m o r e (cycling sightseers)

Dreaming about spring vacation? I know I am even if it's just a weekend at a new pal's cabin in the nearby mountains.

If you're going to any of a burgeoning number of U.S. cities this spring or summer, you may just be able to rent a bike instead of a car. (That is, if you're not sporting your own folding bicycle in your suitcase.)

As David Byrne proves in Bicycle Diaries, tooling around a town on a bike is the best way to catch the true culture, the pace, to really get to know the place--same as when you're staying put.

So skip the rental car and check out RentaBikeNow.com.  It's a network of bike shops and bike rental joints so you have access to all participating bikes in one place. And you can book yours, be it mountain or tandem or comfort, there, online.

It even touts roadside assistance courtesy of my favorite four and two-wheeled auto club, better world.

Find a bike and book it here.

And for international bike-rental and all things bike-sharing, see the aptly named: Bike-sharing Blog.

Finally, for other modes of transport for those not inclined to cycles, check out the public transportation system in the state to which you're heading.

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Photo credit: purplemattfish

m o r e (fair trade footwear)

Autonomie Project is committed to Fair Trade fashion that's "sweatshop-free and eco-friendly." Partnering with facilities around the world, it supplies high quality goods that honor the earth and the worker while allocating funds for projects benefitting the communities in which they practice.

Autonomie offers tees and kids' stuff and bags and... shoes made by Ethletic.

They're classic (conjuring Converse's Chuck Taylors) with a nontraditional mix of Fair Trade organic cotton canvas, safe dyes, vegan materials, and sustainable rubber latex. Made fairly by "rubber producers in Sri Lanka" and "shoe stitchers in Pakistan" they are a new take on old school. (For about the same retail price.)

Here's another roundup I did of eco-friendly footwear and how to make it last.

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m o r e (hands on the farm)

Crop Mob.

It's Guerilla Gardening meets WWOOFing.

It's a bunch of people deemed by the NY Times as "landless farmers and the agricurious" who mob a farm on a given day. In a good way.

It's pretty awesome.

The self-description:

"a group of young, landless, and wannabe farmers who come together to build and empower communities by working side by side.  Crop mob is also a group of experienced farmers and gardeners willing to share their knowledge with their peers and the next generation of agrarians."

As suspected, we need farmers and farmers need us. A crop mob puts them together to learn about local, sustainable food and the community that can make it happen.

The e-mail list in North Carolina has 400 subscribers and the 15 sustainble working farms involed have seen 40-50 volunteers per mobbing (NY Times). A huge help for the harvest (and mulching and planting and pruning and pig penning, etc., etc.).

The original Crop Mob encourages that anyone can start a mob. And this map shows that there are some already sprouting from coast to coast.

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Photo credits: Trace Ramsey

m o r e (truth be told)

I was lucky to see the Oscar-nominated live action short films this week (living in L.A. makes things like that a little more accessible) and they were all excellent--really strong entries this time around. Heavy too--one was about Chernobyl, another something I won't reveal in case you see it. One Swedish entry though was simply hilarious and light and luckily it came at the end of the screening, for some comic relief.

And while it wasn't my absolute favorite pick per se, one that definitely caught my attention because of the poignance of its subject was Kavi.

Kavi is a young boy in India who, with his parents, works at a brick kiln where they sleep in tiny quarters, do back-breaking work, and are told they have a debt to repay that keeps them bound to the boss. This kid wants to play cricket and go to school, but it isn't in the cards. Until one day...

It's astonishing that modernday slavery exists and exists in such numbers:

27 million people are enslaved today in one form or another.

It looks like the easiest way to see Kavi now is to buy the DVD. And I assume the whole lot of them will be out at Netflix in the coming months. (A loosely related documentary I saw a few years ago that's widely available is Born into Brothels.)

According to Kavi's website:

"Bonded labor, a form of slavery, often occurs when people are tricked into taking loans from creditors who have no intention of letting them repay the loan. The creditor then uses violent intimidation to keep his workers slaving with no hope of escape."

And there are links to anti-organizations if this is an issue you'd like to explore further and support.

A book I haven't read but have heard good things about is Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy by Kevin Bales.

And it does happen in the U.S. and it is connected to our everyday lives, like the tomato pickers in Florida who were forced to work and treated terribly.

Finally, at Made by Survivors, you can support people who have made it out of slavery and help them maintain an income by buying their wares (the felt/kids items are especially nice).

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m o r e (diy medicine cabinets)

I don't make a whole lot of my own personal care products. I do make my cleaning products though. And I make this spritzer that I use all the time:

It's simply witch hazel with a couple drops of tea tree oil in a small glass spritzer bottle.

