Phyllis Kornfeld is the author of “Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in America.” She has been conducting visual arts programs with incarcerated men and women—from county jail to death row—for 25 years, in eighteen institutions in seven states.

She is presently holding weekly classes in five correctional facilities in the New England area. Kornfeld curates exhibitions of the work and lectures on prison art at universities, museums, and conferences.

She attended the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, received a B.A. from the University of Texas, and an M.A. from the University of Oklahoma. Her website is http://www.cellblockvisions.com.

Jessica Roemischer graduated from Princeton University in 1982 and has, for the past two decades, taught and performed music internationally. She is also a writer and photographer, and has been a Senior Editor of the award-winning, international quarterly What is Enlightenment? Magazine under the direction of spiritual visionary Andrew Cohen. Jessica interviewed for WIE some of the world’s most influential spiritual leaders and cultural luminaries such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, theologian Karen Armstrong, and guitarist Carlos Santana. 

Jessica is now engaged full-time in teaching and performing music and has developed a unique musical style that draws from the great pianistic tradition of the past two centuries while combining jazz, classical and rock idioms.  She teaches privately and at the Riverbrook Residence for Developmentally Disabled Women in Stockbridge, MA.  Every day she sees proof that every human being, regardless of age, level of experience, or limitation, can access the source of beauty within themselves. Visit her site at Piano Beautiful for videos, audio clips and more…

Maura is a cynic, much to Madge’s dismay, but is still doing her best to promote the sunny way of life. She spends her days strapped to a desk promoting other things, and enjoys cooking, technology, romping through museums, and various grain juices fermented to perfection. She lives in the East Village with her boyfriend and cat.

Maia Conty is a life coach, yoga instructor, and musician. A self-described country girl, she is making it work with her husband and daughter in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, known for its amazing Christmas lights and Italian food (but not for its ecofriendliness). 

Fawn Hoener shares her home with three of her four children. The oldest is a grown-up, a developmental stage to which the younger three aspire. She is a hospice nurse for love and money, a poet for fun and her favorite hobby is decluttering.

I was born in India, raised in England and now living in the center of the universe, Manhattan. I work in 3D and computer graphics freelancing.  I would call myself a evolutionary soul, trying to understand who I am, and uncynically asking questions about our humanity, while trying to keep the world alive long enough so I and everyone can do that. I am human, I am confused, lost, open, broken, sold, bought, found, happy, alive and mostly filled with the wonder of “What is going ON?” - I care about the world, I care about humans, I love technology and gadgets, and motorbikes, I love modern culture and think it is the highest achievement the universe has ever made, in a thousand years, we will be talking about this time as the great transition, the time when humanity moved from individual survival, to collective cosmic exploration, from fear to fascination, from separation to oneness...yes its painful, but if god’s only child’ren can’t do who can? 

Jennifer Bannan is a marketing consultant and author of a book of short stories, Inventing Victor. She lives in Pittsburgh with her two children.

Rena Gross, a charming, delightful, brilliant, extremely modest young maverick, considers herself to be the consummate New York eccentric. Rena loves books, greenmarkets, cooking, concerts, and the park. She despises asparagus, stuffing, stubbed toes, and people who think that waking up before 10 am is a good idea. Rena does not know how to play the drums, but enjoys crashing around on them.

From her home in Lenox, Massachusetts, Uli writes “These are powerful times to be alive and, as scary as much of it is, I am thrilled by what humanity can become in this shift to another society. Already integral thinking is poking its head out of the ground like spring flowers after the winter!”

Victoria is a teacher and organic baker who lives on one island (Long) and works on another (Roosevelt). She’s The Sunny Way’s resident expert in composting and everything else that will help you not throw stuff away. We love her for her warmth, smile, and the fact that she brings pastries everywhere she goes. 

Matt Morrow develops and directs new plays about shark attacks, murderous teenagers, and anything else he can turn into a musical. He loves dancing, dirty martinis, and secondhand crap ... but then, don’t we all? He also recently completed a 10-day Master Cleanse, so if you have any questions about how to get through the tough days, he’s your man.

