“I have witnessed my garden become a tool for the education, the transformation of my neighborhood. To change a community, you need to change the composition of the soil. Gardening is the most therapeutic and defiant act you can do, especially in the inner city. I want us all to be ecolutionaries, renegades, gangstas, gangsta gardeners. Get gangsta with your shovel, and let that be your weapon of choice” — Ron Finley, Guerilla Gardening expert, “The Gangsta Gardener   With gr

“We have never seen health as a right. It has been conceived as a privilege, available only to those who can afford it. This is the real reason the American health care system is in such a scandalous state.” — Shirley Chisholm Previously, I wrote about how to take care of your own health as prescriptions become harder to get and doctor appointments are booked out for the year. However, now (in the fall of 2025), the situation has worsened, and access to affordable health insu

Ah, Primary Care Practitioners (PCPs.) When was the last time you saw yours? Was anything solved? Are you on prescription drugs with side effects that are worse than the original problem? Just call in and make an appointment, although the next available may not be for 6 months or a year. Don’t be pissed at the doctor, though. This situation we are in is not the fault of medical practitioners themselves. An economic system in a downward spiral, worldwide pandemics, and a broke

by Daisy Simmons Wildfire smoke is becoming an increasingly serious public health threat across the western U.S. And it’s getting worse each year as a consequence of climate change. Here, as part of your climate adaptation toolbox, are some tips for coping with wildfire smoke, which may last days and even weeks after a wildfire event. 1. Know the health risks. Wildfire smoke is a complex mix of gases and fine particles produced from burning materials like trees, buildings and

Introduction to Permaculture by Andrew Millison is available for free download and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. See the introduction excerpt below: "The permaculture perspective has more resonance now than at any other time since the term ‘permaculture’ was coined in 1978. The Paris Climate Agreement of 2016 has the world admitting it needs to turn civilization onto a different road. P

by Molly Carter Every year,  nearly 200 million people  are impacted by natural disasters, another 99,000 are killed, and over $162 billion a year is spent on the emergency situations they create – a staggering impact that is just the beginning of the far reach of natural disasters. Serious injury, displacement, loss of family, and even the effects PTSD are just a few of the traumatizing results that can be felt long after the disaster itself. Even though every state in the U

" Tool Libraries, Mutual Aid, and Community-Led Disaster Response" by Shareable is licensed under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0.

"Legal, Financial, & Security Basics" by   Shareable is licensed under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0.

"Survival situations suck. Do all that you can to prevent them from happening in the first place." -Cody Lundin Cody Lundin, AKA AboDude has been a survival instructor extraordinaire for over 32 years and was hand-picked to star in Discovery Channel's hit survival show, Dual Survival for 4 seasons. Backpacker magazine published an article about Cody's survival skills and philosophies, making him the third person in history to grace the cover. In addition, countless TV and new

“I make myself rich by making my wants few.” — Henry David Thoreau Gathering rain to water your garden, growing a food forest in your backyard, raising chickens in your own coop—these are often things that people associate with the term "self-sufficiency"—but they're not the whole story. Sometimes, in order to be self-employed and living on our own terms, we can't afford a big piece of land or we don't have enough room to fit a large rain barrel. The good thing about self-su

For the small percentage of you that love your company, love your co-workers, but hate your actual job, here is another option worth trying. Okay, Imma' tell you a story, because that's what I do. I worked at this natural foods co-op, and I got along with a lot of the people there. They were (mostly) chill, had that hippie vibe, and were just down to earth people. I applied there to be a part-time admin assistant, and I was qualified—in fact, after about 15 years of admin as

Jobs and careers usually are talked about as singular things—"I need to get a job" , or "This is my career". But what if doing just one thing doesn't make as much sense as it used to? There are three main reasons why more is better when it comes to side hustles: You will have backups. Starting a business isn't ever a sure thing—sometimes we can put our all into something, and it just doesn't bring the results we want. It is nice to have a backup to bring in money while