Imagine a neighborhood with clean air, safe places for children to play, and abundant green spaces—all the attributes of a healthy community. Many people lack these basic amenities and I ask myself, why? Are these fundamental needs not the rights of all people?

Majora Carter has spent a large part of her life fighting for environmental justice and promoting the idea that "you don't have to move out of your neighborhood to live in a better one." As a child growing up in the South Bronx, she watched her once thriving neighborhood disintegrate under the weight of poverty, industrial waste, and the worst kind of urban planning. Subsequently, pollution rose, health rates declined, and the economy weakened. Carter began fighting for the revitalization of the South Bronx and secured a $1.25 million federal grant to redevelop the south Bronx waterfront to bring environmental improvements to her community. 

 To continue this fight, Carter founded Sustainable South Bronx (SSBx), a nonprofit organization dedicated to transforming underserved urban communities into sustainable places to live. Her work at SSBx boosted the creation of environmental education programs, green job training, and community projects. Carter now serves as the President of the Majora Carter Group, where she concentrates her efforts on environmental remediation with clients.

People like Majora Carter make me believe that a healthy and sustainable community is indeed attainable for all people. Her work promotes the idea that a collaborative model where government, developers (business and industry), and community unite to create environmental justice is possible. A clean green economy can exist where all people can thrive and live healthy sustainable lives.

Joanna Gangi: There is a major social equity gap in the environmental movement. Why do you think that has been the case? What can we do to make our movement more inclusive?

Majora Carter: Most real social change in societies comes from the advancement of equality. The American Revolution, the Suffrage movement, Labor Rights, Civil Rights, even the Internet. 

The environmental movement has traditionally left people behind in environmental sacrifice zones, which are almost always populated by poor people—usually non-white, but not always.

So, for instance, while the environmental movement may have had past successes in getting land preserved or making automobile emissions cleaner, it has not worked as hard to ensure that working-class people living near preserved land can make a living through sustainable stewardship of the area; nor have the oil refineries near where poor people live become any less toxic.

If we had located our power, waste, transport, and mega-agriculture infrastructure near wealthy people like we have with poor people, we would have had a clean, green economy decades ago. Instead, the environmental movement turned its back on the point sources of greenhouse gases and pollution in favor of their own backyards and favorite animal species. The public health stats illustrate this phenomenon quite clearly.

If we can turn the "environmental" movement into an "environmental equality" movement, I believe new allies will come on board with more passion and tenacity than we've seen before. Clean air, water, and land is not evenly distributed. Poor people are more likely to breathe dirtier air, drink dirtier water, and live, work, or go to school on toxic soils.

The hunger for equality will always be greater than support for Cap and Trade or some other effort that's not directly tied to the lives of people. If we bring everyone together for environmental equality, many of the traditional environmentalists' goals will surely be met as well.

Joanna Gangi: As you have said, economic degradation begets environmental degradation, which begets social degradation. What do you see as the key leverage points for breaking that cycle?

Majora Carter: I think comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of the long term consequences of environmental management is the best place to start. For example, look at coal country in West Virginia: You have a traditionally poor rural area, so you can assume the people there have little to no political power. Mountain top removal strip mining moves in and destroys their water table and their air quality while producing very few jobs. So now they have no cheap clean water supply, dirty air, and continuing unemployment. It adds up to hopelessness, which leads to drug and alcohol abuse, domestic abuse, poor school performance among kids, increased teen pregnancy, etc. 

Mountain Memories: Interview with Judy Bonds
Before she died, West Virginia activist Judy Bonds gave this interview about fighting to save her home from mountaintop removal coal mining.

These problems all cost a lot to combat, but the company pulling the coal out of the area does not pay; taxpayers do. If we look at the two to four years' worth of coal energy produced in such an operation, against all the social and environmental services costs in the context of quality, it's not economic development in any rational sense of the word.

I think this template can be applied to everything from shopping malls to feed lots. Positive alternatives to bad projects will make better economic sense when we first look at the fallout from inequalities among our fellow Americans that a given proposal might produce.

Joanna Gangi: What is your message to people living in underserved neighborhoods who want to make a difference, but may not know where to start or have the appropriate resources?

Majora Carter: Your local elected officials and your fire, police, and parks departments are there for you and most of them really do care—but you have to engage them in a constructive manner. Start by talking among your friends about what you would like to see different in your area. This is not just for "underserved" neighborhoods—all communities can benefit from some intelligent discussion.

So, if it's a traffic light that doesn't give enough time to cross a dangerous intersection, a truck route near residences, not enough green space, or locating a landfill, power plant, or other noxious infrastructure near people, it all matters.

Start with the people responsible for your area and see what you can accomplish. Not everyone will respond, but that might mean your approach is not appropriate for what they can do. Make sure you ask, they will probably say yes. Positive momentum can go a long way.

When I wrote a $1.25 million federal transportation planning grant, I had no idea what I was doing. But I kept the conversation alive in various settings and asked for help. People came out of the bureaucratic woodwork to guide the process and help shape the language for the system. It worked, and today the project has secured over $20 million in local funds and another $30 million in Federal Stimulus funding (shovel ready). This is more money for a project designed with positive community impacts in mind than the South Bronx has seen in almost a century.

But it all started with regular people talking constructively to one another.

Joanna Gangi: You've said that the economic and environmental injustices inflicted on the South Bronx were a direct product of urban planning. When you look at large scale urban planning projects going on now, do you see signs of improvement?

Majora Carter: Not really. I think the use of eminent domain to promote purely private development is a disturbing national trend. Government-subsidized stadium construction is often lurking in the shadows of these undemocratic land deals. In my hometown, we watched with disbelief as New York City's Mayor Bloomberg and our former borough president, Adolfo Carrion, supported a new Yankee stadium to be built on an 18-acre public park with trees over 100 years old—all gone now. This is the richest baseball team in a part of the city with the lowest parks-to-people ratio. And now both of these characters are running around the country promoting themselves as "green." I can't think of any current large scale projects that are going to bring about more equality.

The real intelligent planning and execution is happening on a community/neighborhood level. This is where the real heroes are, but they remain largely unsung. I am currently putting together a new TV series with Sundance Channel to highlight these innovative attempts.

Joanna Gangi: You've identified the players involved in making the triple bottom line work for development projects: developer, community, government. Can you think of an example when these three entities have really come together for the greater good?

Majora Carter: Yes, of course. My favorite is Bogotá, Colombia. In the late '90s while Enrique Peñalosa was mayor, he took a hard look at how much money was going into transport infrastructure and who was benefiting. He didn't have much money to work with, so he looked for low cost investments that would produce the highest quality of life impact. 

How to Build a Happy City:
Interview with Enrique Peñalosa
The former Bogotá mayor is convincing city planners from Beijing to Mexico City to create lively public spaces that center around people and community, not cars.

