Author: Shanon Brooks

The Best Opportunities Come In Times Of Maximum Pessimism

The first half of the 21st Century is a Fourth/First Turning period (See the Fourth Turning by Howe and Strauss).* This means that the olds ways of doing just about everything are quickly evaporating and being replaced by new ways. The faster we learn the new ways (or even creating some ourselves) the better for our […]

Do You Follow Clason’s Law?

As a self-motivated American Dream/Reality promoter and possibly even your counselor and mentor (I only take on this role if you are voluntarily reading my blog on a regular basis), I am getting bold and repetitive about financial autonomy—BECAUSE I BELIEVE IN YOU.   I believe that you can solve your own problems and crises […]

Maybe Forrest Gump Was Right

Retirement. Most Americans are either ignoring this fact of life hoping it will go away, or facing its eventuality with fear and trembling. Based on a year’s worth of research, I am certain that 9 out of 10 people reading this blog fit that category. There is plenty of available data showing the hopelessness of […]

Being As Responsible As I Can

I have been thinking a lot about my mortality lately. No, I don’t have any premonitions, but Julia and I just updated our Revocable Living Trust and it always makes me think about my life, my relationships, and whether or not I am doing all I can for my family. My first job right after […]

The Difference Between Dissatisfaction and Hunger

So Stephen Palmer and I were attending a huge 3-day conference last week. During a break, Steve motioned me over and said, “you got to read this!” I was blown away!  He really nailed it and I just had to share this with you. This is reprinted from Inspirational Weekly. Are you perfectly content with […]

The Sentence That Knocked Down the Berlin Wall (But Almost Didn’t)

This post is a reprint of the November 5 ,2014 article from the Intercollegiate Review.   In retrospect, what event fails to suggest a certain inevitability about itself, conveying the sense that because it happened it had to have happened? Twenty-five years ago this week, the Berlin Wall finally fell. Of course it did. How […]

Basic Leadership Lessons From Lady Gaga

I was approached recently by a friend who was elected last year to his local city council. He was looking for a book on municipal government to help take a principled approach to the myriad issues he faces from property rights and valid zoning restrictions, to pet laws and public infrastructure, from Sunday use of public sports […]

The Failing American Dream: There Is A Cure

In April of this year, John Stossel wrote a thought provoking article about the ability of never quitting as being the reason America has been successful. I quote him here: In the USA, it’s OK to fail and fail and try again. In most of Europe and much of the world, the attitude is: You had your […]

A Whole New Take on “Selfies”

This post is a reprint from the Inspirational Weekly dated October 6th.  Although the Oxford Dictionary officially made “selfie” a real word in 2013, the truth is that selfies are nothing new. Tina Issa wrote in the Huffington Post that “this selfie revolution is annoying. It has made people selfish and narcissistic.” Not so, Tina; […]

Funding Monticello College: A 21st Century Approach

Historically, most American institutions of higher education struggled to fund themselves. Non-profit institutions did not generally have mechanisms for generating revenue. Thus they relied on tuition, donations, and an endowment. Harvard, America’s first school, suffered this same fate. In 1636, without any endowment (the gift from John Harvard, the school’s name sake was quickly squandered) […]

Krislyn Elliott & Lauren Swanepoel

Krislyn Elliott and Lauren Swanepoel act more like sisters than moms as they take really slow walks through the woods together, looking at and taking pictures of every plant they see & wishing they could remember their names and uses more thoroughly. They also like concocting herbal teas, salves, tinctures and strange drinks.

Krislyn is from Utah and has loved learning about plants since an unusually cool high school biology teacher took his classes on neighborhood botany walks. She has always been fascinated and constantly amazed at the power and beauty of plants.

Lauren is from South Africa, she and her family emigrated to Utah almost 10 years ago. They have fallen in love with the area and know more about this state & the great places to explore here than most Utah natives.

We both feel strongly about taking care of our families with natural methods and the abundant medicine we have growing right around us. We are trying to learn as much as we can about our magical local plants and are looking forward to sharing some of our favorites with you.

