Emergency to Emergence

Listen as Mackenzie and Nissa work their way through the spectrum of exchange from gift economies to the financialization of the economy. How and why do local currencies arise? And what can you do to create a resilient, diverse, and relational personal economy?

Although ecology and economy share linguistic roots, they’re often pitted against each other as competing priorities. So how are they related? How did they become so disparate? What happens when we focus instead on their interconnections? Just as pairing wines and cheeses can bring out new flavors we might not have otherwise noticed, listen as Nissa and Mackenzie explore how they’re connected in u...

Like many young boys, Josh Bossin, Sterling College Faculty in Outdoor Education, found a sense of belonging in the outdoors as a child. Unlike others, Josh resisted the many forces that draw adults indoors and keep us there for 90% of our lives, on average and kept his love for the outdoors alive, well, and thriving. Inspired by conservationist Kris Tomkins's no...

Putting Ecological Thinking into Action: Selected Resources for Further Learning & Doing   Yi -Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (book) David Naguib Pellow, What Is Critical Environmental Justice? (book) Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (book) Tricia Hershey, The nap Ministry  (website)

Putting Ecological Thinking into Action: Selected Resources for Further Learning & Doing Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There (book) Alice Outwater, Water: A Natural History (book) My Octopus Teacher, Documentary film (movie) Local watershed Associations, The watershed institute (website) Majora Carter

Since she was a small child, Farley Brown '85, Faculty in Ecology, has had a firm connection to and curiosity about the land and how humans make use of it. Her formative experiences in the woods of suburban NJ and in the waters of the Hudson River caused her to wonder about how we make land use decisions, who influences those decisions, who gets to decide. Always an educator -- even...

Liz Chadwick, Sterling’s Director of Dining Services (AKA the hard working woman who feeds all, also affectionately referred to as "Mom") dishes about Sterling's Kitchen, which AASHE recently ranked #1 in sustainable food & dining on the latest episode of Emergency to Emergence. Our conversation with Liz charts her own professional journey, explores the emotional potency of food, and details t...

Richard Miscovich works with essential, elemental forces to produce nourishment -- with water, air, fire, and grains from the earth, he makes the kind of bread that tells us a lot about what it means to be human. Baking, in the style Miscovich teaches at Sterling -- involves harnessing primal forces, respecting their inherent variability, and responding with a grounding in science but from a place...

Putting Ecological Thinking into Action: Selected Resources for Further Learning & Doing   James Edwards Mills, The Adventure Gap: Changing the Face of the Outdoors (book) Yvon Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman--Including 10 More Years of Business Unusual (book) Jimmy Chin, Outdoor filmmaker , Mayru, Free Solo (website)   Outdoor Afro,...

During Earth Week, we celebrate our rare and precious planet and recommit to living in ways that care for, rather than extract from, it. If we are serious about shifting how humans live together on this planet, we must acknowledge and act to address the wide overlap between systemic harm against BIPOC communities and the Earth. On a special episode of Emergency to Emergence, Sterling alum and...

Putting Ecological Thinking into Action: Selected Resources for Further Learning & Doing Chef René Redzepi  Chef Thomas Keller (website) Chef Alice Waters  Chef Kwame Onwuachi  Chef Andrew zimmern (website) The Perennial Plate, -web-docu-series (website)   J. Kenji López-Alt, Food Lab (book)  Hetty McKinnen   Maangchi's, Big Book of Korean Cooking: From...

Putting Ecological Thinking into Action: Selected Resources for Further Learning & Doing Shaun Chamberlin, personal resource page, www.darkoptimism.org/links (website) Mark Boyle, "The way home, tales from a life without Technology" (book)   Paul Kingsnorth , "Confessions of a recovering environmentalist and other essays" (book) Richard Powers , Overstory (book) Dark Optimism album, colle...

Shaun Chamberlin is an author and activist who describes his perspective as one of "dark optimism" -- unashamedly positive about what kind of a world humanity could create, while unashamedly realistic about how far we are from creating it today. He has written and edited diverse publications -- including creating  Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival, and Capital in the Aftermath of the Ma...