My name is Stephanie “Stella” Griffith. I will be thirty years old this year, which I am really excited about. I am going to rock thirty. Five years ago when I was living in Los Angeles I met my soul mate, Zach and married him a month later. I knew he was the one for me when I asked him what he wanted to do with his life and he told me, “I’m not sure yet, but I know I want to enjoy it.” We moved back to my hometown of Minneapolis about two years ago to be closer to my huge, wonderfully supportive extended family. Zach channeled his boundless energy and pyromania into a career in construction and I am home with our amazing little girls, Cheyenne, who is four and Isabella who is two and a half. I like to think of us as your classic young family with more love than money. We are in the process of moving into the house I grew up in. I am really excited about that, too. It’s strange to think that 12 years ago I couldn’t wait to get out of there and today I can’t wait to be back. Life is funny that way. 

Graying, taciturn Scotsman

Megan Dietz (known to some as Madge) lives in Brooklyn, works as a software designer, and is old enough to be president. The Sunny Way began as a glimmer in her eye and she couldn’t be happier that it is finally a tadpole. She retains an optimistic point of view on purpose (both as a political act and as a way to piss off cynics) and encourages you to do the same.

Does thinking about the environment make you depressed? I think it does for most of us. The news is overwhelmingly bad, and way too much for any one of us to deal with on our own. Plus we’re busy anyway, going to work, running our lives. We know the environment is important, but so is everything else we have to worry about. So, even though we feel awful when we think about the bigger picture, still we soldier on, working, parenting, driving around. What else can we do?

What we’re lacking is a sense of possibility. Our problems are impossibly huge, our lives are impossibly busy, and suddenly the future seems dark and inevitable.

But we must remember that it is not.

The Sunny Way is here to shine light through the chinks in that dark, foreboding future. The fact that we made the world the way it is means we can make it again as it ought to be: clean, fair, humane, abundant, fun, beautiful ... No law says that sustainability has to be ugly or boring. It’s up to us to make it as we want it to be.

So ... here’s what we are about:

• taking on new, greener habits and sharing our experiences (and asking you to do the same via our group challenges)
• reporting from the front lines of change
• exploring the relationship between our social and physical environments
• understanding and transforming the way we think about ourselves, each other, and our wee planet
• building community around possibility and responsibility

It’s true we’re in a pickle, and it’s overwhelming and terrifying in turns, but if we work towards a better future, who knows? We may actually have one! Certainly nothing good will come of giving up.

I’m not a dope. I know the problems are immense, and that there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to solve them. Lots of estimates say we have maybe 20 years until things fall apart. But if that’s the case, then I have 20 years to do everything in my power to sort it out out. I’m not going out like a punk, and neither should you.

So that’s what The Sunny Way is—a site for people who are sick of being depressed about the environment, not because our situation isn’t depressing, but because depression doesn’t get us anywhere. It is simply not sustainable.

We have a long road ahead of us, but our hope is that a bunch of us can walk it together, help each other out, and, with example and inspiration and good humor, encourage everyone else to do the same.

And when I say everyone, I really mean everyone—people who don’t believe in global warming, corporate officers, George W. Bush, the anti-Christ—everyone! We’re all in this mess together, and we don’t have time to squabble. Let’s get moving.

Over the next few weeks, you’ll start to get a feel for what we are up to. Some articles will be essays, some will be based on personal experience, and others will take the form of profiles. We’ll have a wide field of play, but the intent behind all of it is the same: to explore the terrain between where we are and where we want to be. As we get going, it will all become clear.

Then, in the coming months, we’ll be adding new features to The Sunny Way to help us along the path—tools to challenge us, track our progress, and build our community. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you’ll continue to join us. 

We talk about it as though it’s a princess in a tower that needs defending. The poor environment—it needs help! We must protect it from the big evil corporation! Let us chain ourselves to trees to save it!

I’m poking fun at some very dedicated people here, and I don’t mean to show them disrespect. But the idea of the environment as something to be shielded from the evil impulses of humankind is both antiquated and completely inaccurate.

Where is this “environment” of which we speak? Where would you draw a line between it and anything else? Put in a bit of thought and the environment soon reveals itself to be literally everything—by definition there is nothing separate from it. From strip-mining to socializing, every thing and every action is part of it. Business, culture, nature are all fused into one reality. We breathe it, eat it, are actually made out of it. There are no outlines to be drawn.