Why? Tea tree oil is a natural antiseptic so it's great for cuts and burns. It's also said to be anti-fungal--for athelete's foot if it strikes. Witch hazel, also from a plant, is an astringent that is soothing and anti-inflammatory and has many of its own uses.

What for? I got the idea from an organic storebought variety. I use it to spritz my feet or under my arms after a long day (I use it and love it but don't claim that natural deodorant eliminates odor--but this does!). I also use it on small cuts or blemishes. It could be good added to a refreshing foot soak as well.

Plus, I use it to clean up my natural rubber yoga mat every so often.

(Caution: tea tree oil is pretty strong stuff, so use sparingly. Even the fumes can burn a little. And, since I'm not a professional, nothing I say is to be taken all the way to the bank.)

Other DIY personal care recipes that may be of interest:

**Angry Chicken's homemade deodorant.

**Make your own shampoo from baking soda and apple cider vinegar.

**And here are Your Daily Thread's recommendations for skincare from the pantry. I want to try the oatmeal/baking soda scrub.

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m o r e (nature-inspired young readers)

Last year, my husband told me about the only books he enjoyed reading as a kid. All of them were adventure/nature types. And then I read them and could see why they were so captivating to a kid in the Northwest who didn't like reading and writing but liked drawing and exploring and climbing and making. So, for boys of a certain age, even though they're not current, I think the earthy coming of age classics  A Day No Pigs Would Die and My Side of the Mountain just might pique some interest.

And then there are new Young Adult book creations, two of which I read last month. After all, I confess to have a love of books meant for fourteen year olds. They're like candy to me. It could be worse, my candy could be actual candy. Or reality TV. :)

Anyway, here they are.

First Light by Rebecca Stead is a magical story about a boy in New York and a girl in a fictional icey underground land who are fated to meet one day. The boy's father is a global warming scientist and when he goes on an expedition with Dad, the two young characters find out how inextricably bound they are, and we all are, to what's going on under the ice in Greenland. It is beautiful, moving, imaginative, and appropriate for our times.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jaqueline Kelly is a sure bet for any budding naturalist. The girl of the title, Callie Vee, lives in Texas on the cusp of entering the 20th century and the cusp of discovering herself. She is not a regular girl of the time. She is a girl who keeps a notebook about the natural world, catches butterflies and caterpillars and, eventually, gets to know her grandfather who is a real, honest to goodness scientist-type. In fact, he even knows the much talked about Darwin. She helps him catalog plants and distill pecans into liquor while he teaches her that perhaps there is a place for her outside the world of pinafores and pies. Perhaps in the new century...As he says at one point, "It is better to travel with hope in one's heart than to arrive in safety."

Got any sciencey, earthy, greeny young adult books to add to the shelf? I'm always on the lookout.

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m o r e (worms not waste)

The beginnng of a year brings a lot of talk about weight loss and as spring emerges, talk of the same in the context of bathing suits. But might this year be different? Knowing that one in eight Americans is food insecure makes me think more about the weight and mass of food waste than my own waistline.

There are some great resources on how to make your food last, like Love Food Hate Waste and Food Waste Fridays at The Frugal Girl--and following her lead, many other frugal-minded blogs.

And while not every kind of food scrap can go in the mix, composting is the best way to clean up one's food waste stream and get something fabulous in return (aside from feeling good about not wasting): compost! Pretty much the best fertlizer on the planet. And for free, after set up costs.

For those with backyard space, there's the compost pile or the compost bin. But for those of us in small spaces (and with little patience), there's vermicomposting. That's the kind where worms eat your garbage and, in just a few weeks, churn out castings (compost) and worm tea (fertilizer). And the bin might even fit under your kicthen sink--but I've got mine outside.

Worm bins like the one I have from Wriggly Ranch are inexpensive, made from recycled plastic, and easy to set up and use. And since worms eat their body weight everyday, they know just what to do with your carrot tops, stems, apple cores, eggshells, coffee grinds, leftover pasta and bread, paper, leaves, and grass clippings. Your plants, be they house or garden veggies, will thank you.

I used to have mine set up, but didn't have a shady enough spot for the critters to thrive. Now, with a new apartment, I've got a sun-shieled patio that's the perfect spot for my hundreds of tiny wiggling pets to do their thing.

Check out my 25th lim(b) project--vermicomposting--for all the details of how I set up my bin, and how you can set up yours.

For even more:

Worms Eat My Garbage.

Vermicomposting.net.

Do you compost?

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m o r e (living small)

With our booming world population and the not so booming state of our economy, not to mention our air, land, and water, big is definitely no longer better.

