In my brain I have a collection of fantasy-land non-profits that I would like to a) exist b) work for or c) establish myself. They're sort of like dollhouses--sometimes I happen across a nice piece of intellectual 'furniture' in a magazine and then place it in the appropriate room in the appropriate non-profit in the desk of the appropriate employee. For example, "Oh wow! Vermiculture--what a great idea!At the Enviro-Responsibility Institute we should install a big compost with a glass wall where people can see the worms at work. Even better, we could have a live-in volunteer coordinator who would also live behind the glass wall, putting all of his own personal waste into the heap so that everyone could see humans as part of a complete ecological loop. The board of directors could all commit to having composting toilets and vermiculture at their house so that rich people would use them at their dinner parties and then the composting movement would spread like wildfire across the country!" These pieces of intellectual furniture are interchangeable between the various imaginary non-profits. Some are in vogue (socially responsible investing), some are pretty tacky (children's mural projects) some are damaged to varying degrees (the anti-sweatshop movement), and a few are blown to smithereens by some frustratingly excellent point made by an intellectual I admire (Noam Chomsky crushing anarcho-primitivism). Oh man i just used the "A" word in a blog--if i don't write in three days, it means the government goons have come to get me.

Anyway, during the hiking trip one of these non-profits rose to the surface as a potential priority. I would like to be a part of a neighborhood-based sustainability center in which people learn the importance of and methods for reducing dependence on outside resources, particularly oil. Working with Sibley really did convince me that learning about things is a great way to build community in a diverse neighborhood. There could be an urban farm, or at least a garden or two. There could also be a model house that has had all of the inexpensive improvements done (insulation; solar heating/cooling, simple cleaning products) and maybe a fund through which people could finance their own energy-saving home improvements. There could be an after school program where kids learn how to do all kinds of things, from gardening to bike mechanics to sewing to energy audits to cooking...there could be classes and film screenings explaining how everyone fits into the global economy...how much energy it takes to produce a pair of jeans, etc. Maybe there could be some field trips to the woods, to the sewage treatment plant, to city hall, to the ports downtown, to a dairy farm. Field trips taken in our very own bio- diesel school bus, painted appropriately. There will also be ponies, rainbows, and puppy dogs aplenty. In the meantime, I am eyeing the giant field behind the Superfresh on St. Paul street. Somehow, all of this seems like it would be easier to accomplish in Minneapolis. Why is it so damn cold there?