What holds communities together across generational flow? How does craft generate meaning? How can places become homes? This blog post is an inquiry into the ideas presented in Sophia Maravell’s 2015 thesis as part of her Masters of the Arts in the Education School of Goddard College. For her research…

Myth and Meaning in “A Branch from the Lightning Tree” — I’ve been skirting around the work of Martin Shaw for many years now. While reading this book, I was also rereading Bill Poltkin’s Nature and the Human Soul — a different way of engaging some of the same inquiries. They both deal with the descent into soul and the return…

A Review of “The Ghost in the Shell” Manga — Somewhere around the age of fourteen, I saw The Matrix for the first time. I grew up in a household informed by the spiritual teachings of Gurdjieff and J. G. Bennett, so the core themes around consciousness and awakening were both familiar and intriguing. A few years later my cousin-in-law…

Building a Wood-Fired Barrel Sauna — For the past decade, I’ve been in love with extreme heat and extreme cold in combination. Some of my friends over the years have had wood-fired saunas that I would use in the winter, followed by rolling in the snow. I’ve also experimented with similar traditions: steam rooms, sweat lodges…

Somatic Economics — Plasticity In his 2018 text, How to Change Your Mind, journalist Michael Pollan describes the plasticity of the quality of experience psychedelics can offer in different contexts: The difference between these two experiences of the same drug [psilocybin mushrooms] demonstrated something important, and special, about psychedelics: the critical influence of “set”…

Looking back on three years of building a regenerative future — After three years with the Regen Network team, co-founder Will Szal is stepping back from a day-to-day role in the company. He will continue to serve Regen Network’s mission as President of the Board of Regen Network Development, Inc., and President of the Board of Regen Foundation. During this transition…

By Will Szal With the Regenerative Economy Collaborative Monetary theory, the study of money, is a key aspect of economics. It enables economists to analyze money and consider its function. As an economic theory, the technical literature on the subject generally concerns itself with traditional economic indicators: jobs, inflation, etc…

V. Jobbing to Vocation While systems of oversight operate at a macro-economic level, their influence is felt in multiple micro-economic ways with regard to the lives of people and their work. …

Tracking the threads across three book reviews documenting the nascent regional textile economy — Introduction: A Regional Textile Renaissance In 2010, I joined the Slow Money community — a movement focused on moving investment money into local food systems. Not long after, I asked the founder, Woody Tasch, “what about all the other aspects of a local economy; will Slow Money someday expand beyond food?” …