* Cool. 90% Personal Emissions Reduction Begins In Our Garden…

This is a project by Simple Living called Riot for Austerity 90% Emissions Reduction Project. Individuals and families are invited to participate, at what ever level one can, to actively and consciously change one’s life to reduce the negative impact one has on the planet – and increase the positive impact one has too. (Scroll down to read how your Hot Potato columnists stack up so far, especially in the Food category!)

So…we have signed up, and we’ll see how cool we – and the planet – can be a year from the time we signed up to significantly reduce our personal carbon emissions. In the future, we would like to write an official Hot Potato article about the project. For now, here’s a summary of the Riot, our starting point, and some thoughts on really – no, really – changing our lives.

Why 90% – from Simple Living:

“The goal that Miranda, Sharon and other participants have set for themselves is to cut their emissions by 90% of what the average person in the US consumes – the approximate amount people in the rich world need to reduce by in order to avoid the worst effects of global warming. The eventual goal is to reach the 94% that George Monbiot calculates would represent a fair share of the world’s emissions for Americans, but we’re starting slow .

We’re doing this for several reasons. First, because it is necessary – if we want to bestow a decent world on our children, we have to cut our emissions, and much harder and faster than any government has proposed. The reason governments do not propose it is because they believe it is politically infeasible. So we want to present our leaders with as many people as possible who will stand up and say “I did it. Our nation can too.” We’re excited that people want to join us, and we invite anyone who is ready to participate!

…

Monbiot’s calculations were that this was impossible without government intervention. Well, we think it is possible, and we’re going to prove it. It would be a lot easier, though, with government infrastructure changes like better public transportation, more investment in renewable energies and a transfer of subsidies away from stupid things like building new highways and paying corporate agriculture. So if you participate and succeed in any way in this, you should be extremely proud of yourself – you are doing, without help, what they said could not be done.

Miranda and Sharon started this program together. We come from really different backgrounds, and we’ve each got different challenges. Sharon lives on a farm, Miranda in a city. Sharon grows a lot of her food but has no public transport and nothing very walkable. Miranda walks everywhere but only has a lawn. We’re both struggling to do this with young and sometimes recalcitrant children. We’re both excited about it, though! We think it is will be important to demonstrate that this is possible in all sorts of lives.”

What is 90%? - from Simple Living:

“The Rules of the Game are as follows:

1. Everyone can play. Even if you only think you can make a major reduction in a few categories, or 1, or even none, you are invited to join us. Every drop in your emissions is a huge accomplishment, and another person who can stand up and say “I can do it, even without any systemic help – therefor, we can all do it.”

The time period is 1 year – the goal is to reach a 90% reduction (or the best each of us can do) *AND KEEP IT THERE* after 1 year. That is, we’re not dropping our emissions instantly and then going back to business as usual later – the goal is to use this year to figure out what we need to do, what kind of adaptations we need, and how to change things.”

Where does the Hot Potato stand on 90%?

There are seven categories on the 90% Reduction list, which we highly recommend you read more about for stats on the average U.S. consumption of goods and resources per person, and Riot For Austerity’s general recommendations on how we can each go about reducing this. A post by No Impact Man also sums up the project goals, which equal a 90% reduction of personal carbon emissions, based on the average U.S. consumption:

Gasoline:

• 50 gallons per PERSON, per YEAR

Electricity:

• 1,100 kWh per HOUSEHOLD, per YEAR

Heating and cooking energy:

• If your home uses propane or natural gas, 100 therms per HOUSEHOLD, per YEAR
• If your home uses heating oil, 75 gallons per HOUSEHOLD, per YEAR.
• If your home uses locally and sustainably harvested wood: Unlimited
• If your home uses unsustainably harvested wood, 5 cords per HOUSEHOLD, per YEAR

Garbage:

• 0.45 pounds of garbage per PERSON, per DAY

Water:

• 10 gallons per PERSON, per DAY

Consumer goods:

• $1,000 worth per HOUSEHOLD, per YEAR.
• Used goods count only ten percent of their purchase price (so you could buy $10,000 of used stuff).
• Used goods that were donated to Goodwill or the church rummage sale, etc, can be bought in unlimited amounts (since might otherwise just end up in landfill).

Food:

• No less than 70% of food purchases should be organic and be grown within 100 miles.
• No more than 25% of food purchases should be bulk, dry goods (flour, pasta, etc) from more than 100 miles away.
• No more than 5% of food purchases should be wet goods (meat, fruit, shampoo) from more than 100 miles away.

