During the first few years of becoming a hardcore composter, I decided to measure how much waste I was diverting from the solid waste stream. I think it’s important that when any alternative to conditioned behaviors is presented it be analyzed in a concrete, scientific way so that it can clearly be seen as a viable alternative. The results must be visible and dramatic enough so that individuals will decide that the benefits are worth withstanding discomfort and sacrifice.

I undertook my first weeklong measurement project nine years ago when I was catsitting for my compost-crazed friend Naomi in her Manhattan apartment. I sorted into 3 main categories; then, at the end of the week, I weighed everything using an antique metal produce scale. She had a wormbin for recycling food so I deposited my scraps in there. Usually, I would have dropped them off at the Lower East Side Ecology Center’s Greenmarket drop-off table.

Now I know nine years ago is a while back, but the numbers are still relevant, at least in NYC, where acceptable items for recycling haven’t changed dramatically. It was important for me to take an inventory, not just to see how much food waste I was generating and then diverting, but also to observe all the other trash I generated and incorporate lifestyle changes to further decrease my garbage output. I wanted to answer the question: How much of an impact can one person make?

Recently I decided to bring these statistics up to date. I again saved, sorted and weighed all garbage using an accurate bathroom scale. The data recorded here is not precise, but it’s pretty close.

Waste produced was sorted into three categories:

• food waste for an indoor vermicomposting bin (1999) or backyard compost unit (2008)
• plastics, metal, glass, and paper recycled through the NYC municipal recycling program (1999) or Village recycling program (2008)
• landfill-bound trash

A few notes about the numbers:

• The 2008 data represents the waste I currently produce with my lovely parents (who put up with my scrupulous scrap saving and watching me get on and off the bathroom scale a dozen times).
• From comparing the total for these 2 weeks, I can see how lifestyle, location, and number of people in the household all make a big difference in total amount of garbage produced. For example, when I was catsitting in 1999, I was using fewer disposable products (such as tissues and paper towels), but more non-recyclable plastics. Later on I started using reusable menstrual pads, which created even less garbage. By comparison, my parents and I generate much more garbage. Noimpactman has a lot of great ideas on reducing your trash flow.
• There’s a noticeable difference in the data on food waste for these 2 weeks. This reflects the larger proportion of garbage I create with my parents, as well as irregularities of eating at home.

What all of this obsessive saving, separating and weighing shows is that we could actually transform the solid waste problem into a solid waste opportunity by figuring out ways that composting could be developed on a large scale, tailored for a variety of communities depending on the variables and resources of each one. If our perspective shifted from seeing food waste as garbage to seeing it as a raw material for nutrient cycling—there would be no problem!

The most exciting part is really not what is saved, but what is created. The soil in my parent’s garden is a testament to their 30+ years of composting: rich soft soil like chocolate cake, a wondrous variety of plants, honey bees that buzz by in the summer, cardinals in their crimson coats balancing on the fence over turquoise blue morning glories. Don’t we want richness, abundance, health and beauty? If you are not composting, just think of all that potential beauty being tossed in landfills, creating methane gas and leaching into our precious groundwater.

Does one person’s effort make a big difference?

You bet it does ... since I started composting every day, with the only breaks being brief travel here and there (I’m a homebody), I have diverted roughly 2,106 lbs. of food waste. Over 1 ton out of the solid waste stream and into the nutrient cycle! This figure represents me, an omnivore generating about three pounds of food waste per week over a 13½ year period.

There are other ways to reduce your food waste, too, from planning and shopping carefully to donating to needy families.

Currently, as much as 40% of the food bought in America is not eaten. For those who want to make a positive impact on the environment, reducing food waste is truly low-hanging fruit.

(Stay tuned for our editor’s personal experiment in worm composting in her Brooklyn apartment.)

We moved this week, so I have accomplished a ton of stuff on the organization front, but I feel more disorganized than ever. The first week after a move is always tough for me. In this case it was even a bit tougher. Without getting into unnecessary family drama, for the next month or two we are storing all of my dad’s belongings at the new house as well as our own. That has made organization a little bit difficult. OK, a lot difficult, but I have promised myself I won’t complain. We have been amply compensated for the inconvenience.

I have kept our kitchen functional the entire move, which I am very proud of. Aside from one incident involving a KFC buffet (ick!) and a pizza party at Cheyenne’s preschool we have been eating at home the entire week.

We also got the compost bin set up. It is unbelievable how much that has reduced the amount of trash we create. I never even realized how much of our trash could be composted. I keep a little container by the sink and when it is full it gets taken out to the compost pile. The girls have claimed this as one of their chores. It took Isabella a few times to realize that the container doesn’t go in the bin with the scraps, but I think she’s getting it.

I also set up my clothesline this past week. I bought a simple clothesline at the local hardware store for $2.06 and four brackets that were $1.99 each. Zach put two brackets on each side of the patio and I tied the line in a knot and strung it between them to create two lines. When I am done with the line I just pull down the whole thing, wrap it up and store it in a dresser that sits right by the patio door. I bought a very cute vinyl bag with cherries on it at the thrift store for $3 and I keep it hanging on the patio door.

