following is an excerpt from the essay, "Asymmetry, Ikebana, Writing and The Mind," by Andy Couturier As an artist or writer, how do you compose a work that is generous?       How do you place a group of rocks together in a garden, or branches, berries and blossoms together in an ikebana arrangement, — or ideas and language on a page — to invite real participation?       The artist is giving a gift, I think, if she leaves some connections unfinished. Implied. The artist is giving a gift, I think, when the composition is multifaceted, offering a multitude of elements that combine in an abundance... posted on Mar 6 2023 (2,552 reads)

lens of the camera is my rabbit hole. She gives me the space to fall back into my childlike fantasy. The little girl who could sit for hours along the edge of the stream near Grandpa's vegetable garden, marveling at the grandeur of every small detail. A world full of freedom, where coloring outside the lines of "the normal" is allowed, then unfolds. Thus, in the moment, I move beyond learned insights about beautiful or ugly, good or bad. And I create dreamy, colorful images that breathe a new world of simplicity, serenity, silence and transcendence. For hours I want to wander through nature. Preferably through the mountains. This is where I feel so a... posted on May 9 2023 (3,034 reads)

from The Counter 11.08.2018 A conversation with Leah Penniman, author of the new book Farming While Black. Near the end of a five-hour delivery run, Lytisha Wyatt rings an apartment in Albany, New York’s South End. A little girl answers the door, furtively accepting the box of organic produce. It’s one of 97 being delivered throughout the area, and the last of the season, courtesy of Soul Fire Farm’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. As Wyatt walks away, the girl’s mother leans out the second floor window. “Thank you so much! Thank you for everything! Is this the last week? Thank you!” Every week during harvest... posted on May 13 2023 (1,782 reads)

certain dreams in life just don’t pan out, like if all you wanted growing up was to fly, but fate saw fit to furnish you with bad eyes, complete with a shot of red-green color-blindness—the sum of which can disqualify you from becoming a pilot. Grounded by such shortcomings, you may find yourself commiserating with the ratites, a motley clan of birds that includes the emu and the kiwi and the cassowary, most born sans a keel bone upon which to hang their aerial ambitions. Unlike them, you can flunk your vision test and still be cleared for takeoff; all that is required is a statement attesting to your demonstrated abilities to soundly operate an aircraft. But ... posted on Jul 10 2023 (2,667 reads)

to grow food where we need it. The first time I went to Richmond, Calif., nine years ago, my friend, who ran a punk music recording studio out of a converted warehouse, told us not to park our car on the street. The day before, vandals had walked the block and smashed several car windows. At least a few things have started to change in Richmond since then: A berry garden sits beside a bike trail in the Iron Triangle, a neighborhood at the center of the city bordered on three sides by old rail lines. Once a month, Latino and African American families–often people who live just a few blocks from each other but rarely had a chance to meet in the past–gather at the garden an... posted on Jul 20 2011 (9,086 reads)

Hayes: People ask me, “How do you do it all?” The answer is, I don’t … and there’s a good reason for that. Yesterday morning, when I finished writing for the day, I signed on to check my email. From the sea of unread messages, one stood out. The subject line, written in all caps, read: HOW DO YOU DO IT ALL? The more I write, the more I speak, the more I hear this question. It’s understandable. I paint my life as a dreamy blend of farming, cooking, home schooling, canning, lacto-fermenting, music-making, soap-making, crafting, writing, occasional travel for speaking engagements or research and, believe it or not, I even find time to knit. I&rsq... posted on Jul 26 2011 (10,388 reads)

one Baltimore-born Motown veteran is preserving two of the country’s most precious resources: wild mustangs and at-risk children.    Photo by Black Tiger.     Wild Horses, Wild Kids "We can bring the wild kids together with the wild horses—the animals no one wants and the kids no one wants. Together they can learn healing, and they can heal each other." Download the full interview from the Marc Steiner Show, produced in partnership with YES!   Jean Albert Renaud sleeps in a barn. His bedroom shares a wall with the stall of a stallion named Incitatus. On winter nights, he can hear the wind whistling across the hills, but R... posted on Oct 4 2011 (7,954 reads)

most people see a fast-food bag fluttering on the corner of the highway, they probably shake their heads and keep on driving. The Pick Up Artists aren’t most people. These four young environmentalists are driving across America, conducting roadside cleanups and spreading the word about reducing waste. After just three months on the road, the Pick Up America project has already collected more than 37,000 pounds of garbage. And they’re only 340 miles into their 2-year, cross-country trip. The project began March 20 at Assateague Island, Md. They aim to arrive in their final destination, San Francisco Bay, Calif., around August 2011. The team knew what they were getting... posted on Jul 23 2011 (9,661 reads)

it might seem that there’s not much in the way of silver linings in these dark economic times, there is at least one: as people learn to make do with less, they are discovering the many benefits of sharing. Car-sharing, babysitting cooperatives, and tool lending are just a few of the many creative ways people are eschewing ownership and learning to share the goods and services they need. But sharing can do more than just save you a buck. New psychological research suggests that sharing fosters trust and cooperation in the community and contributes to personal well-being. Here are some of the ways that sharing can boost your happiness levels and help your community thrive: 1. Sh... posted on May 21 2013 (26,313 reads)

the last few years, I've become a big proponent of Smile Cards. The premise behind these small cards is simple: do an anonymous act of kindness and leave a card behind, inviting the recipient to pay-it-forward. If he/she does, the chain keeps going, resulting in "ripples" of kindness radiating out. Smile Cards are wonderful in ways I cannot count. Small, simple, humble -- yet powerful, because one act of kindness can be the start of a long chain. But for all these reasons, the main reason why I use them is the subtle change that has begun to occur in the way I think. Recently, I was on a plane reading an intriguing financial book my friend had given me. As o... posted on Sep 11 2011 (23,199 reads)