His administration purchased large tracts of suburban land, beyond the slums that ringed the city. The DOT connected the land via bike and pedestrian routes to local shopping areas and mass transit hubs—but no automobile access except for emergency and delivery vehicles.

In a short time, developers were putting private investments into housing along these non-auto routes. Simple, resident-generated community improvements were implemented in the existing poor neighborhoods, while relatively higher income Bogotaños occupied most of the new housing.

Bike repair and juice stands opened along the route—owned and operated by previously unemployed people. Police spent less time on car theft and more time on community. Public health improved. Everybody gained, and I hear it's gotten even better since I was there in 2005.

Joanna Gangi: The International Living Building Institute is hosting the Living City Design Competition. The competition calls on designers, students, and activists from around the world to create inspiring but realistic visions for the future of civilization. Competition teams will conceptually retrofit existing cities, demonstrating how real communities might transform their relationship with the resources that sustain them. What do you think the most important consideration should be for teams working on this competition? Do you think communities like yours in the South Bronx would be interested in this kind of visioning process?

Majora Carter: I think that people in communities across America, who currently experience environmental inequality, would be interested in seeing the teams demonstrate how to transform the relationship with resources that sustain others. How do we remove the unequal environmental burdens that currently befall some people disproportionately? 

Beyond that, locally maintained horticultural infrastructure should be integrated into all new and renovated buildings and landscape design. The technology is there to utilize greywater, manage stormwater runoff, incorporate high-yield agricultural systems, reduce the urban heat island effect, and more.

The effects of smart policies that incorporate those environmental services' cost savings would be a great thing to see—what would the government savings over the typical 20-year municipal bond issue be?

Joanna Gangi: Your personal story is a major source of inspiration to many people who have felt marginalized by the green movement. What have you learned along the way that surprised you the most?

Majora Carter: I learned that my message plays just as well in "red" states as they do in "blue" states, based on the heartfelt personal reactions I get. I come from the most urban place in the U.S., but I have directly comparable experiences to people in rural areas and places in between. The solutions are often based in shared experience, too. I am so happy to see that an idea like "you don't have to move out of your neighborhood to live in a better one" is gaining ground everywhere!

Joanna Gangi is Communications Coordinator for Cascadia Green Building Council and managing editor of Trim Tab. This article was originally printed in the Fall 2010 issue of Trim Tab, the Cascadia Region Green Building Council’s magazine for transformational people and design.  To see this and other issues of Trim Tab, go to www.cascadiagbc.org/trimtab.

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Grow vines as a living curtain or awning to shade your windows, cool your house, and remove carbon from the atmosphere. Deciduous perennials work well for living curtains because they let sun through in the winter and don’t require yearly replanting. You’ll get the best cooling benefits if you shade south-facing windows (north-facing if you’re in the southern hemisphere).

To grow a curtain, plant your vines in the ground, in pots, or in a window box. Lean a trellis against the wall, then guide your vines up the trellis and over the window as they grow. Using a wooden trellis with pots works well for apartments; it’s portable and doesn’t require wall fastenings. In permanent settings you can use netting or wire to support the plants instead.

A living awning provides shade without blocking your view. Attach shelf brackets (salvaged, built, or bought) at each side of the window. The awning should ideally extend far enough to cast a shadow below the window in the middle of summer. Fasten wood or wires across the top of the brackets to support the vines, or make a shelf and grow trailing plants in containers above your window.

Double the benefits of your living curtain by growing vines that are beautiful or edible. Runner beans, wisteria, grapes, and hops are good choices, depending on your climate and whether you prefer food, flowers, or beer.

Alyssa B. Johnson wrote this article for Can Animals Save Us?, the Spring 2011 issue of YES! Magazine. Alyssa is an editorial assistant at YES!

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Standard water-based sewage systems account for about 30 percent of household water use: Even low-flow toilets use 1.6 gallons of water with each flush.

Composting toilets don’t use water and are odor-free and sanitary if maintained properly. In a matter of months, they break human waste down into unobjectionable compost. Municipal planning authorities across the country are coming around to the idea that composting toilets are not only better for the environment, but safe for public health, too.

One example comes from a private elementary school in Seattle with 233 students. The Bertschi School’s new science wing is designed to be completely self-sufficient, which includes composting human waste. A vacuum flushes the toilet into two composting tanks, which can hold a total of six months’ worth of waste. Janitors dump bark dust into the tanks to add carbon to the mixture, and slide a handle in and out to aerate.

Composting toilets can cost more than $1,000 at home stores, but the Humanure Handbook says you can do it yourself. Mount a toilet seat atop a 5-gallon bucket. Use sawdust to cover your “business,” eliminate odor, and encourage the composting process. Use undyed, unscented toilet paper. Add the results to the rest of your compost, making sure it’s safe from flies, rodents, and the like. Some people empty the bucket into a container like a 55-gallon drum.

This only works with a well-tended compost pile that gets hot enough to kill any pathogens. Experts recommend composting for a year to add a margin of safety, since common germs and parasites don’t survive that long in soil.

The result will make great compost for trees, flowers, fruits, and fruiting vegetables, although cautious gardeners avoid using it on root crops. Contact your County Health Department to find out the regulations about composting toilets in your area.

Oliver Lazenby wrote this article for Beyond Prisons, the Summer 2011 issue of YES! Magazine. Oliver is an editorial intern at YES!

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The idea behind UK Uncut— a grassroots movement that asks why public services like libraries and health care are being cut while corporations skip out on paying taxes—is spreading to the United States, with dozens of actions planned for Februrary 26. Want to hold your own Uncut protest? It's simple, says filmmaker Oonagh Cousins:

1. Choose a cut.
2. List the action.
3. Tell everyone.
4. Get props.
5. Bail-in

Video by Oonagh Cousins

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The next time you find yourself waiting forever for a light to change at a busy intersection, practice this visualization: Imagine the streets around you completely devoid of cars. Replace the painted lane lines with lush, green, flowering plants. Zap that smog-spewing SUV and manifest a café table in its place, complete with a shady umbrella and chairs. Vanish the ugly traffic light and see instead a whimsical statue.

Think it’s all just a wishful fantasy? It’s actually happening, and in some unexpected places. From an artists’ collective in San Francisco’s funky Mission district to New York City’s Times Square, people are working to reclaim streets as public spaces, partnering with residents and local businesses to create a renewed sense of community while they’re at it.

Here’s how to make it happen in your own city:

Start small and temporary. 

Photo essay: Parking spots take on a whole new meaning.

Even something as small and car-centric as a parking spot can be transformed into a space for pedestrians to enjoy. In 2005, REBAR, an artists’ collective based in San Francisco, wanted to demonstrate the need for more urban green space in San Francisco. They put some quarters in a parking meter, brought in some benches and sod, and used the parking space for a rather unconventional purpose: a park instead of a car. They called it PARK(ing) Day. Park(ing) Day is now “an annual, worldwide event that inspires city dwellers everywhere to transform metered parking spots into temporary parks for the public good,” according to REBAR’s website. The website also offers a downloadable instruction manual ($6.99) with step-by-step instructions on how to transform a parking spot into a park, including ideas about creative uses for the space and advice on how to make your park safe and inviting.