The clothes have been drying very fast on the clothesline. Actually, in about half the time it takes the dryer to do the job. One of my big challenges with laundry is to keep up with it. When I get overwhelmed with laundry I tend to use the dryer. This is an ongoing issue I need to address. I have been cracking down somewhat on Cheyenne’s thrice daily costume changes, but with two little kids and a construction worker DH laundry can get a little out of hand. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

My other laundry issue is that I hate putting it away. It’s silly, I know. I should do it while I’m watching TV or talking on the phone, but for some reason I just don’t. Zach hates it too, but he’s agreed to take care of the cat litter if I take care of the laundry and I feel like I am getting the better end of that trade. I am going to work on my resolve. If I can just get myself in the habit of it, I think I will be OK.

G.G.B., my aforementioned Swedish grandmother has promised to come out to visit me in June and help whip this house into shape. That gives me hope. I will keep fighting the battle the best I can and await the coming of the cavalry in June.

My fate as a future “liberal coastal elite” was sealed at age 15, when I sat down at my family’s dinner table and proudly declared that I was going to work for Michael Dukakis’s presidential campaign. My normal, Catholic, conservative parents reacted the way they always did when I said something wackily reminiscent of the 60s philosophies they’d grown up with but never espoused: my dad rolled his eyes, and my stepmom ignored me.

Not surprisingly, I left my hometown for college as fast as I could and pretty much never went back. I lived in big cities, fronted a band, worked for Ralph Nader, stopped eating meat. You know the type. And I’m the only one in my family who chose this kind of track. Home isn’t home to me anymore, and hasn’t been for a while. Over the years, my ideas changed to the point where it has become difficult for me to understand many members of my family at all, and I’m sure they think I’m an alien, too.

Where I see fascinating diversity, they see frightening differences. Small-town family-oriented life bores me to even think about, let alone live, but provides them nourishment and security. And, most divisively, where they see “fair and balanced” news coverage, I see a pile of bullshit so large and offensive it can probably be seen and smelled from space.

Clearly, these members of my family and I see the world through markedly different lenses. At this point, when we do talk (which isn’t often), it’s mostly about movies and TV shows, and even in that shallow arena, our opinions still differ. We don’t have much common ground left, even though we grew up together, running the same streets, sledding the same backyard tracks. Somewhere along the line, our ideas about the world we grew up in diverged, and we stayed up late on Thanksgivings and summer vacations fighting bitterly about religion and poverty and justice. Then as adults, we shied away from conversation for so long that we barely know each other anymore.

Now, here we are on opposite sides of a thick glass wall, regarding each other with a mixture of curiosity and revulsion. We, my family and I and most of America, in fact, are victims of the culture war, shell-shocked and deaf from listening to each other’s screaming.

What is the culture war and what does it have to do with the environment?

The American culture war is a 50-year-long death match still being fought between the opposite ends of the political spectrum. In one corner we have the people who believe that history books and TV news shows are basically telling the truth, and in the other are those who believe that rich white men have run the world for too long. Each side regards the other as the worst possible type of person, hell-bent on destroying America and lacking any redeeming qualities whatsoever. Both sides are guilty of fouling the personal and political environment in our country.

Ironically, the polarization between left and right brings out the worst stereotypical behavior in both groups. Liberal city-dwellers make condescending jokes about people who actually believe the Bible, while conservative suburbanites mock environmentalists for being wussies who won’t eat meat. None of it is pretty. More importantly, all of it is destructive.

I realize I’m speaking in huge generalizations here, and that most people lie somewhere between the extremes of traditional conservative and postmodern liberal. Which makes it even more galling that our country’s political conversations are set at such a shrill, divisive level. Especially when we have so many urgent problems to solve.

The sniping between left and right prevents us from having new and meaningful conversations about how to create a cleaner and more vibrant future. Fighting about age-old arguments is just another way to spin our wheels in the familiar. And as long as we stay stuck in this pattern, any sort of real change is impossible.

Listening instead of fighting

The question at this point is, how can reasonable people get beyond this rhetorical bloodletting? How can we quit fighting this unwinnable war?

For me, the first step is to come straight out and admit that, for all my self-righteousness, I am as confused as anyone. I work for a big corporation and also for a food co-op. I disdain Wal-Mart for its heartless, big-box tactics, but I still, inexplicably, love Target. The advances of Western society have made my privileged existence possible, and yet that very privileged heart also holds deep cynicism toward those achievements and the motives behind them.

From my vantage point inside postmodern liberalism, I am fully willing to admit that it is a mixed bag. For all the good things in it, like feminism, the Civil Rights movement, and rock’n'roll, it also holds a lot of messed up families, broken-down communities, and an insidious moral relativism that has disintegrated our sense of purpose on Earth.

Similarly, I know that many people with traditional morals are also held back by the limitations of what the culture war says conservatism is. Does believing in family and tradition mean it’s necessary to buy the whole Fox News, environmentalists-are-terrorists, homosexuals-want-to-make-us-all-gay package?

On both sides of the equation, it’s a conundrum to be sure. Both points of view have valid points and both are also full of crap. Neither side has a monopoly on The Truth. So why do we feel the need to pledge allegiance to one and fight the other to the death? A better option is to use the brains God (or whoever) gave us to cherry-pick the best parts of each, carry those into the future, and leave both the bitterness and the bad ideas behind.