I can't remember where I saw the blog, The Tiny Life, but I was immediately intrigued. I've written about at least one manifestation of a tiny house here at Less Is More (Balanced) before, but TTL's every post is about something tiny. Mostly houses and how to live with less, but all kinds of miniature movements and moments as well.

The blogger, Ryan, describes the tiny house movement this way:

"Simply put it is a social movement where people are downsizing the space that they live in. The typical American home is around 2600 square feet, while the typical small or tiny house is around 400 square feet. Tiny Houses come in all shapes, sizes and forms but they focus on smaller spaces, simplified living."

I'm really digging his post on Lucy's Love Shack  featuring a renter with 371 square feet to work with. I love the little dog house under the bed and the mini stove (I used to have one like that, too!). It's spare and simple and inspiring.

And the one on foldable tables for large gatherings in a not so large space.

I'm sure there'll be more as I follow along from here on out.

And if you want to get together with people and build a tiny house, there are resources in his localize section.

Other tiny houses I've heard of: tiny texas and the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company.

My apartment is definitely small, but I'm not sure it it's tiny (maybe 800 sq. feet?). All I know is I don't want to live anywhere bigger!

Do any of you live in a tiny space? How I'd love to see photos!

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Photo credit: Tumbleweed Tiny House Blog

m o r e (nature inspired inside)

I read an interesting book last weekend, Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence. I picked it up at the library because I've interviewed an eco-jewelry designer who is guided by the term and know a sustainable fashion designer who uses the concept in her work. It was also talked about beautifully at new urban habitat. And I like the whole idea.

The author of the design book I read describes it this way:

"Wabi sabi is an intuitive appreciation of a transient beauty in the physical world...It is an understated beauty that exists in the modest, rustic, imperfect, or even decayed, an aesthetic sensibility that finds a melancholic beauty in the impermanence of all things."

In art, it is a cherry blossom or a piece of driftwood. Simple, but lovely, beautiful but blemished, balanced and spacious, but not symmetrical and perfect. Inspired by and like nature, wabi sabi objects remind us how things change, things fade, and that by noticing the moments of even such changing and passing away, there is beauty.

I also like how the author relates this philosophy to environmental responsibility. If we all lived wabi sabi, we would, according to him, minimize consumption, choose quality products from sustainable, organic sources, and respect nature. All that, even in terms of our objects, our stuff.

It seems that buying secondhand teacups that show some wear and bear some history is wabi sabi. So is getting a clay teapot made by a local potter. A sustainble piece of furniture or cookware that will last forever. A knitted, knotty blanket. A spare, lovingly handmade item from etsy.  Or nothing at all. Eating lunch with the light hitting the bowl just right. Bringing in some fallen leaves and setting them on the table.

One last thing. Two designer/artisans I was introduced to through the book who embodied the modern wabi sabi spirit with their exquisitely simple designs:

Isamu Noguchi, the sculptor famous for now ubiquitous but still wonderful natural paper lamps.

&

George Nakashima, a woodworker who cared about trees and craft and workmanship.

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Photo credit: happy via

m o r e (trees in the field not the landfill)

I'm not a champion in terms of paper use because I  still use paper towels. There are times when they still seem the best option. So, I commend anyone not using them at all! But I am glad to say I do my part to reduce my use.

Here's how:

No more paper towels for most cleaning tasks (like I say, I still use them occasionally, like when I stepped in dog doo doo, for example). Instead it's a whole mess of rags that either my husband picked up at work or concocted from old towels or t-shirts and tanks.

No more paper towels for hand-drying, but cotton hand/dish towels, most of the time.

Cloth napkins all the way. Well, no napkins when I eat at home actually, but on the go, I use cloth ones to wrap up a muffin, store my bamboo utensils, or yes, wipe my mouth. (See my zero waste lunch toolbox here.)

And that's it. For the ones I do use, I get them at Trader Joe's where they're made from 100% recycled paper with no chlorine bleach--the two ingredients you want to look for. (And the higher the post-consumer content the better.)

For all sustainable papery things, check out Greenpeace's Shopper's Guide to Ancient Forest Friendly Tissue Products.

Any more ideas to add?

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m o r e (ancient, beautiful air purifying)

I've toyed with posting about Sort of Coal for a long time. I probably haven't because it's on the expensive side. But in honor of my indoor air quality post and because it's just so intriguing, I can't resist now.

Instead of using an air purifier, one traditional Asian way of eliminating chemicals, smells, and too much humidity from the air is by using charcoal. Which is burned wood. Which is carbon.

The women behind the company don't want perfumes and chemicals making our spaces smell good. They want them to be pure and natural.

So they've reinvigorated white charcoal.

