"begin quote How much could you live without? In upscale Mill Valley, Calif., a family of four lives in a stylish home with modern amenities but with only a tiny bit of something else: trash. It throws away only a few HANDFULS of non-recyclable waste each year.
The Johnson family doesn't buy and keep unnecessary stuff, and most of what it purchases has either recyclable wrapping or no packaging at all. They take their own jars and containers as well as canvas totes to grocery stores and farmers' markets.
"The less I have, the richer I feel. Stuff weighs you down," Bea Johnson tells Sunset magazine in its January edition. "When we started getting rid of things, it was kind of addictive," she continues. "In a recession, people are inclined to keep things, but I feel the opposite."
Bea and Scott Johnson are among a growing number of Americans trying to lighten their landfill load in a country where the average person generates 4.5 pounds of trash each day. Another example is Amy and Adam Korst, a young married Oregon couple that lived almost entirely trash-free for a year. "It was actually a lot easier than we expected," Amy Korst told Green House.
"There's a huge amount of grass-roots efforts to change how we live," sasys Colin Beavan, who launched the No Impact Project after his family spent a year trying to live without using any power or generating any trash in Manhattan. He wrote a book about it.
The Johnsons started their quest three years ago when they downsized from a 3,000-square-foot home to their current 1,400 square feet, reports Sunset. Béa Johnson said a neighbor called their uncluttered home "futuristic and alien-like" and, peering into closets, asked: "Where's all your stuff?" She offers tips for living simply on her blog, and here are a few as excerpted from Sunset:
•The Johnsons go to the grocery store with their own jars and buy bulk snacks and other pantry supplies. "Some of the kids' friends came over recently and said, 'You have no food here,' " says Béa. "They didn't recognize this as food since there weren't any boxes."
•The family shops with glass jars, fabric bags, and canvas totes, and returns containers for a deposit. Even cheese and meat go in jars. Cheese is purchased when it is cut, to avoid plastic wrap.
•Clean up is done with microfiber cloths. "People are really attached to paper towels," Béa says. "But they're the easiest thing to give up."
•In the playroom there are four bins of toys. The rule is simple: If the boys want something new to them, it needs to fit in the bins.
•One medicine cabinet in the bathroom holds toiletries for the entire family... Béa uses only four beauty products: face powder, eye cream, mascara, and eyeliner....The family uses no Q-tips, cotton balls, or tissue (handkerchiefs sub in here). Toilet paper rolls come wrapped in paper, not plastic.
•The house closets are enviable for their lack of clutter. Shopping is done only twice a year at a thrift store and replaces items that are stained, worn, or outgrown.... Everyone has a set number of items. For example, Béa caps out at 6 pairs of shoes, 7 tops, 7 pants, and 2 skirts (1 also wearable as a top).
CAPTION:Bea Johnson cooks every day, but their kitchen in Mill Valley, California, looks uncluttered. She keeps only utensils and equipment she uses frequently. Photo by Thomas J. Story/Sunset
CAPTION:Bea and Scott Johnson, along with their two sons, live so simply in upscale Mill Valley, Calif., that their 1,400 square-foot home is uncluttered as is their nearly-empty garage. Photo by Thomas J. Story/ SunsetCAPTION:Amy and Adam Korst, who began a one-year experiment to live trash free on July 6, 2009, have only a few unrecycled scraps in a box one month into their Green Garbage Project. Photo by Adam KorstCAPTION: Bea Johnson brings her own glass jars and other containers and fills them with bulk foods at the grocery store. Photo by Thomas J. Story/Sunset
"Whatever it was that happened out there under the lights, it mostly came from God, and I was just a place along the line He was moving on." -Nina Simone
Nina Simone was an unstoppable force against racism. She sang and played with soul, but also with the great classical technique of European composers such as Bach. As such, her message could not be denied. I believe the world needed her at that time, and she was carried along in that wave, but with great sacrifice of her personal life.
I just read Nina Simone's autobiography, I put a spell on you. I have always loved her music since I stumbled across it in my teenage years, who knows how, for its great emotion, starting off with Wild is the Wind. I still find her music a constant source of inspiration, and listen to it often, especially to her Live Euro Concerts recordings. There has been so much I've picked up over the years about her life - even just to clear up the confusion of looking through her discography, all the albums she has recorded at various times - I just really wanted to know all about her actual life.
