Social Permaculture
We need the power of creative and compassionate groups and communities working together to move us toward a more kind and sustainable world. However, maneuvering relationships within communities and keeping them united can be very challenging. In this piece, a life-long permaculturist shares the wisdom she's gathered from four decades of work with intentional communities and groups of changemakers... posted on Dec 04 2016, 5,752 reads

What Great Leadership and Music Have in Common
Management consultant Jim Crupi. who founded and runs Strategic Leadership Solutions, says all leaders should aspire to inspire, just as great music does, pointing out that "Our reaction to a great song can be so visceral that we are forever connected to it...reliving a wonderful moment." In this article he outlines seven ways a good leader can make great music to his staff or followers.... posted on Dec 03 2016, 8,976 reads

On Discerning Your Purpose & Letting Your Life Speak
"'Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney,'" young Vincent van Gogh wrote in a letter as he floundered to find his purpose. For the century and a half since, and undoubtedly the many centuries before, the question of how to kindle that soul-warming fire by finding one's purpose and ... posted on Dec 02 2016, 23,759 reads

Annie Dillard: On Seeing
"When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I've never been seized by it since. For some reason I always "hid" the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of ... posted on Dec 01 2016, 26,890 reads

The Running Program That's Pulled 1,300 People Out of Homelessne
At 5:45 a.m., on a Friday morning, a group of about 20 homeless guys warmed up in a parking lot in East Harlem. In a circle, they did jumping jacks, twisted their torsos and touched their toes, and then huddled up, they chanted the Serenity Prayer ("God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...") and took off running. They ran with Back On My Feet, a program started by social en... posted on Nov 30 2016, 17,100 reads

How Poetry Captivates Us
Robert Hass is one of contemporary American poetry's most celebrated and widely-read voices. He served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 1995-1997 and has won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In the mid-1990s, Cofounder of the River of Words organization, which provides tools for teaching ecoliteracy to young students through multidisciplinary, interactive curricula, Hass is Distingui... posted on Nov 29 2016, 10,961 reads

Singer Loses Voice and Finds Her Song
One day in 2011, singer-songwriter Crystal Goh woke up with no voice. She was diagnosed with a rare neurological condition called Spasmodic Dysphonia, with no known cause or cure. Two years went by as Goh struggled with this disease. In the midst of her isolation and depression, she wrote a song to remind herself about the importance of hope. And as she began to share this song with others, her vo... posted on Nov 28 2016, 4,029 reads

Food Waste and the Culture of Rush
Journalist Diana Moreno took a job at a low-cost supermarket in Germany where she discovered what she called a nasty reality: "Every day, at a sleepy four o'clock in the morning, a random employee has to do the 'waste inventory'...we get rid of items just because they've lost their label, or because the package is broken, or because they've been left outside the fridge." This food waste adds up to... posted on Nov 27 2016, 13,278 reads

Grit: The Power of Passion & Perseverance
What is grit? In this interview, University of Pennyslvania psychology professor Angela Duckworth explains that grit is the capacity to work hard and stay focused. She shares why grit is necessary in additino to talent, and why talent needs the drive that grit provides in order for one to be successful. ... posted on Nov 26 2016, 15,487 reads

How Libraries Save Lives
"Knowledge sets us free, art sets us free. A great library is freedom," Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in contemplating the sacredness of public libraries. "You never know what troubled little girl needs a book," Nikki Giovanni wrote in one of her poems celebrating libraries and librarians. A beautiful testament to the emancipating, transformative power of public libraries comes from a little girl named... posted on Nov 25 2016, 12,259 reads