The RēMind, No. 032: RēSearch
The RēMind, No. 032: RēSearch
Offerings from Rē / Sequoia Samanvaya’s NEW Booklets / Retreat Day Passes / Widfire Management / Agrihoods / Renewable Aquaculture Gear / Indigenous Botany
Our gardens offer up fresh produce and our newsletters volunteer food for thought.
This week, we look at research into prescribed burning for wildfire management, “agrihoods,” harnessing indigenous plants to save crops, making batteries out of crab shells, and developing more sustainable aquaculture gear.
Our friends, Rev. Sara Jolena Wolcott and Kristine Hill, from Sequoia Samanvaya’s have written thoughtful guidebooks, or “Throughlines,” on complex, critical, and often dis-membered history and theology. Their latest booklets explore Land Acknowledgements: Historical Context and Contemporary Inquiries; and Boarding Schools, Sexual Abuse, Land Abuse, Property Systems, and Religious/Spiritual Violence. To learn more and order, click here.
Offerings from Rē:
Saturday Restorative Retreat Passes Available!
Our day passes are a great opportunity for busy folxs, amazing option for locals, and incredible offering for anyone interested in a restorative day outside the city.
Saturday, October 8 will be a fresh experience for all those interested in Ayurveda, yoga, soulful nourishment, self-care, and rēconnection to mind, body, and nature. Consider our invitation and lean into a beautiful practice for you.
Thana Nu of @nourish.me.wellness, Caitlin Smith of Within Wellness, and Ashlei Laing of Re: The Regenerative School will hold space and guide us into balance in a beautiful rustic setting.
Register for $150 USD day pass here AND join our facebook group here!
We are also offering a limited number of scholarships (residents of Fayetteville and Lincoln County, TN will be prioritized)!
Please email us at admin@regenerativeschool.org for more info.
RēMembering the Origins of Climate Change
According to educator and theologian Parker Palmer, "the opposite of to remember isn't to forget, it's to dis-member." Course facilitator Rev. Sara Jolena Walcott applies this framework to our fragmented, short-term understanding of climate change. In this new, three-part course, participants will trace the roots of climate change back 500 years to its roots in colonialism, racism, and theology. Along the way participants in the course will also delve into their own family histories to make sense of the deep history of how we have arrived at today's climate crisis and how we can instead choose to build a more regenerative future. Click here to learn more about this upcoming course! Watch this space for dates and more details!
How to Save a Forest by Burning It
By Raymond Zhong for The New York Times | September 7, 2022, about 15 minutes
The Forest Service has acknowledged that its methods are failing to keep up as the planet warms. The agency’s investigation into this spring’s ill-fated burn in New Mexico found that, even though it had been properly planned, the resulting fire proved more dangerous and fast moving than anticipated… To help teach land managers how to burn in increasingly volatile landscapes, [researchers have] spent years working… on the fire equivalent of a flight simulator — a video game-like training system that would be “a Minecraft-type experience for burn bosses.”
To read more about how scientists are using high-tech tools to ensure prescribed burns can be done safely in a warming world, click here.
Agrihoods Promise Fresh Food and Community. Can They Add Equity to the List?
By Greta Moran for Civil Eats | September 6, 2022, about 8 minutes
Agrihoods are planned communities that integrate agriculture into a residential neighborhood.
“Everyone in America was at one time either a farmer themselves or their neighbors were the farmers. Then we separated farm production from farm consumption, and nobody knew where their food came from,” said McMahon. “This is a way to restore that balance, at least to a small extent.”
To read about the latest development in a growing number of agrihoods that function not just sites of food production but also a sources of community building, click here.
Making Batteries Out of Crab Shells May Be a Great Idea
By Molly Taft for Earther | September 2, 2022, about 5 minutes
We’re going to need a huge amount of batteries to move off of fossil fuels, but traditional electrolyte substances bring with them a host of new issues: They can be incredibly complex to recycle, the electrolytes are not biodegradable, and they can be dangerous in their own right, sometimes exploding or causing fires. In the case of lithium batteries, there’s also an issue with the destructive mining practices... Enter crustaceans. Crabs and lobsters have a material in their exoskeletons called chitin, which helps keep their shells tough and strong. Chitin can also be made into a derivative called chitosan, which researchers combined with zinc to create a new electrolyte substance to power a battery that they say remains almost entirely energy efficient after 400 hours of use. What’s more, unlike traditional battery electrolytes, this crab goo will break down in soil in about five months, leaving zinc—that can be recycled—behind.
To read more about the implications and hope of this exciting research, click here.
The Tide Turns Toward Renewable Aquaculture Gear
By Meg Wilcox for Hakai Magazine | September 2, 2022, about 8 minutes
Aquaculture both contributes to and is potentially harmed by the ocean plastics crisis. Much of the industry’s gear, from ropes to cages to flotation devices, is made of plastic. Over time, that plastic degrades, generating millimeter-sized particles that can be ingested by shellfish and finfish, potentially harming their health. While harvest bags are a small part of the plastics used on a typical oyster farm—and in aquaculture more broadly—replacing them with a nonplastic biodegradable material is a step in the right direction…
Rather than relying solely on plastic equipment, shellfish and seaweed growers are embracing biodegradable alternatives, click here to read.
Botanic Matchmakers Could Save Our Food Supply
By Mark Schapiro for Inside Climate News | August 28, 2022, about 15 minutes
A cousin of wheat, called Aegilops tauschii, growing wild from Syria and the Middle East to the Caucusus—the so-called Fertile Crescent—have bolstered resistance to a fruit fly that’s followed the warming temperatures into the wheat fields of the American Midwest. And the progenitor cousin of corn, teosinte, growing wild in the mountains north of Oaxaca, Mexico, has repeatedly contributed to the breeding of commercial corn varieties resistant to the corn borer and other pests. A study in Crop Science lists multiple commercialized crops that have benefited over the years from breeding with their wild relatives, including barley, bananas, chickpeas, corn, hops and wheat… Resisting drought, flooding, extreme weather events, these are traits that [indigenous, wild varieties] tend to shine in and have leveraged to maximum effect.
Many of what are now considered “wild relatives” were food sources for Indigenous communities for centuries before the arrival of Europeans. To read more about how wild landscapes harbor plants important to our food security, click here.
That's all for this week! As always, we at Rē are grateful for your attention and support. If you liked this newsletter, consider donating at https://regenerativeschool.org/redonate/
Thank you and see you soon!