Karen Christensen
About A Smaller Circle
Karen Christensen, CEO Berkshire Publishing Group
karen [at] berkshirepublishing [dot] com
I remember hearing from Sonya Solomon that Illinois had a lot of interest in rural revival, and here a program that is trying to address directly the demise of a sense of community: Stewardson villagers are looking to mimic the success of other small towns in the area, such as Dieterich and neighboring Strasburg, in [...]
Posted: August 23rd, 2010 under Building community, Community in the media, Rural community.
Comments: none
Isn’t this just an upmarket variation on the package holiday, rather than anything one can really call community? . . . they have a ready-made social life waiting for them. There is dinner in the local osteria with 15 families they have got to know well, or wine tastings and music festivals, to the entire [...]
Posted: August 18th, 2010 under Building community, Great Barrington (Berkshire Hills, Massachusetts).
Comments: none
Interesting take on how geography affects community life, in “Small town brings sense of community.” I’m sure there are many other factors, but the shape of our physical environment does affect how we connect and stay connected: In our small town of Spencer, the teenagers know what they’re doing after school or after work – [...]
Posted: August 16th, 2010 under Building community, Civic life & public places, Community attachment.
Comments: none
Here’s an aspect of community economics, in a speech by Nancy Pelosi, that I want to look at more closely: “Today, again, we will create over 300,000 jobs or save them—not just any jobs, but jobs that are the most significant in our country, a sense of community that our teachers, our police, and our [...]
Posted: August 11th, 2010 under Building community.
Comments: none
One of the challenges of community I need to be reminded of, living as I do now in a town where we don’t lock our doors, is the simple one of safer streets. Here’s a story about a program called National Night Out, creating “a greater sense of belonging here, there’s a greater sense of [...]
Posted: August 4th, 2010 under Building community, Urban community.
Comments: none
Anyone interested in community and community building should have this book: A pattern language: towns, buildings … – Google Books.
Posted: July 12th, 2010 under Building community, Designing communities, Resources.
Comments: none
I spotted the book How to Walk to School: Blueprint for a Neighborhood School Renaissance at BookExpo last year. It’s the story of urban school revived by a group of committed parents, not a book about the importance of walking to school. I like both ideas. The challenge of improving rural schools is quite different [...]
Posted: May 23rd, 2010 under Building community, Great Barrington (Berkshire Hills, Massachusetts), Urban community.
Comments: none