Once you’ve successfully reclaimed 200 square feet, you’re ready to take on a whole street, or even a park.

Request a one-day street closure in an area that pedestrians and bicyclists already frequent, like a park or esplanade.

“Ciclovias” started in Columbia in the 1980s, when several of the country’s major cities declared main streets closed to cars on Sundays and holidays from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. A staggering 2 million people (30 percent of Colombian citizens) now participate in these weekly events, where stages are set up for aerobics instructors, yoga instructors, and musicians to encourage people to move their bodies without the assistance of an automobile.

The cities of Portland, Ore., Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and even Cleveland, Ohio, sponsor  “Sunday Parkways”—events where park streets are closed to car traffic. On a recent Sunday in the streets of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, those enjoying the break from cars included families teaching kids how to ride bikes, joggers and runners of all shapes and sizes, and even old-school boom-box-toting roller skaters disco dancing their way across the pavement. 

After you see how much fun a Ciclovia can be, you’ll want to move on to a semi-permanent project. This type of project uses a temporary installation to test a street closure, with the goal of eventually closing the street permanently. For this one, you’ll need help.

To make a park permanent, recruit partners who will benefit from the experience, like community organizations and local businesses.

San Francisco’s Pavement to Parks project reclaims wasted space on overly wide streets and turns the space into temporary public parks and plazas, complete with benches and movable landscaping. City and community organizations help make sure the parks stay clean and coordinate community uses such as farmer’s markets, chess clubs, and concessions. In one “parklet," Pavement to Parks partnered with REBAR and three restaurants to turn parking spots in front of the restaurants into additional seating and bike parking.

Building the World We Want
When city officials told them, "That's public space. No one can use it," architect Mark Lakeman and his neighbors began a revolution in Portland's public places.

Perhaps the most well-known example of a successful temporary street closure that is now on its way to becoming a permanent pedestrian area is in New York City's Times Square, where, in May of 2009, Broadway was closed to traffic between 47th and 42nd Streets. The goal of the project, named “Green Light for Midtown,” was to improve mobility and safety in Manhattan’s Midtown area, and to make it a better place to live, work, and visit. Because this project would affect a large and diverse group of residents and businesses, New York City’s Department of Transportation held numerous public and private meetings with stakeholders before they started the project—with Business Improvement Districts, local community boards, elected officials, local media, the theater community, government agencies, and representatives from the taxi, hotel, real estate, and tourism industries.

This closure yielded some startling results. According to the Department of Transportation’s 2010 evaluation report, pedestrian injuries in the area dropped by 35 percent. In addition, the area has become a much more inviting place, encouraging people to linger and spend time there, which promotes social interaction and benefits local businesses. Again, according to the Department of Transportation (DOT) report:

• 84 percent more people are staying (e.g. reading, eating, taking photographs) in Times Square and in another similar temporary pedestrian area (in Herald Square) than before the projects.

• 42 percent of NYC residents surveyed in Times Square say they shop in the neighborhood more often since the changes.

• 26 percent of Times Square employees report leaving their offices for lunch more frequently.

• 74 percent of New Yorkers surveyed by the Times Square Alliance agree that Times Square has improved dramatically as a result of this project. 


The DOT currently is upgrading and reviving the plaza with a temporary mural, and is designing a permanent pedestrian plaza for the space that will be constructed in 2012.

Like the song says, “if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.” Here are some more tips to ensure that your new temporary pedestrian plaza will get built, be used, and turn into a permanent pedestrian oasis:

Make the space beautiful and inviting with plants, seating areas, and art.

Using reclaimed materials whenever possible is the inexpensive and environmentally responsible way to go. Pavement to Parks blocked off one street using reclaimed logs that were hollowed out and used as planters. In another plaza, they sanitized, painted, lined, and filled donated dumpsters and unused terracotta sewer pipes with trees and plants. For easy maintenance, make sure your plants are drought-tolerant.

Warn users of the space in advance of the closure with fliers, signs, handouts, and digital announcements.

Because the Green Light in Midtown project would potentially disrupt one of the most congested traffic areas in the United States, the DOT made a tremendous effort to involve the community and form collaborative partnerships long before the first orange cone was placed. In addition to meeting with key stakeholders, project leaders distributed thousands of fliers to inform the public about the proposed closure and invite them to participate in open house discussions. The DOT also welcomed feedback about the proposal on its website.

Make it fun! Have a party in your new park!

It’s easier than you think to turn a parking spot or even a street into a beautiful, safe place for people to relax and socialize, even in the middle of a big city. Look around, visualize, and then start talking to people in your community about it. Happy parking!

Erika Kosina wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Erika is a freelance writer and community organizer who explores ways to make our world a more connected, social place. She blogs about taking a break from technology at TechFreeDay.org.

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2. Real-Life Benefits for Women

Ana Sanchez has worked with Southwest Creations Collaborative in Albuquerque, N.M., for the past 12 years. The business offers living-wage jobs to immigrant women who do handwork, contract sewing, packing, and labeling. “Since we run a ‘communal shop,’ women who take side jobs that they find on their own or that SCC passes up because they are too small can use all of the organization’s machinery,” says Program Director Jessica Aranda. SCC provides on-site child care for working mothers; GED, English as a Second Language, computer literacy, and citizenship classes; and reproductive and preventive health care programs. Moms even get paid time off to visit with their children’s teachers and set academic and behavioral goals. southwestcreations.com —Laura Paskus

Photo by Susan Seubert.

3. Pedaling Sustainability
As Jed Lazar pedals his bike and big, blue trailer around town, people often flag him down to ask about his business, SoupCycle. And it’s exactly what it sounds like—soup on bicycles. “That’s so Portland,” they sometimes say.

While the business credits some of its success to the city’s bicycle culture, it’s the tasty soup that keeps customers coming back. Lazar uses local and organic produce whenever possible and has a rotation of more than 50 traditional and exotic recipes. Each week, “soupscribers” sign up for the vegan, vegetarian, or meaty option. Lazar buys the necessary ingredients, and his team transforms them into soups. Then, Lazar’s bicyclists deliver to Portland, Ore., neighborhoods on scheduled days. “Biking is a wonderful way to connect to the community,” he said, “and to run your business.”

Three years ago, Lazar and his business partner Shauna Lambert planned SoupCycle as an MBA project at Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Washington state. They pooled enough of their savings to last six months. If the business didn’t have at least 100 weekly deliveries by then, they’d have to call it quits.

