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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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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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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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Sweeten With Honey

Before the global sugar industry, local honey was the universal sweetener. Because raw honey has antibacterial properties and  tends to crystallize, it can store indefinitely.

Stock up on raw, local honey in the summer when it’s been freshly collected. The freshest and purest honey will crystallize rapidly—and this is a good thing. It’s what preserves the quality of the honey. The actual rate of granulation will depend on the floral source: Blackberry honey may granulate in two weeks, while fall wildflower honey takes about a month. Honey granulates quickest at 57°F, so aim for that.

When you need some honey, scoop crystals into an open jar. Set the jar into a pot of hot water for a minute or so, and it will return to its clear and liquid state. Then you’re ready to use it.

For baking, substitute 1/2 cup to 2/3 cup of honey per cup of white sugar. Reduce the amount of other liquids by 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup for every cup of honey used. Lower the oven temperature about 25°F because honey browns faster than sugar. Add 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda for each cup of honey in your recipe, because honey is naturally acidic and baking soda will temper it. 

Darn a Sock

Put an old lightbulb or glass jar into the sock so that it shows through the hole. That keeps the material supported and gives a smooth surface for your needle work.

Thread a large needle with thread similar in weight to the thing you’re mending: Embroidery floss works for cotton or synthetic socks.

Use a small running stitch to circle the hole, far enough outside the damage that the fabric won’t unravel later. Don’t use any knots; leave the ends unsecured.

Use long stitches to stitch horizontally across the length of the hole. You will eventually weave a framework of stitches to fill in the damaged area. Sometimes it’s easier if you turn the sock upside down on every other stitch.

Once your horizontal stitches are done, turn your sock sideways and start weaving your thread vertically, in and out of the horizontal stitches. Secure the vertical weave at the end of the row with a couple of small running stitches. Turn your sock the opposite way and weave again. Keep going until your hole is filled in.

Capture Wild Yeast

You don’t need a package of yeast from the store to make a loaf of bread.

Mix 1/2 cup filtered or spring water (no chlorine!) with 1/2 cup of rye flour and 1/2 cup of white bread flour (using malted barley flour can also be helpful) in a glass bowl. Cover the bowl with a wet towel to let air in but keep bugs out. A warm day is optimal. Let the culture sit for 36 hours. After that, feed your culture every 12 hours by removing half of the old culture and replacing with a mixture of white and rye flour and an equal amount of 85°F water. Mark the level of the culture so you’ll know how much rising has happened.

The culture should get more vigorous with each feeding. When the culture is bubbly and doubles itself in 12 hours, around Day 4, you can start feeding with only white flour and water.

After about five to seven days, a successful culture can double itself in eight hours or less, smells pleasantly sour, and is full of bubbles. That’s when a “culture” becomes a “starter,” and it’s ready to bake with. Store as you would any commercial sourdough starter.

If your culture is slow to get going, some people suggest adding 1/4 teaspoon of unfiltered apple cider vinegar to raise the acidity, which encourages the yeast.

Save Kale Seeds

Kale is a winter green and offers more nutrients per serving than any other vegetable. In mild climates it can be a four-season crop. Once temperatures rise, older kale plants will start going to seed. Kale plants create hundreds of tiny flowers on stalks that emerge where the leaves attach to the stem. In a couple of weeks, the flower petals fall off and seed pods form on the stalks. Let the pods ripen and dry on the plant—they’ll get brown and brittle—then harvest the largest pods. Remove the seeds from their pods—there will be hundreds—save them in a paper bag, and plant them in early spring. 

Refrigerate Without Electricity

The pot-in-pot cooler uses the evaporative power of water to draw heat energy away from the contents. In Nigeria, where 90 percent of villages have no electricity, these pots preserve tomatoes for 21 days instead of two or three days.

In a well ventilated dry area, place a small clay pot inside a larger clay pot. Fill the space in between them with wet sand and keep it moist. Cover the top with a cloth. Store produce in the inner pot.

As the water evaporates, it pulls heat out with it, making the inside pot cold.

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You're in the park surrounded by swaying willows, or maybe knee deep in goldenrod in someone's backyard, or sunk into the couch in a small apartment on Cayuga Street.