She wrote her autobiography with honesty, and also with her great control and artistry in telling her story. I have really gained an understanding. I found it fascinating how she grew up, that she was a child prodigy, playing for church revivals from the age of six, and how her community supported her. America was divided into black and white at that time. Her destiny was influenced by that fact. Instead of becoming America's first black concert pianist, as her mother wanted, although she did train classically and have that dream, she ended up becoming a voice of change, with a gift and classical background that was impossible to deny. Although she had prodigious talent, the musical institute had never had a black student, let alone a black female student. She was turned down for full scholarship (necessary since she did not have wealth). She ended up singing in a club for money, although her minister mother would never have approved. She was a classical pianist (who had played gospel and church songs growing up) who ended up singing to support herself, and after gaining fame, turned her talent into a weapon to fight for civil rights. I'll post a video of Mississippi Goddam, a song I enjoyed for a long time just for its energy before actually understanding what it was about. It was the first song she wrote for civil rights, which she wrote in a flood of emotion after hearing of black children being blown up in a church in Alabama, and a few other similar events that tipped her over.
I would like to post an excerpt that I find personally fascinating from her autobiography. From I put a spell on you, by Nina Simone (with Stephen Cleary), Ebury Press: 1991, page 91-94:
"After the murder of Medgar Evers, the Alabama bombing and 'Mississippi Goddam' the entire direction of my life shifted, and for the next seven years I was driven by civil rights and the hope of black revolution. I was proud of what I was doing and proud to be part of a movement that was changing history. It made what I did for a living something much more worthwhile. I had started singing because it was a way of earning more money; then fame came along and I began to enjoy the trappings of success, but after a while even they weren't enough, and I got my fulfillment outside of music - from my husband, my daughter, my home. That changed when I started singing for the movement because I justified what I was doing to myself and to the world outside, I could finally answer Momma's great unasked question, 'Why do you sing out in the world when you could be praising God?'
"I needed to be able to answer that question because, although being a performing artist sounded like something grand and wonderful, up to then it felt like just another job. I didn't feel like an 'artist' because the music I played, to which I dedicated my artistry, was so inferior. That was why I put as much of my classical background as I could into the songs I performed and the music I recorded, to give it at least some depth and quality. The world of popular music was nothing compared to the classical world: you didn't have to work as hard, the audiences were too easily pleased, and all they were interested in was the delivery of the lyrics. It seemed like a nothing world to me, and I didn't have much respect for popular audiences because they were so musically ignorant.
"As I became more involved in the movement this attitude I had towards my audiences changed, because I admired what they were achieving for my people so much that the level of their musical education didn't come into it anymore. They gave me respect too, not only for my music - which they loved - but because they understood the stand I was making. They knew I was making sacrifices and running risks just like they were, and we were all in it together. Being a part of this struggle made me feel so good. My music was dedicated to a purpose more important than classical music's pursuit of excellence; it was dedicated to the fight for freedom and the historical destiny of my people. I felt a fierce pride when I thought about what we were all doing together. So if the movement gave me nothing else, it gave me self-respect.
"It was at this time, in the mid-sixties, that I first began to feel the power and spirituality I could connect with when I played in front of an audience. I'd been performing for ten years, but it was only at this time that I felt a kind of state of grace come upon me on those occasions when everything fell into place. At such times I would give a concert that everyone who witnessed it would remember for years, and they would go home afterwards knowing that something very special had happened.