For example, traditional values include a lot of useful things, like how to raise strong kids who know right from wrong, the value of community, and the power of pulling together toward a common goal.

And postmodernism includes some fine stuff, too: honoring the richness of diversity, respecting individuals’ personal perspectives, and expanding one’s circle of care to include the entire world.

These all seem like good, practical values, don’t they? Put them all together and it sounds to me like a viable recipe for tackling problems and designing solutions that serve the needs of lots of different kinds of people.

And this is exactly my hope, my call to action. I am laying down my arms in the culture war, and I want you to do the same. If we are successful, maybe we can harvest the wealth of all our different worldviews and come up with a new one that ties them all together. Maybe not. But we will never know unless we stop the sniping and give ourselves a chance to connect on a higher, more human level.

So, I hereby promise to stop the snark and start really listening to people who have different ideas, especially if I don’t agree with them. In this way, I hope in my own small way to rebuild the bridges that liberals and conservatives have stupidly blown up in this useless, protracted struggle, so we can work together and fix the mess we’ve made.

Will you join me in this effort?

Over the coming months, I will report back from the front lines of sitting out the culture war. Please write and let us know how your make-like-Switzerland action is going, too.

Tomorrow I have my meeting with the leader of the community garden to have my plot officially assigned and learn the basics about the community garden. I can’t wait! Seeing the garden plot is going to make it seem so real.

Today my friend Martha and I went thrift store shopping for garden pots. Unfortunately we didn’t have a lot of luck. I did manage to find this cute little tin-ceiling-tile pot for $.99, but that was it.

My other garden related score was 10 large sized canning jars I found for $.40 each. Since Tuesday is Customer Appreciation day at this particular thrift store I got the whole lot for $3. In my early twenties I did a lot of home canning using farmers market produce and I am hoping to start that up again. Unfortunately I left all of my canning jars in my ex-boyfriend’s parent’s garage when I moved to California so I need to get a new batch.

I’m going to try to make a lot of pickles. My kids can eat a jar of pickles a week, so I think that would be worth canning. We had this exact conversation almost every morning last summer, “What would you like for breakfast today girls?” “Ummmm, Popsicles and ice cream.” “Popsicles and ice cream aren’t breakfast foods. What else do you want?” “Pickles, tomatoes and cheese!” “OK, pickles tomatoes and cheese it is, then.”

I generally freeze tomatoes and pasta sauce, but I am going to try canning salsa and a tomato relish this summer. I love tomato relish on good crusty French bread. I am also going to try my mom’s recipe for dilly beans, which are pickled green beans. They are really good. In fact crusty French bread, tomato relish and dilly beans sounds like an excellent lunch.

Martha and I have made plans to attend a huge plant sale at the State Fair grounds next month. The Friends School in St. Paul puts on the sale every year. It is supposed to be huge and full of really interesting plants. I think it will be a lot of fun.

I love old furniture. When I was a kid, my dad (a fireman in inner-city St. Louis) would drag me to junk shops. He would let me pick out a toy while he perused the latest arrival of urban refuse. I found some great stuff in there, too—a Cookie Monster puppet, a Bionic Man action figure. I had no idea I was suppose to want something new and shiny, so these objects received my unadulterated affection. I learned to find great pleasure in digging through mini-mountains of discarded toys to find my next treasure.

My Dad always hauled something home too. Whether it be an old floor model radio from the 30s, or an upholstered rocking chair from the 40s, or an antique piano (even though no one in my family knew the first thing about playing it). For years our garage was filled with all this stuff until my Mom got fed up and held a series of garage sales to get rid of it all—yes, it took quite a few. And my dad is still angry. But I’m forever in debt to my him for showing me how to appreciate the finer things in life: Other people’s junk.

The best part about loving other people’s junk is that it’s hard to be disappointed. It usually comes with a pretty cheap price tag, or, even better, free. And by definition it is usually something out of the ordinary or outdated, two qualities I greatly admire.

The second best thing about other people’s junk occurred to me recently, in this day of trying-to-be-green consumerism: It is actually a form of recycling! Now you can feel good about being poor and having to shop at thrift stores and garage sales!

But it’s just an added perk to my already hyper-obsession with old furniture. So if you dare to jump aboard this particular bandwagon in the Green Revolution, here are a few tips in thrifting for furniture:

• Thrift stores, Salvation Armys, junks shops and the like usually renew their inventory on Tuesdays. I don’t know why, but they do. This is not hard and fast rule, so ask the counter person when they usually get stuff in and plan on going that day. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there in the land of thrifting and the early bird gets the awesome new pole lamp.
• Many junks shops/antique stores have their own aesthetic. Usually the guy or girl selling also has a fascination with a particular kind of junk. So find a shop with a similar sensibility to your own and make it a routine to hit it now and then.
• Don’t be afraid to haggle. (Except in a Salvation Army or Goodwill. The sales people there will just laugh at you.) I love this part. This is what almost makes the whole transaction worth it. You pick a price that said item should be worth, and see how close you can get the shop owner to that price.