They first served the soup to friends and used their feedback to refine the recipes. They started out cooking in a borrowed church kitchen. Lazar did all the deliveries using an electric-assist bike and was putting in 60 to 80 hours a week. A year and a half in, they hired a professional chef, and the SoupCycle staff now comprises seven workers who put in 10 to 40 hours a week in Portland and nearby Corvallis. Lazar is down to a more manageable 50 hours a week and can comfortably take vacation time. Most of the staff do deliveries, but Lazar makes sure they have a hand in soup production and ordering, too. “I want them to be able to say, ‘I helped make that soup, and it’s incredible,’” he said. “Then the customer also feels more connected to the product.”

It’s that customer connection that’s most fulfilling to Lazar. “We’re spreading hope for a more sustainable world and a thriving local economy,” he said. “We’re living that every day delivering soup.” —Krista Vogel 

Photo by Susan Seubert.

4. Urban Farmers for Hire
Donna Smith works with Patricia and Andrew Nimelman at their home in Portland, Ore., where they receive monthly installments of plant starts, seeds, and instructions. Working just 30 hours a week, Smith earns a living doing what she likes best—farming. Smith and her business partner, Robyn Streeter, run Your Backyard Farmer, which helps its clients plant, tend, and harvest organic gardens in their yards. Families design a menu of veggies to grow, then sit back and wait for their harvest. Smith and Streeter currently tend or consult with 57 farms and have helped farmers around the world start similar programs. —Krista Vogel

Photo by Paul Dunn.

She began making one-of-a-kind children’s clothes from pieces of adult clothes from thrift stores and consignment shops. With her sewing machine tucked into her kitchen, she carefully deconstructs pounds of clothing that would otherwise end up in a landfill and reassembles them into unique kids’ clothes, artful and fun. Adult long sleeves become kids’ pant legs. A mock turtleneck collar becomes the waistband of a flared skirt. Using local suppliers—often the surplus clothing is donated to her—and selling to small shops, she’s built riciclikids.com into a solid local business. She’ll be hiring soon and expanding her operation out of her kitchen.

Another reason for leaving the corporate world behind was quality of life. “I wanted to be more ‘there’ for my family,” said Collins-Pezzner, who has a husband, 15-year-old son, and a merely-days-old baby girl. Although she admits she works full days, they’re hours spent at home where she can be flexible to the needs of her family. She even talked her husband into leaving his corporate job, too. “We’re both believers in doing our dream.”

More articles from New Livelihoods, the Fall 2011 issue of YES! Magazine.

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 PEEK INSIDE THE SPRING 2011 ISSUE OF YES! MAGAZINE

Joel Salatin is no simple farmer. When he speaks, he at times takes on the air of a Southern preacher, philosopher, heretic, businessman, activist, or ecological engineer. Since Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the film Food, Inc. brought him to fame as the man who raises meat the right way, Salatin has become a sought-after speaker. But he still spends most of his time on his rural Virginia farm—with the chickens, baling hay, moving cows from one paddock to another. He is a self-described “Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic” and has a penchant for perplexingly long catchphrases. It is perhaps Salatin’s unwillingness to compartmentalize that has made him such a compelling moral voice for the food movement. For Salatin, farming is inseparable from ethics, politics, faith, or ecology.

Salatin’s farm, Polyface or “the farm of many faces,” has been in his family for 50 years. At its heart is a practice called “holistic range management,” where cattle mimic the grazing patterns of wild herd animals. The strategy cuts feedlots out of the equation altogether and stores carbon deep in the roots and soil of Polyface’s lush perennial pasture.

There’s a missionary quality to Salatin’s farming. He speaks of his work as a ministry and as healing. He calls his animals “co-laborers” and “dance partners” and says he respects each animal’s distinctiveness. Who better to articulate an ethic of how, when, and whether we should raise and eat our fellow animals?

Madeline Ostrander: What do you think a sustainable diet should look like?

Joel Salatin: What would a sustainable diet look like? Oh, my!

Ostrander: Because it’s often talked about as a vegetarian diet.

Salatin: No, not at all. I think we need to go back to localized diets, and in North America, yes, we can really grow perennials, so there would be a lot of herbivore—lamb, beef—in a diet. And our fruits and vegetables, which have a high water content, would be grown close to home, preferably in our backyards. In 1945, 40 percent of all vegetables consumed in the United States were grown in backyards.

I think a local diet would have an indigenous flair. If you’re along the coast, you’d eat more seafood. If you’re inland, you would eat more herbivore and vegetables. If you’re in Florida, you would eat more citrus. Historically, it’s not about the relationship of meat to vegetables or whatever. It’s more about, what does this area grow well with a minimum of inputs?

Ostrander: Cows have gotten a bad rap lately for their contributions to environmental problems. What’s your response?

Salatin: Don’t blame the cow for the negatives of the industrial food system. All of the data that the anti-meat people use assumes an irrigated, concentrated animal feeding operation. Over 50 percent of the annuals that we grow in American agriculture are to feed cows. Cows aren’t supposed to eat corn. They’re supposed to mow forage. It’s completely inverted from nature’s paradigm. To use that inverted paradigm to demonize grazing, the most efficacious mechanism for planet restoration, is either consciously antagonistic to the truth or is ignorant of the kind of synergistic models that are out here.

Here’s the thing. There’s no system in nature that does not have an animal component as a recycling agent. Doesn’t exist. Fruits and vegetables do best if there is some animal component with them—chickens or a side shed with rabbits. Manure is magic.

Counterpoint: If you have to kill your conscience to eat, it's not worth it.

Now, we could argue about how many animals we should be eating. I really don’t think Americans should be eating so much chicken. Because chicken requires grain; it’s an omnivore. Historically, herbivores—beef, lamb, goat—were every man’s meat because they could be raised on perennials. The kings ate poultry because they’re the only ones who had enough luxury of extra foodstuffs for birds.

Poultry used to fill a recycling niche. Today, if every single kitchen had enough chickens attached to it, there would not be egg commerce in America. All the eggs could be produced from kitchen scraps. What a wonderful thing that would be. There’s no excuse for an egg factory.

Beef cattle—there’s no excuse for a feedlot. We don’t need all those irrigated acres in Nebraska. See? And suddenly all of the data that the animal demonizers are using just crumbles like a house of cards.

Ostrander: Your website says that your farm respects and honors the animals you raise. What does it mean to respect an animal and then eat it?

Salatin: It is a profound spiritual truth that you cannot have life without death. When you chomp down on a carrot and masticate it in your mouth, that carrot is being sacrificed in order for you to have life. Everything on the planet is eating and being eaten. If you don’t believe it, just lie naked in your flower bed for three days and see what gets eaten. That sacrifice is what feeds regeneration. In our very antiseptic culture today, people don’t have a visceral understanding of life and death.

Ostrander: What do you feel is your responsibility to the animals that you raise on Polyface Farm?

