A Month -- a Lifetime -- in View

I love National Geographic’s Daily News for a quick snapshot of the health and heart of our planet. At a time when we can be given so much news that is both conflicting and disheartening, National Geographic’s concerned but mostly non-political take can be refreshing. And one thing I really enjoy: it often gives me a smile along with a dose of new information. Not many news agencies can say that!

Their “Best of” photo collections are a great way to get a fast view of the planet and a few of those smiles. Here the “Best of January” begins with a trio of penguins admiring a plush toy in their image. It’s a gorgeous shot and a great thought: “The composition of this image reinforces what to me is its main point,” says Monica Corcoran, senior National Geographic photo editor, “communication. The ‘talking heads’ are not sure what to make of this oddly familiar intruder.”

Thanks, National Geographic, for once again reminding us that there is so much still to smile at in the world -- so much to lift our hearts and souls and refresh for all the work we still need to do to ensure these many wonders continue.

The Cure For Living in Darkness: Let There Be Light!

It is sometimes too easy to feel that all the news is bad news and that our path to a greener more sustainable future is unbelievably convoluted and too filled with obstacles to properly progress.

And then you hit a story like this one: a simple answer to a complicated question, one that has deeper meaning than that easy solution would imply.

In San Pedro, a small town near Manilla in the Phillippines, the residents struggle with poverty and all that goes with it. Because the homes they’ve been able to build lack proper windows, they also struggle against darkness, even during the day. Adapting an MIT development, the Isang Litrong Liwanag (which means liter of light) Project helps residents create bright indoor light out of easily accessible products. Here’s an incredibly lucid explanation from FM World:

They are made from an ordinary plastic bottle, filled with water and a capful or two of bleach.

A malleable metal sheet, about a foot square, has a whole cut in the centre where the plastic water bottle is tightly fitted. A little grouting goes around the contact area of the bottle and sheeting to keep out rain.

The unit is then inserted into a hole cut into the metal roofs of the breeze-block houses and the metal sheet is moulded to the roof shape for a good fit, aided by a little more grouting.

The bottle hangs about two-thirds into the room below. Sunlight filters through the externally exposed part of the bottle and is diffused through the water, making for a bright light in the room.

According to the Isang Litrong Liwanag website, as of 2009, “3 million households still remain powerless outside Metro Manila. And even in the metro, families still continue to live in darkness,” so this deceptively simple initiative is having an incredible impact on the quality of life for an increasing number of people. From the website:

Isang Litrong Liwanag, is a sustainable lighting project which aims to bring the eco-friendly solar bottle bulb to low-income communities nationwide. Designed and developed by students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The Solar Bottle Bulb is a device based on the principles of Appropriate Technologies – a concept that provides simple and easily replicable technologies that address basic needs in developing communities.

The video embedded below shows this simple but powerful technology in action. It’s difficult not to be moved when you think about the difference this will make in people’s lives. It also gets me thinking, as these things sometimes do, about the simple answers we can find in our own lives to make things better and about how we tend to complicate things for ourselves: making things hard when -- sometimes -- they can be easy.

For me it’s also about moving forward in a conscious way: watching where we place our feet and thinking about how we can live more lightly on the land and with the people we love.

In any case, it’s all good news, and I’m always in favor of that!

If you’re looking for more information on Isang Litrong Liwanag, it’s here.

Eating Local, Eating Raw: Easy Steps to a Conscious Diet

I’ve been interested in raw and organic foods for a very long time. Though I’m not currently a vegetarian, it wouldn’t be much of a leap to call me a flexitarian: I’m mindful about what I eat for both moral and health reasons.

Long story short: my interest in real food is part of my personal history. In some ways, it’s been one of the touchstones of my adult life. So when we were planning our retreat program here at Dancing Deer and someone suggested we do a raw foods component, I threw my support in right away. I understand the personal power that new knowledge can bring and, in many ways, that’s what our retreat program is all about.