You can really get some great stuff, especially in more rural areas or small cities populated by lots of senior citizens—Pittsburgh, I’m lookin’ at you! My entire house is filled with used items. The only new thing I own is my computer. And a cheap-ass rug, because those are real hard to find used and in non-disgusting condition.

I find it comforting to fill my space with artifacts from our past. I guess in a weird way it keeps my life in focus by reminding me of who I am and where I came from. Owning used furniture is a more personal experience. Even though it used to belong to someone else, once you buy it, it becomes wholly original and completely specific to you as a person. It transcends “used” status and becomes “one-of-a-kind.”

For instance, my latest greatest find is an orange sectional couch, a la 1969. And this brings me to my fourth and final tip for thrifting: Persistence.

It was love at first sight. I found it in one of my regular junk shop haunts. But the bastard owner, usually known to be somewhat fair-minded about pricing and bargaining, wanted $1,200 for it. “No,” I said to myself. “This couch is $800.” Which I know is still kind of pricey, but just check out the pic. You can sail to Europe on the thing after the ice caps melt.

I very politely asked the sales lady how much she thought the owner would be able to go down on the price. She smiled and picked up the phone. After a moment of mumbling, she hung up and stated, “No less than $1,100.” I nodded, said thank you, and went on my way.

A few days later I was back, perusing the store, and “Oh! Look, what a lovely couch—how much do you think the owner could go down?” The same sales lady smiled, picked up the phone, dialed, mumbled, hung up and delivered to me the same plate of disappointment.

Undeterred, I repeated this a few more times. Always the same sales lady, and always the same reply. Though, at one point, he did come down to a grand. By that point, the sales lady had lost her smile. Until finally, finally… I walked into the store one afternoon. And he was there. The owner—I recognized him from previous haggles.

Finally! Face to face! I knew this was a unique opportunity and my pulse quickened. But he was on the phone. So I sat on my soon-to-be new couch and stroked it as if petting a newborn puppy. Calmed by its luxurious tweediness, I sighed internally. When he hung up, no words were minced: “Are you the one that’s been coming in here asking about this couch?”

“Yup,” I smiled back at him. “How much do you think you can—“

“How much do you wanna pay for it?” he asked me.

“800.”

“You obviously love it. You have to take it with you now.”

So with a phone call to my boyfriend to come and help me carry it home, section by section, I was the proud owner a beautiful orange sectional. I think in a way, this couch was destined to be mine. It makes me beam and churn every time I walk into my living room. To me (and I realize only to me), this orange sectional from the sixties is the definition of perfection.

Folks really love their IKEA, Crate and Barrel, and—oh, I don’t even know new furniture stores. I never go in them. But seriously, why give your money to a big company and cause more resources to be used for materials, manufacturing, and delivery? Especially when there are amazing things like my orange couch in the world.

Support your local junk shop. Recycle furniture. And in the process you might find a new method of self-expression in personalizing your space to suit you and you alone.

(Uli’s story of communicating with the elected politicians in her state has totally inspired me to reach out to mine. Maybe a future challenge could be participating in democracy? Image by dbking via flickr. -ed)

Mass Power Shift was a climate change conference in Boston last weekend put on by a number of mainly student organizations. They did an impressive job pulling together a logistically very complex event in only four months.

The weekend was packed—with lots of Speakers (John Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz-Kerry were the most famous, but the whole line up was very diverse and impressive: Miss Rhode Island, Claire Allen, State Senator Marc Pachico and on and on); about 30 workshops on different aspects of Global Warming and Activism, from networking on the web to green roofs to spiral dynamics, you name it; panel discussions; regional community break-out sessions; entertainment; a march and fair; and, as the culmination and maybe most important part—lobbying in the State House for the State Congress to pass the Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) on Monday morning.

This legislation has already passed the Senate in MA, and our goal was to urge as many of the representatives as possible in person, to pass it in this legislative session. We were aiming for a firm commitment to do whatever they could to make this happen, and there is a follow up plan in place. The GWSA demands a reduction of greenhouse emissions of 20% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. Now that seems not even going to be enough according to the latest science, but—one step at a time.

It was all new to me, as well as most of the other 50 or so ‘lobbyists,’ but we practised our meetings with experts in advance. In the first real meeting, I was nervous never the less. We worked in small groups or pairs and I think we all felt strengthened by this. The first reperesentative we met, Antonio Cabral, had agreed to a set appointment, asked us into his meeting room and said “Okay, talk to me!” He has already proposed a rail system around Boston funded by a pollution tax on cars. Another, Anthony Verga, came from a background of fishery and appreciated the sentiment that environmentalism has so far been a white middle class affair and the move out of that bubble.

It is good to get to get to know the people in the legislature. As much as they might be just a small part of the picture, they do hold power, and to speak with them about their own concerns about this issue is both humanizing and enlightening. One very impressive, absolutely non-pretentious and deeply caring man was Senator Pachico—he spent a lot of time with the participants of the conference. First and foremost was the “human connection”! Almost everyone, aides and representatives alike, was incredibly gracious and interested and some said that this kind of event carries a lot of weight in their mind. Meeting real people with real stories makes them feel supported, too, as they are up against a multitude of interests.

