Create an Open Organic Campus

With the drought we are facing this summer and another graduating class behind us, a new tourist season begins on Main Street. We honored those who made the ultimate sacrifice with Memorial Day observances, and we thought about those in our communities and families. It brings into focus how difficult it is to make adequate, sustainable choices — and what that means for our little towns in the big mountain valley.

A Home-Work-Community

One thing is sure: we all need to make sacrifices to sustain our communities — in recreation, education, arts, and transportation. The reward comes from entrepreneurial opportunities in health, open and organic learning, homemaking, and making decisions about our agrarian farm and ranch heritage, Main Street economics, and our fragile ecosystem.

Emergent Education: Turning Minds Home

Anyone who is paying student loans is getting an education in frustration. Sending our students out to become consumers of university catalogs — without a overhaul of the education system — will deliver a reality check when Wall Street calls with a less-than-generous job offer. It fueled the Occupy Wall Street movement, when in fact it could have fueled an entrepreneurial movement that helps solve challenges at home, through work, and in community.

Canvas Campus

Colorado State University and the Denver Botanical Gardens are producing courses on water-saving plants and ground cover. I love Kentucky and Bluegrass music, but I am so over Kentucky Bluegrass as a lawn option. Xeriscaping came from Colorado, and now it must be a change that focuses on the differences in Colorado landscaping, agriculture, high-altitude and indoor growing. Education needs to stay home — bringing technology and access to trained minds to students who grow where they are planted.

Florence and Trinidad

The Emergent Campus in Florence and Trinidad, as well as online education, allows people of all ages to continue learning and apply that learning to our communities. Recertification, certification, bachelor's, master's, and soon-to-be doctorate programs — at home, through our work, and shared with and in community.

Richard Arnold Beattie and the Leadon Family Foundation have started a Regional and Colorado Chapter to foster education in entrepreneurship and address ecological and economic challenges at home, through our work, and in the communities we serve. To apply, get started, or become part of a Thinking-Action Group, comment here and send an email to richardbeattie809@gmail.com.