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Category: Trends

movements, viral ideas, works with impact and meaning, creative results and change from businesses and science

jars of seeds
HELP SEEDS FULFILL THEIR PROMISE

HELP SEEDS FULFILL THEIR PROMISE

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One of my favorite quotes about seeds comes from writer-filmmaker-cum-social entrepreneur Kenny Ausubel who co-founded Seeds of Change with his wife Nina Simon in 1989.  The seed- growing company’s mission, “to restore ‘backyard diversity’ into the food web through marketing organic, biodiverse heirloom seeds to gardeners,” continues to this day. Around the same time that Ausubel was doing that, he was also helping to put together Bioneers, a non-profit group that holds an annual conference which, it says here, functions…

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LEGACY-SCHMEGACY, KEEP ON WALKING

LEGACY-SCHMEGACY, KEEP ON WALKING

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Lately I keep tripping over people who are either “building a legacy” or are trying to convince me that I should be doing one too.  It’s beginning to make me all kinds of grumpy. These strangers are telling me that my life will only have “meaning” if I do stuff that will somehow “impact the future” after I’m long-gone.  That one makes me scratch my head.   It’s even a bit intimidating. Me, I’m still walking towards my dream and I’m…

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rooster on a table
LET THERE BE LIGHT (The Power of Small)

LET THERE BE LIGHT (The Power of Small)

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Very often it is the little things that make a big difference in lives that are lived on the edge. In poorer parts of a city, where people’s homes often do not have access to reliable electrical service and where windows that let in light might be a bad idea in terms of home security, people either spend a lot of time outside their unlighted homes or use open fires, candles or oil lamps as light sources.  These can be…

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light-is-good
BEYOND STUFF-LOVE (PART 5): Lifestyle

BEYOND STUFF-LOVE (PART 5): Lifestyle

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[Writer’s Note:  This post was written at the height of the Bitcoin madness, before it imploded and left gaping holes all over the place.  It seems to me that I’m not the only one who got confused by the Bitcoin virtual world.  Makes me feel less stupid, that.] ACK!  I’ve been wandering around, lost, in the Bitcoin virtual currency world these past few weeks in (another) failed attempt to understand what the heck is going on with that. I chose…

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towards
A MASTER’S JOURNEY: Jim Olson

A MASTER’S JOURNEY: Jim Olson

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The process-oriented mindset is one of several styles of moving to the beat of your own passion.  Another name for it is “mastery.” One of the best breakdowns of the requirements and outcomes of pursuing “mastery” is the one the celebrated art curator Sarah Lewis delineates in her book, THE RISE:  Creativity, the Gift of Failure and the Search for Mastery. This 2014 book is a fascinating exploration of the constant pursuit of excellence that is pretty much what distinguishes…

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in-praise-of-slow
THE BIG S.L.O.W.

THE BIG S.L.O.W.

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For years now, I’ve heard about the “Slow Movement.”  The ideals of keeping to a human pace, puzzling out and enjoying inherent creative processes, caring about human interactions and needs, and savoring life’s little moments one by one have always resonated with me. But, hey…I’ve been busy!  As the consensus-world kept picking up speed and going hyper, all kinds of interesting things were popping.  The razzle-dazzle got brighter, and the pyrotechnics were grand. Busy, busy, busy was the order of…

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giving-wings-to-the-dream
WALK LIKE A “BESTOWER”

WALK LIKE A “BESTOWER”

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Nipun Mehta walks his talk. He’s been doing it for over 20 years now and his walk has been highly successful at helping other people walk theirs. Mehta was a UC Berkeley computer nerd and a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who witnessed and participated in the peak of the DotCom madness.  By the time he was in his third year at UC Berkeley, he was at Sun Microsystems doing work that gave him what he says was more money than he…

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my-yard-in-the-morning
DO WHAT YOU CAN

DO WHAT YOU CAN

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In the spring of 2020, world paradigms changed. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared that the Novel Coronavirus Disease, Covid-19, was a pandemic. This came after China reported in December, 2019 that there had been more than one instance of a weird life-threatening respiratory illness in Wuhan, the capital and major industrial and commercial center in Hubei province. The health-care professionals at WHO watched how the new disease spread and the effects it had on…

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guerilla-garden-and-tv
THE BEAUTY REBELLION (Guerilla Gardening)

THE BEAUTY REBELLION (Guerilla Gardening)

Comments 14 comments

It is heartening for me to see the world-wide burgeoning of another sort of rebellion against the very real effects of the post-modern aftermath of our narcissistic phase of dominion and domination over nature, where we humans felt entitled to willy-nilly pave over the world and dump our stuff all over the place to make yet another ugly. They call it “guerilla gardening” and it continues to expand all over the globe.

turning-on
MULTIPLY THE FUN (An Un-Seeing Exercise)

MULTIPLY THE FUN (An Un-Seeing Exercise)

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Consistently over the years, assorted research has shown that job dissatisfaction is a problem for about two-thirds of the people in America. This “disengagement” has wide-ranging effects.  Gallup tells us that this job irritant issue has cost as much as $350 billion a year in “lost productivity.” (It can also suck a soul dry, and turn your life into a desert, but nobody scientific ever mentions that.)