Salatin: Our first responsibility is to try to figure out what kind of a habitat allows them to fully express their physiological distinctiveness. The cow doesn’t eat corn; she doesn’t eat dead cows; she doesn’t eat cow manure, which is what is currently being fed to cows in the industrial food system. We feed cows grass, and that honors and respects the cow-ness of the cow.

Chickens—their beaks are not there for us to cut off, as industrial operations do. Their beaks are there for them to scratch and to hunt for insects. So we raise them out on pasture, in protected enclosures, in a free environment, so they can be birds.

We look at nature and say, “How do these animals live?” And we imitate that template.

We have the chickens follow the cows, the way birds follow herbivores—the egret on the rhino’s nose. The chickens sanitize behind the herbivores, scratch in the dung, eat out the parasites, spread the dung into the pasture, and eat the insects that the herbivores uncovered while grazing. 

The pigs make compost from cow manure, which we mix with wood chips. They love to do it, and they don’t need their oil changed, they don’t need spare parts, and they’re fully allowed to express their pig-ness. Then animals become team players—partners in this great land-healing ministry.

This is all extremely symbiotic and creates a totally different relationship than when you’re simply trying to grow the fatter, bigger, cheaper animal.

But the animals also have an easier life than they would in nature. Nature is not very philanthropic. I mean, every day the gazelle wakes up and hopes she can outrun the lion, and every day the lion wakes up and hopes she can outrun a gazelle. We protect our animals from predators and weather. We give them good food and care for them, and in return, they are more prolific.

Ostrander: So honoring the pig-ness of the pig is about ecology as much as ethics.

Salatin: Honoring the pig-ness of the pig establishes a moral and ethical framework on which we build respect for the Mary-ness of Mary and the Tom-ness of Tom. It is how we respect and honor the least of these that creates an ethical framework on which we honor and respect the greatest of these.

A culture like ours—that views plants and animals as inanimate piles of protoplasmic structure to be manipulated however cleverly we, in our hubris, can imagine—will soon view its citizens and other cultures in the same kind of disrespectful way.

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Page 2

Ostrander: You claim that the kind of agriculture that you do could feed the world. How would that work?

Salatin: Well, for example, take cows. If we do what I call mob-stocking herbivorous solar conversion lignified carbon sequestration fertilization, we could triple the number of herbivores and the amount of carbon we’re storing in the soil.

Ostrander: What was that long phrase?

Salatin: Mob-stocking herbivorous solar conversion lignified carbon sequestration fertilization. The idea is you’re mob-stocking: Herbivores in nature are always mobbed up for predator protection. Now we don’t have predators, so we use an electric fence to keep them mobbed up. So we’re not Luddites. We’re using high-tech.

We farm grass, and we harvest that grass with cows. But we don’t just turn the cows out into a field. We move them every day from paddock to paddock and only give them access to a single spot a couple days a year. We let the grass grow to what we call full physiological expression, the juvenile growth spurt. By doing that we’re actually collecting a lot more solar energy and metabolizing it into biomass than you would if the grass were kept short like a lawn.

The difference is, for example, Augusta County, where we are, averages 80 cow days per acre (a cow day is what one cow will eat in a day). On our farm we average 400 cow days per acre, and we’ve never bought a bag of chemical fertilizer and we’ve never planted a seed. We’ve taken the soils on our farm from 1.5 percent organic matter in the early 1960s to an average of 8 percent organic matter today. That cycle of herbivore, perennial, and predation builds up root biomass below the ground and sequesters carbon and organic matter. It’s the same process that built all the deep soils of the world—the Pampas in Argentina, outer Mongolia with yaks and sheep, the American plains with the buffalo.

Now, if you consider vegetables, we could do edible landscapes. There are 35 million acres of lawn in the United States. I tell people, we’ll know that we’re running out of food when the golf courses around Phoenix start growing food instead of petroleum-based grass to be irrigated with precious water. We’ll know that we’re short of food when we can’t run the Kentucky Derby anymore, because we need that land for farming. Go to Mexico. They don’t mow the interstates. Every farmer along the highway has a staked-out milk cow. 

Ostrander: Can you describe how you slaughter animals at Polyface?

Salatin: Well, the chickens, for example, are taken from the field right into our open-air slaughter facility, and we don’t electrocute them like the industry does. We do a kind of a halal, or a kosher type of kill, which is just slitting the jugular, and they gradually just faint or fade away.

We have raised them. We have nurtured them and cared for them. It’s different from the compartmentalization of the industrial system, where we have people who have never seen the animal alive doing the slaughter.

And frankly, I believe it is psychologically inappropriate to slaughter animals every single day. Even in the Bible, the Levites drew straws; they ran shifts in the tabernacle where they did animal sacrifices.

Ostrander: Is there a different emotional experience that people have when they’re eating food raised on Polyface than if they’re eating a McDonald’s hamburger?

Salatin: We have a 24/7, open-door policy. Anyone is welcome to come at any time to see anything, anywhere without an appointment or a phone call. We encourage anyone to come and walk the fields, pet the animals, bring their children, gather the eggs out of the nest boxes—in other words, to build a relationship and create a memory that can follow them all the way to the dinner plate.

Download clips from the
original audio interview.

Our culture has systematically alienated people from the experience of dining. I can’t believe how many kids come here and watch a chicken lay an egg and then say, “Oh, is that where they come from?” The amount of culinary and ecological real-life ignorance in our culture is unbelievable.

So what we want to do at Polyface is provide a platform, so that anyone can come and partake of this marvelous theater that was all a part of normal life 150 years ago. We want to create a greater sense of all the mystery and appreciation for seasons and for the proper plant-animal-human relationships.

Some people even want to process some chickens with us. And that is a very powerful memory to take to the table with you. If the average person partook of the processing of an industrial chicken, for example, they probably wouldn’t eat chicken. But by coming here and seeing the respect that’s afforded to that animal all the way through, we can create a thankful, gracious, honoring experience when we come to eat. 

Madeline Ostrander interviewed Joel Salatin for Can Animals Save Us?, the Spring 2011 issue of YES! Magazine. Madeline is senior editor at YES!

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OK, not everyone is in a position to quit their job to spend more time at home. And not everyone wants to. That doesn’t mean that the household can’t shift toward increasing production and decreasing consumption. The transition can start with simple things, like hanging out the laundry or planting a garden. For those people who need or want to push further into the realm of living on a single income or less, here are a few secrets for survival we’ve learned on the family farm:

Get out of the cash economy

Sometimes a direct barter—“your bushel of potatoes for my ground beef”—works. But we don’t always have something the other party needs. At those times, gifting may be the best answer. Gifts are often returned along an unexpected path. Last summer I canned beets and green beans for my folks—of course, for no charge. In the process, I discovered that my solar hot water system wasn’t working. I called a neighbor and asked him to look at it. He fixed it, free. We have a facility that a butcher uses to process chickens for local farmers. On chicken processing days, Bob, Mom, and Dad help out, at no charge. At the end of the summer, the neighbor who fixed our hot water wanted to get his chickens processed. He got them done, no charge. Mom and Dad got a winter’s supply of veggies. Bob and I got a repaired hot water system. The butcher had a place to do his work, and the neighbor got his chickens processed.

