Hey there! We want everyone in the world to have a happy life with lots of good things. We have all the things we need to make this happen, like energy that doesn't cost too much, lots of food, and ways to get rid of waste safely. But sometimes we don't have enough of these things and it makes us sad. We want to figure out why this happens and how we can use things we already have to make sure everyone has enough. Right now, some people have more things than others and that's not fair. We need to find a new way to share things so everyone can have what they need. It's like when you share your toys with your friends so everyone can have fun together. We can't keep doing things the way we are because it's not good for the planet and it makes people unhappy. We want to find a better way so everyone can be happy!
🚮 W.A.S.T.E.: Words Assisting Sustainable Transformation & Ecology
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Ambrosia trifida | Giant ragweed. By late summer it is taller than you, and the whole city sneezes in its direction. The Botanical Gardens keep a patch by the gate, with a label. |
| Chestnut Book Nook | A Little Free Library on a quiet street, set under a streetlight so you can take a book home after dark. |
| Choose Your Own Adventure | A book you read with one finger saving the last choice, so that if a page ends badly you can go back. It always ends badly once. |
| Copy That | A seed scattered rather than stored. Copying with acknowledgment is a gift economy: you credit the original, then you copy it, and the method outgrows its makers on purpose. Also called Scalable Sustainability. |
| Geometron | A way of describing the world as shapes you can draw with a compass and a straightedge, and build from what other people throw away. Also a book of the same name by Trash Robot, passed hand to hand in the city until its cover went soft as cloth. Mina found one on the returns cart at Central and read it standing up. |
| Guano Bridge Books | A Little Free Library stocked and kept by staff of the Austin American-Statesman and the Texas Book Festival. The shelving needs some repairs, and the stewards say so plainly. |
| Historic Homelessness | No one sleeps under the bridges now. The houses float, tethered to footings along the creek, and the city says it is solved. Joe, on a bench, says there is a second kind of homeless, the kind that happens inside a house, and it is a different kind of work. |
| Historic Hunger | Hunger has gone mythic, something grandparents say to make children finish their bread. Kids toss pears over the bike lane, and a boy misses one, and his friend catches it behind his back. |
| ReLeaf | The cooperative that keeps the gardens, the stories and the van. Nora Sanchez started it, and whoever tends it owns a share. The name is a leaf turned over. |
| Sara Stevenson | I’m a middle school librarian, and I first saw a free little library up in Seattle this summer. I’ve seen them popping up around town and told my husband I would love him to make me one. Never did I imagine he would produce such a fine piece of woodwork and construction, a mini replica of our house. Now I can be a 24-hour librarian. |
| Tradescantia pallida | Purple heart. Leaves the color of a bruise that is healing, small pink flowers, and roots wherever a stem touches. Frost takes it to the ground and it comes back from the root. Edward Palmer collected the first one near Ciudad Victoria in 1907. |
| Waller Creek | Named for Edwin Waller, the city’s first mayor. It runs south from the north end of town, past the university and the east edge of downtown, and ends in Lady Bird Lake. A song on this site sets it beside the Red River district and the live music. |