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By Brian Skeele, on March 21st, 2011
I should have been a woodshop teacher, (BA in Industrial Arts) but went into construction instead.
Much to my amazement, I keep being drawn to learning, my own ongoing growth and the Santa Fe School District’s trials and tribulations. Quite a few years ago, I came across the idea that schools could be centers of communities; in fact they used to be, all across America. The light bulbs went off…What if schools were reconfigured and became the hearts of “Mixed use, mixed income neighborhoods, with lifelong learning, and open space”??!!
 Live, work, play, learn, shop, all within walking If they were conveniently located, and multiple stories for commercial shops and teacher’s housing were added for smarter density, teachers could walk to READ MORE >>
By Brian Skeele, on March 21st, 2011
As we work together to build, test and deploy rapid social, economic, and ecological prototype scenarios for sustainability, we can kick the ball farther down the road sooner, if we build in support.
My experience is the creative process pushes my buttons. My expectations of perfection cripples me. How can I ask for help if my ideas are “halfbaked”?… READ MORE >>
By Brian Skeele, on March 21st, 2011
 is your neighborhood playing with a full deck of cards? To help folks become conversant in all the parts that go into a sustainable neighborhood, while having fun at the same time, how bout a deck of playing cards??! Like baseball cards, but with a different component on each card; An illustration on the face, and info on the back…”Collect em all!”
The cards could tie into Lessons Learned, Ideas, Tools, How to… , Sustainable Rules of Thumb, Indicators, etc and maybe the big village scene. Hey, submit your ideas for cards, and if your idea(s) is chosen, we’ll send you a pack of cards!
Make em totally fun, and yet informative, and empowering. Remember, the challenge is to make sustainable neighborhoods as popular as cell phones, so they’ll spread across the planet like wildfire!
Hey, how can we be making sustainable real, if your neighborhood isn’t playing with a full deck of cards??!!
Submit your ideas Here!!
By Brian Skeele, on March 20th, 2011
I think that says it all! “If it ain’t Fun, it ain’t sustainable!”
I can get overwhelmed by the immensity of it all; the Impending Bummers, the complexity of all these systems within systems, trying to figure out how we are gonna learn to collaborate on such large scales, when we’re so busy it’s hard to get three people together at any one time.
As a visionary wannabe facilitator of sustainable neighborhoods, who’s been going for “What else can we do beside suburbia?” for 30 + years, I’ve learned some useful tools along the way. A major learning is working with the inspiration within. At times I call it “Letting go, and letting God”. Now I know we have deep convictions about separating church and state, and I don’t want to use language that might create separation between us, so please just consider this concept, and substitute the words that work for you…. READ MORE >>
By Brian Skeele, on March 17th, 2011
“Oh so many, ways to be wicked”
I woke this morning to the song playing in my head, Maria McKee and Lone Justice belting it out, my personal soundtrack….the Japanese Meltdown is in Day 6.
I call em Impending Bummers. When I think about doing something unknown, I can have a lot of apprehension, I can feel downright scared. I bite my finger nails, tear at my cuticles.
Maybe it’s the thousands of years of our collective worrying about getting eaten by a sabertooth tiger. Or if Genghis Khan is going to show up in the spring this year…That may explain where the dread, this background anxiety, comes from. It certainly pushes me on a spiritual path in an attempt to find relief, but face it, as stewards of our amazing beautiful spinning green and blue planet, we suck…. READ MORE >>
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