And here’s our starting point and personal goals….[drum roll]:

 

1. GASOLINE.

If only we had started this a year ago, or two years ago!

In the past two years, we moved from CITY to COUNTRY and now, to our surprise, to the….SUBURBS [group breath intake, oohs, hiss].

In Chicago, we didn’t have a car. We used the bus, train, biked, and walked a lot – with an absolutely luxurious ride in a friend’s or family member’s car once in a blue moon, which always felt odd after almost never being in a car.

Then, after fleeing the city for beautiful precious delicious clean air (may we always appreciate it) and an education at Mother Nature’s university a.k.a. a 32 week internship on an organic CSA farm in southeastern Wisconsin bordering a nature preserve of hundreds of acres, we began to live the good life. In reality, our stay wasn’t perfect, at no fault to Mother Nature, but we did learn so much and successfully detoxed from our living for three years in the very polluted although wonderful city that is Chicago. (We both grew up in the much cleaner and more spacious suburbs, so, along with the stress of doing deep, personal healing and emotional work, I don’t think our bodies or minds were in the right condition to live amongst all the smog and concrete. Actually, no one was meant to live like that, but that’s another post. When we moved to the city, we had no idea how allergic to it we would end up being.)

As interns on the organic farm, our daily commute to work consisted of stepping out of our bedroom, and walking to the field. We loved it! Occasionally, we’d drive the farm truck around, but not much. The 100 person CSA farm, like most farms, used a gas-powered tractor, but we didn’t drive the tractor. (One large CSA farm we visited, Springdale Farm in Plymouth, Wisconsin had just converted a tractor to run on a battery, eventually to be powered with renewables. The owner of the farm said he loved using it out in the field, because he could enjoy working on his farm with a quiet electric-powered tractor.)

Currently, we are living with Aireen’s mother and stepdad in their home for the time being, in a northwest suburb of Chicago. Aireen’s mother doesn’t use her vehicle very often, so we share with her. Um…did we mention…it’s an SUV. And here’s the BUT. But, three adults are sharing the car, one of those adults works from home, and the other two (that’s us) just found jobs at the same place. So, with the cooperation of a sweet and sympathetic scheduler at work, hopefully we will be able to carpool most days!

Enter 90%. Even before we learned about the 90% challenge, we have debated several options to NOT drive a big SUV the 10.5 miles to work and back. Dreams of electric and hybrid cars, converted electric motorcycles, electric scooters, and electric bikes floated in the air. None of these are financially possible at this point. Then there’s the good, old-fashioned pedal-powered bicycle. We thought that the bike option was more possible, but 10.5 miles is significant. We’re both young, in our late 20’s, and the route to work is a straight shot down one road, with bike-able sidewalks for much of the trip even. Not that being young or old should be a deciding factor. A healthy body and a healthy mind is for the young and the old.

(Side note: if you go to China and visit any of their many huge parks early in the morning, they are FULL of elder Chinese men and women radiating energy and life – exercising, doing tai chi, singing in choir groups, playing instruments, flying kites, sitting, walking, and just enjoying life outdoors. I found while studying abroad in Asia that the common American mentality that associates age with degeneration, losing worth, and even shame is not nearly as prevalent in Asian cultures.)

I was still skeptical about the bike thing, but then I read a comment on No Impact Man’s blog from a person who bikes 15 miles to work in the Silicon Valley, which he described as “probably the outer edge of what’s doable.” So 10.5 miles is less than the point of no return, which apparently is over 15 miles. This revelation was comforting. We need to become more bike buff for sure, which is something I’ve wanted to do ever since seeing Mr. Bike a.k.a Dave Glowacz speak two years ago in our old Chicago neighborhood, Andersonville, at Women And Children First Bookstore. And I read his fun and informative book Urban Biker’s Tips And Tricks. So part of our 90% goal is biking more, a lot more, in the suburban jungle of Chicago’s northwest suburbs.

GOALS:

• bike more often, especially short trips
• build up biking endurance
  
• acquire accesories (bike lights for night and rain riding, cargo bags, handlebar bell)
  
• review Urban Biker’s Tips And Tricks
  
• replace tires on bicycle
• save up for airless tires

BOTTOM LINE: For now, we use an estimated 4-5 gallons of gasoline per week. That’s 2-2.5 gallons per person, per week. Our work schedule is still fluctuating, so our gas usage will change as well. We are always mindful when we drive. Multiple errands in one car trip. Light foot on the gas pedal. Only drive when necessary. Park the car and walk around from there. Sometimes we use the public trans PACE bus, which picks up right in front of our home, but unfortunately the bus system does not go to where we work. One option might be to take a bus (or two) part way, and then bike to our workplace from there. But then it might be less of a hassle to actually bike the whole 10.5 miles instead of waiting and going out of the way on the bus, which is still gasoline-powered.