From the source:

"Activated charcoal begins as regular charcoal and is then "activated" with oxidizing gases, such as steam or air, at high temperatures. This oxidative process further erodes the charcoal's internal surfaces. This increases its adsorption capacity by creating an internal network of even smaller pores or we can say the heat opens up millions of small spaces between the carbon atoms and turn it literally into an atomic sponge that adsorbs both organic and organic impurities."

This is a technique that has been used in Japan and Korea for a very long time, but is newer to us.

The wood is from branches harvested from Japanese forests, not disturbing the trees. The products themselves are effective for years and can be reactiviated with sunlight. When you're done, it seems each can be safely added to your soil outside, making plants happy.

And each is exquisitely beautiful. Much prettier than an air purifier machine! In fact, even without the health properties for the indoor environment, white charcoal pieces (which actually appear black but without any mess or dust like the charcoal we think of) could be bought purely for aesthetic purposes.

Some sorts of coal freshen up the fridge, some clean water, and some purify and balance the air.

So, what do you think? Like it? Sort of?

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m o r e (breathing free indoors)

You can read my guide to cleaning up your indoor air over at Your Daily Thread today.

Could be as easy as kicking off your shoes.

Read the guide here.

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Photo credit: christinathedork

These two quotes seem to be loosely connected, at least in my mind. I was reminded of the first recently; in fact, I'm almost always reminded of the first by daily life. And the second I read in a book I just started (more to come on that later). So, in honor of slowing down and looking around:

"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished."

Lao Tzu

"It's amazing what you can see when you just sit quietly and look."

Grandaddy in The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly

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Photo credit: lindsay.pearce

m o r e (unitasking)

When my husband and I recently watched Ozu's Tokyo Story, we were struck by the slowness, the deliberateness of pretty much every movement the parents in the film make. They meditatively walk, eat, sip, and pack their things. They give attention to every movement.

While I can't go to quite the same distance, I have started to notice my movements and the way I do things. I've started slowing down and say, first sitting down, then changing directions, then reaching for something.

Being more mindful of each step in a process and giving each action its due is certainly less stressful (and probably, in the case of physical tasks, a lot easier on the low back). It's also more effective. I find that when my husband and I try to talk about something important while we're doing a task that requires concentration, upset ensues. Or when I multitask and speed up I fumble, I make mistakes, I forget things.

High speed multitasking may be common in our times, but it doesn't make it effective.

In fact, studies are showing  it's quite the opposite. Multitasking causes poor performance and decreased productivity (see dumb little man's post on the subject for details).

I'm thinking by multitasking we also miss a lot of little moments.

Thich Nhat Hanh advocates "unitasking" in his book, The Art of Power because its opposite causes a diffusion of power: "Now we can send e-mail while listening to music, talking on the phone, and taking a picture...With your energy that dispersed, where is your power?"

This is why I'm working on not checking email until I've accomplished one of my own projects most days, limiting what's on my desktop (on screen and onliteral desk), choosing not to make the phone call and do the thing at the same time, doing one project at a time, stopping to look around, being more mindful of my physical movements, and sometimes just doing the dishes and paying attention to water and soap and dish--hard as that may be.

And you? How do you unitask? All suggestions welcome.

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m o r e (food and fowl, not lawns)

A couple of years ago I wrote a brief post on Novella Carpenter, but I kind of can't believe I haven't mentioned her since. Well, now that I've read her book, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, here goes.

Carpenter has a family history of back to the landing, raising rabbits for food, for example. Her parents did it when she was a kid. But as an adult, she moves to Oakland, to a pretty rough and tumble neighborhood called Ghost Town, and does many a similar thing only this time, it's the 21st century and not back to the land but right in the city. Farming there with the freeway, the liquor stores, the people living in cars, and the shootings.

She, with some help from her boyfriend, plants a garden on an abandoned lot next to her duplex, then acquires turkeys, chickens, rabbits, bees, and finally, pigs. She's a farmer, a grower, a beekeeper, a person who raises and harvests her own meat, hanging it sometimes in her bathroom to rest.

The concept and the writing inspire. Between the antics of the animals and the neighborhood and Carpenter herself (like dumpster diving three nights a week just to keep the pigs happy), it's hard to put down. And any foodie (who's not a vegetarian) will appreciate the connection between barnyard animals and what ends up in the kitchen and on the table.

There's also some fascinating history about Black Panthers in Oakland and urban farms all over the place, like the stat that "Shanghai raises 85 percent of its vegetables within city limits." They do it in Cuba and Tanzania too.

Even without an interest in transforming the agricultural system to be closer to home or self-sufficiency, Carpenter's combination of edge and sincerity are worth the ride.

You can always keep up on her blog, too: Ghost Town Farm.

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