-height:150%;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Symbol'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:
150%;font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>Now, maybe because our various crises
have escalated, or because it costs so much to disappear into your own parcel
of wilderness, opting out no longer feels like a possibility. One of
Transition’s more oblique arguments may be that we can’t escape
anymore. We have to work together to remake the places where we already live. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;line-height:150%;
mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-family:Symbol'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><i><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>Karl
Dye, head of the Bonner County Economic Development Corporation, told me,
“All the things Transition’s doing basically line up with what
we’re trying to do, which is create better-paying jobs.” He saw a
lot of promise in Lanphear’s group, though he also said: “If you
start a business to produce food locally and there are opportunities to make
money by taking it to other areas, you’re going to do it. You may believe
in Transitions and local production and local consumption, but hey, man,
we’re still Americans.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;line-height:150%;
mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-family:Symbol'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><i><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>A
minister told me she was glad that Transition wasn’t “a greenie,
hippie, far-out thing.” But Michael Boge, the City Council president,
seemed to complain of exactly that, telling me he didn’t understand why
the group had to cheapen a good idea by “inventing a new word for it and
wrapping themselves in that catchphrase.” (The new word Boge objected to
wasn’t “Transition”; it was “sustainability.”)<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;line-height:150%;
mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-family:Symbol'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><i><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>Still,
Boge, who owns five drive-in restaurants and is active in a long-distance
motorcycling club called the Iron Butt Association, told me that he felt allied
with Transition’s ideals. “I’ve bitched about this to my
friends for years: we need to make a concerted effort to get off fossil
fuels,” he said. “And I truly believe that with the country and God
behind us, we can do it.” Transition was a prism, offering a slightly
different view of Sandpoint depending on how each person turned it, but always
shooting out lots of rainbows.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;line-height:150%;
mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-family:Symbol'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><i><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>The
vibe was much more <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/alice_waters/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
title="More articles about Alice Waters."><span style='color:windowtext;
text-decoration:none'>Alice Waters</span></a> than Mad Max. (Jeff Burns, a
local food activist who joined the food working group, was a conspicuous
exception. “Some people on the food group want to feel good,” he
told me, “and some people want to figure out how to feed 40,000 people in
case the trucks stop rolling.”)<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;line-height:150%;
mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-family:Symbol'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><i><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>Transition
doesn’t claim its method is mathematically guaranteed to succeed. It
simply posits that our best hope is to “unleash the collective genius of
the community” and hope all the right pieces spill out. “We truly
don’t know if this will work,” Rob Hopkins asserts in a
mission-statement-like document called the “Cheerful Disclaimer!”<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;line-height:150%;
mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-family:Symbol'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><i><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>“The
genius of the Transition message, as I see it, is that it takes what we should
be doing to avert these crises and turns it into something that sounds inviting
and positive and uplifting,” Richard Heinberg, a Transition U.S. board
member, told me in Sebastopol … Heinberg said he worries that Transition
risks losing people in the elation it inspires. He has been debating with
Hopkins whether, in addition to devising a long-term descent, Transition should
emphasize preparing for disasters that Heinberg says are unavoidable or already
unfolding, like volatile gas prices or “being sideswiped by economic
catastrophe and weather disruptions.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='text-indent:-.25in;line-height:150%;
mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-family:Symbol'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>·<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><i><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>I
was also surprised by the degree to which Transition members were intermixing
with city authorities. Shortly after the Great Unleashing, Shelby Rognstad, a
young cafe owner and an early Sandpoint Transition Initiative board member
alongside Kühnel and Lanphear, was appointed to the town’s planning and
zoning commission — a significant position, because Sandpoint was writing
its first new comprehensive plan in 30 years.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'>Read the
whole article here ::: <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/magazine/19town-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4&ref=magazine">http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/magazine/19town-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4&ref=magazine</a>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Corbel","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:150%'><span style='font-family:"Malgun Gothic","sans-serif";
color:black'>::: shauna </span><span style='font-family:"Malgun Gothic","sans-serif";
color:#913200'>lawyer</span><span style='font-family:"Malgun Gothic","sans-serif";
color:black'> struby</span><b><span style='font-family:"Malgun Gothic","sans-serif";
color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:150%'><span style='font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif";
color:#913200'><a href="http://thinklady.typepad.com/thinklady/">http://thinklady.typepad.com/thinklady/</a>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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