Even if you’re not interested in making the complete lifestyle change to total raw food diet, we’re teaching some skills that many people will find life-changing. It’s about not only coming to terms with the fact that you can eat in a more healthful and earth-friendly way, but that sourcing and preparing the foods you require needn’t be as daunting as it might at first appear.

And even if health were not an issue, the level of consciousness required to making and eating even a partially raw diet can change your outlook entirely. Take, for instance, this New York Times piece from a few days ago.

For the second time in three years, food prices began to soar in late 2010. Some food experts thought the increases could have been a factor in the unrest that swept the Arab world in early 2011.

In 2008, food riots broke out in developing countries around the world, as the prices of staples, particularly rice, jumped sharply. Good harvests and a drop in demand due to the worldwide recession eased those shortages in 2009.

Prices began rising steadily again in the summer of 2010.

These are frightening facts. Articles like that can make you feel despair. Perhaps they even should. But they can also make you reconsider the way you’re eating right now. It seems to me that there has never been a louder call to a local diet that consists of whole foods: and all of that is entirely in keeping with a raw food lifestyle.

We are so lucky in this region: everything we really need for a healthy diet is grown pretty much within a 100 mile radius. That is to say that, if it isn’t grown locally, you probably don’t really need it. Think about that the next time you reach imported strawberries in your local market. Think about all the fuel it took to get them to you and, in some cases, the political repercussions on local economies that send all of their food away.

Eating locally is not a radical thought. It’s a sensible one and, in some ways, it’s the very easiest.

You can get more information on the Dancing Deer raw food retreat here.

Perfecting the Sustainable Swim

You don’t live in my neck of the woods without giving at least the occasional thought to building the perfect pool. When I saw this disappearing hydrofloor swimming pool in Inhabit, I knew that I was A. Unlikely to build it and B. Equally as unlikely to stop myself from wanting to. Here’s the skinny from Inhabitat:

The design is basically a custom ceramic floor that is set on a metal grid. As the grid lowers water seeps in from slots on the sides. The pool can be set at various levels for wading, laps or even diving. Setting it at a shallow level is great for kids. When a party erupts, the pool disappears to make room for a dance floor.

So imagine: now you see it; now you don’t. And when you don’t, the water is protected and insulated out of sight, but ready to be used again at the touch of a button.

Hydrofloors, the British company responsible for the disappearing swimming pool, appear to specialize in pools so high tech, James Bond would feel right at home. And like so many bits of really cutting edge technology, when you look at this product line, you can’t help but think you’re looking at the future… and that -- just maybe -- the future is now.

Nourishment in All Its Forms

These days, we spend a lot of time musing on the idea of nourishment. To me, part of living consciously is personally addressing as many aspects of our lives as we can and thinking about the things we need -- and the things we need to do -- in order to live richly and in best service to ourselves and others.

And so what is nourishment? It is the food we eat, sure. But, along with our bodies, we can nourish our hearts with relationships and friendships. We can nourish our spirit with meditation or relaxation or art: depending on our own preferences and how we’re geared. We can nourish our minds with thoughtful reflection or introspection or literature.

I know that, with this post, I’m once again skating very close to philosophical ideas and what will be one person’s answer will likely not be another’s. Still, the questions are largely the same: how do we nourish and nurture the very best parts of ourselves? How do we preserve the things that the pressures of our careers and lives can demand?

These are complicated questions. Not easily answered. And at the same time, they are among the most basic things we can ask ourselves:

What do I need to be the very best me I can be?

How do I step back from my life in order to look at it more clearly, in either a conscious or passive way?

In a lifetime of searching, I’ve found that, for me, some of the best answers to those questions can be discovered in retreat. This is why, over the past couple of years, I’ve been helping to shape what are now our farm-stay style retreat programs here at Dancing Deer Farm.

We’ve crafted retreats in several disciplines and areas of interest, but they all share a common foundation: to give those attending the physical and emotional space they need to nourish themselves in a way that is meaningful to them.

If you’d like to look over the programs we currently have available, you’ll find that information on our website here.