It was a powerful opportunity to begin to build relationships with people we have so many ideas about.

And then we will see—let’s hope the act will get passed and MA will emerge as a leader in Climate Action as it could and should be. Mass Power shift and the organisations involved in this event are definitely not going to stop. If you want to take more action right now, you can go for it here:

http://www.350.org/4/

http://www.1sky.org

http://www.itsgettinghotinhere.org

Last week we got a ton of decluttering done at the new house. I got several closets and dressers cleaned out. There’s more to do, but I think my dad needs the space to himself for a while, so we are taking the week off from the house and focusing our efforts on our old place.

Inspired by Megan, this week I am working on eating at home. The kitchen is usually the one area I am really good at organizing. I am really good at meal planning and pantry management, but the move has made that more difficult.

I made a batch of bran muffin mix for breakfasts. I am keeping it in the fridge and making a batch each morning to be served with a piece of fruit and a small bowl of cottage cheese or a hard boiled egg. Normally I like more variety in my breakfasts, but I’m not feeling picky this week.

I made a batch of granola bars for snacks. I have a lot of dried fruits to use up, so this helped make a dent in those. They are healthy, portable and everyone in the family likes them. If we get bored of those we can have popcorn or strawberry smoothies.

Lunches will be tuna salad sandwiches, chicken salad (made with leftover chicken cooked for Tuesday’s dinner) with dried cherries and tarragon and good old peanut butter and jelly served with either carrot sticks or fruit.

I made a dinner menu for the week that mostly uses things I already had in the pantry, fridge or freezer. When I plan ahead I am much less likely to eat out. Here’s the menu.

Monday: Scrambled eggs with cheddar, toast and fresh fruit
Tuesday: Noodles, chicken and veggies with spicy peanut sauce
Wednesday: Dinner at church (this is a weekly thing)
Thursday: Potato leek soup, popovers
Friday: Cheese and spinach enchiladas, Mexican slaw
Saturday: Navy bean soup, cheddar garlic biscuits
Sunday: Pannekoeken with strawberry rhubarb sauce

Probably the only thing I will buy for this menu is cream for the potato leek soup and to whip for the pannekoeken.

How are you all doing with your challenges?

In the documentary Waste = Food (showing tonight on the Sundance channel at 5 pm), chemist Michael Braungart says something like,

“If I told you my relationship with my wife was sustainable, you would feel quite bad for me.”

I’m sure he typically gets a chuckle out of this line. The idea of choosing a partner, job, home, or anything else simply because it will continue to exist is laughable. In every area of our lives, we want excellence, not just something that doesn’t die out. I wonder, then, why are so many of us trying so hard to build a world based on simply not depleting natural resources?

Maybe we should set our sights higher. Is there any reason why we can’t create a future that is better in every respect than today? I envision a world with more beauty, better food, cleaner air, slicker toys, cooler fashions, amazing opportunities, and unprecedented awesomeness for everyone. Is reaching for sustainability going to get us there?

Think of how nature operates—a cherry tree for instance (an example from Cradle to Cradle, written by Braungart and his business partner William McDonough). There are no programs to ensure that the cherry tree doesn’t have a bad impact on its environment, no need for measurements of the tree’s carbon footprint, no government directives to keep it in line. Instead, simply by existing, the cherry tree adds value to the planet, in the form of housing (for birds), food (yum!), pollution control (trees love to suck up greenhouse gases), nutrient dispersal (falling petals and leaves decompose into the soil), and aesthetics (heart-stopping gorgeousness every April).

As we walk the path of reinvention, we should keep the cherry tree in mind. Our goal should be to recreate human civilization in its image, so that just by going about our day-to-day activities and pursuing our dreams and falling in love and doing all the things humans like to do, we add value to the biosphere. We can’t stop at doing less harm to the planet. We must configure our societies so that they create wealth and beauty and justice as byproducts.

Why must we reach beyond the merely sustainable? Because anything less is simply not going to inspire us to the greatness we need to embody in order to overcome the massive challenges in front of us. Not to mention, those who have less-than-enough now are probably not going to leap directly from not-having to voluntary simplicity. Everyone deserves the opportunity to dream and chase those dreams. We need to strive for a world where doing so doesn’t automatically create waste and in fact makes the world richer, the biosphere stronger, and humanity happier.

So, how do we get to better-than-sustainable? Maybe we can begin to see ourselves not as masters of nature or slaves to it, but as conductors. Leonard Bernstein probably couldn’t play all the instruments as well as his musicians, just like we can’t break down soil like earthworms or drop perfectly nourishing pink blossoms at the exact right time like a cherry tree. But he did have an amazing ear for how it all works together, how the cellos should feel propping up the violins, or how the oboe solo should cut through the strings. In the same way, we humans seem pretty uniquely suited to coordinate nature’s activities so that they operate in the most optimal, nourishing, and gorgeously elegant way.

It all begins with paying attention and looking for opportunities to create greater harmony and impact using the instruments before us. Farmers who practice permaculture and biodynamic farming do it with dirt and trees and flowers and beasts. Mentors who attune themselves to the needs of their charges and respond with games and lessons that reach kids where they are do the same thing in education. Restaurants that get involved in growing their own food are conducting as well.