William DeMille

Director of Georgic Develeopment

William DeMille is a lifelong vegetable farmer. He studied Horticulture and Agronomy at Northwest Missouri University, Maryville. He holds a certificate in aquaponic engineering and production from Cornell University, NY, and another from GrowHaus Aquaponics in Denver, CO. He also studied soil regeneration and is a graduate of Dr. Elaine’s Soil Food Web School. He is the Director of Georgic Development for The Center for American Legacy Studies.

William is a farm consultant establishing several agricultural startups since 2005 in Missouri, Oregon, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada and he currently manages 2500 acres of grassland for the Ruby Mountain Foods Company.

His latest venture is a market gardening school called Georgic Revolution where he teaches a 17-week course onsite in Nevada covering soil health and vegetable production without the use of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc. and where he operated a soil lab.

William lives with his wife Vernie in the snow capped mountains of Northern Nevada.

Lloyd Nelson

World Renown BD Expert

Lloyd Nelson has been practicing the art of Biodynamic (BD) Agriculture for over twenty years. He is a BD preparation maker, builder, artist, farmer, arborist, BD educator & consultant. He is co-founder of Biodynamic Source – a Colorado based non-profit specializing in high potency BD preparations – and he owns and operates a Biodynamic spray, fertilizer and consultation service. He has worked with small and large scale farms, vineyards, and orchards to transition to sustainable Biodynamic land management and Demeter BD Certification.

Vern Cox, PhD

Educator

Vern Cox is married to Joyce Christensen and they have 8 children. He has 3 earned degrees, a BA in psychology, and both a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in marriage and family therapy.

He has had a diverse and interesting career that started with the Bureau of Land Management, followed by a stint as a Learning Disabilities teacher, and finally a marriage and family therapist, working his way up to executive director of the High Country Counseling and Resource Centers that served two counties in Wyoming.

Dr. Cox served for several years on the board of a charter school. Dr. Cox remains heavily involved in his community and the home schooling movement.

He has extensive background in marriage and family counseling, having held a number of administrative positions during his first career. He holds a BA in Psychology and both a Masters and PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy. He lives with his wife and several married children on their multi-generation farm in Southern Utah.

Joseph Lofthouse

Educator

Joseph adopted the principles of landrace gardening in response to the harsh growing conditions in a high-altitude, short-season, desert garden. Instead of relying on expensive poisons, labor, and materials to coddle the plants, he encourages genetic diversity, cross-pollination, and survival of the fittest, allowing the plants to adapt themselves to the current and ever-changing ecosystem, thus simplifying gardening and seed saving. Joseph is the author of Landrace Gardening: Food Security Through Biodiversity and Promiscuous Pollination. Joseph loves eating, farming, swimming, hot-springs, sunbathing, bird-watching, running, yoga, leggings, kilts, playing guitar, singing, and living habitually barefoot.

Dan Brooks

Educator

Dan Brooks was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. During his first career, he spent 20 years working in and managing high-end restaurants and golf courses including extensive banquet/special events services and ice sculptures.

For the past 23 years, Dan has been a successful entrepreneur and family business owner in Las Vegas. He and his wife have 4 children and 11 grandchildren. He serves as a trustee for The Center for American Legacy Studies.

Shanon Brooks, PhD

Director

Shanon Brooks is the director of The Center for American Legacy Studies, an institution dedicated to helping families embrace and incorporate the Five American Ideals; Georgics, Liber, Providence, Public Virtue, and Liberty into their lives and communities. America exists because of Americans. Americans are the beneficiaries of a peculiar culture and way of living.

Over the past 75 years, that culture and way of life have been lost. Restore that culture and Americans will rebuild America to once again be worthy of John Winthrop’s 1630 admonition, “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”

Brooks has been a leader in alternative higher education for over 30 years, and is the author of two books: AMERICAN: Killing the American Dream and A Thomas Jefferson Education for Teens.

Dr. Brooks is a veteran of military service in the United States Submarine Fleet and holds a Bachelor’s degree in business administration, a Master’s degree in education, and a Ph.D. in constitutional law.

He and his wife Julia reside on the 80-acre conference facility of The Center for American Legacy Studies.