Restoration Nation — An Economy That Restores

Meet the Maasai: Camel Herders

by Beth December 13, 2010

Many people have heard of the Maasai of Africa and their cattle. But how many know that some Maasai in Tanzania are turning to camels after their cattle herds died in an extended drought? The drought in Tanzania has lasted since the 1990s, but things became desperate around 2007. A couple of years later, Heifer [...]

Women Solving Women’s Problems

by Beth December 10, 2010

A problem I’ve never thought of: menstruation keeping girls out of school because they couldn’t afford to buy sanitary pads, and menstruation making it difficult for women to work because their husband wouldn’t approve the purchase of pads. The solution: pads designed from banana leaves. Read all about Elizabeth Scharpf’s solution and the possible problems [...]

Women Take Back Food

by Beth December 2, 2010

I felt very lucky after reading an article in Ms. magazine about women and the various movements to change food production and consumption in the United States. I live in Denver, and there are so many women making good things happen: Jennifer Jasinski and Beth Gruitch at Rioja and two other restaurants; Elisa Wiggins at [...]

Arrest Johns, Not Girls

by Beth November 30, 2010

The summer issue of Ms. magazine (yes, I’m way behind on my magazine reading) was a great read. My favorite was probably the article about Hollaback, a website where you can post articles about and pictures of street harassers. I still remember how much I got harassed on the street in DC 30 years ago! [...]

Restoration, Not Prohibition: Root Tea

by Beth November 18, 2010

Over on my other blog, Beth at Home and Abroad, I wrote about the comeback of Root tea, a true American liqueur. Now when I planned this blog to be about restoration, I wasn’t thinking of everyone getting all likkered up. But I do like the idea of reviving a liquor that has a long [...]

Women Need Restoration Most

by Beth November 10, 2010

Here’s an excerpt from The World’s Women 2010: Trends and Statistics, prepared by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs at the United Nations Environment Poor infrastructure and housing conditions as well as natural hazards disproportionately affect women from the less developed regions in terms of unpaid work, health and survival. More than half of [...]

How Southern Utes Learned to Outfox the Feds

by Beth November 3, 2010

The Southern Utes are one of the few tribes that manage their energy resources to benefit themselves. They even have an oil company, Red Willow Offshore, that won a lease in the Gulf of Mexico about a month before the Deepwater Horizon well blew up. American Indians got the reservations they got, to paraphrase Loyd [...]

Why Garbage Is Golden

by Beth November 1, 2010

Years ago I forwarded an article from Audubon magazine to Eric Lombardi, executive director of Eco-Cycle in Boulder, because I thought he would be interested in hearing about a landfill being reclaimed (I think it was on Martha’s Vineyard). It was considered to be an easy reclamation project because the landfill contained no toxic materials. [...]

How to Make Electricity from Bacteria

by Beth October 25, 2010

Bacteria making electricity? Sounds like science fiction, no? But it’s already happening at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, courtesy of Professors Derek Lovley and Kelly Nevin and others. Lovley and company took some Geobacter organisms from the muck of the Potomac River in the late 1980s and discovered that they are good for oxidizing [...]

Restore California Meadows, Help Farmers

by Beth October 18, 2010

Yes! magazine’s summer 2010 issue focused on water, and my favorite article therein described the ongoing restoration of the Feather River watershed in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Planned and carried out by ranchers, timber barons, fisherpeople, and government officials, it is aimed at raising the quality and quantity of the water that ends [...]

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