Usually, one way or another, a circle is formed. What are you doing here with a professor from Maine, a few pink-haired chatty teenagers from town, a local diesel mechanic, and a retired couple who brought cookies? You're here to learn how to weave baskets out of the long limbs of willow trees. You're discussing how Thor got along with the giants in Norse mythology. You are about to plant the first herb in your medicinal garden. Or you've been hearing about natural gas drilling, but want to get more information. Any one of these people might be your teacher today.

In Ithaca, New York, the Ithaca Freeskool offers you an alternative to traditional education. With classes like Mushroom Hunting, Bike Repair, Know Your Rights with Debtors, and D.I.Y. Movie Making, it's a refreshing variety of completely free classes for people of all ages. Started only a few years ago and run entirely by volunteers, the Freeskool gives the community an opportunity to share their skills and knowledge.

Anyone can teach for the Freeskool, so the semesters take on the flavor of whatever people are interested in at the time. We all have some sort of skill hidden up our sleeve, perhaps a hobby that's become something more. Often, sharing that skill—that love for what you've learned—with others is what brings about the most enjoyment. On the other hand, some classes arise out of a need. An issue becomes important in the community and there is a sudden hunger for information—then, the Freeskool becomes a vehicle for sharing, processing, and problem-solving.

Anyone can bring a Freeskool to life in their town. In fact, there are Freeskools all over the country and in other parts of the world. If you're thinking of starting one, consider some of the following:

• People: People make it possible. Get a group of interested folks together and talk about your visions for the Freeskool. Contact and collaborate with other organizations and local educators who might be able to help. Ultimately, you'll need teachers and organizers. Of course, you can be both. The Ithaca Freeskool has three to five organizers running most of the show—even such a small group can get a lot done. Teachers change from semester to semester, but it's good to have a core group of organizers.
• Classes: Get the community involved by asking what skills and needs people have. What local issues need more attention? What kinds of education are people seeking? What kinds of classes would foster social interactions that will bring people together? In Ithaca we put up big posters with two columns labeled “What I can Teach” and “What I Want to Learn” at community events. People are encouraged to put check marks next to the subjects others have proposed that they would like to see as a class. Then we put out the call for classes far and wide. (It's also likely that free classes are already being offered by other groups and can easily be incorporated into your calendar.)

• 

  Photo by Shira Golding

  Communication: It's important for interested people and organizers to keep in touch. Set up an email account, a website, a Facebook page, and even a listserve. Establish some way that people can get in touch when they have ideas. Set a date and place for regular meetings of organizers and invite new people to get involved throughout the year.
• Places: Scout out places for classes and meetings. Often, people host gatherings in their homes and backyards. In warmer weather, classes can be held outside in parks. You can also ask community centers or even local businesses if they mind having classes in their space—usually these partnerships are mutually beneficial as participants feel inclined to buy something during or after class. In Ithaca, an independent book store called Buffalo Street Books has provided a space for literary classes while The Shop, a downtown cafe and music venue, hosts a weekly origami class. The community can be very supportive!

• Guidelines: It can be really helpful for teachers and students if your Freeskool develops some guidelines. Ithaca Freeskool created a Tips for Teachers document and a consent policy that outlines ways that teachers should be sensitive to activities that include physicality and/or might push participants' emotional boundaries. These suggestions can help teachers get a sense of how to better run and publicize their classes. Currently, our Freeskool is going through a visioning process to better define our collective values and goals.

• Get the Word Out: Most Freeskools have a calendar of classes that comes out several times a year. Come up with a name, get artsy and make tons of flyers. Send out a press release when a new semester begins. Table at local grocery stores, conferences, farmers' markets, etc. It's good to have a few locations that reliably carry your calendar. List those spots on your website. Tell everyone you know! Thanks to a small grant we received from Sustainable Tompkins, we were even able to make a few Freeskool "Distance Learning" movies. We post them on our site, which helps people see what attending a class can be like.

Learn As You Go

Life's best lessons are outside the classroom. YES! Magazine's special issue on learning the skills we need take on today's challenges.

