I just heard that Steve Jobs died. Very sad. I was listening to his 2005 commencement address at Stanford University about "loving what you do" - in work, in relationships, in every part of your life. Jobs spoke of the love he had for his work and family - through all of his life's ups and downs. He ended his commencement address with a quote from the final issue of the Whole Earth Catalog. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

I have been thinking about how to write about the OWS event - the Occupy Wall Street protests. I first heard about the plans when I participated in the March on Blair Mountain this past summer, and have been thinking about it ever since. There are a lot of young - and not so young - people in NYC right now, calling attention to the pretty complicated state of affairs in our country. This state of affairs? One in which corporate interests wield a significant amount of power over government policies and practices. The power wielded is often not respectful of the health and well-being of the "commons" - it is often more protective of the interests of the top 1%, to use the language of many of the protesters.

Of course, not all corporations and corporate people are contributing to the problem. Steve Jobs' creativity, genius, and leadership have benefited people across the globe. Warren Buffett, as just one other example, supports the recent conversations about increasing taxation of the very wealthy. Others contribute mightily to public welfare. But this isn't always the case. Think about how long it is taking to hold a big corporation accountable for the devastation directly caused by the BP Gulf Oil Spill. Big businesses can be seen as "people" for the purposes of contributing to political campaigns, but they aren't "people" who can be held accountable for crimes against humans and nature in the same way that you and I would? And the mortgage disaster sleight of hand games. It doesn't make sense to me. Businesses ARE people - the business or corporation should not provide an invisibility cloak that absolves the owners and decision-makers of responsibility for their behavior. Really. This is not Hogwarts.

On my drive back home from Kentucky this past weekend, I listened to a podcast from The New School at Commonweal: Exploring Nature, Culture, and Inner Life. Host Michael Lerner was interviewing Richard Heinberg, author of The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, as well as other books about the changing times. Journalist Heinberg maintains that traditional economic theories of the industrial age - theories that support the idea that economies, based on industrial activities made possible by fossil fuels, should and must continually grow - are no longer useful. He proposes that three factors are converging in a way that will require a totally new paradigm for evaluating the health of a society - the converging factors are resource depletion, environmental disasters and resulting impacts, and enormous debt. Heinberg - and many others across the globe as well - holds that a "healthy" GDP does not automatically translate into health and well-being of the society. And striving to continually make more, spend more, make more, spend more, as individuals or as nations, is no longer sustainable. The earth's resources cannot support this any longer, without significant costs for the future. 

We need to find other ways of measuring health and well-being of ourselves and our society than the monetary bottom line, and to create a culture that promotes and supports the healthier ways of thinking, relating, and doing. Economics and employment would definitely be part of such an index, but so would ethical living, happiness, physical and mental health, moral and social health, and abundant, safe, and clean natural resources.

I respect what the OWS people are trying to do, hungry and foolish though they may be - at the very least, they are trying to raise awareness of power and its repercussions, ill or good. Let's really think about where our power should come from - whose thoughts and needs and ideas should be considered when decisions about the public welfare are being made. And let's think about the ways in which we can exercise our own voices, whether in words that we write to government officials or newspapers, in conversations with friends and neighbors and in classrooms and offices, or in public protests of our own. We can use what is happening on Wall Street to ask questions and start conversations and learn more - we all have to be part of the solution of turning things around.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
—From the  Declaration of Occupy Wall Street

And it isn't just corporations. It is us as well. We are also culpable and need to open our eyes and get real about what matters. More about that coming soon.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish. Indeed. Rest in peace, Steve Jobs.

A good time - and a cold time - was had by all! On Friday and Saturday, my two sisters Valerie and Jennifer, my brother Ray, and my parents welcomed dozens of people to this sale of 45 years' worth of "stuff" that had accumulated in our house on Overbrook. (Hmm. I notice that I call it "our" house, even though I haven't lived there in decades and even though I haven't contributed a dime to its mortgage!)

