Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Earth.
Outlet, In.
When people ask, 'what do you do?', It often generates this default response of a job they don't really enjoy. It's a sad thing really, when you ask someone this question, hoping to see their eyes light up with excitement and feel their energy pick up, and all you get is a reluctant, bland, unintrigued, rehearsed, and oppressed response.
By Priscilla Boot5 years ago in Earth
NEW ORLEANS DESIGNERS COLLABORATE FOR ZERO WASTE JEWELRY LINE
Slow fashion is on the rise Ultra-fast fashion may be on the rise, but so is the slow-fashion movement if you look for it. My mission in life is to improve the world I live in, and because of my love for design, I have chosen to do this through fashion. I do acknowledge that this is a small step toward tackling the larger challenges we face as a global society, but I believe that by supporting the work of leaders within the communities I collaborate in, I can do my part in helping build a more equitable future, where everyone is treated with respect, including our planet.
By Katie Schmidt 5 years ago in Earth
Cutting Through Clothing Waste: Cause-related Crafting
Finding myself with extra time on my hands as a result of COVID-mandated shutdowns, I renewed my passion in all things crafting, a hobby that was a large part of my childhood spent with my even-craftier twin sister. Like most moms, I started making wreaths to both pass the time with my young son and beautify our home, where we were spending more time than ever.
By The Girl is Craftyyy5 years ago in Earth
Full Circle Magic
It begins in small ways. We throw our food scraps lazily into the corner of the garden; carrot tops, watermelon rinds, steeped coffee grounds. Joined by seasons of leftover meals, the scraps take a nap for a year, preparing for their ultimate debut into garden society. When the time arrives, we pull the scraps from their resting spot and turn them into our beds. Now awake with the fresh aroma of microbes, they help our garden grow. This compost is one ingredient to my creative process.
By Olivia Rose Phipps5 years ago in Earth
Coping with Eco-Anxiety
I can't walk past an alley without side-eyeing the long concrete corridors for my next dive. I get a rush when I spy a free, neglected thing with dreamy potential. I'm also a sucker for thrift stores, estate sales and free boxes. Trash-to-treasure hunts scratch my creative itch. They are also a coping mechanism to temporarily alleviate my eco-anxiety.
By Going Nowhere5 years ago in Earth
Flowers for the People
My introduction to social change was a subtle one, more specifically stumbling across the book "Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change" by Vincent Papaneck in a local used book store when I was 15. For the first time in my life, I felt like there was a certain amount of social change that was within my capacity. Coming from a working class background, I felt removed from the creative students who had access to the technology that allowed them to create digital images, build 3D models, as well as the classes, background, and instruction that allowed them to hone in on those skills. "Design for the Real World" provided a practical guide to material minimalism and rethinking design and generative practices in a way that also catered to human needs. And for the first time, I had been introduced to design and creative means of practice that didn’t glorify excess or destruction for its own sake. Previously, I believed that design and generative practices were only possible through ceaseless and rapid production of “new” goods and that a “trade-off” needed to be made between the creation of “new” things, the majority of people living “well”, and being able to maintain a livable environment free of exploitative competition.
By Janelle A. Monroy5 years ago in Earth
You know what I love about plants?
You know what I love about plants? They don’t hold on to time. They don’t hold onto stories and identities, even if we name them and give them one. They don’t try to give me a story or tell me who I should be; the plants just do their thing. I can't tell them what to do, well I can but they don’t listen. They are connected to their own wisdom. It’s not my command that will make a plant grow, I don’t control them. Sure I experiment with their environment, but it's within them to push on.
By Kyrra Catherine5 years ago in Earth
The Cicada Year
They have a polarizing effect, cicadas. I know the first time I saw one, seventeen years ago during the last emergence of Brood X, I wasn’t too keen. Something about their wild, ungainly flight, sending their big black bodies careening this way and that, was unsettling. I find it funny now—even charming—but I remember dodging them on the way to school back then, fending them off with an open umbrella and crying. In fact, most people I know are extremely unsettled by their presence, especially as concerns these periodical cicadas that crawl from the ground in hoards, coating tall trees with a vibrating, screaming layer of the clumsy, sex-crazed insects. No one who has experienced a periodical cicada year forgets it, that’s for sure.
By Jessica Whitehead 5 years ago in Earth
Extinction Level Event (ELE) & Climate Change on Earth - are we at the Brink of Imminent Destruction?
Now as most of my readers will know, I am a true Trekkie and really enjoy watching Star Trek and all that goes along with science fiction - indeed anything that goes along with space and exploration.
By Jonathan Townend5 years ago in Earth
A Garden
My transformation began slowly. There were bits of seeds planted when we went camping as kids and told to police the grounds before we could leave a campsite. Trash bags were in our cars, and we picked up litter whenever we went on a hike. The seeds began to sprout when I read “Silent Spring” , suggested by my favorite librarian. And roots took hold as my class celebrated the first Earth Day, a day to show concern for the whole earth. The seeds and roots had turned into large plants as my college friends and I went hiking above and spelunking below the Appalachian Mountains. My love of nature was fully formed, and I wanted to take care of this earth, this planet we all live on.
By Judi Guralnick5 years ago in Earth
Rebuild
In the wake of the day, surrounded by an impoverished neighborhood which cried out from the cracks in the concrete. I realized something had to be done. And I for one couldn’t sit back and just do nothing. With tears in my eyes and a deep burning in my soul to uplift the community around me, it hit me like a dump truck full of old memories labeled as trash. I ran through the house waking up my seven children in a plea of excitement singing “today is the day, today we unit with humanity and pull together as one in an effort to Rebuild the land in which we were created”! As they wiped away the sleep from their eyes while looking at me as though I’d lost my mind, they jumped up with curiosity wanting to know where I was going with all of this!
By Jacresha Jones 5 years ago in Earth