With a new fall calendar coming soon, we're pretty excited and motivated. We're also getting ready to have our first ever Freeskool Prom—a night of celebration, dress-up, and silliness that we plan to have at the end of each semester. We'll watch video footage and a photo slideshow of recent classes, drink punch, and give out some awards. People will have a chance to socialize, collaborate and, of course, dance.

If education is going to be sustainable, it has to be flexible and up-to-date. Freeskools provide an alternative that enable people respond to the month-to-month needs and interests of their community. Classes can evolve as they need to. Remember, if you've got skills and knowledge, you've got a Freeskool.

Lily Gershon is a contributor to Shareable.net and an organizer of the Ithaca Freeskool. Originally from Kiev, Ukraine, she now devotes most of her time to building a sustainable homestead with a group of friends in Freeville, NY.

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Who benefits when a pastor in a small town in Florida threatens to burn the Quran? Or when a proposal to build a Muslim cultural center in Manhattan erupts into a national controversy?

And what can those of us who believe extremism is harmful do to stop it?

Terry Jones, the Gainsville pastor who was catapulted onto the global stage by his plan to burn the Quran, said his action was about standing up to Islamic extremists. But General David Petraeus and others tell us that this action would play into the hands of extremists. Extremists need anger and hate to recruit and motivate followers; without images of outrage like this, people might revert to peace, respect, and tolerance, which, after all, come pretty naturally to a social species like ours.

There’s another group of extremists who likewise rely on hatemongering. The extreme right wing in this country needs fear and anger to keep people distracted from the real sources of insecurity—a stalled economy that has been managed for the benefit of Wall Street and big corporations, two protracted and disastrous wars, and a system increasingly unable to support a middle-class way of life.

The extremists on both sides have an oddly symbiotic relationship—each thrives on the anger and vitriol of the other.

But Reverend Jones and others of his ilk can succeed only when moderate voices are silent. Quiet disapproval isn’t enough. We must take a stand often, courageously, and respectfully for tolerance and peace. Here are a few ways we can do this during an especially fraught anniversary of the 9/11 attacks:

• Speak out in support of religious freedom, as the 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrow did recently in support of the proposed New York City Muslim cultural center.

• Speak up when you hear Muslims or other groups disparaged, whether in public or private, as ColorLines publisher Rinku Sen suggests in her recent column.
  
• Read out loud from the Quran or other Muslim texts on September 11, as the Network of Spiritual Progressives is doing (Brother Jamal Rahman, the Muslim Sufi member of our Interfaith Amigos, offers some verses from the Quran and from Rumi here). Or hold an interfaith candlelight vigil for peace, like the one planned by the Gainesville Muslim Initiative.
• Offer generous humanitarian aid to Pakistani flood victims because they need help and because it’s important for humanitarian aid to flow across religious divides.
• Examine your own prejudices—most of us have them. And consider what you have to gain and lose when others are treated as equals.
• Familiarize yourself both with the violent interpretations of the religions you encounter and with the interpretations of the same religious texts that emphasize love, compassion, and tolerance for all.
• Speak out for tolerance on blogs, Facebook page, in public forums, in your faith group, and in letters to the editor. Call out candidates for public office of any political party who use intolerance or people’s race, religion, or immigration status to whip up electoral passions. Just a few voices for tolerance in any community can change the tone of a dialogue.
• Monitor news and public-affairs media, and insist that they include voices for peace and tolerance in their programming, and not give undue importance to advocates of exclusion and intolerance. (A starting place is to sign Color of Change’s petition calling on businesses to “Turn Off Fox.”
  

In coming months and years, we can expect even greater social stresses from a flagging economy, the continuing wars, and the "natural" disasters that will occur with increasing frequency on an overheated planet. Those stresses will be multiplied if we allow demagogues to transform them into hate and anger. Silence won't be enough—we'll have to speak out if we are to stop the madness.

Question: What are you doing to counter intolerance? What have you found works best? Please leave your comments below.

Sarah van Gelder wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Sarah is the executive editor of YES! Magazine.

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In this fun, quirky video, filmmaker Andrea Dorfman and poet/singer/songwriter Tanya Davis  use poetry, art, and music to offer advice for tackling one of society’s biggest fears: alone time.

