Tip for folding shirts in 2 seconds
I saw this quirky video, tried it and like it. Truly, 2 seconds to fold a shirt.
Annie Leonard: Stay home on Black Friday
Annie Leonard ("The Story of Stuff") urges us to stay home on Black Friday, offering us some stunning images in this one-minute video: What else is there to do? Fifty years ago, people would have thought you were an idiot to even ask this question. Although I have NEVER shopped on Black Friday, I signed Annie Leonard's Pledge.
People actually moved their money
A couple years ago, in response to Arianna Huffington's "Move your Money" campaign, I moved my money from a regional bank to a non-profit credit union. I wasn't alone, as the Guardian reports:
In the US . . . from the start of 2009 to mid-2010, 1.5 million members joined credit unions in a year – the number of new members usually expected in a 14-year period. When you examine how credit unions works, it's easy to see why. Unlike big banks, credit unions don't engage in any form of casino finance. When you deposit money into a credit union account, it isn't invested anywhere or gambled in any way. The only time it is used by the credit union is when it is loaned to other account holders; and even then it is guaranteed by an FSA scheme, meaning that it won't be lost if the loan repayments aren't met. Those who join credit unions are not customers, but members – like a co-operative.
How to make an island
Do you need to get away from it all? Do you crave an island of your own? Richie Sowa was in that position. Rather than find an island or buy one, he decided to make his own. The foundation of his island is consists of empty plastic water bottles. Sowa is now growing his own bananas, coconuts, spinach, almonds and tomatoes. In the video below, he says that he has everything he wants. Although his island is currently in Mexico, he plans to keep increasing the size of the island, until he sets out to sea.
We are moving from the few and big to the small and many
At Orion Magazine, Bill McKibben has noted a trend in energy production, information, health care, banking and (believe it or not) farming:
[W]e’re moving, if we’re lucky, from the world of few and big to the world of small and many. We’ll either head there purposefully or we’ll be dragged kicking, but we’ve reached one of those moments when tides reverse.This movement to the small and many is a democratic movement, and McKibben's comment about the "tides revering" refers to the fact that "small and many" will be resisted by those who can profit by confiscating and retaining large-scale control:
In our world, most of those people are not actually persons—we call them corporations. But their power over our democracy is very real, and on the farm and on the trading floor and in the hospital ward they’re doing their very best to block the transitions we need. Their money, earned under the old bigger-is-better paradigm, gives them great power to block change: just look at how skillfully the fossil fuel industry has used the Tea Party to stifle legislation that would speed the transition to renewable energy. Watch Big Ag write the next Farm Bill—it won’t be pretty.