Seen from this point of view, we can begin to understand that our debtors’ economy, social issues, and even the wars we fight are all environmental problems. They are signals that the way we interact with capital, with the physical world, and with each other are all in need of sorting out. The same limited thinking that causes environmental devastation also causes social injustice, economic confusion, and widespread isolation. (These destructive thought patterns and how they are changing will be a hot topic here on The Sunny Way in the weeks to come.)

Our saving grace is this: a problem with many facets also offers many solutions, and every small change has an impact on the health of the whole. In this way, improving your relationships and saying “good morning” to your neighbor are eco-friendly choices, which pile up and eventually reveal themselves to be building blocks of a cleaner, friendlier future.

Thinking about the environment in this way, I’ve come to feel that we need a better term to get all this across. Maybe we could replace “the environment” with “everything” ... As in, What are your plans for making “everything” better when you are president, Mr/Ms Candidate? I suppose it works okay, but it lacks a poetic ring.

Could we try “the totality”? In a sample sentence: Wow, rampant consumerism sure has screwed up “the totality.” I do like how it sounds all sci-fi, but people who support “the totality” might have to be called “totalitarians,” and that is not at all what we are going for.

The simplest term—“life”—might turn out to be the best. “Life" must be supported in everything we do.

Can you get behind that slogan? Let us know in the comments.

I am in the midst of my 11th move in the last 12 years. It’s been a fun and crazy 12 years, as your late teens and twenties often are, but I am ready to be settled. This will be the last move for quite a while and Zach and I are very excited. As we box up all our worldly possessions one more time, we have been talking and daydreaming about our life in the new house.

It’s funny how many small details come up in our conversations. “Just think, Stella, you can put a laundry basket right under the laundry chute off the kitchen and finally have a good place to put all those cloth rags,” or “I want to put the bikes somewhere out of the way, but easy to get down so we will actually use them.” “Maybe we should put a little chalkboard or whiteboard in the kitchen to write down stuff we need as we realize it so we don’t have to make so many emergency runs to the store."

We believe that every little action helps, but, like most of us, sometimes we lose focus. One of the big obstacles to living more in line with our values has been organization. I start out with the best of intentions, vowing to bring my stainless steel water bottle, my cloth grocery bags and my travel coffee cup everywhere. I resolve to ride my bike for errands and only use paper towels for really yucky cat or baby messes. Then life intervenes and I am dashing out the door forgetting my water bottle, or taking the car because I’m 5 foot 2 and my bike is hung too high for me to reach, or reaching for a paper towel to clean up a juice spill because I haven’t washed the cloth rags.

I suspect that I’m not alone in being derailed in my efforts to be green by disorganization, so I want to invite you to join me in The Sunny Way Organization Challenge. Spring is a perfect time to do this. It doesn’t have to be big. Maybe you’ll resolve to put the cloth grocery bags back in the car when you’ve unloaded the groceries so you don’t forget them, or maybe you’ll streamline the laundry so it’s easier to line dry it. Whatever it is we want to hear from you. For those of you who are already super-organized, tell us your secrets. I’ll be chronicling my efforts as best I can during the move and I’d love to hear more about yours. We’re all in this together. 

Birthdays are a wonderful rite of passage. The joke in my house is that my birthday lasts the entire month of October, with the exception of the 13th, which is my husband’s birthday. I love a good party. Life is a gift to be celebrated. Eat, drink and be merry, I say.

Still, the reality is that kids birthday parties can easily turn into stressful, bloated affairs. Between the junk food for 20 kids, the disposable, licensed character cups and plates and the blinky-light toys, birthday parties can be more of a paean to the Gods of consumerism than a celebration of the life of a child. The first time I went to Chuck E. Cheese as an adult I felt an immediate urge to call my mother and apologize for ever dragging her there. As long as I can, I am going to try to avoid that kind of birthday party, if only for the sake of my sanity.

Up until this year my kids’ birthday parties have been family affairs. Last year I asked Cheyenne what she wanted for her birthday and she told me, nearly bursting with excitement, “A birthday cake and a birthday hat!” I knew I was getting off easy. This year she has friends and ideas of her own and I can tell we have entered a whole new ballgame. My challenge this year was to come up with a birthday party that was fun, but still as simple and eco-friendly as possible.