Tanya shows us how to ease into loneliness—starting in easy places like the bathroom or coffee shop, turning off our cell phone security blankets, honoring the things we like to do by ourselves—as we learn to enjoy it and feed ourselves with it.

Recent studies show that our brains need downtime, away from computers and other digital devices, to spur creativity and productivity. Check out the video...then unplug and reap the rewards of solitude!

Film produced by Bravo!FACT.

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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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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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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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While the increasing costs of a college degree have not seen an increasing return, the penalties for not going to college are steeper than ever.

Photo by Flickr.com.

Do you know a college student? Chances are, that person is going to graduate with an alarming amount of debt: Students in the class of 2008 graduated owing an average of $23,200 in student loans. It’s now a given that you “need” a college degree to achieve middle-class status in the United States. But we also know that the middle class isn’t what it used to be. So, is a college education worth the money?

The question plagues many Common Security Club members, whether we are students, graduates, parents, or grandparents. How can we save (or borrow) enough to pay for top level schooling, when private college tuition—plus room and board—now runs about $45,000 year? Parents wonder whether they should compromise their retirement savings; grandparents are shocked at the cost; teens have little to compare it to, and may be quite unprepared to make use of such an expensive investment.

In her new book, DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education, Anya Kamenetz ambitiously dismantles much of our cultural mythology around higher education:

Looking at the history of American colleges and universities convinces me that many aspects of the current so-called crisis in higher education are actually just characteristics of the institution. It has always been socially exclusionary. It has always been of highly variable quality educationally. It has always had a tendency to expand. It may be because we keep asking more of education at all levels that its failures appear so tremendous.

Kamenetz analysis is both rational and radical. She questions whether college is “nothing more than an elaborate and expensive mechanism for employers to identify the people who … had all the social advantages in the first place, and those people then get the higher paying jobs.”

Her point is ultimately practical, which is what makes this book such a good resource for folks questioning and contemplating higher education. While stating flatly that, since the 1970s, there has been no increase in return to match the increasing cost of a college education, Kamenetz also makes it clear that the penalty of not going to college has increased in that time. This penalty is a steep decline in income for those with no college degree. The decision, then, of getting a degree, or not, can’t be taken lightly.

Kamenetz also covers the student loan industry that saddles young people with debt, critiques both the popular and real histories of higher education in this country, and examines the difficulties faced by community colleges.

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But perhaps the most useful section of the book is the last one, in which Kamenetz examines a large variety of alternatives to traditional 4-year colleges. Some of them come out of digital age technology that makes information highly accessible, while others are more hands-on. There are opportunities for self-education through Internet-accessible course syllabi (MIT, for example, makes all of its syllabi available online). There are also free colleges, where students work to run the campus in exchange for their education. She describes “edupunk” as “an evolution from expensive institutions to expansive networks” of teachers and learners—largely connected through the Internet. For those who learn best with their hands, or at least in person, there are more directly experiential colleges built on a foundation of internships and apprenticeships.

Kamenetz concludes with a 30-page resource guide of all sorts of educational possibilities—from the highly virtual to the totally experiential. It made thrilling reading for me, as the parent of a couple of “non-traditional” learners (and no budget for Harvard, anyhow). I would recommend it highly to stoke discussion of the future of higher education … and particularly to all the high-school seniors out there.

Andrée Collier Zaleska works as an organizer for the Institute for Policy Studies, where she co-directs the Common Security Club network. She is also a climate activist and the co-founder of the JP Green House, a zero-carbon demonstration home and garden in Boston.

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Total dependence on one currency is like total dependence on one crop, or, for that matter, a single energy source: there’s always the risk that crop failure or a cutoff in supply will topple the whole system. This is the scenario we’re seeing now—credit has dried up and unemployment is soaring. In small pockets throughout the world, in rural areas and inner cities, and spots as far-flung as Bavaria and Thailand to Massachusetts and Michigan, people are responding by launching their own currencies. Such monetary renegades are not simply thumbing their noses at the dollar (or the mark, or the euro, or the baht…) They are making a carefully considered choice to promote the well-being of their communities.

