Anagain, Inc.

Weekly Greens – Sept 3rd

Tara — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:31:06 +0000

Image by Joel Bedford It’s been an interesting week…from the oil rig explosion in the Gulf to the mid-week events at the Discovery Channel (thankfully in both cases the workers were okay) and more. Now while I won’t be able to cover or recap everything that happened during the past week, I hope you enjoy [...]

Quick Green Reads For The Weekend Volume 181

david — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:30:07 +0000

If you live in San Francisco and are into green design, you may want to check out West Coast Green between September 30 – October 2 at Fort Mason Center. My friend Michelle Kaufmann is on the The Future of Prefab panel, which you should definitely make a point of being at. Wish I could be there! On to the Reads…

If some sort of natural disaster or terrorist attack were to shut down New York City’s food supply chain, our supermarket shelves would reportedly be picked clean within three days. Other U.S. cities aren’t any better prepared for such emergencies, thanks to our fuelish dependence on a globalized food system.

One of the most beneficial and fun ways to save on gasoline, even skip gasoline if you so choose, is by pedal power! If you haven’t noticed, bike riding has made a big comeback in the last few years. Business men and women are riding bikes to work, families are spending quality time going for bike rides, people are riding their bikes for exercise, kids are riding their bikes to/from school and more.

The Greenpeace ship Esperanza is in the Arctic to protest Cairn Energy’s drilling here. At dawn Greenpeace activists left the Esperanza aboard inflatables, successfully evaded the Danish Navy, and scaled the Stena Don drilling rig. Four climbers are currently occupying the rig, halting the drilling operation.

I tried to stay quiet and hoped that if I closed my eyes long enough, this whole “Ground-Zero Mosque” controversy would blow over. It hasn’t. In fact, all the fuss and controversy over this “mosque” has risen to such ridiculous and offensive levels that I can no longer endure this breed of Islamaphobia gone wild. (Thank you! It’s not even AT the WTC site, it’s 4 blocks away.)

Thich Nhat Hahn in Guardian UK: The situation the Earth is in today has been created by unmindful production and unmindful consumption. We consume to forget our worries and our anxieties. Tranquilising ourselves with over-consumption is not the way.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Please don’t miss the Change.org petitions over on the right hand side of the site. Topics like offshore oil drilling and the Climate Bill are awaiting your support!

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Book Review: Twelve By Twelve by William Powers

david — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:30:34 +0000

If how many dog-eared pages a book has after you have finished it is any indication of how good it is, Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream is amazing. I have never (and I do mean never) folded down that many corners of pages I wanted to revisit later in a single book. And in all honesty, I don’t even want to really say too much about the book because I believe you have to experience it for yourself – I don’t want to inject my interpretation of it too much and possibly spoil it for you. When I started the book, I expected nothing more than a story about a guy who lives in a 12×12 off grid cabin, which is a story I have read 100 times. But this book is not that, not at all – it is so much more and so very different than what I was expecting. It’s about growth, indecision, struggle, and joy while being full of honesty and authenticity. It is, hands down, the best non-fiction book I have read this year, without a doubt. Basically, the book is about the author going to stay a while in an off grid cabin on 30 acres in NC which is owned by a physician who willingly lowered her salary to $11,000 so she wouldn’t have to pay income tax and thus not fund any wars. The author, who has been a busy international activist for many years, is struggling with being a “man without a country” (I feel like this quite often) and finds the time in this cabin to evaluate his life, his lifestyle, his needs and his wants – oftentimes without expected results.

This book is so much bigger than I expected it to be, and again without giving away too much, I wanted to share a few short pieces from some of my dog-eared pages…

Solitude’s richest gift is allowing one’s own thoughts to flow, and not through mental aqueducts built by others.

Today it’s not the British Empire colonizing us, but a pervasive corporate globalism.

Walking the aisles of the organic Adams Market, I looked around and saw what I might become: a holier-than-thou progressive, carving an identity niche out of being so darn responsible.

I have helped create rainforest-protecting municipal reserves, indigenous areas, and community forests that have successfully resisted logging, mining, and industrial farming. But these efforts have been trounced by the global trend. Have I been merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

When I fly over the rainforest into these places, I feel the irony. Planes spew dangerous global warming gasses into the stratosphere that hasten the desertification that fuels rainforest decline.

Ironically, the more I treated my life energy as sacred and lived frugally, the more I was able to indulge myself; I could gush generously where it counted.

I could go on and on with more of my favorite passages, but you really need to read the entire book for yourself. I cannot recommend this book enough; books don’t usually affect me this much, and this one has definitely changed my viewpoint on, and my perception of, life. I plan on rereading it many times over, and will continue to fold down pages and highlight important passages for a long time to come. Thank you, Mr. Powers.

If you are looking for a book to inspire you and change you, then borrow, beg for, or buy this book – you won’t be sorry.