You are here: Home / Archives for Lindsay Curren

About Lindsay Curren

Lindsay Curren is Editor-in-Chief of Transition Voice, the online magazine on peak oil. She also writes Lindsay's List, the women's conservation blog, and co-founded Occupy Parenting. Follow her on Twitter @LindsaysList.

Yes, you can bake bread

By February 23, 2012
Fresh Bread

My husband and I are on one heck of a family resilience bender. When we first got married almost three years ago, we focused on insulating our place from attic to basement, shaving 20% off of our heating and cooling expenses. This really adds up. But in the past six months our efforts have turned more to homemaker re-skilling. We've added a rain barrel and composter. He's learned to brew beer. And after getting into canning, I've also begun the art of real, regular bread baking. Rising to … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Arts, Re-skilling Tagged With: , ,

Energy and presidential politics

By February 7, 2012
Mitt Romney & Va Gov Bob McDonnell as "Friends of Coal"

We found out the hard way when my husband Erik ran for the Virginia state legislature* that too often issues within states and localities are drowned out by the political noise blared out across the nation from Washington by the news media. (Transition Voice readers will know Erik as our publisher). It was 2009, and on the local campaign trail, almost all Erik ever heard, besides concerns about jobs, were questions on the federal health care bill, the cost of wars, and the US federal … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , , ,

Peak kitsch: “The Crisis of Civilization”

By January 31, 2012
Carbon Man

An ongoing issue in the peak oil world is how to tell the story of declining non-renewable resources in a way that's accessible to a wider audience, while remaining credible to experts. To reach out without dumbing down. Most experts on energy and the economy have already made up their minds on the financial crisis, global warming and peak oil and no one documentary is going to shake the faith of these stalwarts. But the public is a different story and there's plenty of room there for … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Films, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Why Jane, you look lovely! Review: AUSTENtatious Crochet

By January 17, 2012
Cap and Muff

Images of the post peak-ocalypse tend toward the grim. Even when we imagine ourselves earnestly gardening our edible plots and sharing hand tools and home brews with neighbors, in the background we see the haunting specter of mutant zombie bikers. We also wonder whether there will or can be any aesthetic pleasures in a world made by hand if that world is cobbled together like a MacGyver experiment, all duct tape, bunny ears and twine. Is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong? But … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Reviews Tagged With: , , ,

Portlandia, the best city since Cicely, Alaska

By January 3, 2012
Pickle Sketch

Portland, Portland, Portland. It seems like Portland's all we ever hear about when some great new thing is happening in the world of clean energy, proactive government, mass transit, holistic health, spiritual wellness, social innovation or cultural offerings. It's like Portland is God's own petri dish for hatching the best of the best, the most progressive of the most progressive. Sure, we envy Portland. Sure, we want to be Portland. But all that fantastic ahead-of-the-curve prescience … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Arts Tagged With: , ,

Ten easy resolutions for 2012

By December 31, 2011
New Year banner

Here it comes, the scariest potential year since Y2k, if you buy the hype on 2012. Of course, the sages tell us that rather than ushering in an earth-shattering colossal end to the human experiment, what we can really expect in 2012 is an increase in human enlightenment, even if there are some growing pains along the way. In the spirit of thinking about what could be better in your life, community and the world, here are ten easy resolutions that you can adopt (or cherry pick) to help out … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Transition Tagged With: , , , ,

Wipe out waste

By December 27, 2011
Linen Napkins

Just before Christmas I was shopping in my local Goodwill store, scouting, as always, for good quality linen napkins and kitchen towels. As luck would have it I found a lovely set of six white cotton napkins with a rainbow of stripes that has a sort of beachy feel to it. This was a perfect addition to my collection since I didn't have a "summery" set. At 50 cents, they were a must have. For the same price I picked up some periwinkle blue cotton kitchen towels with a shell weave at the border. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conservation, Energy Tagged With: , ,

When down is up: Review of “The Power of Community”

By December 22, 2011
Cuba gardening

It's only a few years old, but The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil by Faith Morgan and The Community Solution studio has already become a classic documentary in the peak oil world. This short (53 minutes) award winning 2007 documentary packs a punch in telling how, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba lost over half of its oil supplies very quickly, essentially making it the only culture in the world to have experienced what amounted to a direct peak … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Films, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Butternut squash soup

By December 20, 2011
Butternut squash soup

There may be nothing better this time of year than a nice hot bowl of soup. Pair it with a hunk of good bread, a couple of slices of cheese and a side of apples and you have yourself a peasant's meal fit for royalty. Slave to perfection? Too often in my cooking I've been a slave to recipe books or precise instructions of one kind or another. And after successfully growing Butternut Squash in our community garden this summer, I was determined to make the undisputed, most perfect Butternut … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Arts, Food Tagged With: , ,

Talkin’ peak oil blues: The new KunstlerCast book

By December 12, 2011
Crary and Kunstler

Beloved curmudgeon and peak oil prophet James Howard Kunstler doesn't mince words. Whether it's on his Monday blog, Clusterfuck Nation, in his many public appearances, as a featured commentator in documentaries, or in books like peak oil classic The Long Emergency, Kunstler delivers the bad news straight on. Take his comments in the ABC-TV film Earth 2100: One of our political leaders said, not too long ago, that the American way of life is non-negotiable. And we're gonna discover the hard … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Reviews Tagged With: , , ,