“From the beginning we had two objectives—to promote the region and promote local charities,” says Christian Gelleri. In 2003, Gelleri and a group of his students at a Waldorf School developed the Chiemgauer currency in the Lake Chiemsee region of Bavaria, Germany. Since then, some 3 million Chiemgauer notes (equivalent in value to the euro) have been placed in circulation. The currency, accepted by 600 businesses in the region, typically is spent and spent again 18 times a year—three times more than the Euro. This means that the currency is encouraging trade and cooperation in the region, which keeps the shops and restaurants and artisans active. Think of this faster rate of use (what economists term “velocity”) as a kind of reinvestment in the community.

Local currencies can help a community counter some of the problems with conventional money. For example, bank-issued currency tends to flow toward the money centers for investment. If you shop at a chain store, the profit gets whisked out of town and into the corporate coffers and then, often, to the speculative market. A local currency stays in the community, encouraging local business and trade, adding value to local products and services, and supporting the local infrastructure.

Reliance on national currency means being at the mercy of the national credit situation. As we’ve recently seen, credit constriction can paralyze local economies. Despite the availability of goods and the need for business, when there’s no money, consumers don’t buy. Stores don’t sell. Start-ups can’t get a toe-hold. An alternative currency gives people another way to buy, sell, lend, and borrow. If the community creates its own currency, local business can go on even if the supply of national currency dries up.

At the most basic level, currency functions as a means of exchange (I give you a dollar and you give me an ice cream cone), a unit of value (a dollar, pound, etc.) and a store of value (you can hold onto a dollar as it maintains its worth). It’s also a source of information about relative value, and about what is needed to keep trade flowing, for instance, by adjusting the supply of money or the exchange rate so that those in other markets can afford your goods.

With local currency, a community can meet currency needs that the national tender isn’t fulfilling. If the idea seems fanciful, there are models up and running—some for many years.

A now-common sign around Great Barrington, this one at Rubi’s Cafe. Photo by Jason Houston, jasonhouston.com

BerkShares
Author and urban activist Jane Jacobs’ work was one inspiration for the monetary experiment called BerkShares—considered the best-designed and most successful local currency in the United States, with more than $2.4 million-worth passing from bank to hand to till and around again since fall 2006. The attractive paper bills—one BerkShare is worth $1, but is sold into circulation for 95 cents—are accepted at more than 400 businesses in the Berkshire region of western Massachusetts.

Jacobs pointed out that national currencies cover such broad geographical areas that they provide no local feedback. The way our system is now, regions subsidize each other, and weaknesses are not corrected. Local currencies, however, have clear feedback loops so that trade and production imbalances can be addressed more quickly.

As Susan Witt, executive director of the E.F. Schumacher Society, explains, “Whenever a BerkShare must be returned to the bank [instead of recirculated], that means there is not a source or product available locally to fill that business’s needs.” For example, say a toy store finds itself stuck with the currency. This presents an opportunity for a local craftsperson to provide the store with wooden figures, games, or puzzles to be purchased with BerkShares.

Witt, co-founder of the BerkShares program, took to heart Jacobs’ belief that regional economies need their own currencies to grow and thrive. “Businesses are now trading with other local businesses, so that they’re sourcing their printing, accounting, and food products locally rather than out of the area,” says Witt. “People are getting off Amazon.com and back to the local bookstore and camera store. They like the personal exchanges and the ambiance, so they stay.”

The currency belongs to the community, Witt stresses. And its use has been a valuable exercise in community empowerment. “The use of BerkShares is educating people on the importance of supporting local businesses. With that comes a sense of empowerment—that people can make positive changes in the local economy. The fact of BerkShares raises questions like: Can we issue currency that is not backed by the U.S. dollar? It’s prompting people to think about other ways of thinking about money.”

	Hardcastle buys food with BerkShares from Rubi’s Cafe worker Kate Van Olst. Photo by Jason Houston, jasonhouston.com

On a recent visit to Great Barrington, Massachusetts, I purchased Berkshares at Lee Bank and spoke to Branch Manager Paula Miller, who expressed enthusiasm about the currency. “Customers love it. We’ve gotten to know other businesses better,” she said, adding that it’s always fun when clients recognize the work of local artists who designed the bills. “It makes it a little more real.”

