Of Towers and Tables: What We Build Says Everything
There were towers in the city. Concrete towers. Glass towers. Towers that rose like teeth from the earth, biting at the sky. Some of them were crooked,…
Making Money
-
-
The Weight of a Day Given
There are many who give money and many more who wish they could. And there is nothing wrong with that. You give what you have, and if…
-
The Vanishing Volunteer: What Happened to Showing Up for Each Other?
Somewhere between the endless scroll of our overly-curated lives and the tightening squeeze of economic survival, the spirit of volunteerism has quietly withered. Fewer people show up…
-
If You’re Not Changing It, You’re Choosing It
Let me tell you about the time I lived with a raccoon. Not officially, of course. I didn’t sign a lease with one or agree to split…
-
Building Brand Communities: How Organizations Succeed by Creating Belonging – By Carrie Melissa Jones, Charles H. Vogl, and Caroline Miller
Our modern marketplaces are flooded with flashy ads and empty slogans, and the idea of a “brand community” can sometimes sound like marketing speak disguised as something…
-
The Elevation of Solidarity Above Charity
Charity has its place. When someone’s in real trouble; when the rent’s past due, or the fridge is empty, or there’s a medical bill hanging over their…
-
Radical Neighboring: Or, How I Accidentally Joined a Cult of Kindness
Let me just start by saying, I am not what you would call a “neighborly” person. My general policy toward the people living on either side of…
-
Toward a Status Economy
We tend to think of economies in terms of money. Monetary systems, markets, prices; these are the structures we’re taught to see. But what if we’ve been…
-
Beyond Buzzwords: What Power, Empowerment, and Social Change Reveals About Real Transformation
Power, Empowerment, and Social Change; Edited by Rosemary McGee and Jethro Pettit In the sprawling and often self-congratulatory literature of development studies, “empowerment” has become one of…
-
The Art of Stepping Sideways: How to Exit the Rat Race Without Going Off-Grid
Most people think escaping the rat race means buying goats. The fantasy goes something like this: you sell everything, move to the country, get some chickens, and…