Every day, we have opportunities to choose to reach for a better-than-OK solution, in our work environments, at home with our families, on the road, with our friends and neighbors. And every time we approach a situation with an open heart and an intention to do more than the minimum required, we increase the net goodness available to everyone, including ourselves.

The vision that inspires me was described by my friend Richard Kotlarz, an incredible thinker whose take on economics is unlike anything I’ve ever heard. In one of his papers, he describes how we will know we have succeeded: when a child is born, we will celebrate the unique and valuable gifts she brings to the planet rather than shake our heads in sadness that a limited pie now has to be divided amongst more people.

Every creature on this earth has a contribution to make. Let’s dispel this false notion of limitation and pie allocation—there is no pie!—and instead take up our birthright as the only creatures on the planet which have the ability to discern and predict and conduct.

Let’s allow ourselves to be inspired by a vision of the future where, like the cherry tree, the gifts we all bring with us when we come here are given freely to a planetary economy that never stops growing, because it is based on life itself. Let’s not stop at sustainable. Let’s go for magnificent.

I recently saw Horton Hears a Who and it was so good I went to see it again. The movie is gorgeous to look at, the acting is wonderful, and the story embodies a sense of faith, optimism, and responsibility that fits right into The Sunny Way of looking at things. Dr. Seuss sure knew what he was talking about.

Last night my friend shared this quote from The Lorax with me, and, on this beautiful Saturday morning as I prepare for today’s Sunny Way meeting, I would like to share it with you.

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

Are there other amazing Dr. Seuss tales that speak to you even as an adult? Let us know in the comments. I myself am a HUGE fan of The Sneetches.

Part 1:

Part 2:

(Apologies for the punny headline; I couldn’t resist! -ed)

I’m getting incredibly excited about the garden experiment. I’ve been officially accepted as a new member at the community garden and I have marked the first workday on my calendar. I think we will be tilling that day.

The plot will be $10 for a 10 x 20 plot. I busted out the tape measure this morning to get an idea of how big that is, and I am very happy. It turns out to be larger than my living room at the apartment. I had it in my head that the plot would be smaller than that.

Almost all of my tomatoes have sprouted, as well as most of my bell peppers. That’s going to be a lot of tomatoes. It’s a good thing my girls like them.

I am really looking forward to meeting my fellow gardeners. I’m still firmly a gardener wannabe and I have so much to learn. I also just love meeting new people.

I’ve also been working on ideas for my garden at home. I don’t have a lot of space at home, and I want to make it attractive. It’s mostly going to be a container garden. I won’t be limiting myself to edible plants, but I definitely want to include edible plants in my home garden. I’m thinking of replacing some dying bushes in the front of the house with raspberry bushes. I’ve been told that they are pretty easy to grow. I am also planning on having some edible flowers and of course plenty of herbs. I thought it made more sense to grow the herbs at home, since they grow well in containers and it’s nice to be able to use them as soon as you cut them.

I want my back deck to be my oasis from the world. I think it is going to take me a few years to realize my vision for the back deck. The reality is that I have only so much time and money to go around this year.

We got a secondhand outdoor table to replace the one my parents had. The old one was older than me and much to big for the space. Eventually I’d like to build a pergola over the table. I think it would be nice to have the additional shade and I think it would be really pretty. We have some leftover lumber that can eventually be used for that project.

Next week I am going to start hunting for free and cheap containers for my home container garden. I’m sure between craigslist, freecycle, thrift stores and garage sales I’ll be able to find something.

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to score an invitation to my great-aunt Beulah’s. Invitations to Beulah’s are an exciting thing for many reasons, not the least of which is the food.

“We’re not going to fuss, sweetie,” she always says, “We’ll just throw a little something together and keep it simple.”

And yet the food is always to die for. The secret to Beulah’s cooking, she and I agreed recently, is that everything is made from scratch. The bigger secret is that cooking many things from scratch is easier than it seems.

And, of course, when you cook from scratch, you know what you are eating! We care about the environment, our health, and the health of the workers who grow and harvest our food, so we are eating more and more organics, something we’d never be able to afford if we relied on organic convenience foods. Knowing how to cook is key to being able to eat well on a budget.

I have been cooking for as long as I can remember. As soon as I could stand on a chair I was in the kitchen “helping” my mom and dad. I was eight when I attempted my first solo cooking experiment, a memorable batch of brownies that I made with olive oil. The recipe called for vegetable oil, and olives seemed more like vegetables than whatever “canola” might be.

By the age of 12, I was planning and cooking whole meals. For extra credit homework in Home Ec, I made petits fours for the whole eighth grade class. That was memorable too. As I made the first batch of icing, it fell on the floor, directly onto the dog who was begging at my feet. The food coloring from the icing dyed his fur blue for a week.

In spite of these occasional mishaps, I learned a lot from my childhood attempts at cooking.

Indeed there was a time in our history when learning how to cook was a part of growing up. As families got busier, and convenience foods became an increasingly large part of our food culture, fewer and fewer kids learned basic cooking skills. Without these skills, people now rely on prepackaged foods, fast food, and convenience foods, which are hard on their health and on the environment.

