The Learning Journey into sustainability on-line has begun.
What does this mean to me??? This is something that changes every time I do more research.
One day you are looking at the practices that run your daily life and the next you are looking at how the whole world can be changed by whole system design ramifications. 
I live about 40 miles from where I work so I to often think about the resources I am using for transportation.  The Prius I drive lessens the carbon footprint I leave on a daily basis but I never thought about the whole system when I bought it.  I thought about 50 m.p.
I have seriously thought about where I live in relation to where I work.  I have tried to sell my house.  Walking away is not something I am willing to do.
 Trying to change what I do is an option.
In my little corner of the world I'm working at being a better at recycling.    I'm  trying to reuse things I can reuse.  Reducing waste is a constant challenge. 
The little thing I am doing that I love is eating locally.  In my case this means growing things I like to eat in my flowerbeds.  What is really cool is that many plants reseed themselves but the next generation is sometimes a little different.

Strawberries and dill in my flowerbeds. Yum

Volunteer Tomato

 Marigolds from saved seeds, 3ft tall

  Pumpkin that decided to besiege my patio.

Sustainable humor

I threw in a few pictures because digging in the dirt  locally and trying to make things pretty is part of my picture of sustainability.  Farmers markets and community gardens. Restaurants cuisine reflecting the availability of local produce. Deserted buildings changed into urban fish farms. Divergent yet connected thoughts. Is our sustainable future something we choose to direct? (from the book Design is the Problem)pg.12 We shouldn't be afraid of cooperating on standards,systems and understandings  because this is a necessary precursor to higher order development and advancement.  Ecological stability is of interest to me.

I really am on a journey with this class because:
 Leaving the plants of my yard.

 My mind goes back to what brought me to this class. Looking at all the engineering and cross disciplinary work that goes into whole system design that can change the lives of third world people in need of life saving vaccines. This was what I read about while looking at redesigning a refrigerator and got to see what some college students did with designing a solar refrigerator.  Sustainable and practical for meeting the needs of people without the resources to meet their own needs.

I know my mind needs to do a lot more reading and interpreting and digesting.   I know I have to try and construct some kind of order with all of the things I am interested in.

All of these things take me back to my early studies of geography.  There is the physical geography, the natural unreconstructed world. And then there is cultural geography.  All that man made design stuff of the environment.  The definition I like is "the character of place"  which puts the physical and cultural into one big picture  of the world we see.  We need to look at what we have here on this planet and what we want our future to be.

I certainly hope to be changed by this journey because as you can see I am not the most focused.  I am very curious.

At the very least I want to be responsible "to the world"  because individually I can not be "responsible for the world" .  I certainly would like to make some contribution to the world that lasts seven generations into the future and is for the good.

This course can be of service to me by educating me about what needs to be done and where
I have some skills and abilities to affect the change that is needed.

I will try to make more connections and references to all of the readings in the future.  But for this first week I hope these thought will do.  I hope you all enjoyed the "blue moon".  It can see every thing we are up too ;)