"Those moments are very difficult for a performer to explain. It's like being transported in church; something descends upon you and you are gone, taken away by a spirit that is outside of you. I can only think of one comparison: I went to a bullfight in Barcelona once, not knowing what to expect. I sat in the sun drinking vodka waiting for it to begin and when they got the bull out and killed him I threw up from the mixture of alcohol and shock. It was a Sunday afternoon blood-letting, a real blood-letting. Back in Tryon at revival time people would 'come through' and shout, carry on and foam at the mouth. We'd call it 'blood-letting' but it wasn't - not real blood-letting like it was that Sunday afternoon. I realized then that Spanish people were not much different from black people in America in the Holy Roller Church, and the songs performed by the flamenco musicians were similar to those performed by my people in churches in the black south - all rhythm and emotion. The only difference was they actually killed the bull in Spain, whereas in America they had revival meetings where the death and sacrifice were only symbolic. But it was the same thing, the same sense of being transformed, of celebrating something deep, something very deep. That's what I learned about performing - that it was real, and I had the ability to make people feel on a deep level. It's difficult to describe because it's not something you can analyze; to get near what it's about you have to play it.
"And when you've caught it, when you've got the audience hooked, you always know because it's like electricity hanging in the air. I began to feel it happening and it seemed to me like mass hypnosis - like I was hypnotizing an entire audience to feel a certain way. I was the toreador mesmerizing this bull and I could turn around and walk away, turning my back on this huge animal which I knew would do nothing because I had it under my complete control. And like they did with the toreadors, people came to see me because they knew I was playing close to the edge and one day I might fail. This was how I got my reputation as a live performer, because I went out from the mid-sixties onwards determined to get every audience to enjoy my concerts the way I wanted to, and if they resisted at first I had all the tricks to bewitch them with.
"I know it all sounds a little Californian and wired, but it wasn't like that at all: I had technique, and I used it. To cast the spell over an audience I would start with a song to create a certain mood which I carried into the next song and then on through into the third, until I created a certain climax of feeling and by then they would be hypnotized. To check, I'd stop and do nothing for a moment and I'd hear absolute silence: I'd got them. It was always an uncanny moment. It was as if there was a power source somewhere that we all plugged into, and the bigger the audience the easier it was - as if each person supplied a certain amount of the power. As I moved on from clubs into bigger halls I learned to prepare myself thoroughly: I'd go to the empty hall in the afternoon and walk around to see where the people were sitting, how close they'd be to me at the front and how far away at the back, whether the seats got closer together or further apart, how big the stage was, how the lights were positioned, where the microphones were going to hit - everything. I was especially careful of microphones, taking the trouble to find one that worked for me and throwing away those that didn't. So by the time I got on stage I knew exactly what I was doing.
"Before important concerts I would practise alone for hours at a time, so long sometimes that my arms would seize up completely. There was one period when I was so dissatisfied with drummers that I decided not to use them anymore. So I sat down for days and trained my left hand like a drum; just as I mastered it my arm went paralyzed from all the work it had done. Other times I'd fall asleep at the piano and Andy would have to come and put me to bed. I made sure the musicians in my bands understood the way I was likely to go on stage. My ideal musician was Al Schackman, but there were others who were almost as wonderful - and those that weren't got fired from day one. My bands knew the repertoire of songs I would choose from, but I never gave them a set list until the very last minute - sometimes as we walked out on stage - because the songs I played each night depended on the mood I caught from the audience, the hall and my preparations through the day. When I walked out to play I was super-sensitive and, whilst aware of the crowd, tried to play for myself, have a good time and hope the audience would get pulled into that, as if - like my musicians - they were an extension of me for the time the concert lasted.
"The saddest part of performing was - and still is - that it didn't mean anything once you were off stage. I never felt proud of being a performer or got vain about it, because it mostly came naturally and I didn't feel I completely understood or controlled what happened on stage anyhow. I did my preparations as carefully as possible in order to set the scene, but having done that the rest was difficult to predict. I knew which songs to play, and in what order, but the difference between a good professional show and a great show, one where I would get lost in the music, was impossible to know. It just happened. Whatever it was that happened out there under the lights, it mostly came from God, and I was just a place along the line He was moving on.[my bolding] With civil rights I played on stage for a reason, and when I walked off stage those reasons still existed - they didn't fade away with the applause; and there were always new ideas to discuss, articles to read, speakers to listen to and songs to write. For the first time performing made sense as a part of my life - it was no longer that strange and wonderful two hours out front which only depressed you more when you got back to the dressing room and stared at the paint peeling off the walls and wondered if you'd get any sleep that night."
