It was a sunny, mild, and beautiful day, with bluebirds playing in the field and a hawk soaring lazily overhead, as a handful of Transitioners plus other volunteers celebrated National Service day for Martin Luther King weekend at Full Circle Farm on Sunday 1/20. Volunteers replaced some cabbage and cauliflower plants that had been lost to the cold, installed some new raised garden beds, weeded the orchard, and stacked bricks to be available for future projects. For more on Full Circle Farm, including weekly volunteering opportunities, check out http://www.fullcirclesunnyvale.org/.

Pocket neighborhoods are small-scale communities with small or tiny houses that can offer affordable living and a strong sense of community. Book Group 6 has been talking about pocket neighborhoods for a while, and last Wednesday 1/16, members had an opportunity to roll up their sleeves and look at how to plan one.

Pete Childress led a wonderful hands-on workshop on designing a pocket neighborhood. The group worked in teams to create a design and layout for a possible real pocket neighborhood in East Palo Alto. Pete then helped calculate a likely cost for each project. That’s just the first step, but it’s exactly what planners do when thinking about creating their own designs. Each neighborhood had 10-15 homes of 200-400 sq feet and common buildings, gardens, etc.

Book Group 6 plans to continue looking at pocket neighborhoods and other creative and alternative building arrangements in the hopes of promoting interest and possibly action (!) to make living more affordable, sustainable, and community-friendly here in Silicon Valley.

If you have any questions send email to Book Group 6: tpa_book6@yahoogroups.com

Here’s a link to Sven Eberlein’s blog post about visiting Transition Palo Alto for the Holiday Sharing Expo. 
http://svenworld.com/2013/01/16/biking-the-train-to-the-swap-meet-or-life-in-a-carbon-proportionate-world/

Sven Eberlein of shareable.net visited our Holiday Sharing Expo in December and spoke to some TPA Transitioners. His article just came out. Enjoy!

http://www.shareable.net/blog/how-to-bring-transition-town-style-sharing-into-your-community

UPDATE: “Bart here. I think Sven really captured the flavor of Transition. He interwove stories from other Transition groups with his reporting on our sharing event. Here’s an excerpt. Be sure to see the original article for photos and a video.

Transition Palo Alto has been doing a clothing exchange twice a year for the last four years, but it’s their Craft Swaps and Sharing Expos that take the swapping to another level. At their recent Holiday Sharing Expo I got to see first hand what’s possible when people come together to exchange gifts, crafts, stories and ideas. From clothes laid out on a tarp to a table full of toys, from Tom Kabat’s wooden bike creation to Connie Beal’s cookie decorating demonstration, from Willi Paul’s Transition Tales to Herb Moore’s Scrapophony of instruments made from glass jars, PVC pipes, tuna cans, and a set of old keys, the event was like a demonstration project for life after cheap oil and quarterly profits.

Rani Jayakumar, one of the driving forces behind the TPA swaps, explains their organic evolution. “Two years ago we did a Christmas event because there wasn’t enough produce to share,” Jayakumar says matter-of-factly. “So we thought why not enlarge the scope and include crafts and Christmas decorations, in case people were tired of certain things and wanted to swap them out? Six months later we did another one in the summer, then other people got ideas and carried it on, and it just kept on going from there.”

Transitioners from as far away as Humboldt and Monterey gathered at the Berkeley library on Saturday January 12 for the first quarterly regional Northern California Transition convergence. Local attendees included Dave Lantz, Victoria Armigo, William Mutch, Eitan Fenson, and Barbara Weinstein. After an excellent potluck lunch, folks shared what’s happening in their local Transition initiatives and how others might help. The breakout sessions featured brainstorming about topics ranging from affordable housing to energy, group dynamics, climate change, local currencies, and more. To learn more or get involved at the regional level, check out the Transition US web site (http://www.transitionus.org/) or write to info@transitionus.org.

Starting this month, mark your calendars for Fourth Friday, our ongoing monthly event.  Each month, on the fourth Friday, we’ll have an activity (film, speaker, panel discussion, or other topic of interest).

