'Living Lightly' launched

Have you seen the newest column in the Border Mail on a Saturday?

It's called 'Living Lightly' and appears in the Pulse section, below Wodonga Tafe's gardening article.

The column is for stories about sustainable living locally, and is being co-ordinated as a Transition Towns Albury-Wodonga initiative.

So far there have been stories about home energy use, bubble-wrap double glazing (a topic you know we love!) and the street harvest program. It's a ripper of an idea and a great opportunity to share positive stories with the Border Mail's 60,000 readers on Saturdays.

Make your vote count ... local help at hand

Let me guess, you're already over the Federal election campaign and we have still got weeks to go. I know it is easy to get frustrated when politics seems to focus on personalities, semantics, a single election cycle timeframes (at most) and lip service. It's even harder when both our local seats are very safe.

But I also know that we are all concerned about the future and have our own ideas about what our governments should be doing to help deliver us that future. Do you know the candidates' policies for your areas of interest or concern? Moreover, do the candidates in your area know what matters to you? You may not want to "be political" (I don't) but there are plenty of "squeaky wheels" out there, letting their opinions be known. If you aren't adding your voice to the conversation, you run the risk that your opinion is not being represented.

Ok, so what can you do?

You don't have to settle for the sound bites offered by the media. Investigate the policies of both our local federal candidates and those for the senate. Even better, get in touch with them and ask them what they will do to address the issues that matter to you. Meet them when they come to town, leave a phone message at their office, write a letter, email, tweet, whatever takes your fancy.

Oh, and you might want to check out these local sources of political information:

• The brand new Our Voice: Politics Albury Wodonga blog, where you can hear interviews with the candidates for both Farrer and Indi, as well as read and contribute opinions.
• ABC Goulburn Murray will also be hosting a weekly politics chat on Gaye Pattison's morning show and a blog, featuring Albury's Dave Gaukroger who blogs here and here.
• The Border Mail has already run some articles profiling local candidates and will no doubt continue. It and the free local papers are also an opportunity to share your views through the letters to the editor.
• And I'm told that News Weekly has just commenced a "Pollies Corner" column, to feature articles from our state and federal MPs (although I haven't managed to check out a copy myself just yet!).

I know this sounds a bit like a GetUp! promotion, and that's probably because I share some of their views. They aren't a political party, and they aren't promoting a particular party. They do want us all (and the pollies!) to engage with the political process and to ensure the upcoming elections, both federal and state, are about issues and policies not the hot air we have been subjected to of late.

Replace Hazelwood event pics

A pictorial update from the Replace Hazelwood event in Wodonga last weekend.

If you want to know how take a stand on a serious political issue, but have some fun at the same time, this was the event for you. It featured a cake replica of the coal-fired power station, complete with 'steam' in time for the Border Mail photographer.

The Deputy Mayors of Wodonga and Indigo councils did the honours to cut up the cake after the official pictures. And we were entertained by the Next Generation, a band that formed especially for the occasion, with their impressive rendition of [previously AC/DC's] Long Way to the Top ... If You Keep on Burning Coal.   

All pictures in this post taken by Joy GrinhamFor more about Hazelwood and the options to replace it, as well as news and pictures from other events held across the nation, visit the Replace Hazelwood website. Local media coverage included both pre- and post- event stories in the Border Mail, another in News Weekly and as an item on WIN tv news.

Catching my eye

I've been making an effort to be more organised to 1) not overlook/forget documents, audio or video clips that come to my attention and 2) find the time to view/listen to them!

The current solution involves an electronic file to keep anything I think fits the bill so I can easily put my hands on it if I find myself with time on my hands. I've also downloaded the audio files and am trying to multi-task so that I listen to them while doing other things like cooking, gardening or travelling (be it walking, driving or my next train journey).

Some items you might be interested in are:

Prosperity without Growth- this is one of the 2010 Deakin Lecture series. You can download both video and audio files of all the talks (full list here). There are many good ones. The title Prosperity without Growth had me contemplating attending the lecture in Melbourne when the program was first announced. I didn't, but am really glad I've had the chance to catch it online instead. Tim Jackson discusses the issues with our current economic (and energy and social) systems, why growth cannot be infinite on a finite planet, as well as the challenges and opportunities such a discussion raises. I highly recommend taking a look/listen.

The full lecture (and questions from the audience) can be downloaded as audio or video. An additional interview on the same topics aired on Radio National's The National Interest program (download here). And if you can't find the 40+ minutes to hear one of those, at least take a look at the 7-minute highlights package from the lecture, put together by ABC tv for Big Ideas.

From TED.com I've enjoyed Collaborative Consumption - how technology in the 21st century helps us to share rather than all consume individually (here). Also, I finally got around to watching Hans Rosling make statistics seem absolutely riveting, and bust a few myths around global development in the process (here). It deserves the hype I'd read about it.

I've enjoyed several segments from Life Matters (another Radio National show), particularly their It Took Over My Life series, again accessed online. Specifically taking my fancy were ones on The Kitchen Garden, Geocacheing and The Simple Life (featuring Rhonda, whose blog Down to Earth I've been following and enjoying for a couple of years in fact the blog is better than the interview, I reckon).

An article by US permaculture author Toby Hemenway, The Myth of Self Reliance makes some interesting points about self sufficiency and contrasts it with self-reliant communities, which sound very much like community resilience, as Transition Towns frame it. Indeed, this article seems to fit very nicely with Tim Jackson's messages, and with the ideas behind Transition Towns.

Snail mail hasn't been forgotten. I've been perusing, or is that drooling over, the new Green Harvest and Eden Seeds catalogues that arrived in past weeks. Also, a farm and garden calendar and planting guide magnet from Senator Christine Milne. Check out her blog for info about those.
A local food and gardening calendar would make another great project for Transition Towns (and/or member groups), don't you think?