Archive for April, 2008

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Simple living is a lot of fun.

I don’t think this aspect occurs to people until they have been involved in simple living for a while. Admittedly, going around changing all your light bulbs may not be the most fun you’ve had this week. It has its own rewards, of course, but fun isn’t the main one.
Personally, I like simple living because with fewer possessions and a smaller home to take care of, with a less hectic lifestyle, I have more time.

• More time to write — and for me, a day when I don’t get around to writing is a day with less life in it.
• More time to do my yoga stretches, morning walk, and prayer / meditation.
• More time to play badminton with my husband, in the evening just after the sun goes off the badminton setup in our yard.
• More time to really enjoy my friends… when they slow down enough!
• More time on the phone with my favorite family members, who live thousands of miles away.
• More time to cook from scratch.

More time, more fun…. and the simple green living lifestyle is better for our world.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, her husband and her daughter Camille, is an enjoyable account of a year in the life of this famous novelist and her family, beginning as they leave Arizona for the southern Appalacian mountains of Virginia. They are going to a region where they have family, but even more importantly, to a place where it is possible to grow your own food.

Their concept is to only eat locally for a year.

I found the book fascinating and inspiring. Kingsolver’s ability to write makes me splutter with jealousy.

The book combines information about how food is grown and marketed with their experiences.

And here it is as an ebook

click on eBook

Kingsolver, Barbara – Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Simple living, green living… would you like to do more? Want to live more ecologically, more in harmony with nature?

There are so many things that you can do to change your lifestyle, a little bit… or a lot…

Anything you do helps us all. As modern physics shows us, we are all far more deeply interconnected than we have realized.

You may be — as I have been — overwhelmed or angry or not sure what matters the most. The purpose of this site is to help you choose what you can do to live more simply, what actions of yours can have the greatest beneficial effect on the planet.

It isn’t always what you think it will be. There are a lot of stereotypes and misconceptions out there. For example, recycling trash is certainly worthwhile but it is not going to save the planet. On the other hand, I think the world needs much more reasonable dialogue about how many children to have, if any.

The simple living movement has been around for decades, also often known as voluntary simplicity. The green component has always been there, but now many people who might not be drawn to simple living itself do care about green living.

Simple living, green living… not identical, but mostly overlapping. I write about both.

My husband Kelly and our close friend Peter Rice, with some help from me, built an earthbag home in Crestone, Colorado. We used thousands of bags meant to hold rice but they had been misprinted and we got them as seconds. Into them we put scoria — small volcanic rocks commonly used on lawns in dry climates. They are great insulation. We plastered the house, inside and out, with papercrete, Read the rest of this entry »

This website got started several years ago, but I never did much with it. I think I felt too discouraged about the number of people who really care about making a difference to the planet.

Now, thanks to Al Gore, Hurricane Katrina, and countless other people and events, more and more people are waking up to the reality that humanity has already had massive effects on the planet, effects that will continue through our lifetimes and those of the generations after us.

It can be overwhelming.

It can be maddening.

But each of us CAN do things that will make a difference to our effect on the planet. We can do them sooner or we will be forced to do them later, when our choices will be fewer.

This website about about “living simply that others may simply live” — with a green twist.

I may be angry at times, I may be very sad at times, and mostly I expect to be informative. I hope it helps you.