After some discussion Cheyenne and I came to an agreement on the theme of Garden Tea Party and a guest list of a few kids. Especially at four years old, I think a small party of children helps to keep things simple and fun. The guest list was small, so I didn’t really bother with formal invitations. I have a casual circle of friends, so e-mails, word of mouth and scraps of paper with my address written down were my preferred means of communication. Little kids really don’t care about the invitations anyway, so why waste the paper?

For the menu I decided to stick with easy, homemade foods. By skimping a little on convenience I could afford to use higher quality organic and local ingredients. Considering there were only six kids, including mine, it wasn’t much trouble. To make the menu more fun, I made everything bite-sized—kids love that. We had bite sized tea sandwiches, cheese and crackers, cookies, banana bread bites, fruit, gingerbread orange tea and bite sized cupcakes with white frosting and sprinkles. We would have had scones with homemade jam, but I forgot they were in the oven. By the time my nose had reminded me they were literally toast. Still, we ended up with a pretty great spread:

I used real plates and cups instead of disposable. I found some old demitasse cups at my parentss house that worked as teacups. We spread a picnic blanket on the floor of the living room and served the kids there, so there wasn’t much chance for them to break anything.

I wanted to come up with party favors that were a little less disposable than the average bag of cheap plastic toys. Since the theme of the party was garden related, I decided we would all plant our own tomatoes or lettuce. I found some white ceramic pots at IKEA for $.50 apiece and bought a package of Early Girl tomato seeds and a package of French-style salad mix seeds.

It was actually above freezing that day, so we bundled up in our coats and headed outside. The kids were really enthusiastic about planting. “So this seed is going to become a tomato? That’s awesome!” Even the little ones were excitedly scooping dirt into their pots. Who doesn’t like playing with dirt? When we were done we wrote each kid’s name on their pot with a dry-erase marker. Here’s the birthday girl with one of her garden tools:

The whole thing cost me about $50. Most importantly, it was a hit. The kids loved the novelty of having something “grown-up” like tea and they really enjoyed the food. Surprisingly, the cucumber sandwiches went as fast as the cupcakes, so I at least feel like the kids got something healthy to eat that day. They had a blast planting their seeds and I felt good about sending them home with something that would remind them of the party for months to come.

Everyone had a lovely time. It wasn’t a big, noisy stress-fest, but a simple celebration of my sweet little girl. The focus was on the people, not the event. I like that. At the end of the day that is what memories are made of. 

Every four years, as potential presidents vie for the support of the electorate, we hear a lot about hope. Candidates wax rhapsodic about it for days on end, and we eat it up with a spoon and a cherry on top.

It’s not surprising. In an increasingly insecure world, hope gives us something to hold on to. We might not be able to see very far into the future, but we can at least hope that it will be good, which makes us feel a little better.

This, of course, is a necessary thing. God only knows where humanity would be if we didn’t have this capacity. In our darkest times, hope keeps us going.

My problem with hope is that, on its own, it’s inherently passive—nice and warm and fluffy, but ineffectual. If we were sitting inside a burning house, hope would have us looking round at each other and saying “I hope the firefighters get here soon” when we could be gathering up the children and pets and getting ourselves out of danger.

Even worse is when hope is an enabler, when it gets pinned like a pathetic little tail on the donkey of postmodern cynicism. When we look at life through a fundamentally pessimistic lens, we are magically relieved of our responsibility to change anything.

Meanwhile, as we bitch and moan about the sad state of things, the state of things gets ever sadder. So do we—cynicism begets more cynicism. And our small allotments of hope just encourage us to wait, blindly, for something better to come along.

One recent example of this dynamic: The Secret. Millions of people saw and read it, hoped for things, then sat on their arses waiting for those things to materialize out of thin air. But—seriously—has anything ever materialized out of thin air? Has any desire come true with absolutely no action on the desirer’s part? Do we really believe that Santa Claus is going to give us everything we hope for, even if Mom and Dad are broke?

This hope-and-wait act is so childish, so rife with dodgy thinking about how things work, it’s no wonder we are cynical.