Homemade Prosperity
Producing things at home lets Shannon live on a fraction of what she thought she needed.

Be interdependent

It would be handy sometimes to have our own tractor and tiller. But it seems foolish for us to own that equipment when we can borrow from my parents. It’s cheaper to borrow and lend money, tools, time, and resources among family, friends, and neighbors and abandon the idea that it’s shameful to rely on each other, rather than a credit card, paycheck, or bank.

Invest in your home

One of the most solid investments Bob and I have discovered is spending to lower expenses. Examples are better windows, more insulation, solar hot water, photovoltaic panels, or even just a really big kettle for canning.

Tolerate imperfect relationships

Living on reduced incomes may require more family members living under one roof, husbands and wives spending more time together, or greater reliance on friends and neighbors who may stand in for family. The families depicted on television, in movies, and in advertisements show dysfunction as the norm—with an antidote of further fragmentation of the family and community. That gets expensive. While no one should tolerate an abusive relationship, learning to accept or navigate the quirks of family and friends will keep the home stable and facilitate the sharing of resources.

Shannon Hayes wrote these tips to accompany her article, "Homemade Prosperity," in the Winter 2011 issue of YES! Magazine, What Happy Families Know. Shannon is the author of Radical Homemakers, The Farmer and the Grill, and The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook.  She works with her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in upstate New York and blogs at YES! Magazine.

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During the last two great depressions in the U.S., hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of people organized to meet their basic needs when the mainstream economy and centralized monetary system failed them. Unemployed poor folks got together to create time dollar stores and cooperative mills, farms, health care systems, foundries, repair and recycling facilities, distribution warehouses, and a myriad of other service exchanges.

Many of these were based on the hour as a unit of account, and often everyone’s hour was equal and could either be exchanged for another hour of service or its equivalent in goods.

Modern forms of time exchange, called Timebanks and LETS (Local Employment Trading Systems), have been around since the 1980s. Now, with one in ten Americans unemployed (likely twice that, given recording problems), time exchanges are making a comeback.

Timebanks USA, a system of over 120 timebanks in the U.S. and a few other countries, was developed by activist lawyer Edgar Cahn as a way to help the underprivileged and underserved help each other through an organized system of reciprocity. In the following interview, Cahn explains the basic principles behind timebanks:

Official Timebanks purchase software that provides a ready-made, standardized directory and accounting system of individuals, and sometimes nonprofits or government agencies, that are willing to provide services to their communities and receive help in return.

Timebank coordinators help create matches between people who need things and others who can help meet those needs, and they keep track of completed transactions in the system. No money is involved, and everyone’s hour is equal, which is one of the features that enabled Timebanks to receive an official IRS income tax exemption declaration so that people on disability, social security, unemployment, and other government benefits can participate without penalty.

The egalitarian nature of the system ensures that people will be able to purchase the services that they need without toiling endlessly to meet high prices in the market economy. People can also trade goods with the stipulation that their price be based on the amount of time involved in producing the goods and not their market value. Timebanks’ most successful application has been to provide a means for at-risk youth who have gone to court to do service for their community.

LETS systems also operate without money (except for fixed costs like gas or paper copies), but the value of time or goods may be linked to market value. Every community determines its own rules, so every LETS is a little different. LETS are now mostly online accounting and directory systems just like Timebanks, but they have also taken the form of paper ledgers, checkbooks, paper currencies, and time-based stores.

When one person provides service or goods to another, the giver receives credit in her account and the receiver gets a debit to his account so the system is always in balance. People manage their own accounts and make payment over the internet by logging into their personal account. Businesses, nonprofits, and government may also have accounts if they are involved in reciprocal community exchange. Some systems have account balance limits, others don’t or merely flag high or low balances and then contact members to help them figure out how to spend or earn their credits.

Many communities have created  similar time exchange projects, going by names like Fourth Corner Exchange, Village Networks, Richmond Hours, and Austin Time Exchange.

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Probably the largest time exchange in the world is the Fureai Kippu in Japan. Fureai Kippu (“Caring Relationship Tickets”) was created in 1995 to help families who had migrated to other parts of Japan care for elder family members from whom they'd been separated. Seniors can help each other and earn the hour credits, family members can earn credits and transfer them to their parents who live elsewhere, or users may keep credits for when they become sick or elderly themselves.

Free open source software is now available for any community to tailor a time exchange to its own needs and to reflect the local culture. Many of these projects also have regular in-person meetings, swaps, and potlucks to help facilitate exchange, trust, and community building.

While we may not have many dollars these days, most people do have some time. Instead of paying professionals who we may never see again to provide services, we can use time exchanges to find neighbors who might provide service in exchange for hour credits, thereby saving scarce U.S. dollars for things like rent and medicine.

In the process, people get to know and trust their neighbors, establishing caring relationships that can help reweave the fabric of our communities, and replace our culture’s over-reliance on individual financial security.

Mira Luna is a San Francisco based activist who is working on developing an alternative economy in the Bay Area. She helps coordinate Bay Area Community Exchange, a local timebank, JASecon, and the Really Really Free Market. She wrote this article for Shareable.net, a new online magazine that explores the ways that sharing is transforming life in the twenty-first century.

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Off the Waffle in Eugene, Oregon is not your typical waffle house. You won’t find pads of butter, bottles of fake maple syrup, or sides of hash browns and eggs here.

The owners, brothers Omer and Dave Orian, are in their mid-twenties and usually sport matching red afros. They and their seven employees serve traditional Belgian Liège waffles made from yeast-leavened batter. They use pearled sugar imported from Belgium, which caramelizes through the waffles, making them crunchy on the outside and moist on the inside.

And if you’re low on cash, Omer and Dave are happy to make a trade, because they’re big fans of bartering.

“When we were in elementary school, Dave would carry with him a little suitcase full of toys in hopes of trading them for cool stuff that other kids had,” says Omer.

Dave says the brothers have traded all kinds of things for waffles, including “acupuncture, massage, plumbing, a trumpet, and art.” And Omer adds that they received yard rakes from one customer.

“We have bartered for things we never would have gotten were we to have to pay cash for them,” Dave says.

The Orian brothers also installed a “barter wall” next to the counter to encourage exchanges between customers. The “wall” is a large corkboard with a sign next to it explaining: “It may benefit you to trade your goods and services with your neighbors as an alternative to using money, which can potentially be a little hard to find these days.”

“I don’t know that our five foot bartering wall will be the thing that turns this local economy in the right direction, but I do think we can make a significant impact,” Omer says. He argues that Eugene possesses ample “human and natural resources” to sustain itself. “The lack of cash flow due to the economy should not stop this city from prospering.”