Benefits Beyond the Obvious

I’d like to see us reverse this trend and raise a generation of young people who know their way around a kitchen. Teaching kids to cook has benefits beyond the obvious.

Involving children in food preparation is a great time to talk to them about where food comes from, and the environmental and social impact of our food choices. It’s the perfect opportunity to explain the benefits of eating organic, locally-grown, or fair trade products in a way that actually means something to them.

Kids have an easier time understanding a concept if they have hands-on experience with it. When they are allowed to help in the planning and preparing of a meal it awakens their interest in a way that simply talking about your values does not. Without some concrete connection to the subject, these conversations can become little more than the modern day version of “eat all your food, because kids are starving in China.” It goes over their heads. When a child feels like there is something concrete she can do about a problem, she is much more likely to take an interest.

Another benefit of letting kids help with the cooking is that it makes them more likely to eat a wider variety of foods. A kid who regularly turns his nose up at peppers might happily eat them in a dip he has helped prepare, or as the smile on smiley face pizza.

Getting kids in the kitchen

My kids are small, but they have been helping me in the kitchen for quite a while now. They love to do simple things like dumping ingredients into bowls, stirring batters and mixes, and putting toppings on pizza. They get so excited when I ask them to help me cook. Cheyenne was two years old when she made her first batch of salsa. I chopped up the veggies and put each one, plus the herbs and spices in separate bowls. I let her dump it in and stir. Ever since then she eats salsa all by itself. She doesn’t even need the chips.

Pizza is another good first project. Younger kids will get a kick out of choosing different foods to top their own pizzas. Older kids can do everything from kneading and tossing the dough to spreading the sauce and topping the pizza. You can make smiley faces or designs on the pizzas using the toppings for some extra fun.

Salad is another thing kids can help make. Cheyenne likes to help me pick out veggies for the salad and Isabella likes to toss it. I’m not sure either of them would eat salad if they hadn’t made it first, but being involved in the process makes it fun for them.

One of my favorite rainy-day projects to do with my kids is to make pretzel or bread dough shapes. My mom used to do make these with my sister and me when we were younger and I just loved it. I tried this project recently with my 12-year-old cousin and we had a blast. We both agreed that kneading bread dough is very therapeutic when you are feeling squirrelly. You can make pretzels into snakes or hearts, or make bread dough animals with raisins for eyes. My cousin and I made cinnamon raisin turtles. Yum!

In addition to cooking, it can be fun to involve kids in the planning of meals. Take them to the farmers market and let them pick out some new fruits and vegetables to try. Getting to try new and interesting foods is one of the best things about farmers markets. Last year we got hooked on ground cherries, yellow doll watermelon, water spinach, and smoked trout. It’s tough to find those kinds of foods at the supermarket. You could also pick a theme, like an ethnic cuisine or a color, and let your kids come up with menus based around it.

Food is such a wonderful thing. It nourishes us and bonds us in so many ways. I can’t tell you how many friends I have made by bringing over a basket of muffins or inviting someone over for dinner. We use food to express caring, like bringing soup to a sick friend or a casserole to a loved one who has had a baby. It gives us an easy starting point for conversation with people we don’t know, or don’t think we have much in common with. My mom was at a meeting once with a group of people from all over the world, who had never met before. Halfway through the day they discovered that each of their grandmas had a good recipe for rice pudding.

Our world may comprise a multiverse of different cultures and religions, but we all like to eat. That shared passion is something I want to pass on to my kids.

I am giving a talk tonight in NYC all about The Sunny Way, and how it is informed and supported by the teachings of Evolutionary Enlightenment.

Would love to see you there. I guarantee you will be 100% more fired up when you leave than when you arrived.

The EnlightenNext center in New York is located at 243 W. 30th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue, 11th floor. We’re getting started at 7:30 and asking a $10 donation.

Hope to see you there!
Megan

A while back, I used to work with a young programmer fresh out of school. He started out writing reports for a tricky customer, and, though he did the best he could deciphering the instructions, his work came back week after week with changes. Eventually, he cracked.

“Are. They. Ever. Going. TO JUST BE HAPPY WITH THE FREAKING REPORT??”

I was older and wiser, so I told him to shut up and be grateful they wanted changes because that meant he would continue to have a job. His job = fixing people’s reports. I don’t know if he ever really got that point, but it always stuck with me.

I see our place in history right now much as I saw my young friend. As human beings, inhabitants of planet Earth, which is run by a master tweaker called evolution, it is our job to change, to adapt and transcend and roll with the punches and grow. That is the job of every living thing—to live, to thrive, to develop—and we humans are very uniquely suited for it.

And yet so many of us resist. With everything in us, we cling to what we (think we) know. We shoot down new ideas without really letting them in. We spend more time trying to convince ourselves that we are content than we do in actions that bring us contentment.

My intent is not to scold—I resist changing, too—but to understand. Thinking about it from a rational perspective, it does seem kinda silly, right? Like beating ourselves up because we can’t get the ocean to stop churning. I do not pretend to know the entire Meaning of Life, but it seems evident that stability and security and tidily wrapped up loose ends are not among its major themes.