And what are we waiting for anyway? Who’s going to save us? The government? Global free markets? Barack Obama? Maybe. But in the meantime, we risk a LOT by sitting still. In fact, we risk everything.

We at The Sunny Way hereby propose that all such flaccid waiting and hoping come to a full and complete stop right now. We’d like to add the concepts of action and responsibility to the mix.

Instead of using hope as a band-aid to soothe the sad cockles of our cynical hearts, let’s allow it to illuminate possibilities. Instead of vague optimistic platitudes, let’s make our hopes specific. Let’s imagine a future we can be hopeful about, then actually take responsibility for making it reality.

Hope is a gift, but if we are to succeed, it must be the star we navigate by, not the drink we drown our sorrows in. 

Inspired to daydream by the snowiest Easter I care to remember, I began my community gardening adventure by starting some seeds. I picked the girls’ room at the new house to be my potting shed because until we have entirely moved in it is the least disturbed room in the house. I didn’t involve the kids in this part, mostly because they were so sugared up on Easter candy they couldn’t stay focused long enough to be useful.

I used one of those plastic “greenhouse” seed starter kits. I know, I know. It’s not the most eco-friendly way to start seeds. You’ll have to forgive me. I’m nervous about this gardening thing and the last time I was able to grow some really solid plants from seeds was in elementary school using one of those seedling kits. You have my word. When I get more experience and more confidence at this gardening stuff I will find a better way of starting seeds.

After I had planted the first row I realized that if I didn’t find some way of labeling them I’d never remember which plants were which. I improvised a labeling system using some of my husband’s electrical tape. It comes in several colors to help you to tell electrical wires apart. I taped a different color on each row according to the type of plant and made a key using a sheet of notebook paper.

I planted two rows of a compact sort of tomato I am hoping to grow at the house, two rows of mixed heirloom tomatoes and three rows of mixed bell peppers. I was going to plant the packet of cucumber seeds that I had until I read the seed packet and realized they didn’t need to be started indoors. I was also going to plant the rest of the Early Girl tomatoes we used at my daughter’s birthday party until I realized there were none left.

It’s probably just as well that I was out of the Early Girls as I think I probably have more than enough tomato plants already. Of course I could always give away the extras. That would probably be a nice way of meeting the neighbors I don’t know and reconnecting with the ones I do.

I took a photo of the birthday tomatoes we planted last week. As you can see we have a couple of sprouts. Hopefully that is a sign of things to come.

Half of the greenhouse kit is still empty so sometime this week I am going to take Cheyenne seed shopping. If she’s come down off her sugar high by then I will even let her help me to plant them. Wish us luck!

I recently watched The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard, a 20 minute film about consumerism, its destructive effects, and a little eensy bit at the end about what we can do about it.

It is good—very well thought out and clearly presented. One thing I loved hearing about was how consumerism was designed into our economy as its driving force after World War II. This quote by economist Victor Lebow is astounding:

“Our enormously productive economy ... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption.... we need things consumed, burned up, replaced, and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.”

Too bad Lebow’s predictive powers didn’t follow all the way through to how future generations were supposed to deal with the mess created by this idea ... but I digress.

It seems to me that this film was made to introduce people to the concepts of sustainability, and it mostly does a very good job of that.

But there is a bit in the intro, about 2 minutes in, where Leonard says “The government is there to take care of us. That’s its job.” That statement right there just turned off about a hundred gazillion people, including me. And most of the people who would be turned off by that statement? Are probably the ones who most need to watch the rest of this video, which really is excellent.

There’s also a bit where a diminutive government stick figure shines the shoes of the big fat corporation stick figure in a top hat, which made me giggle, but I’m not sure how many conservative types will stick around after that.

Maybe Leonard doesn’t care, but she should. Isn’t it possible that there are people who identify more with conservative, small-government values but still are interested in a better environmental paradigm? The choir understands the sermon already. It’s time to widen the circle.

Besides turning off non-liberals, I also don’t think it’s particularly useful to cast corporations in the role of villain. We are all in this mess together. Every person and every organization has a contribution to make.