Look her up on iTunes! Don't miss:
Four Women (Four Women: The Nina Simone Philips Recordings) To be Young, Gifted and Black (The Very Best of Nina Simone) Mississippi Goddam (Four Women: The Nina Simone Philips Recordings) Medley: Moon of Alabama / In Childhood's Bright Endeavour (Live Euro Concerts) Ain't Got No / I got Life (Live Euro Concerts) My Baby Just Cares for Me (Live Euro Concerts) Revolution (Live Euro Concerts) Who Am I (Live Euro Concerts) Compensation (Live Euro Concerts) Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (Live Euro Concerts)
Relayed at http://www.care2.com/causes/global-warming/blog/empire-state-building-will-use-100-percent-renewable-energy/
...and reproduced here!
Article follows:
Caretakers of the Empire State Building announced that the architectural icon recently set a new standard for excellence by becoming the largest commercial purchaser of renewable power in the state.
According to the New York Times, the Empire State Building will purchase over 50 million kilowatt-hours worth of renewable energy certificates annually — enough to cover its yearly electricity consumption.
The two-year renewable energy contract was purchased from carbon offset retailer Green Mountain Energy Company (recently acquired by NRG Energy New Jersey), and will be sourced through wind power facilities.
The iconic building occupies about 2.85 million square feet and is estimated to use approximately 55 million kilowatt-hours of energy each year (Seer Press). By offsetting all of its electricity consumption, the Empire State Building will avoid 100 million pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
That's the equivalent of:
•Nearly every house in New York State turning off all their lights for a week;
•Taking approximately 40 million fewer cab rides; or
•Planting nearly 150,000 trees--more than 6 times the number of trees in Central Park.
In July 2010, the Empire State Building unveiled a $2 million interactive, multi-media sustainability exhibit at the second floor visitor's center, which showcases a $20 million energy retrofit project aimed at educating the millions of people who visit the building every year on the positive global impact of both energy-efficient building and sustainable living practices.
"It was a natural fit for us to combine 100% clean energy with our nearly completed, ground breaking energy efficiency retrofit work,” said Anthony E. Malkin, president of Malkin Holdings which supervises the Empire State Building.
"Clean energy and our nearly 40 percent reduced consumption of watts and BTUs gives us a competitive advantage in attracting the best credit tenants at the best rents," Malkin continued.
"Our program of innovation at the Empire State Building shows simple, replicable, non-proprietary steps for other landlords to follow to be more energy efficient, cleaner and greener."
Powhatan women of the "new world" are represented as real women.
This is a National Geographic documentary. I found it at my suberb local video store, it orders in all kinds of TV shows. This is, in short, the true story of the settlement of the Americas, as only now is our culture ready to hear it. I want to hear it! I am the descendant of those who descended into America and Canada. I remember hearing in primary school about how my people killed all the buffalo, some just shot them from trains for "sport".
England at this time is a land tightly coiled with energy, becoming literate, and running out of land. Only the nobles own land, and most people are peasants that work the land, but can't own their own land. Only nobles go hunting for sport. Most of the forest has been cut down to use the wood and free up land. The rivers are now muddy and slow-moving because of all the runoff from farming. They used to flow quickly, and were full of fish. Eventually they were overfished and the people had to turn to the sea for fish for the first time, as they'd killed the freshwater resource. The largest difference which influenced the development of the people in Europe is that the Europeans have the big 5 domesticated animals, animals which happened to be very useful to us due to their natures: horses, pigs, cows, sheep, and goats. The heavy horses and cattle can help plow fields, and also help fields be more productive with their manure.
Anyways, there is alot of info that we don't commonly know, such as that the pigs that the Spanish brought with them when they arrived in the Americas became a major pest, eating the corn that the natives to America were planting in their fields. The Americas were so full of resources, the rivers were described as being more full of fish than water. In America, there was so much space that the animals there roamed in vast herds, and the people there would hunt the buffalo and it gave them all that they needed. But they did burn back forest to create even more rich grassland so the buffalo would "come to them". All the landscape in North America and south America was managed. It's fascinating to see all these civilizations enacted. It's done so well, with actors, giving you a glimpse of life here and there, contrasting, helping you understand who the people actually were for the first time. But even just knowing that the tomato, potato, the turkey, and so on were cultivated in South America over many years, is something we are all not really aware of. They contast visuals of the foods of each people, it's so cool. This is where we have come from.