It was a walk down memory lane. Old clothes, tools, books, records (remember A Taste of Honey? The Ray Conniff Singers?), and many many coffee makers and spatulas. Towels, sheets and blankets from the lake house... colorful margarita glasses and a bright yellow end table and random remotes and big-ass phones with cords... and a plastic Budweiser Beer sign that my dad insisted on pricing at $35 (no, it didn't sell). And I found my "letter jacket" from high school marching band, which of course no longer fits but which I of course did not sell. And I found a Senior Scholastic Magazine from December 1969. The back page had an ad for Royal Typewriters - "Ask mom and dad to get one for you! You will get better grades and - groovy! - it has a transistor radio in its case!" One article wondered about what was ahead in the 1970s - did you know that computers were big machines that could solve hard problems very fast? Maybe someday, every college will have one on its campus!

I arrived late Thursday and apparently had missed the most exciting and slightly tense part of the pre-sale process - the negotiation among family members about how to price the various items. Of course, Mom and Dad had the last word, but each person had their opinions based on emotional attachment to the thing or to vast experience with other garage sales. Not surprisingly, given my push-over personality, once the sale started I was tempted to let people pay whatever they wanted. Fortunately, we had rules - no price cuts until after noon. When my Dad's back was turned, however, I often charged only a dime, instead of a quarter, for a flower vase or mug.

Did I mention that it was about 50 degrees? A windy 50 that led me to root through my parents' drawers and closet for socks and coats.

Each visitor seemed to be on a mission. We had many requests for military stuff - uniforms, documents, guns, knives - and for stamps, coins, and jewelry. We did have several small baggies filled with costume jewelry - miscellaneous necklaces and earrings from across the decades. We found some pretty cool big clunky earrings from the 1980s, as well as some novelty items. Somehow, no matter how many times we tucked them into bags with other pieces, the blinking Santa Claus earrings ended up alone on the table, tucked under some place mats or tea towels. And my mother parted with her collection of crystal salt cellars, one by one, many with its own tiny spoon.

Many people had stories to tell - one man bought a coffee maker for his son who could not find a replacement carafe to fit his fancy coffee maker; another bought a bin of chunky chalk for his grandchildren and talked about how they love to draw on his sidewalk when they visit. Several families with only one English-speaking member came and bought toys and household goods. It felt very good to be passing things that we no longer used on to others who needed them. Sustainability - recycling and reusing.

My brother and sisters and I had many conversations about "stuff." We all, to varying degrees acknowledged that we had way too much stuff, and after being surrounded by stuff for two days, we pledged to go clean out our own attics and closets. 

Stuff and stuff. Last Thursday, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published an article Lessons from the Amish. Tim Grant, the author, described how the Amish have easily weathered the economic recession that has plagued the nation. In Amish communities, people live below their means. Imagine that - below their means. What a sense of freedom that would bring - freedom and energy that can be devoted to more important things.

On my way home, I had a minor car accident (well, I drove over a curb at a gas station in Flatwoods, West Virginia and three kind men lifted the car back onto the road). I bent something - I noticed immediately that the steering was off - and yet, like a fool, I drove the remaining two hours home, 45 miles an hour, flashers flashing. Steve's nephew, Donny, owns a body shop and is taking care of things - he did tell me that I should NOT have driven the car home, but I did make it. So I am without a car for several days and get to ride the bus again. And then. My furnace isn't working - so we are a bit chilly. I plan to sleep in Steve's red WYEP sweatshirt tonight 'cause it has a big hood. 

But as I used to tell my kids when they were young (and a little whiny about not getting what they wanted) - "Yes, we are rich. Absolutely. We have a roof over our heads, food to eat, clothes to wear, and FAMILY! We are RICH IN LOVE!" They would roll their eyes - but I know they got it.

Thomas Doherty, the editor of peer-reviewed Ecopsychology, practicing psychologist, and professor at Lewis and Clark in Portland, Oregon, talks a lot about "personal sustainability." Using his questionnaire, we can examine our own emotions and thoughts, our physical health, play and creative lives, relationships with other people, our communities, and the natural world, to assess our own health and well-being. How much in balance are we? Are we living our lives in ways that can be sustained in a healthy, thriving way over the long-term?