David Gilligan Mini-Cast  Putting Ecological Thinking into Action: Selected Resources for Further Learning & Doing   ​​Terry Tempest Williams , Author (website) Gretel Ehrlich , Author (website) Rachel Carson , Biologist, writer, ecologist (website) Barry Lopez , Author (website) Jack Turner , Author (website) John Muir , Author, environmental philosopher (website) Henry David Thorea...

David Gilligan, Faculty in Ecology and Associate Dean of Sterling's Wilderness Field Programs, wants other humans to know that nature is our home.  He reminds us that wild nature is the ”wellspring of human being, of all diverse cultures on planet earth, of all creativity, of all thought.”  After many years of venturing into the wild nature and conceiving of it as the ultimate unbounded...

Putting Ecological Thinking into Action: Selected Resources for Further Learning & Doing   Noe Alvarez, Spirit Run: A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America's Camile Seaman, PHOTOGRAPHY (website)  Melanin Base Camp (website) Jenny Bruso/ unlikely hikers (website) Linda Black Elk, Ethnobotanist, INSTAGRAM (website)  YMCA (website)  Boys and Girls Club of America (website)...

Laura Beebe joins Emergency to Emergence hosts, Nakasi and Dakota, for a rich conversation on the importance of the backcountry to human development -- her own and her students.  Resisting a guide’s tendency to define backcountry in geographical terms or locate it far from the places that bear obvious marks of human development, Laura conceives of backcountry as a "state of being" reached thr...

Putting Ecological Thinking into Action: Selected Resources for Further Learning & Doing Jack Lazor,   The Organic Grain Grower: Small-Scale, Holistic Grain Production for the Home and Market Producer (Book) Lynne Miller and Stephen Lesley, The New Horse-Powered Farm (book) Ben Hartman, The Lean Farm (book) Antonia's Line (film) All creatures great and small (PBS series)

Gwyneth Harris, Sterling College’s Garden Manager joins Emergency to Emergence hosts, Nakasi and Dakota, for a rich conversation on the intricacies and advantages of small scale farming. Though farming is often misconstrued as a simple vocation, Gwyneth portrays the elegant complexities of an agro-ecological farming system, particularly one that balances education, experimentation, production, and...

Putting Ecological Thinking into Action: Selected Resources for Further Learning & Doing   Favor Ellis, touchstone transformative bodywork and intuitive counseling (website) Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism (book)  Emergent Strategy (book) Alexis Pauline Gumbs , Undrowned (book) Prentiss Hemphill , Finding our Way (podcast) Levar Burton , Lavar Burton Reads (podcast) N.K. Jemi...

Favor Ellis, Sterling’s Dean of Community, explores how one finds home and a sense of belonging. After working with unhoused youth, traversing varied geographical and emotional terrain, and moving many times, Favor found a place to call home at Sterling.  She now shapes Sterling’s community to be one centered on care, where all are welcome to bring their whole selves, evolving identities, and...

Putting Ecological Thinking into Action: Selected Resources for Further Learning & Doing Father Greg Boyle, Founder of Homeboy Industries (website) Vermont Department of Corrections, Restorative Justice (website) Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman (book) Abenaki Wisdom Melody Walker Brook, Weaving a Thread Through the Seven Generations (TED Talk)  Chief Don Stevens of the Nulhegan Band of...

John Zaber has a long history with Sterling and in this episode he reflects on his rich career as an explorer and educator. As a Sterling alum, faculty member, Dean of Student Life, and Director of Learning Support (among other important roles), John has lived and shaped so many aspects of the Sterling experience and inspired generations of students. In this conversation, he offers reflections fro...

Putting Ecological Thinking into Action: Selected Resources for Further Learning & Doing Salvation Farms.org (website) Ruralvermont.org (website) Wendell Berry’s, Writings and Resources (website)  J.R.R. Tolkien, ”The Hobbit” (book)  John Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath" (book) Vermont Gleaning Collective (website) Jack Kornfield (website) Jack Kerouack, On the road &  “Big...

Sterling Alumna (‘01) Theresa Snow,  Founder and Director of Salvation Farms , conveys the origin of her non-profit and explores the practical and ethical importance of food surplus management.  This conversation reveals the multifaceted potential of gleaning and surplus management activities, which serve as an eye-opening and activating type of experiential service learning while also s...