An amazing graphic that stood out to me, was the "tree-falling" graphic. In Europe, they show the huge area of forest that is felled by people by speeding along a map, and trees falling down domino style as you speed along. This is our way of life. We needed wood for everything. When we got to the Americas, North America especially, we just went nuts there too. We exported wood for money, and again they show the swath of tree falling, over a huge area of the map.
It was interesting too, how we went over to North America, and lived in the fortified villages, stakes all around their villages for protection. Our cattle replaced the buffalo. We came there and took over their landscape with our own. We transplanted apple trees. Biological domination. We wouldn't have been able to take over if it weren't for the accidental destructiveness of the pigs we brought, and the microbes we brought like smallpox, that killed most people. Civilizations of people that had been living for so long, with the ways they had found on both continents, wiped out. They showed the European people, families who never could have owned their own land in Europe, especially in England, boating down the rivers of the New World in wooden boats. My favourite thing though is how they showed the native people, as people. Women laughing and talking. Perhaps we are far away enough from our domination of the New World, that our culture can admit to it. And now we are facing the evil of our own ways-- not to be too dramatic, but we lived unsustainably where we came from, and now we have used up the great bounty of this place. There is no new place to turn. We have to change.
My special Christmas gift for my daughter. The base was made from a pair of pants. I cut out the crotch for her head to go through, and then cut away more of the pants, tailoring it to fit her. It works really well, as there is room for her to extend her arms up as far as she likes - the pants would just be in their natural orientation. The feather rows are cut from felt, as it doesn't fray. It's tied on in front, like a jacket - I used a red wide shoelace.
Underneath she holds onto knitting needles to extend the wings, the blunt ball ends at the wingtips so she doesn't injure anyone when she's playing. They are handsewn into the costume, around the ball ends, so they don't fall out.
Japanese company Blest headed by Akinori Ito has created a machine which can return plastic rubbish back into its original form-- oil. Several are in use, and his team travels around the world to show the machine in action.
I've always thought that you can't have highly specialized technological methods for production but then just throw those products in a hole in the ground. If we want to create highly technical products that don't bio-degrade, then we have to use the same amount of care in its disposal.
First image:I painted a Watty Piper illustration on Lucan's pillowcase. Shane and Savannah got into it as well, and we painted pictures that suited each person, which was really cool. Making stuff created the best Christmas.
Second image: Savannah's painting for Lucan, characterizing him as this manga monster character by Christopher Hart.
Third image: Savannah's t-shirt design (appliqued) for her Dad, the "Tru-be"s. Apparently they are in a league of their own.
Fourth image: Troy's painting of a parrot for Daddy.
Fifth image: One of two marble race designs I made for Lucan. This one uses aluminum channels which velcro to a board (cheaper than magnets). (The other one is just narrow PVC pipes which fit into joins.
And so on...
CAPTION: Bea Johnson cooks every day, but their kitchen in Mill Valley, California, looks uncluttered. She keeps only utensils and equipment she uses frequently. Photo by Thomas J. Story/Sunset 
CAPTION: Bea and Scott Johnson, along with their two sons, live so simply in upscale Mill Valley, Calif., that their 1,400 square-foot home is uncluttered as is their nearly-empty garage. Photo by Thomas J. Story/ Sunset
CAPTION: Amy and Adam Korst, who began a one-year experiment to live trash free on July 6, 2009, have only a few unrecycled scraps in a box one month into their Green Garbage Project. Photo by Adam Korst
CAPTION: Bea Johnson brings her own glass jars and other containers and fills them with bulk foods at the grocery store. Photo by Thomas J. Story/Sunset 
Powhatan women of the "new world" are represented as real women.
Underneath she holds onto knitting needles to extend the wings, the blunt ball ends at the wingtips so she doesn't injure anyone when she's playing. They are handsewn into the costume, around the ball ends, so they don't fall out.