Photo by Abby Quillen.

Right now you can make a number of exchanges using the wall. Ellen will do some proofreading or editing for you if she can borrow your truck for an hour. Heather, a doula-in-training, will provide free labor support in exchange for experience toward her certification. Mike will fix your bicycle for some moped parts. And if you’re a business lawyer, Omer and Dave would like to trade you some waffles for your services.

If legal work for waffles doesn’t sound like a fair trade, you probably haven’t tasted these waffles. Everyone who has seems to invariably sound like a teenager with a crush. The store is wallpapered with waffle wrappers decorated by customers, many of them waxing poetic about the waffles. “Waffles make me so happy,” one gushes. “There’s a waffle at the end of the rainbow,” another proclaims. Off the Waffle’s 1,695 Facebook fans seem pretty smitten as well.

Off the Waffle’s “original” waffle is served in a to-go wrapper just like it would be if you purchased it from a street vendor in Brussels. But you can also sit down in the casual dining area, enjoy the Django Reinhart music that’s often playing on the stereo, and get a waffle served on a plate and topped with a combination of gourmet ingredients you’d expect to find in a much fancier restaurant. The Ahee-hee, for instance, features cream cheese, garlic-rubbed seared rare ahi tuna, sesame seeds, and drizzled sesame oil.

While you wait, you can pick up Off the Waffle’s small “joke basket” and exchange jokes with other customers. It’s crammed with scraps of paper, post-it notes, and pieces of napkin scribbled with jokes like, “What’s the difference between snowmen and snowwomen?” You turn it over for the punch line: “Snow balls.”

Off the Waffle just moved to a new location, and they haven’t put their sign up yet, but day and night, a line seems to snake from the counter to the door. Most people pay cash, but if you have a healthy potted plant or a restaurant-style highchair, Omer and Dave will probably trade you a mighty tasty waffle for it.

Abby Quillen is a freelance writer who lives in Eugene, Oregon with her husband, son, two cats, and four chickens. She blogs about simple, healthy, and sustainable city living at www.newurbanhabitat.com. She wrote this article for Shareable.net.

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1. Build a Home

Bats like warm, dry, tight spaces. A bat house provides them with an alternative to your attic, and reduces the chance of human/bat contact. Advice on what to look for in a ready-made bat house, along with plans for building one yourself, are available from Bat Conservation International at batcon.org. 

That’s where you’ll also find a state-by-state guide to the needs of different bat species. For example, the hollows of dead trees provide a roosting site for bats in many areas, but the Western Yellow Bat roosts in living palm trees. So bat lovers in Southern California leave palms untrimmed, particularly during nesting season, when bat babies may be clinging to the fronds.

2. Watch Your Water

Bats need drinking water and are attracted by ponds and birdbaths. They may miscalculate a swooping approach and become stranded in steep-sided swimming pools. Provide an escape route by making or buying a small floating ramp like the “Frog Log”: froglog.us

3. Plant a Night Garden

Bats are the primary predator of agricultural pests—one bat eats 2,000 to 6,000 insects each night. Plant afternoon-blooming or night-scented flowers to attract moths, and the voracious bats that follow will help control your local mosquito population. Evening primrose, phlox, night-flowering catchfly, fleabane, goldenrod, four o’clock,  salvia, nicotiana, and moonflower are all good choices. 

4. Adopt a Bat

This is the year of the bat, according to a United Nations declaration that recognizes their importance to the world’s ecosystems. You can support research, conservation, and protective legislation by adopting a bat through Bat Conservation International. Someone you know might love the (symbolic) gift of a bat. 

The torrid summer of 2010 will cap off the hottest decade ever recorded on our planet. American households have responded to the heat by doubling our consumption of electricity for air-conditioning since the mid-1990s. Our a/c use has, in turn, boosted greenhouse gas emissions from power plants—helping to speed global climate change and to ensure that future heat waves will be even more frequent and intense … and that we’ll soon be cranking up the air-conditioning yet another notch.

But around the country, people are starting to recognize this vicious cycle and trying to put a stop to it.

I’ve met many people from across the country who enjoy the non-air-conditioned life, even in the heart of the Sunbelt. Here in Salina, Kansas, a place where triple-digit highs are common, my wife Priti and I have lived without air-conditioning for ten years.

Air-conditioning plays an important role in protecting the more vulnerable segments of our population during heat waves. But that doesn’t warrant its lavish deployment throughout society for much of the year. Whether you live in a house on a shady lot or in a third-floor urban apartment, it’s possible to stay comfortable by reviving and updating simple hot-weather strategies that have been cast aside during the age of air-conditioning. And it can be done without costly equipment or home renovations.

The key is to focus on people-cooling, not building-cooling. Your body is constantly converting chemical energy from food into heat; hot and/or humid weather makes it harder to unload that heat. But filling a home with chilled, still, dry air around the clock is only one of the many ways by which we can help our bodies maintain their thermal balance.

Keep air circulating. Air movement is highly effective in helping you evaporate perspiration and shed heat. On a merely warm day, a breeze through an open window is enough to do the job, but in truly hot weather, especially if it’s humid, turn on a fan. Ceiling fans are good, but the direct breeze from a portable or window fan can be more effective. In summer, we have a window fan blowing directly across our bed at night.

Don’t let the morning weather forecast scare you into reaching for the A/C switch. If all of the home’s occupants are away at work or school during the day, midday temperatures are not very relevant. If you are going to be home all day, the predicted high temperature or heat index may sound menacing; however, a naturally ventilated indoor space often remains at least ten degrees cooler than the outdoor maximum, and air movement knocks a few more degrees off the temperature your body is actually sensing. In a closed-up, air-conditioned home, a thermostat set in the mid-to-upper eighties would create a suffocating environment—but with open windows and moving air, living in such temperatures is no sweat.

Change your location with the time of day and sun position. If you’re fortunate enough to have a basement, take advantage of the geothermal cooling it provides. A fan enhances the effect. And if things get really tough, there’s no need to be an absolutist. For a few hours’ break, you can quickly and fairly efficiently cool down a one-room refuge with a window air-conditioner.

Reserve sedentary activities for the hottest part of the day. When physical work is called for, just accept that you may need to wring out your shirt afterward. Don’t do your running or other exercise at three in the afternoon under a broiling sun, but don’t do it in an air-conditioned health club either. Research shows that regular exertion in the heat builds the body’s tolerance, helping you function better in hot weather.

Don’t make extra heat. Remember that any energy-consuming household device releases waste heat. Plan meals that involve less cooking—cut back on boiling and baking especially. Keep the dishwasher and any unneeded lights turned off. Use solar technology—a clothesline—to dry the laundry. And take cold or lukewarm showers to avoid burdening your indoor atmosphere with a big load of humidity.