This month:
January, 25, 2013
7:00p – 7:15p:   Transition for Newcomers
7:30p:  Film “Bag It” and Guest Speaker

Has your life become too plastic? We’ll show the film, “Bag It” and have a speaker about the status of an upcoming Palo Alto ordinance to ban retailers from distributing plastic carryout/checkout bags.  Come hear what Palo Alto is doing and learn what this will mean to you when you shop.

“Bag It”, is an award-winning documentary film that started out being about plastic bags, but evolved into a wholesale investigation into plastics and their effect on our waterways, oceans, and even our bodies.

Friday January 25, World Centric, 2121 Staunton Ct, Palo Alto, 7:30pm (7pm meet and greet).

Local Garden Share

Garden shares are held twice each month.

• Second Sunday of each month. 11am-12, Common Ground, 559 College Ave, Palo Alto (map)
• Fourth Sunday of each month, 11am-12, Full Circle Farm, 1055 Dunford Way, Sunnyvale, CA (map)

A Brief History

By Peter Ruddock
The South Bay Local Garden Share kicked off at Common Ground in Palo Alto in the summer of 2010, a joint project of Transition Palo Alto, Slow Food South Bay and other community organizations.  It was consciously modeled after the existing garden exchange at Transition Albany and intended to kick off as part of Slow Food’s Dig In! National Work Day, shepherded by Peter Ruddock and Jan Butts.  There was so much enthusiasm, that it actually had a couple of trial runs before the National Work Day.  Despite some qualms during slow periods during the first winter, Peter and Jan were patient with the event, nursing it at its weakest points.  By the spring of 2011, it had become a monthly gathering with a loyal group of regulars.  In fact, it excited folks enough, that in the summer of 2011, Victoria Armigo and Michelle Philips decided to replicate the event at Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale.  Since that time we have had Garden Shares twice monthly, on the second Sunday at Common Ground and on the fourth Sunday at Full Circle Farm.

By the spring of 2012 we were talking with Rani Jayakumar who coordinates a similar event for sharing craft material, the Craft Swap.  We decided to occasionally combine the events, and began to add other opportunities for sharing.  We have now done this three times, the last two of which have attracted about 100 people.  We have had bike repair, a soap making demonstration, a cookie decorating demonstration, clothes, books, toys and more to swap, video tales of Transition, and our own unique event, scrapophony, the brain child of the unique Herb Moore, where he teaches people to make instruments out of scrap material.

We consciously chose the word “share”, rather than “swap” or “exchange” to emphasize that we do not place a specific value on any given item.  All items are placed on a table.  People tend to stay for most of the hour or so that we run.  There is a great chance to talk to other sharers and so build the Transition community.  People often talk about the source of the things being shared, be that someone’s garden, someone’s kitchen or somewhere else.  It is particularly nice to know all about something that you are going to take home.   You take home what you want – no one counts (although everyone keeps an eye out for someone who overdoes things, which has only happened once).  In the rare event that we have leftovers, we donate them to a local food bank.  And don’t fret if you do not have anything to share in a given month:  share yourself, take something home, and come back with things when you have them.

The future looks bright for the Local Garden Share.  We will continue our monthly sharing events at Common Ground and Full Circle Farm throughout 2013 and beyond.  We are looking into adding a third monthly event.  We will plan to have a few joint events with the Craft Swap and others.  And we are looking forward to the Great Reskilling Expo, a full day of sharing skills with each other, which is being planned for the spring of 2013.  Garden, kitchen and other skills will be well-represented at that upcoming event.

Help us build a vibrant and resilient society for people and the planet.

Transition Palo Alto brings people from South Bay and beyond together to build a a more just, sustainable, and regenerative world from the ground up.  We promote regenerative agriculture, the sharing and gift economy, and social, economic, and environmental justice as the means to transition from an exploitive, fossil fuel based society to one that values all life on earth.

Coming up:

To get involved, check out these links: 

How to get involved! and What you can do about climate change. And sign up for our spam-free mailing list for information about important activities and events. And want to get in touch? Send a message to transitionpaloalto@gmail.com.

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