THE LAB

By Gabriel Scheer,

Founding Partner at Re-Vision Labs

I’ve been meaning to write this post for quite some time, but somehow keep back-burnering it.

It’s rare to find a content-producer that produces content in heaps of different topics, and yet, through them all, carries a theme that appeals to me. Take, for example, Your Favorite Band (which is undoubtedly cooler than My Favorite Band). My guess is that they have a common theme, something you really jive onto, that runs throughout their music. That theme is what makes even the duds tolerable.

This theme, of having an overall “good”-ness, is why I’ve been digging publisher Chelsea Green. I began exploring their books a while ago, and wrote a blog post on The Gort Cloud. As I dug deeper, I realized that this publisher, whose tagline is “The Politics and Practice of Sustainable Living,” is like My Favorite Band: a miss here and there, but by and large, an amazing repository of community engagement around sustainable living. I’ve short-listed below a couple “must-read” books I’ve really enjoyed.

Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered - My bible, by a guy who knows better, Woody Tasch. This book, written by the former chairman of Investors’ Circle, addresses a “fiduciary responsibility that is not stuck in the industrial concepts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but which reflects the new economic, social and environmental realities of the 21st century.” Needless to say, with the problems being experienced across the economy the last year plus, these ideas could not come at a better time. Some of the ideas explored in the book include the notion of localized investments (something I’ve also explored in past posts, including on CSAs and community-supported businesses), and an investment fund with a much broader understanding of its desired return on investment (for example, adding “soil quality” into the mix). I am saddened that I shall miss the first national congress of Slow Money, taking place in September (if you go – let me know how it was!).

Fresh Food from Small Spaces – I live in an apartment in the densest neighborhood west of the Mississippi and north of San Francisco. I want to garden. What’s a guy to do? This book’s a great how-to, featuring not only guidance on creating a garden in a small space (I created one in our alley, a photo of which is below), but also recipes for indoor “gardening” (creating things such as sauerkraut and growing mushrooms). It’s a great primer, a sweet tool for urban dwellers everywhere.

Chelsea Green has built itself as more than merely a publisher, offering a model for community engagement that could serve as a guide to other publishers. For starters, they have an active community blog that includes notable thinkers such as Naomi Wolf and Howard Dean (yes, that one). They also have a great Twitter integration, enabling their community to tweet not just about Chelsea Green, but about individual books and the like. They’ve got a great podcast series, and a newly-launched TV station. Finally, with a Green Tip of the Day and a deep blog roll, they have done a great job creating a site to which I just keep coming back.

That’s my paen to Chelsea Green, My Favorite (Band) Publisher. Who’s Your Favorite (Band)?

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