I have witnessed and experienced un-sustainable lives - ways of life that are not healthy and that cannot sustain one's being over time. My sweet and brave daughter, Julie, has experienced such a life herself, suffering with an eating disorder for seven years, and has offered to share her story with you - and to share information about how we can advocate for research that can help prevent and treat eating disorders. Here is Julie's story, in her own words - she has shared this with many young people in high school and college:

I want to begin by sharing a story with you all – a story about a shy little girl who spent her free time dreaming about all of life’s wonderful plans and possibilities – a little girl who was quite confident that these hopes and wishes would come true.  She loved everything beautiful from silver sparkle jellies and bright pink nail polish to princess Halloween costumes and dress up clothes her mom had secretly bought at Goodwill.  She built a pretend office in her walk-in closet to play secretary with her best friend Natalie and she set up three dollhouses on the dining room table, spending hours rearranging furniture and making up stories about the lives of her families.  This little girl had an endless amount of creativity and motivation and never once questioned whether or not her dreams would come true.  This little girl was me.

Flash forward to late middle school and early high school.  The little girl I once was began to fade into the background as goals took on the form of straight A’s on a report card and dreams turned into becoming valedictorian and attending an Ivy League school.  My days became filled with honors classes I rarely enjoyed but had to pretend I loved and hours upon hours of homework that continued far into the night.  Sleep was of little importance or so I told myself and having fun was the last thing on my list.  It didn’t matter whether or not I wanted to do what I was doing; I simply had to and I knew no way out.

During the fall and winter of my sophomore year, I found an outlet for some of my stress about academics and success – a new project focused on my outward appearance.   I woke up at 5:30 in the morning to flat iron my hair, I was always running late as I threw clothes around my room until I had found the perfect outfit, and I began to eat as little as I could in hopes of getting to that magic number on the scale.  Now this is in no way to say that school was the sole cause of what later became a full-blown eating disorder – there were the typical family issues, the obsession with images in the media, and an overall lack of positive self-esteem – but my focus on being the perfect student certainly added fuel to the fire.

As the year progressed, I became increasingly entrenched in my rigid eating and exercise habits and spent far too much time critiquing my body in front of the mirror.  Family, friends, and doctors had begun to notice my behavior and were concerned with how thin I had become.  They all told me I could not lose any more weight and suggested I get some help.  Yet, at the time, I could not understand what they were so worried about; it was as though they were trying to tell me I needed to stop the one thing in life that made me feel calm, the one thing I was certain I could succeed at. 

However, the high of feeling in-control and powerful could not last forever.  By the end of the summer, I knew that something was wrong, that I wasn’t happy, that I was always anxious, and that I had fully lost that all that desire and creativity I once had as a little girl.  But stubborn as I was, I would not change what I had become and so I waited until my parents took action and decided to sign their 16-year-old daughter into treatment.

To make a long story short, as I feel the details of my time in treatment are not necessary to who I am today, I will simply say that the seven years I spent going through the revolving door of relapse and recovery was the hardest thing I have done to date. I had to hit rock bottom time and again before I realized that I was sick of being sick, that I needed to change something, and that I couldn’t do this alone.  Although I didn’t know what I wanted for myself, I knew what I did not want, and that was my life the way it was with an eating disorder.

Throughout my ups and downs in treatment, one thing remained consistent: I was becoming alive again.  I began to feel all kinds of emotions that I had blocked for years – anger, sadness, happiness, love.  I began to notice hunger cues and cravings for so-called forbidden foods that I had denied myself of for so long.  I began to have hopes and dreams again – I wanted to go back to school and to have friends and a boyfriend and a job I loved someday.  I began to let down my guard and to open myself up to the possibilities life had to offer.  Now I will not lie, the path to recovery is not simple or neat or ordered or anything my once OCD self thrived upon.  There were highs and lows and all kinds of in-betweens – which I later learned is how everyday life is even without an eating disorder.  But in spite of any pain or struggling I had to experience, the work was worth the reward.

As I speak to all of you today, I have been out of treatment for a little over a year [now two] and I can honestly say I didn’t always believe that my life as it is today would be possible.  I had fought and fought for so long that I sometimes didn’t even know what I was fighting for.  Yet, here I am, twenty-four years old and finally living those dreams that the little girl in me always knew I could.  No, my life is not perfect; not everything is sparkly jellies and princess costumes.  I was not valedictorian of my high school nor did I go straight to a top-notch school.  But I am happy.  Day by day, I am learning to accept my flaws, to ask for help when I cannot do it alone, and to admit that sometimes I am scared and unsure.  I do not always love how I look or the way my clothes fit on my healthy self.  I have my moments, although they are becoming less frequent, where I want to restrict again or run just a little bit too far.  But by the end of the day or week or however long it takes, it always seems to turn out okay.

