ICR -- Investigating Community Resilience
Every week Dave Barrons hosts a conversation about community resilience in the Northwestern Michigan. Each show investigates resilience through various themes with his guests. Select one of the themes in the left sidebar to watch past shows from that theme's perspective.
Bay Bucks -- Get Them & Use Them!
This discussion turns to the theme of economics and the subject is Bay Bucks, the local currency circulating in the larger Traverse City region. Dave is joined by long time Bay Bucks advocate Sharon Flescher, discussing the reasoning behind the creation of a local currency, the seven year history of Bay Bucks and a look to future growth. Local currencies generate the full impact of their multiplier effect in the local economy. None of that economic value is exported to outside economic interests. The key to that success is to get more and more of the local currency in use. Bay Bucks is set to push for another round of expansion.
The Occupy Movement Locally
Dave is joined by three active participants in the Occupy TC efforts going on locally. The discussion highlights the 'message' problem facing both the larger Occupy effort and those working locally: how to have a decentralized movement with some coherency to the message. This talk also shares numerous web-site resources and access points for those wanting to keep in touch with what's going on. Check CommonsDreams.org for links to many occupy resources.
New Name - ICR: Investigating Community Resilience
Beginning with this show OUTSIDE IN becomes ICR: Investigating Community Resilience. A new name reflecting a more direct link to our content. Bob Russell returns to look around at how the term is being used increasingly and to help clarify our focus. We also highlight web-based resources that showcase resilience work going on in other communities. This discussion also looks ahead at broad areas of success and need in resilience development locally.
Reviewing Foundation Concepts of Resilience
Bob Russell is in with Dave this week reviewing foundation concepts that are critical to resilience thinking: adaptability, diversity, redundancy, and feedback loops. The discussion seeks to detail the connections between each concept and the idea of building resilience into our Northwest Michigan communities. Towards the end of the discussion Bob and Dave make an announcement which includes a name change. From now on these weekly discussions will be known as ICR: Investigating Community Resilience.
A Shining Example
In this week's program Jan Shireman and Gerard Grabowski join us to tell their story of a business that is a shining example of the all-local, farm to business to consumer economic model so important to building local food resilience. These two created Pleasanton Brick Oven Bakery nearly two decades ago in search of a locally made, healthy bread and in the process became national leaders in the artisan bread movement. Pleasanton Bakery today employs nearly a dozen people in direct bakery jobs. Learn what makes their bread so different. Jan and Gerard share their dream of local sustainable agriculture and of ag-to-consumer businesses to support locally grown food. Only one of the grains they currently use comes from outside of Michigan, but the rest is grown on downstate farms. Gerard argues that northern Michigan needs to grow much more grain for local use, and develop its own milling facilities to turn the grains into flour.
Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay Updates
Andy Knott, Executive Director of the Watershed Center, joins Dave for an update on Watershed activities which include major storm water mitigation projects around the Bay and long term work managing sediment behind three dams scheduled for removal from the Boardman River. Brown Bridge Pond will see dam removal and restoration of the river bed over the next year. Dave and Andy also discuss a presentation at the recent Fresh Water Summit in Traverse City. We share a portion of Dr. Gary Fahnensteil's talk on developments in the water-column food web in Lake Michigan where the Quagga mussel is changing everything at an historic rate. Fahnensteil works at the Great Lakes Research Lab in Ann Arbor and his findings are sobering.