 

2. ELECTRICITY.
3. HEATING AND COOKING ENERGY.

Our home has an electric stove, so our cooking falls under the Electricity category. I’m not sure what our electricity usage is, and since we share the electricity bill with two roommates who are not participating in the 90% Reduction, it may be difficult to assess the exact kwh per month. The house currently uses a couple compact bulbs. And we have more CFL bulbs waiting to be installed. Ideally, I would like to invest in LED bulbs, more expensive, but mercury-free, EMF-free, much more energy efficient, and much more beautiful quality of light. Gaiam sells LED bulbs, so we can research and save up for a possible future purchase.

GOALS:

• install compact fluorescent bulbs
• invest in LED bulbs
  
• use/build solar cooker
• use/build solar dehydrator
• ferment food and drink
• more raw cooking
• more use of candles lit at night
• possible investment in small-scale renewable energy sources, like a cellphone handcrank charger, etc.
• hang clothes out to dry more
• hand wash clothes more
• for heating water: shorter, cooler showers
• for heating the house in winter: convince roommates/home owners to insulate, put up thick curtains, turn down the thermostat and enjoy the fireplace (if I learn how to knit sweaters by then, this might help too).

Both of us value DIY ethics and aesthetics, but we are still developing this aspect of ourselves. We are hard-core gardeners, but we have yet to really make our own clothes, build things beyond very simple projects, etc. And we love cooking and preparing food. However, to do that at the level we would like requires consistent mental willpower and joyous energy that we are still mustering and cultivating. One step at a time. (Notes to self: Will ask friend to mail us a Kombucha tea starter. Will get Wild Fermentation book and make Kimchi at home instead of buying $10 jar at Whole Foods. Will attempt to be more crafty and build something this summer that contributes to 90%.)

BOTTOM LINE: For now, we’re not sure. We’ve always lived with roommates so don’t have records of our individual electricity usage. We don’t use the electric stove everyday. We light candles sometimes (my mother hand pours and hand paints soy candles), but we could do this more. We unplug, put to sleep, and turn off lights, appliances, and computers, and get into trouble doing this for roommates too. : ) Biggest gas and electricity uses: fridge, hot showers, charging laptop computer, washing and drying machine, stove/oven, toaster oven, lights. Occasional usage for: how could I almost forget – the electric juicer, recharging digital camera battery, charging a cellphone (which triples as our alarm clock and calculator), electric beard trimmer. We already use a handcrank blender (put into use almost everyday) and a handcrank/solar flashlight-radio-weatherband (rarely used). We’re not sure how many therms of natural gas we use to heat water and to heat the house in the winter. Our roommates, the homeowners, are not signed up to 90%. The natural gas usage on the gas provider’s bill is mixed in with their use. Not sure how to estimate our use at this point. Our roommates also use A/C in the summer, which we did not use when we lived in the city or on the farm. We close our bedroom door and vents, and keep windows open (fresh air!) instead of using the house A/C in our bedroom.

 

4. GARBAGE.

GOALS:

• grow, process, and preserve foods more (like kimchi, kombucha, salsa) to avoid packaging waste
  
• become more crafty in general
• buy used when possible
• barter, scavage, manifest
• simplify
  

BOTTOM LINE: We compost all our food scraps, and we recycle. I don’t know how much emissions recycling contributes. We also save and reuse glass jars to store bulk foods, leftovers, etc. We reuse some plastic bags, although storing food in plastic is not healthy because of leeching, but it varies by quality of plastic. We save and reuse paper grocery bags, and most of the time we bring our own cloth bags to stores. I love this zipable cloth bag I bought from a co-op in Milwaukee. It folds up to the size of a CD case, and unzips to the size of a medium-sized bag. I keep it in my shoulder bag all the time in case we need it. For a month long road trip that included a fun two-day train ride, we purchased from Reusablebags.com an awesome food and water hauler bag. We’re also fans of stainless steel water bottles.

Most garbage we do produce comes from plastic bags or sealers from packaged and processed foods. Some of these can be recycled, but not all. Estimated pounds of garbage per day: we’re still not sure. Most days we throw nothing away, but we’re still unsure whether some of our recyclables are actually being recycled or not. For example, our soymilk comes in Tetra Paks that are recyclable, but only a few places actually recycle them, and we’re still not sure whether our location is one of those places.