In fact, giant corporations have the biggest potential to turn things around. I and everyone I know can be yurt-living vegans and still never have anywhere near the impact of Wal-Mart increasing the fuel efficiency of their truck fleet by 25%, as they are on track to do by the end of this year. Any solution for our future is going to require the full participation of industry, so why antagonize?

So much environmental rhetoric is full of this venom for corporations. I believe it’s a huge failing on the movement’s part for many reasons, but none more important than this: people do not respond as well to anger as they do to encouragement and inclusion. Ever have a boss who yelled at you vs. a boss who was nice to you? Who did you work harder for?

Corporations are made up of people, and people can be reached if you approach them in a way they can respond to. Accusing them of killing babies is probably not the most effective tactic.

What do you think about The Story of Stuff? Let us know in the comments.

As everything in my apartment is being torn apart and packed into boxes, I have been thinking long and hard about this organization challenge. I’ve decided that for me this is going to boil down to three major points: my habits, arranging my physical space in an efficient way, and getting my family on board.

Adjusting my habits will help keep laziness and poor planning from derailing my efforts. This is a problem for me. When the girls were babies I fell into some bad habits out of exhaustion and they need to be broken.

Arranging my physical space in an efficient way will make it easy to do the things I need to do. Having things laid out poorly wastes time and effort that could probably be spent more efficiently elsewhere.

Getting my family on board is crucial. My girls are old enough to put things away and help with chores. The responsibility is good for them and I have better things to do than pick up their toys all the time or put away clothes they pulled out of the drawer for no reason. Zach is more than willing to help, but when things are disorganized he gets overwhelmed. Having him help with organizing things he uses everyday will make the system work for both of us, not just me.

Deciding which to tackle first feels like a chicken-or-egg sort of question. All of these factors are very much intertwined. I have to start somewhere though and I am starting with my habits. I can’t tackle the new space until my dad has moved out of it and I think the kids have enough on their plate right now just adjusting to the idea of moving.

I’m going to start with three simple things this week.

• First, I am going to make sure I put the cloth grocery bags back in the car when I’m done. This will prevent me from getting to the store and realizing that they are still at home.
• Second, I am going to rinse out my travel coffee mug when I am done with it and stick it directly in the diaper bag so I don’t forget that either. I always have the diaper bag with me, so that should prevent me from forgetting it.
• Third, every time I leave the house to go somewhere I’m going to ask myself if there are any other errands I need to run that are on the way there or back. I got a good start on this today. I planned ahead and did my grocery shopping after work.

How are you doing this week?

I’m pretty sure I went a little overboard buying seeds today. It’s another gloomy early spring day and the garden center had me under its spell—it was like grocery shopping hungry. Also, I had the girls with me and they kept pointing to seed packets and saying things like, “Look, they have purple carrots!” or “Can I plant these pretty flowers?” I don’t even know how big my garden plot is but I splashed out anyway. I did get mostly compact and container-friendly varieties of vegetables, though, so I could always keep some at home.

As I pored over the seed packets I imagined myself in my gardening hat gathering the harvest. I imagined Cheyenne and Isabella eating veggies straight from the plant. I imagined the luscious, amazing meals I would make from the bounty of my garden, and the tranquil peaceful setting the flowers would create on my patio.

Then I got home and all of my insecurity kicked in. I don’t know why, but I am kind of nervous about failing at this. Ever since I was a kid I have wanted to be good at gardening. The Secret Garden was my all-time favorite book when I was younger and I loved to imagine myself as Mary, coaxing things to life and caring for my “bit of earth.” I think I’m afraid I’m going to shatter that daydream or something ridiculous like that. I need to turn off my inner perfectionist on this project and just look at it as an experiment.

When we got home I sorted the seeds by when they needed to be started. The anaheim peppers, black cherry tomatoes (I know, I already said I had too many tomatoes), violas, delphinium and some white flower I got for free needed to be started today. A few others like the zucchini and basil need to be started a few weeks before the last frost and the rest can be planted directly in the ground. I also got some cat grass for the kitties that can be started indoors at any time.

The violas were Cheyenne’s pick. She is obsessed with the color purple. They are an edible flower, which makes me happy. We found a pretty yellow flower pot in the garage and together we planted the seeds. I think the purple flowers will look very cheerful in their yellow pot.