Get wet. High humidity may be the enemy, but water in liquid form is an essential ally. When it’s feasible, hit the lake or local swimming pool with your friends and neighbors. When it’s not (and if water supplies are sufficient), nothing cools like the old garden hose or lawn sprinkler.

Stay near plants. Head to the woods, where it always feels cooler. Plants can cool twice, by blocking sunlight and by absorbing heat as they transpire water. If you have a yard, you can further reduce the peak indoor temperature by creating more shade [pdf]. If possible, have trees, especially to the south and west. If that’s not possible, a dense stand of other kinds of tall plants—giant reed (Arundo donax) or sunflowers, for example—can be tall enough by July to shade the sun-baked sides of the house. We have grapevines covering a couple of windows.

Bring in the night air. If, when the sun starts going down, the outdoor temperature drops below that in the house, it’s a signal to pull in some of that outdoor air. Use a whole-house or attic fan if you have one; otherwise, set up one window fan blowing in and another out.

Meet your neighbors. Especially in the evening, spend time under a shade tree, patio umbrella, or screen porch, or head for the neighborhood park. Using natural cooling can help reverse the trend toward isolation from neighbors and nature that has characterized the age of air-conditioning.

The most important adjustment to be made is not in the thermostat but in our own view of what constitutes comfort. When people say they couldn’t survive without air conditioning, they tend to be thinking about the last time they dashed from a sun-baked parking lot into a chilled home or business. But focusing on those extremes ignores a wide range of perfectly livable, pleasant environments—that come at a much lower cost to you and the planet.

Stan Cox wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Stan is the author of Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer). His website is LosingOurCool.com.

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	Purchase the How To Keep Love Going Strong poster. JUST $3 (+ shipping) Download the PDF for free.

Why is marriage so tough at times? Why do some lifelong relationships click, while others just tick away like a time bomb? And how can you prevent a marriage from going bad—or rescue one that already has?

After years of research, we can answer these questions. In fact, we are now able to predict whether a couple will stay happily together after listening for as little as three hours to a conflict conversation and other interactions in our Love Lab. Our accuracy rate averages 91 percent. Gay and lesbian relationships operate on essentially the same principles as heterosexual relationships, according to our research.

But the most rewarding findings are the seven principles that prevent a marriage from breaking up, even for those couples we tested in the lab who seemed headed for divorce.

Emotionally intelligent couples are intimately familiar with each other’s world. They have a richly detailed love map—they know the major events in each other’s history, and they keep updating their information as their spouse’s world changes. He could tell you how she’s feeling about her boss. She knows that he fears being too much like his father and considers himself a “free spirit.” They know each other’s goals, worries, and hopes.

Fondness and admiration are two of the most crucial elements in a long-lasting romance. Without the belief that your spouse is worthy of honor and respect, where is the basis for a rewarding relationship? By reminding yourself of your spouse’s positive qualities­—even as you grapple with each other’s flaws—and expressing out loud your fondness and admiration, you can prevent a happy marriage from deteriorating.

In marriage people periodically make “bids” for their partner’s attention, affection, humor, or support. People either turn toward one another after these bids or they turn away. Turning toward is the basis of emotional connection, romance, passion, and a good sex life.

The happiest, most stable marriages are those in which the husband treats his wife with respect and does not resist power sharing and decision making with her. When the couple disagrees, these husbands actively search for common ground rather than insisting on getting their way. It’s just as important for wives to treat their husbands with honor and respect. But our data indicate that the vast majority of wives—even in unstable marriages—already do that. Too often men do not return the favor.

Start with good manners when tackling your solvable problems:

• Step 1. Use a softened startup: Complain but don’t criticize or attack your spouse. State your feelings without blame, and express a positive need (what you want, not what you don’t want). Make statements that start with “I” instead of “you.” Describe what is happening; don’t evaluate or judge. Be clear. Be polite. Be appreciative. Don’t store things up.

• Step 2. Learn to make and receive repair attempts: De-escalate the tension and pull out of a downward cycle of negativity by asking for a break, sharing what you are feeling, apologizing, or expressing appreciation.

• Step 3. Soothe yourself and each other: Conflict discussions can lead to “flooding.” When this occurs, you feel overwhelmed both emotionally and physically, and you are too agitated to really hear what your spouse is saying. Take a break to soothe and distract yourself, and learn techniques to soothe your spouse.

• Step 4. Compromise: Here’s an exercise to try. Decide together on a solvable problem to tackle. Then separately draw two circles—a smaller one inside a larger one. In the inner circle list aspects of the problem you can’t give in on. In the outer circle, list the aspects you can compromise about. Try to make the outer circle as large as possible and your inner circle as small as possible. Then come back and look for common bases for agreement.

Many perpetual conflicts that are gridlocked have an existential base of unexpressed dreams behind each person’s stubborn position. In happy marriages, partners incorporate each other’s goals into their concept of what their marriage is about. These goals can be as concrete as wanting to live in a certain kind of house or intangible, such as wanting to view life as a grand adventure. The bottom line in getting past gridlock is not necessarily to become a part of each other’s dreams but to honor these dreams.

Marriage can have an intentional sense of shared purpose, meaning, family values, and cultural legacy that forms a shared inner life. Each couple and each family creates its own microculture with customs (like Sunday dinner out), rituals (like a champagne toast after the birth of a baby), and myths—the stories the couple tells themselves that explain their marriage. This culture incorporates both of their dreams, and it is flexible enough to change as husband and wife grow and develop. When a marriage has this shared sense of meaning, conflict is less intense and perpetual problems are unlikely to lead to gridlock.

Adapted for What Happy Families Know, the Winter 2011 issue of YES! Magazine, from Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, by John M. Gottman, Ph.D., and Nan Silver, Three  Rivers Press, 1999.  For further information on practical, research-based relationship tools for couples and therapists, contact The  Gottman Institute.

Illustration by Ivana Forgo/istock and YES! Magazine 

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Relationships count—cultivate them.

Be inclusive of a wide range of food system interests.

When it comes to disagreement, find common ground where you can; for all else, foster a climate of robust debate and respect for everyone’s opinion.

Educate your members, the public and policymakers about terminology like “just,” “sustainable,” and “food policy.”

Look for unusual connections such as economic development and the local food economy.

Find a champion, especially a policymaker, who will work for your cause.

Learn more about your food system by conducting food assessments, research, and ongoing information gathering.

The Community Food Security Coalition provides technical assistance and information about food policy councils. See their website at www.foodsecurity.org.

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Mark Winne contributed these tips to Food for Everyone, the Spring 2009 issue of YES! Magazine. Mark is cofounder of the City of Hartford Food Policy Commission, the Connecticut Food Policy Council, End Hunger Connecticut!, and the national Community Food Security Coalition, and author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty (Beacon, 2008). Interested? Check out the YES! Tool Kit for Activists.