Time Banking
Time Dollars, now used in settings as varied as small towns, retirement homes, schools, and prisons, respond to conventional currency’s limited capacity to measure worth. “Dollars don’t measure value very well,” says David Boyle, a Fellow at the New Economics Foundation in the United Kingdom. They are good, he says, at measuring “the instantaneous value of Microsoft or currencies on the international exchange. But not the value of, say, a local shop, or of me if I’m very old or young. I might have skills, but not those that are conventionally marketable.”

Time Dollars were developed in 1980 by law professor Edgar Cahn, who lamented that crucial work to improve people’s lives—such as child and elder care—is much needed but little valued. He saw that many who could do these tasks were idle and felt useless. To get people economically engaged, Cahn proposed a system where people earn credit according to the number of hours they work. These Time Dollars can then be “cashed in” for services, like yard work, tutoring, etc.

Not only does Time Banking promote social justice by connecting people, promoting reciprocity, and improving neighborhoods—it has also proved quite versatile: People have exchanged Time Dollars for wool spinning, “rune making,” and having a baby delivered by a midwife. And there’s always an ample supply since no community is going to run out of hours.

TimeBanks USA offers a start-up kit that includes instructions and software for starting a Time Bank anywhere. Rose-Marie Pelletier is working on launching a Time Bank in her town of Pownal, Vermont, an economically diverse rural community of 3,500. At a town meeting, Pelletier looked at the listings of delinquent taxes over recent years and saw that they had increased geometrically. She’s a math teacher, and the numbers spoke to her; she saw the extent to which people were hurting. “People want to help each other—when we know how to do it,” she says. “I see Time Banking as a way of building community, one hour at a time.”

Chiemgauer Regional Currency
Conventional currency excels at serving as a store of value—so much so that use of money for actual trade slows down, leaving some local economies stuck. Coin and paper currencies do not lose value like the products one buys with them can, which makes hoarding and speculation attractive, particularly with the enticement of interest. Argentine economist Silvio Gesell described this phenomenon in 1913 and said that money also should lose value: that it should “rust” or go moldy like other commodities, and suggested a penalty, or demurrage fee, for holding onto it. Nearly 75 years later, then-teenager Christian Gelleri read Gesell’s work and was fascinated. As a high school teacher, he saw the chance to test the model with a local currency. This is how it works: Each quarter, every Chiemgauer bill loses 2 percent of its value. In order to spend the money later, the consumer needs to put a special sticker on the paper currency.

In the beginning, Gelleri got complaints. Then people figured out how to make the model work for them. For instance, one cinema owner said that business went way up at the end of the quarter when people wanted to shed their currency. Increased cash flow at quarter’s end was helpful for accounting, he said. The 2 percent loss, he added, was insignificant compared to the advertising he’d have to buy to secure the same level of customer loyalty he has from accepting the Chiemgauer.

A consumer can exchange euros for Chiemgauers at 50 offices in the region.Three percent of the purchase price goes to a nonprofit the buyer chooses. So far, more than $100,000 euros have gone to charities such as school athletic programs and environmental groups. The “good cause” component reinforces people’s investment in the currency, and in their community.

Maybe we’re asking national currencies to do too many things. As Thomas H. Greco, Jr. points out in his new book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, some functions are inherently contradictory: If money is for trading, you want to use it; if money is to store value, you want to save it. Greco and others such as David Boyle say that people could be better served by separating out the functions of money—and using different currencies, depending on whether you are, say, meeting friends at a local café or saving for college.

Back on Main Street in Great Barrington, Matthew Rubiner, of Rubiner’s Cheesemonger & Grocers, says the issue of local currency has shifted quickly from the theoretical to the here and now. “When BerkShares started we talked about what would happen if the economy falls apart and we were really forced to look local.” The economic downturn, he says, has “brought the question into bolder relief.”

Judith D. Schwartz wrote this article as part of The New Economy, the Summer 2009 issue of YES! Magazine. Judith is an author/journalist in Bennington, Vermont now writing about alternative/complementary currencies and localization movements. www.judithdschwartz.com Interested? Read “The Local Multiplier Effect”

Three years ago, I decided to downsize. I sold my big house (which I loved!), got rid of all my stuff, and built an itty-bitty eco-friendly cottage. When I finished building, I slid my little house into a friend’s backyard. This isn’t as odd as it sounds. My house actually “fits” in the backyard. It looks like a tiny cabin, or a tree house. It’s also super-small and built on wheels.