I planted the black cherry tomatoes, anaheim peppers, and delphinium by myself as Cheyenne had run off by then. I used the electrical tape marking system I came up with on Sunday. The white flowers were Bella’s choice so I waited for her to wake up from her nap, then we planted them together.

Finally I planted the cat grass. the package said to plant it in something flat like a bowl, so I dug out an old roasting pan that we found in the garage. I’m not comfortable using it for cooking, but it made a cute container for the cat grass. I considered getting catnip too, but my cat Anakin is a recovering catnip junkie and I was pretty sure it would be destroyed almost immediately.

In case you are curious, here’s a list of the seeds I got that haven’t been mentioned already: Cucumber, Lemon cucumber, Summer squash, Basil, Thai basil, Mesclun, Italian Parsley, Cilantro, Mint, Chives, Two kinds of nasturtiums, Leeks, Snap peas, Carrots, Purple carrots, Daisies, Forget-me-nots, Marigolds—I told you I went nuts!

Some are for the community garden and some are for the house. There are a few more plants I want to get—a type of pumpkin meant for smaller spaces, tomatillos, purple curly leaf basil, chervil, and more flowers and herbs that I won’t know I need until I see them. I’ll probably hit the farmer’s market for some plants later in the spring.

Just try to watch this and not grin:

Like many modern folks, I'm accustomed to seeing perfectly matched eggs. Even the organic eggs that I buy at the supermarket are uniform in size within the box, regardless of slight variations in shell tone. Recently, I decided to switch to shopping at the farmer's market, where I was surprised one day when I passed a booth selling eggs whose size varied among the dozen. I suppose that I had previously assumed that all hens of a certain type always laid identically sized eggs -- i.e., one sort would always lay large, another would always lay extra large, etc. But really, I hadn't thought about it too much. I've never seen a real hen laying real eggs.

I had no idea that hens might lay eggs of varying size. I then leapt to a conclusion that, perhaps, "organic" hens in the "natural" state must lay eggs of wildly varying size, like that ones I saw at the Union Square Greenmarket, in the same way the humans have babies of varying weights. Why were the supermarket eggs all the same size? Does this have something to do with agribusiness? What have we done to our fair chickens?

I shared these thoughts with my father over dinner one night not long afterwards. As I spoke, I saw the fear that he had raised an idiot flash behind his eyes.

"No, Rena," he said gently, "they sort the eggs."

Oh. When I ran this story past other people, including some of the farmers at the greenmarket, they all expressed amusement that I had not known that supermarket eggs achieve their uniformity through presorting. I must have looked like an idiot asking apparently obvious-to-everyone-but-me questions like, "Do different hens within a group lay different sized eggs?"

But seriously, how was I to know? I grew up in the suburbs, live in the city, and have never seen an egg in the nest. Aside from childhood trips to historical reconstructions like Colonial Williamsburg, I've never seen people interacting with live poultry.

I'm just one more urban girl with an imperfect idea of where her food comes from. And maybe, not knowing much about it made a fool out of me. But I'm nothing if not eager to learn. So I took the opportunity to poke around at the farmers' market and educate myself on the various kinds of eggs you might see shopping outside of a supermarket:

1. Chicken eggs are the old familiars. The ones you see in the photographs were purchased at a greenmarket and have bright marigold-yellow yolks.
2. Pullet eggs are smaller, laid by younger hens. They are a fun choice if you're looking for a way to control portion size.
3. Duck eggs are larger than chicken eggs, more oblong in shape, and their shells have a matte, parchment-like tone to them. They have a bright yolk with a more orangey color than you'd see in a chicken egg, and taste oddly egg-ier than chicken eggs. Bakers like to use them because they loft up higher in cakes.
4. The cute kid siblings of the egg world, quail eggs are considered a delicacy, although you might find them too pretty to eat. The insides of the shells are pale blue, and the outsides are speckled. Some confectioner's shops sell chocolate imitations, but there's really no risk of confusion.

Please rest assumed that every delicious egg in the photos was eaten. Yes, I had fun playing with my breakfast food all week.

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.

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? 

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 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 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. 

(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. 

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:

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.

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?

(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

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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.)