Last night was the first night of the year when I really felt like knitting, and I’d been meaning to watch the talk Jules Dervaes gave last spring at UCLA for a long time, so I fired up YouTube and watched as I whipped up a couple of washcloths. I really enjoyed Dervaes’s low-key yet passionate style, and it’s great to get a little glimpse into the man behind Path to Freedom, a project and a website which have inspired thousands of people to take up the cause of freedom gardening and the 100 foot diet.

Dervaes touches on many topics in his talk—most striking was the fact that our society offers 1000 choices of shoe companies but only 150 choices of food plant varieties, 4 of which (rice, corn, wheat, and potato) provide 60% of our diet. He also encourages students to start growing at least a little of their own food, even if it’s only basil on a windowsill of their dorm rooms, saying that the first step is the hardest and most important.

“We’re trying to live the inconvenient solution,” he says. “We’re trying to put the roots in the grass roots.”

I hope you enjoy what Jules has to say. Plus if you watch the whole thing you’ll get to see the biggest squash you ever saw! Part 1 is below. Parts 2-5 can be found after the jump.

Part 1

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image by oddsock and Magritte

In my meanderings around the blogosphere over the last several weeks, I came across a post wondering if post-Peak Oil culture may look like the Netherlands on steroids, where our every action is mediated by regulation and law, and questioning whether that is the kind of future we want.

When I was recently in San Francisco, I saw a tiny microcosm of the kind of thing this writer was describing. On each MUNI train I rode, there were at least 10 signs describing what we were compelled to do by law, including giving up our seats to elderly and disabled riders. I was a little put off by this, personally—how far must we have sunk as human beings if we have to be compelled by law to give up our seats to people who need them?

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Personal Development for Smart People

It’s great to achieve goals and and to see my abilities develop over time, but to me, growing for myself isn’t enough. I undertake the task of becoming a more powerful, truthful, and loving human being because that’s what I need to become in order to create the future I believe we can and should have.

The thing I love most about the framework for personal growth Steve Pavlina outlines in his new book, Personal Development for Smart People, is that this holistic context is built right in.

Throughout the book, he uses the metaphor of cells in a body. Each of us is a cell in the body of the universe, he says, with specialized functions to perform but also with undeniably strong connections to all the other cells. As he proceeds through the fundamental principles of personal development, he returns to this image again and again to underscore the idea that personal development is never really taken just for one’s own sake; that what benefits each cell also benefits the body as a whole; and that aligning our individual selves with the principles he describes pulls the entire body into closer alignment with them.

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image by hikikomorix

When I was thinking of topics to write about concerning frugality and environment the one thing that kept cropping up was community.  I really think that one of my biggest assets in working to live a frugal, environmentally friendly life is my strong and helpful community.

It’s a hard one to quantify. I can’t look at my monthly expenses and easily say, “my community saved me $200 this month,” but they provide me with so many tangible and intangible benefits I can hardly count them all. It’s amazing to me what people accomplish when they pull together.

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(As Jessica encourages her students to trust and open up to new possibilities within themselves, so we at The Sunny Way hope to inspire you to think about the future in new ways, and act in new ways to create it. Enjoy this beautiful video! -ed)

Last fall, I began teaching piano at the Riverbrook Residence for women with developmental disabilities in Stockbridge, MA. Riverbrook is a rare and special place—the women there are supported in every dimension of life. I often remind myself of how new this phenomenon is.  It has been only a few decades since ABC news reporter, Geraldo Rivera exposed the shockingly inhuman conditions at Willowbrook—an institution for those with mental retardation on Staten Island, NY.  In doing so he helped bring this issue into our collective conscience. The care for those with developmental disabilities is, I believe, central to the evolution of humanity as a whole.

While things have generally improved since Rivera’s report in the early 1970’s, Riverbrook stands out as a remarkable place. Because of its uniquely supportive environment, the women trust me, and work closely with me. I, in turn, am discovering a new dimension in my own teaching as I witness them express, through our piano improvisations and group music activities, strikingly individual aesthetic sensibilities.  This experience is proving to me that the Authentic Self—that part of us that is beautiful, natural and free—is, indeed, universal and unfettered by any limitation.

In this video, Tanny Labshere, whom I wrote about in my previous post, is playing an improvised duet with me. It will give you a first-hand experience of what I am describing.

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A few weeks ago, Uli sent out this video by strength and wellness writer Shawn Phillips, in which he talks about how our focus on health, or the absence of problems, seems to keep us from pursuing strength, or the positive state of well-being. I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between health and strength, and sustainability and magnificence. Of course we all want to be free from disease and injury, just as we want a society that functions without causing huge environmental problems. But I agree with Shawn that pursuing abundance is far more inspiring than going after okayness.

This weekend, Uli will be riding a 100 mile bike race in Maine in order to raise money for the German-language edition of What Is Enlightenment magazine. I’ve been so impressed with and inspired by her drive to try something new and go beyond what she thought she could do. Uli’s pursuit of her goal—a 100 mile bike ride up a mountain!—is truly inspiring in terms of defining this new idea of health not being merely the absence of troubles, but bountiful good feelings of strength, well-being, and possibility.

Have a great weekend, everybody! And good luck, Uli! We look forward to hearing about your experience next week.

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image by southtyrolean

As I watched the Presidential debates the other night, my head spun. Seemed like every other thing out of the candidates’ mouths was a either very high number I couldn’t relate to, or some variation on, “That’s just not true, Senator!” And I’m sure there will be statements that inspire more head-scratching at tonight’s Vice Presidential debate.

In my attempts to make sense of it all, I started looking around online for answers, and I found a few great sites that help cut right through the rhetoric and spin.

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image by soapbeard

Some of you may know that for the last 3 weeks, I have been laid up with a broken ankle. I have a cast from my toes almost to my knee, and I’m not to put any weight on my foot at all, so getting around is a matter of using crutches or rolling around in my office chair. Even hobbling to the corner is a major exertion and causes stress on my ankle, so my mobility is limited to my house and my back yard, for the most part.

In trying to make productive use of this extended period of time at home, I’ve noticed something—I dick around on the internet a lot. It’s a habit now: I go to my computer, check my message boards and RSS feeds, and next thing I know hours have passed without my actually having accomplished anything.

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