And of course, a lot of us agree that the world needs to change, right? It’s not like we have everything running smoothly yet. It’s obvious that we have a great deal more to figure out about living in a way that works for the entire environment—natural, social, and political. So with all these good reasons to jump headfirst into creating the future, why do we still have such a hard time with exploring new ideas and experimenting with our own lives?

There are many good reasons, I think, especially at this time in history — we’re too busy, broke, and disconnected to be bothered. But I wonder if there’s also something deeper than that, some sort of built-in aversion to change, or some kind of historical pattern set up in us that seeks permanence. One possibility? The kind of stories we like.

The importance of stories can’t really be overestimated. They are what cultures and peoples are made out of. Truth is transmitted in them, old wisdom is handed down, and new realms of possibility open up when you listen. They are the primary way we communicate with each other and have been for millenia, with very few changes to their structure. We like our intriguing set ups, revealing climaxes, and inevitable endings. It’s an ancient, deeply satisfying pattern, and, in hard times, imagining our own happy endings can strengthen our spirits.

But so often I sense, in myself and in the people around me, a strange expectation that life should perform like a story. We think that once we reach a new milestone—lose so much weight, get married, make X amount of dollars—we will be happy and we can then ride off into the sunset. We will “be done.”

Think of every Hollywood romance you ever saw. The couple gets together, and bam! That’s the end. Of course, in reality, the marriage lasts a lot longer than the wedding (usually), but there are very few stories about what to do with this dreamy partner once you’ve snagged him. We only seem to be concerned with the milestone, not the changes that come after it.

And this is a pattern that is repeated in almost every story we hear from childhood on up, an old, old trail that’s been traveled for thousands of years. Wishing for a happy ending that we rationally know will never arrive is not just a silly thing humans do; at this point, it’s a building block of who we are.

To consciously participate in the creation of the future, it’s important to get familiar with this particular strain of thought, and to keep an eye on it so it knows it can’t run things. Because when it does, we end up racing through life trying to “get there” without paying much attention to where “there” is. And that, my fellow security-seekers, is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place.

When the annoying little child in the backseat of our minds jumps up and down and hollers Are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet, it is very tempting to just go a little faster to try to shut her up. But we don’t have to make this choice. Instead we can remember who is driving. The fact is, no, we are not there yet and we will never be. Life is not done until death, and most of us even don’t see that as a full stop. The name of the game in this world seems to be change a little, then change some more. We’ll never “be done.”

In fact, as soon as we solve the issues we have now (and I insist on being optimistic that we will), new and different issues will develop. This is evolution, and it operates by messing around causing problems and proposing solutions trial-and-error style until something works. It’s as though nature has so many ideas, she doesn’t know what to do with them, so she’s decided to try out every last one. Some work and some don’t, but taken as a whole, it’s a pretty amazing system, and it’s all built on change and experimentation.

Maybe it’s time for us to stop fighting and embrace the engine of the universe—transformation—and see where it leads us.

I had a stellar week with the organization challenge. I have remembered my cloth grocery bags and coffee mug every time. I even remembered the grocery bags when I was out getting non-grocery items, which is when I am most likely to forget them. I have one of those bags that folds up and I have been keeping that in my purse. That way, if I run to the hardware store or the garden center I have at least one bag with me.

I also did better at combining my errands, although I still feel like I could use some more work on that one. This week I am going to break out the white board. Then when I realize I am running low on something I can write it down immediately instead of trying to remember it later when I am making the grocery list. That is a big downfall of mine.

I also need to work on not running errands on a whim. I ran out of cinnamon today. I like cinnamon sometimes in my coffee or on my oatmeal, but really, it’s not a pressing need.

I have a new rule of thumb for myself. If the errand is for something small and non-urgent, like cinnamon, I am going to ask myself if I would be willing to walk or bike it. I don’t mean that I necessarily will walk or bike it. If the weather is bad I will still take the car, but by asking myself if I would be willing to use my own energy to get that item I should cut back on a lot of silly little errands. Hopefully I can eventually make these errands a thing of the past through planning ahead, but I think this will work as a stopgap measure.

Over at the new house, I am working on clearing out my parents’ unwanted clutter. They lived in that house for 20 years and now they are both in small apartments with no room for most of their junk, I mean belongings. We are trying to find homes for as much of it as possible and dispose of the rest in the proper manner. We have literally taken truckloads of stuff to Goodwill and we are still not done. Next week we plan to list their outdoor table on craigslist. I also found a home for their silk flowers. Cheyenne’s Japanese dance group is going to take them to make hair ornaments for performances. That one makes me feel particularly good as silk flowers are hard to give away and this will guarantee they will be used.

So, slowly and steadily we plod ahead. How are things going for all of you?

The folks at TED have just posted video of the presentation Al Gore gave at the TED Conference in Monterey last month.

This is not the slideshow he’s presented over 2,000 times and which forms the basis of the movie An Inconvenient Truth. Instead, this is a new presentation “cobbled together” as he puts it, to fit the shorter format of the TED Conference, and delivered here for the first time.

Probably because of that, the talk is a little rough around the edges. Nonetheless, it’s a compelling, stirring performance and his theme of optimism in the face of the challenges ahead is one I think we can all get behind.