If I can leave you all with one thing today, with the most valuable thing I have learned throughout my recovery process, I want you all to know that it is okay, in fact it is perfectly wonderful, to be you, in your purest form, to follow those dreams of the little girl or boy inside of you, to live in a way that makes you happy.  I agree that academics, a career, finding your ideal city, and so on, are all important things in life.  We would not move forward if we never had tangible goals.  But when push comes to shove, it is being true to ourselves and surrounding ourselves with people who do the same that keeps us alive.  Everything else just seems to fall in place. 

So that is Julie's story - and her brother Michael, her dad Tony, and I each have our own stories about those seven years. I can tell you that the prayer at the front of my mind and heart each day when I woke up and each night when I went to sleep (or tried to sleep) was about Julie - and how we could help her become whole again. She traveled her path to recovery courageously, as we walked our paths alongside her, and she came out the other side whole. As a vibrant and wise young woman of 24, Julie is well aware of what is needed to live a life of personal sustainability, of joy and strength.

Julie has been active with the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA), organizing campus activities to educate students and working with others to plan the annual St. Louis NEDA walk to raise funds for research. If you would like more information about how to help, please visit here. If you know others who have struggled with lives that cannot sustain health and well-being, you may share her story with them. There is hope.

Whoa - check out this picture. This has been my life, and mind, over the last couple of weeks. In case you cannot tell what is going on in the photo, it is a picture my dad took of us dancing the hora at Leah and Michael's wedding. Around and around, weaving and circling, coming together and parting, with such happiness, chaos, and energy. The wedding was a feast of joy - we are all still floating on cloud nine, still basking in the love that was present.

Leah and Michael are very wealthy in the love that they share for one another, and in the love among them and their friends and their families. Yes, the wedding was festive and big and glorious, with music to die for, cakes and wine and more food and drink than you can imagine, beautiful dresses, beautiful-er men and women, flowers, sacred traditions and prayers - and the abundant joy would have still been experienced if the day had simply been families and friends coming together to witness Leah and Michael's vows of commitment to one another.

I have been thinking about abundance - I think that I have talked about this a bit before. I am amazed at what riches I find when I look, when I listen and wait. In June, I sent the photo below to Sheila Rodgers, the photographer for Nancy Gift's book Good Weed, Bad Weed. Sheila is my dear friend, secretary, and "queen of f***ing everything." I asked Sheila if this plant that was growing like, well, like a weed, was indeed a weed. There were several of these plants, growing taller and taller in the beds in front of my house and looking like a mess. Sheila's response -  "Depends on whether or not you like it and want it." 

So I - who am not a very patient person - decided to wait to see what would happen. Here are some photos of the same plants from the last few weeks. They speak the language of sunshine, greeting me each evening as I return home from work.

I have been a weed before in my life - offering what I felt like were gifts to folks who did not want what I had to give. And, without much change at all on my part - same old genes, same old personality and looks, I have so not been a weed in other worlds, among people who treasured and valued what I can give. And I have seen places that have been viewed as eyesores, as weeds to be eradicated, to some, and as jewels in the making to others. I have told you about Chris Condello of Wilkinsburg and the Whitney Avenue garden, and about Juliette and Michelle of Pittsburgh Permaculture and the Hazelwood Food Forest, who have taken abandoned vacant lots and transformed them into life-giving spaces providing food for their communities. Looks like this is catching on elsewhere, based on this recent NY Times article. Weeds and vacant lots, or food and communities. Our choice.

My summer class, Psychology and the Environment, is coming to an end. What a motley crew we are - counseling students (some of whom admittedly took the class only because they needed an elective and all of the other classes were either full or didn't fit their schedule), landscape architecture students (who must have been thinking throughout much of the course - "what in the world have we gotten into here?") and me - a late bloomer who has become enthralled with all things ecological - with the beauty of this world, and how it all works together, and how we can nurture and protect it. I have so treasured our class time together, learning alongside these people and experiencing each person, including myself, wake up just a little bit more each night.