Arunachalam Muruganantham decided he was going to do something about the fact that women in India can’t afford sanitary napkins, he went the extra mile: He wore his own for a week to figure out the best design.   When Arunachalam Muruganantham hit a wall in his research on creating a sanitary napkin for poor women, he decided to do what most men typically wouldn’t dream of. He wore one himself--for a whole week. Fashioning his own menstruating uterus by filling a bladder with goat’s blood, Muruganantham went about his life while wearing women’s underwear, occasionally squeezing the contraption to test out his latest iteration. It resul... posted on Jan 26 2012 (19,057 reads)

Pablo Picasso, the Spanish artist, was a schoolboy, he was terrible at math because whenever the teacher had him write a number on the chalkboard, he saw something different. The number four looked like a nose to him and he kept doodling until he filled in the rest of the face. The number 1 looked like a tree, 9 looked like a person walking against the wind, and 8 resembled an angel. Everyone else in the classroom saw numbers on the chalkboard; Picasso perceived a variety of different images. The connection between perspective and creative thinking has to do with habituation and over-familiarization. Over-familiarization with something ( an idea, a procedure, a system ) is a tr... posted on Mar 4 2012 (49,089 reads)

Lori Stokes of North Carolina One Thursday night, I went to eat dinner with a friend and I heard a tiny kitten meowing near the side of the house as I opened the door to go in.  My friend had no pets because she did not like cats; she said they gave her “the creeps.”  As I went in the door, I told her “I hear a kitten.”  She said, “No, it’s your imagination.” Being a kitty person, I knew better. I ran outside and found the baby.  He was all soaking wet.  The house had been power washed earlier but no one knew there was a baby kitty over in the bushes or that he h... posted on Mar 12 2012 (19,844 reads)

to life on the screen. For naked-eye skies we started with the still photographs of Akira Fujii, regarded as the world's foremost wide-angle astrophotographer, then "twinkled" their brighter stars by applying pseudorandom algorithms developed at the digital-processing houses Form in Los Angeles and Video Arts in San Francisco and by our special effects artist, Don Davis. (The digital post-processing wizards started with theoretical models, while Don simply made de-focused video images of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, then reverse-engineered its twinkles to apply them to the stars in the photos.) Telescopic views of brighter objects such as the Moon and the planets w... posted on Apr 2 2012 (7,417 reads)

fixing and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul. Service rests on the premise that the nature of life is sacred, that life is a holy mystery which has an unknown purpose. When we serve, we know that we belong to life and to that purpose. From the perspective of service, we are all connected: All suffering is like my suffering and all joy is like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally and inevitably from this way of seeing. Serving is different from helpin... posted on Apr 16 2012 (100,016 reads)

Simplicity has become a “modern classic” because it gives voice to ways of living that are vital for building a workable and meaningful future.  As we awaken to an endangered world, people are asking, “How can we live sustainably on the Earth when our actions are already producing dramatic climate change, species extinction, oil depletion, and more?”  For a generation, a diverse subculture has grappled with these concerns and, in the United States and a dozen or so other “postmodern” nations, this subculture has grown from a miniscule movement in the 1960s to a respected part of the mainstream culture in the early 2000s.  G... posted on May 1 2012 (34,779 reads)

is a list of 15 things which, if you give up on them, will make your life a lot easier and much, much happier. We hold on to so many things that cause us a great deal of pain, stress and suffering – and instead of letting them all go, instead of allowing ourselves to be stress free and happy – we cling on to them. Not anymore. Starting today we will give up on all those things that no longer serve us, and we will embrace change. Ready? Here we go:   1. Give up your need to always be right.There are so many of us who can’t stand the idea of being wrong – wanting to always be right – even at the risk of ending great relationships or causi... posted on May 10 2012 (562,988 reads)

for food — whether it's ferreting rare mushrooms in the woods,picking abundant lemons from an overlooked tree, or gathering berries from an abandoned lot — is all the rage among the culinary crowd and the D.I.Y. set, who share their finds with fellow food lovers in fancy restaurant meals or humble home suppers. But an old-fashioned concept — gleaning for the greater good by harvesting unwanted or leftover produce from farms or family gardens — is also making a comeback during these continued lean economic times. In cities, rural communities, and suburbs across the country, volunteer pickers join forces to collect bags a... posted on May 12 2012 (12,182 reads)

Graduation Speech Gets Standing Ovation: 2012's Baccalaureate speaker at the University of Pennsylvania was an unconventional choice for an Ivy League school. To address their newly-minted graduates, aspiring to dazzling careers, they picked a man who has never in his adult life, applied for a job. A man who hasn't worked for pay in nearly a decade, and whose self-stated mission is simply "to bring smiles to the world and stillness to my heart". This off-the-radar speaker launched his address with a startling piece of advice. Following up with four key insights gleaned from a radical 1000 km walking pilgrimage through the villages of India. As he closed his on... posted on May 14 2012 (394,990 reads)

Just head over to the park. Seattle's new food forest aims to be an edible wilderness. (Photo: Buena Vista Images/Getty Images) Seattle’s vision of an urban food oasis is going forward. A seven-acre plot of land in the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood will be planted with hundreds of different kinds of edibles: walnut and chestnut trees; blueberry and raspberry bushes; fruit trees, including apples and pears; exotics like pineapple, yuzu citrus, guava, persimmons, honeyberries, and lingonberries; herbs; and more. All will be available for public plucking to anyone who wanders into the city’s first food forest. “This is totally innovativ... posted on Jun 8 2012 (35,218 reads)