Stories shared by the Radical Joy community

How Is It Possible to Love a Hurt Place?
May 11, 2022Shortly after meeting in Cazenovia, New York in 2009 to design our new organization, Radical Joy for Hard Times founding member Noah Crowe experimented with the practice we’d devised to find and make beauty in …
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How to Fill a Hole
May 4, 2022What do you do with a big hole? Do you negotiate around it? Do you figure it’s beyond repair and try to ignore it? Or do you take the RadJoy approach and fill the hole …
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sticks with moss on top, in a bog!
July 12, 2022This Earth Exchange came half way through a project we have been doing here in Hull called This Place, which has been about trying to explore our connections to Land, Community and our Selves… The …
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Imagining What’s Been Lost
July 12, 2022Due to some uncertainty about travel dates, I was not able to plan an Earth Exchange with my community this year and I ended up traveling on the day of. As I sat on a …
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Wounded and Beautiful in my Neighborhood Parks
July 10, 2022REPORT: Radical Joy for Hard Times 12th Annual Global Earth Exchange Saturday, June 25, 2022 Peninsula Park & Rose Garden Portland Oregon’s first public rose garden with a historically designated bandstand, community center and …
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Breath of life
July 9, 2022This year, I ventured out solo for my exchange with the earth, pursuing a moment of sunshine that had broken through after a week of rain; pursuing stillness. Travelling on my trusty bicycle, I chose …
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Song for Barstow Mine
July 7, 2022Four friends hiked up Spirit Gulch in Ouray County, Colorado to visit the Barstow Mine. The mine operated from 1895-1930, extracting primarily fluorite, copper, and silver. When we came upon the mine, situated at 11,000 …
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Stop, Look Both Ways, and Listen
July 7, 2022I did my Global Earth Exchange at the junction of two state highways where I had a car accident. I learned after the accident that this place was a dangerous intersection with relatively frequent accidents. …
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