On the About Us page of this website, I mentioned in passing that my husband Kelly and I had lived at Sunshine Camp in Forestville, CA, in an intentional community with other family members. I don’t know why I happened to mention it, but that brief reference led to a fascinating communication. I do love how the internet brings people together!

Here is what happened: a few weeks ago, I got an email from a man named Dan Philipps, who described himself as a genealogist by hobby. He had come to that About Us page while searching for Sunshine Camp in Forestville. As he wrote me:

In the 1930s my grandfather’s cousin (Rev. Charles Philipps) was the Catholic priest and pastor of Saint Sebastian’s in Sebastopol. Somewhere during that time he obtained via foreclosure the property that became Sunshine Camp. From the 1930s to 1958  he ran the camp and each summer would bring children from the poorer areas of Oakland and San Francisco for camps on the Russian River. Read the rest >>>

You can have a wonderful wedding, full of joy and love, for very low cost and in a very eco-friendly manner. I know, because my husband Kelly and I did it. It takes some planning, but it’s well worth it.

First, decide how many people you want to have at the actual ceremony. One way to save is to have a small wedding. You could have the ceremony privately and have a big party or reception that evening or a few days later.

We wanted to have many family members and friends with us when we exchanged vows, and we ended up with 135 guests. We found a place to hold the wedding that cost nothing, and I suggest you do the same or at least find a low-cost spot. If you want to be a in a church, the charge can range from free (especially if you are a member) to many thousands of dollars. According to the Bridal Association of America, the average cost for a wedding location is $435. Read the rest >>>

Does the the state of the world  get you down? Do you worry about the future of our children and grandchildren? For me, yes and yes… That’s why I was so delighted to discover the existence of this book:  Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World
I’ve been a fan of Paul Hawken’s for decades now, but I didn’t know that grace, justice, and beauty WERE being restored to the world on the scale that he describes. Here is the blurb about the book:

One of the world’s most influential environmentalists reveals a worldwide grassroots movement of hope and humanity Read the rest >>>

We recently visited an intentional community here in Mexico, less than two hours from where we live. Some Mexican friends of ours from Guadalajara had been looking for the right place to move to, and this place was it. It has over twenty families, living in regular houses. Each family seems to own its own place; our friends were renting a rather simple and very nice house, and had just purchased land within the community to build their own.

This couple invited us to visit on a recent Sunday, and I’m so glad we went. (We are currently living in Mexico, by Lake Chapala.)

“To live ecologically is important,” said our friend Sandro over lunch. (We spoke mostly in Spanish, with a bit of English here and there.)  “But it’s not everything. There is spirituality. ” I was in agreement. “And you must have tradition,” he finished.

I wondered how many Americans would have added tradition, but it’s at the very heart of the success of this Mexican community, now over 25 years old.  Teopantli Kalpulli  is out several miles on a narrow, dusty dirt road from what appeared to be an ordinary semi-rural Mexican town, which our friends said was about an hour from the edge of Guadalajara. Read the rest >>>

Do you have a sense of community in your life? It could take many forms. It could be knowing your neighbors and stopping to chat while walking the dog. It could be through a church or other faith-based connection. It could be through knowing other parents  if you have kids. It could be… fill in your own ways.

Of course, people vary in how important community is to them. It’s very important to me, partly because of my particular personality and also because I think community is an important element of living well in this world. Read the rest >>>

You may not have heard of the Transition Towns movement, but chances are you’ve heard of survivalists. What really are these two groups and how might it matter to your life?

Transition Towns are spreading throughout the world… that link takes you to an informative website about them, and I blogged about transition towns, with more links, recently. In a nutshell, transition towns (or cities, or islands, or whatever) come about when a group of people in a community get together to explore what can be done there as preparation for a world with less oil and different climates. This is a new but very vital movement and clearly one whose time has come!

I’ve been reading some about this movement, and late last night I happened to surf my way to the site for the United States transition movement: http://transitionus.ning.com/ Read the rest >>>