 

5. WATER.

GOALS:

• find the little hose attachment that measures gallons of water used and keep track of water usage in the garden
• invest in or build rainwater catchment barrels
• shorter showers
  
• save and use more grey water
• setup grey water storage if possible
• get well water tested
  

BOTTOM LINE: Our water, unlike almost all other Chicago suburbs, comes from the property’s own well. (There’s a current debate in the small suburb where we live to switch over to expensive lake water piped in from many, many miles away that boasts health toxins such as chlorine, fluoride, and according to EWG’s national tap water database, stuff like arsenic.)

We use the well water to water the garden daily to keep moisture levels even, for plant health and to lessen weeds. The garden will feed more than the two of us, so the garden water usage would be divided amongst an average of 3 people (more or less for certain crops). We don’t have rainwater barrels set up yet. We have set up small empty bins or buckets to catch rain before, but it’s not an ideal setup. We drink bottled spring water and filtered well water. Mountain spring water collected by your own hands is SO good, but we don’t have any mountains here in the flatlands.

Most of the time, we both don’t feel the need to shower everyday, but one of us is fond of long showers. We flush “as needed” (i.e. number 2 and for guests). Number of gallons used per day, per person: not sure yet.

 

6. CONSUMER GOODS.

GOALS:

• learn how to make/alter own clothes
• learn how to make own reusable organic cloth pads
  
• become more crafty in general
• buy used when possible
• barter, scavage, manifest
• simplify

BOTTOM LINE: (Plant-based body care products like shampoo, soap, etc. will be under the Food category.) We don’t buy stuff very often. Two days ago, after putting it off for a long time, we bought an electric razor and haircutting kit to trim Adam’s beard. We bought the cheap one. This past year we invested in probably the two most expensive and important consumer goods we have ever owned: an acoustic guitar for Adam and a digital camera for Aireen. We buy recycled toilet paper, other bodycare stuff, business supplies, books, gifts, etc. For gifts this past holiday season, we put bow ties, homemade gift tags, and pretty flower stickers on canned tomato sauce and preserved apple cinnamon sauce, which were from the farm’s crops we harvested and processed ourselves. Our family and friends LOVED them.

 

7. FOOD!

GOALS:

• grow as gardeners and grow our garden
• grow even more of our own food and medicine better – using methods from Grow Biointensive, Permaculture, Fukuoka Natural Farming, the Ringing Cedars books, and a closer connection to the earth
  
• make own body care and cleaning products, like lip gloss, salve, shampoo, toothpaste, etc. as much as possible (we use Dr. Bronner’s soap, vinegar, baking soda, and water for cleaning)
  
• use the clematis flowers and leaves for soap for laundry, etc.
• preserve and winter over more food from the garden
• responsibly harvest wild plants for food, medicine, and ingredients
• find more local wild areas, for enjoyment and for wild plants
  
• find and join a local food buying club, if feasible
  
• start ordering bulk from online website
• go to localharvest.org or other resources and find eggs from local, organic, *pastured* chickens (for Aireen, who is vegetarian; Adam is vegan)
• find local, organic sources for other goods we aren’t growing
• eat even more local, in season, healthy
• (just added) explore poo and pee composting more, for self-sufficient fertility and sustainability…plan to read Future Fertility:Transforming Human Waste Into Human Wealth by John Beeby and The Humanure Handbook, available to read online

BOTTOM LINE:

Food Sustainability In One’s Diet And In The Garden

Our diet is mainly plant-based, with Adam being vegan and Aireen being vegetarian. We’ve known for a few years that eating an animal-friendly diet can be better for the Earth, but just a few months ago, we found a recent study by The University of Chicago that, while not altogether shocking, quoted some astounding figures. According to the study, the greenhouse gas burden of the average American diet is 1.5 tons greater than a plant-based, vegan diet. This 1.5 tons of carbon from eating factory-farmed meat, dairy, and eggs accounts for nearly 20% of the average North American’s total greenhouse gas output! This is aside from the significant contribution of ammonia, another greenhouse gas, given off from animal waste. Whenever we buy eggs for Aireen, we make sure they’re from organically-fed, cage-free chickens. We would like to find a local source of pastured (grass-fed) eggs, because this reduces the burden of having to grow, process, and ship all of the feed for the animals, and contributes to healthier chickens who lay more nutritious eggs.

As for the garden, our main growing area is 4 double dug, biointensive beds just transformed from lawn into garden this year. The 4 beds equal 224 square feet of growing space. We also have about 200 square feet of garden space that the three of us are tending elsewhere around the house, which includes Aireen’s mom’s eggplants and tomatoes. For the household, that’s an estimated 424 square feet total used to grow our own food.