My house offers 84 square-feet of living space and cost about $10,000 to build. It was built for the highway, but—honestly—it isn’t anything like a travel trailer. It doesn’t contain any space-age plastics or fake wood. Instead, it’s the real deal: knotty pine, cedar, and fir.

I made the house to be as simple and natural as possible. I minimized my construction footprint by using a bunch of “green” building techniques, including:

• Recycled and Salvaged Wood—The house took shape based on the materials that were offered to me or “found.” For example, I decided to install skylights after I found two huge windows at the salvage yard. I installed knotty pine siding on the interior walls and ceiling, and used cedar planks for the loft floor after the wood became available at the local reuse store. I installed exterior cedar siding after my neighbor offered me a bundle. He had originally purchased the wood in the 1940s, and had been storing it in his garage since that time. It was beautiful old-growth cedar—the kind you can’t find anymore.
  
  
• Insulated Windows—The house has nice, wood-clad windows that are low-emission (which reflects sunlight to keep the house cooler in the summer) and argon-insulated. They cost a mint, but have proven to work great! They cut noise and heat loss, and look fabulous.
  
  
• Solar Electricity—A 240-watt photovoltaic (solar) system powers my lights and other electric gadgets. It was sized to meet my needs, based on Olympia’s cloudy weather.
  
  
• Non-toxic Stains and Sealants—I used a water-based stain on the outside of the house, and a water-based sealant on the kitchen counter. I didn’t coat the floors, walls, or ceiling. As a result, the house carries a subtle, natural cedar and pine smell. I love the woodsy, peaceful smell of my house.
  
  
• Primitive Water/Sewer—I don’t have running water in my house. I pull water from a nearby garden spigot, and jug it into the house. I use a composting toilet, and I shower elsewhere. This “primitive” set-up has presented some of the greatest challenges for me. But I’ve gotten used to things, and I recognize that (on a world scale) any sort of toilet or shower is a blessing. Millions of people live without running water or a sanitary sewer. My situation is gifted by comparison.
  
  
• Other Good Ideas—I used shredded cotton insulation in the walls and ceiling, and Marmoleum (a natural linseed product) on the floor. I placed the house in the backyard with consideration for wind, sun and shade. Most importantly, I simply minimized the size of the house while creating a sense of space, utility and natural beauty (smaller really is better for the environment).
  

I’ve been in the backyard for over two years. I didn’t intend to find myself stumbling down a “greener” path, but the house has worked on me. I buy less stuff (there’s no place to store it). I re-think leaving lights on, and mull over better ways to manage my compost. I take fewer and shorter showers because I’m imposing on someone else. My ecological footprint has definitely gotten smaller by living in my little house.

I’ve saved a lot of money (my utility bills don’t really exist, and I don’t have a mortgage). I also spend less time fixing things and cleaning. Now, I have more of the “stuff” that I always wanted: time and resources.

I’ve tried to explain my house to other people. It’s a bit awkward. For example, a few weeks ago, a group of 5th-graders visited my house. I was trying to explain how my house works, and what makes it “green.” And ultimately, we spent less time talking about the house (itself), and more time talking about how the house has connected me to the community.

I’m less autonomous. I rely on the sun to power my lights. I trust the rain on the roof to keep me company. I love that the wind cools my house in summer (it works!). I depend on the library and food co-op, and the generosity of friends and neighbors. I have to ask for water every day, and that has changed me!

I find myself wanting (more than ever) to give something back. And that is at the root of all sorts of new ways to live more simply and in-step with my world. Downsizing just keeps getting better!

Dee Williams' tiny house was featured in Sustainable Happiness, the Winter 2009 issue of YES! Magazine. Dee is an inspector with the Washington State Department of Ecology. Reprinted with kind permission from South Sound Green Pages. Interested? Dream House: Tour Dee Williams’ house See the houseplan at www.tumbleweedhouses.com

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.

:: YES! STORY:
Fresh from the City
Citizens and local policymakers join up to get fresh foods to schools and neighborhoods.

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.