How a fish tank, a room full of bacteria, and a bed of living soil can put food on your table twelve months a year
Month: May 2026
Run it. Here it is: Johnstown Municipal Gardens A Living Garden, A Working Machine, A New Kind of Civic Infrastructure Bright Meadow Group Every city
I was standing in the grocery store last Tuesday. Which is a sentence I have started approximately four hundred conversations with, so you know this
An Open Letter to the President of the United States From the desk of Nathaniel Leery Mr. President, I am going to speak to you
The Wright Way: We Made Work Shameful, and Now We Wonder Why Nothing Works Walk around any working town for an afternoon. Any afternoon. Pick
There is a building at the corner of Tenth and Columbia in Lafayette, Indiana, that has been refusing to become ordinary for going on 130
On open thinking, the collision theory of creativity, and why a $12,000 flying machine is too fun not to talk about. Off Book One of
Let me tell you something they hope you never figure out. That man cannot tie his own boat to a dock. He cannot pump his
What Happens When the Knowledge All Dies I live with memory problems. Nothing cinematic. Nothing poetic. Just the daily friction of knowing that if I
Increasing Production in a 2-Acre Fish Pond Using a Greenhouse Wetland Loop A Bright Meadow Group Systems Example Most pond operations are not limited by
There’s a picture of Sam Altman going around. He’s onstage somewhere, in a suit cut a half-inch tighter than a suit needs to be cut,
Letter on Recall and the Shape of Representation There’s a habit in Harrisburg — quiet, almost polite — of doors closing just a little too
Race and Nationality in Johnstown: A Real History Prologue I don’t usually open this heavy, but the rest of this piece needs it. So here
Bright Meadow Group Cernunnos Foundation Finance and Banking Government Johnstown Thought Experiments
Section 8 to Ownership
Summary Johnstown holds two underutilized assets and one persistent problem in close proximity to one another. The assets are a growing inventory of city-acquired distressed
A Veteran Recovery Residence for the Appalachian Highlands A Concept Paper from Bright Meadow Group The Gap Between discharge from a VA inpatient mental health
Mark Cuban took the bait. I’ll give him that — most billionaires don’t bother. His response was sharper than the usual swing at M4A too.
Or: Do You Want to Make More Money Making Your City Better? I’m going to tell you, up front, that I think you’re probably a
I don’t have any Black enemies that I know of. I don’t have any Chinese, Persian, Ukrainian, or Brazilian enemies either. I don’t have Mexican
A note from the desk, for anyone whose project has gotten stuck in a way the manual didn’t cover. There are specialists in this world.
From the Editorial Desk of the Blue Ribbon Team Congressman, They primaried you for reading the list. Let’s start there, because everything else in this
Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder isn’t the kind of thing that comes from one event. It comes from being hurt over and over, in a place
RJ doesn’t do a lick of work and I love him for it. I’m serious. Anyone who’s worked with RJ will tell you, very carefully,
Aquaponics Bright Meadow Group Design Environmental Permaculture River Refugium Project Science and Research Thought Experiments
Low Nutrient Polluted Water Solution
The Orange Creek Problem: River Refugium for Acid Mine Drainage When polluted water can’t support its own cleanup biology, you have to prime the pump.
A lament for the constitutional office of the United States House of Representatives, and for the citizens of Kentucky’s Fourth District who let strangers buy
Saw a thing going around the other day. Maybe you saw it too. “You air-drop a billionaire into a third-world country with five dollars in
Window’s open today. The kind of warm where you almost forget you wanted the coffee until you’ve already poured it, and then you remember —
There is no reason this house should be this charming. At its core, it is a narrow-fronted brick box. Two full stories, a flat-faced urban
Cernunnos Foundation Culture Finance and Banking Government Intellectual Property Labor Paleontology Thought Experiments
Usufruct
The Dead Hand: A Capitalist Case for Generational Reset Thomas Jefferson, writing to James Madison from Paris in September of 1789, set down a sentence
A BMG Model for Networked DIY Venue Cooperatives Observe. Design. Interact. The Frame There is a working middle in live music that the industry has
Bright Meadow Group Cernunnos Foundation Culture Government Intellectual Property republican Virtue Thought Experiments
A Letter on Property and Its Limits.
I have been arguing with a paper on my coffee table for the better part of a week. It is a piece from Bright Meadow
Aquaponics Bright Meadow Group Cernunnos Foundation Culture Design Environmental River Refugium Project Thought Experiments
Real Farm to Restaurant
Rabbits, Comedians, and the End of the World’s Dumbest Supply Chain How a conversation about animal urea became a farm-restaurant-television format designed to teach the
You Can’t Afford the Man. You Can Only Pay for His Work. Name’s Philip Randolph Wright.Mister Wright if we are doing business. The first thing
A Triple Sycamore at Fort Benjamin Harrison State Park At the bottom of the sled hill in Fort Benjamin Harrison State Park, in Indianapolis, there
I wasn’t going to write about this. Money is exhausting and politics isn’t my lane, and I had a whole post planned about a new
Why Permaculture’s Founding Principles Require Technology, Not Refusal A Cernunnos Foundation Position Paper on Permaculture and the Work of Restoration There is a sentence at
Bright Meadow Group Design Environmental Government Johnstown Permaculture Science and Research Thought Experiments Uncategorized
Backfill: The Hole That Heals
A BMG Concept Brief on Closing the Reclamation Loop The first three pieces in this series argued that American landfills are inventory, that the cities
Bright Meadow Group Design Energy Environmental Government Johnstown Permaculture Thought Experiments
The Tin Can Was Steel:
A Hidden Inheritance in American Landfills There is a story we tell ourselves about American industrial history that goes something like this: we used to
Bright Meadow Group Design Energy Environmental Government Johnstown Permaculture Science and Research Thought Experiments
Johnstown’s Next Mill:
A Proposal to Turn Closed Industrial Capacity Into the Region’s Material Recovery Sector A BMG Concept Brief Johnstown is a city built to process material
Bright Meadow Group Design Energy Environmental Government Johnstown Science and Research Thought Experiments
Future Mining
The Hundred-Year Inheritance: Why America’s Landfills Are the Next Material Frontier The headlines about landfill capacity want to be a problem. They will be, if
Part 2 The previous piece argued that we already know how to be citizens. We do it every Sunday at one o’clock and every Friday
George Washington did not fear disagreement. He feared factions. The distinction matters. Washington had commanded men from every colony, every accent, every grievance, and he
The militant left has a math problem. Ten to fifteen percent of the country, depending on whose polling you trust, identifies somewhere on the militant
We Will Not Beg for Bread Name’s Philip Randolph Wright. Mister Wright if we are doing business. I hear it everywhere I go. I hear
You. The one with the list. The one who has decided that a man who pronounces a word funny, or owns the wrong kind of
Is it strange to sit in a coffee shop with a warm mug between both hands and ask what I would want from my government?
The diner television was muted, but a rocket was rising on the screen above the coffee pot — slow, silent, almost dignified. The man beside
The City of Johnstown’s draft Comprehensive Plan, Forging the Future, landed in February. I’m new here — three blocks outside the city line, close enough
Water scarcity is the bugaboo of the next century, and it is a lie. Two-thirds of this planet’s surface is water. Beneath the surface, aquifers
A Blue Ribbon Earning DIY Venue in SW Pennsylvania. So here’s the situation. I’ve landed in Johnstown during what appears to be a quiet stretch
Donald Trump is President again because he had something to sell. Andrew Yang shook the 2020 Democratic primary from a standing start — no political