Last night was an amazing class. Chris Condello did his first public speaking about the Whitney Avenue garden, telling the story of his own life and the community that is growing, thanks to his efforts, tomato by tomato, pumpkin by pumpkin. Please, please, please check out his blog and think about what you might also have to offer to your own corner of the world. Heather Smith, one of our own counseling students, also spoke. She had just returned from her annual trip to Oregon where she spends time in the wilderness with friends who are passionate about being with and learning from the natural world - she spoke about "deep ecology" and about the advocacy and activist roles that counselors and other ordinary citizens can take on. 

Both Chris and Heather spoke the truth from their hearts. They bring spirit and light to their work and to their lives that touch so many others. Their work is not simple or clean. Neither one's story fits into a nice, neat box with square corners and straight lines - no box that might suggest lives of rules, predictability, and control. Their lives are messy. And wonderful. And abundantly rich. Just like ours. Particularly if we are willing, like them, to really see and listen, to get our hands dirty as we muck around in the soil with the bugs, worms, basil leaves, grape vines, and the occasional wild raccoon.

Finally got my rain barrels hooked up, thanks to friends from the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association - just in time for some good showers. How goes it in your world?

I have had some reactions to the "angry mother letter" that I posted last week - if you haven't read it, a brief scan of it now will help you understand what follows. Basically, the letter is from mother earth to her human children, in which she chastises her children for their destruction of their home.

Some people reacted with - I am a mother; I so get that level of frustration. Others said - Seriously? Will this anger really help? 

I have done some reading and thinking since I posted the letter, and I can empathize with both positions. I am a mother of two amazing children - in spite of their amazing-ness, there have been times when I have felt beyond frustrated with their behaviors and choices, and when I probably did not speak to them in a particularly loving way. And yet - I am the mother of two amazing children - and when I have expressed my frustration to them in a less than loving way, it has almost always gone badly. It has seldom resulted in the desired response - "Oh, yes, mother dear! I goofed! I am so sorry and I will never do it again." The more typical result of an attempt to parent via anger, shame, and guilt has been that the focus shifts from what the child could possibly learn and do differently to dealing with the icky crap that comes with angry outbursts.

I have learned over the years that parenting or teaching by anger, humiliation, shame, or guilt does not work - and that doing so poisons the relationship that is so essential for growth to happen. So I can totally see that the letter from an angry mother earth might result in shut-down by its readers - a closing down to the important seed of truth and wisdom that is buried deep within the diatribe. The result of reading the letter may not be the desired - Wow! I never thought of this! I am going to clean up my act right away and compost, recycle, be thoughtful about consumption, and write my representatives! It may more likely be anger in return, denial, and distance - certainly not thinking it through and considering changes.

Research may shed some light on this. Studies that investigate the effects of having someone complete a carbon footprint assessment (which provides feedback about how "green" the person is in daily living) yield interesting results. Briefly, for participants who already identify themselves as being sensitive to environmental issues, knowing the carbon footprint may reinforce already existing good habits or lead to additional positive changes. For participants who do not identify themselves as environmentalists, the outcome may be the opposite - no positive change and perhaps even a decrease in environmental concern (for further reading, see Vess and Arndt, 2008, and Brook, 2011, under Resources). Why might this be so? It is no doubt complicated - and yet, it may also be as simple as thinking about how any of us feel when we learn that we are not doing something we should be doing, or that we are screwing up - even if this isn't done in an angry way.

We are human - which means that, sometimes, our response to such feedback is resistance and defensiveness - which certainly does not help our cause.

One area of research that might be adapted for the purposes of understanding all of this is the area related to stages of change and motivation. Have you ever tried to make a significant behavioral change in daily living - to lose weight, to stop smoking, to drink less alcohol? Most of us who make these attempts go through steps of increasing readiness prior to actually making and maintaining the change - I will talk more about this later. 

What is important about this line of study is that there is greater success in change when we can meet people where they are in their readiness to change - when we can accept that they are not yet ready to act differently, but that they are at least contemplating doing so. When we can accept them at that pre-change stage, then we can help them take baby steps toward an actual behavioral change. We do this from a place of openness, support, curiosity, and acceptance - not from anger and judgment. I wonder what this might mean in terms of talking with people about environmental issues? What do you think?