According to research by Ecology Action, a family or mini-farmer has the potential to grow a year’s worth of food, fuel, and fiber for one person on as little as 4,000 square feet when using the 8 Step Grow Biointensive Method that grows topsoil instead of depleting it, uses no machines or petroleum, plants hexagonally and intensively, and uses far less water, inputs, and energy than conventional/chemical or industrial/tractor organic methods. Some food growers get turned off by the double-digging method. The point of double digging is to aerate soil for healthy roots and to incorporate compost, eventually creating a healthy soil that will no longer need to be double dug. Digging should also be done with the most ergonomic, efficient, flowing movements with a calm state of mind.

One of the 8 steps is to grow the compost crops that double as food crops (corn, grains, sunflowers) to add lots of organic matter to the compost pile, which becomes compost added to the beds, which becomes topsoil. To grow food sustainably, we need to first grow soil for soil health – and to feed people. Step 8 is to use all 8 steps, a whole systems approach.

As stated on the Ecology Action website, these techniques:

• Produce 2 to 6 times more food
• Build the soil up to 60 times faster than in nature, if properly used
• Reduce by half or more the amount of land needed.

while using:

• 67% to 88% less water
• 50% to 100% less fertilizer
• 99% less energy than commercial agriculture, while using a fraction of the resources.

A very helpful perspective offered by Grow Biointensive and the book How To Grow More Vegetables is the 60/30/10 ratio.

60% Carbon-and-Calorie Crops: plants grown for maximum carbon or biomass (organic matter) and calorie-efficient food. This category includes corn, sunflowers, and grains.

30% High-Calorie Root Crops: plants grown for maximum calories, which are space efficient to grow. Includes potatoes, sunchokes a.k.a. jerusalum artichokes, garlic, and leeks.

10% Vegetable Crops: for vitamins and minerals. Beloved tomatoes, herbs, and other veggies go here.

Our garden is not up to 60/30/10 standards, which really takes an amazing but not impossible diet/garden coordination. We do have 1 out of the 4 main beds devoted to almost all heirloom potatoes, and another 1 out of 4 beds devoted to the ancient grain quinoa, which is a complete protein like hemp! Quinoa has the highest protein content of all grains, has a higher fat content than other grains, and is a good source of iron, calcium, and other nutrients.

Even if your garden doesn’t follow any or all of the guidelines in Grow Biointensive’s conscious diet planning, the concepts behind 60/30/10 show how important and complex it is to look at what we eat, how sustainable is it to grow, and how sustainable was it actually grown. For example, beans and soybeans pack a lot of calories in a small amount eaten (considered weight-efficient), BUT they take a larger area to grow (thereby not as area-efficient, even less if planted in rows instead of hexagonally and intensively in beds).

These are important factors to consider to work towards a sustainable garden or farm that contributes to less harmful impact on the planet. Another key principle in Grow Biointensive is to, eventually, have a self-sufficient garden. Ecology Action states:

“The goal of a GROW BIOINTENSIVE sustainable mini-farm is to produce essentially all of the soil’s fetility sustainably and to eventually need no outside inputs.”

EA goes on to note that a person’s food, fuel, and fiber requirements may be grown on potentially as little as 40 beds that are 100 square feet each:

“Generally, the minimum farm size for growing all of one’s person’s soil fertility, human nutrition and income on a sustainable basis will be approximately 4,000 square feet of planted surface, assuming intermediate GROW BIOINTENSIVE yields.”

Getting inputs from off site for your organic garden, unless you can verify they are sustainably produced, is kind of like driving an eco-car. Even the most carbon-neutral car still requires materials stripped from the earth…and then what happens to the same materials when they’re done being a car?

There’s also the poo and pee factor. Did you know that the poo and pee from a person for one year, properly composted, is enough to produce the same person’s fertilizer requirements for one year’s supply of food?

So, devoting garden space to crops from the 60% and 30% categories, like corn and grains and potatoes and sunflowers*, could help a person get closer to the 90% goal, especially combined with all the steps in the 8 Step Grow Biointensive Method. We recommend the books How To Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons and One Circle: How To Grow A Complete Diet In Less Than 1000 Square Feet by David Duhon. (*Check out this great use of sunflower seeds. This is a fun raw chocolate pie video from Bryan Au’s new national raw organic food TV show called “RAW ORGANIC SAVING THE PLANET”.)

Where We’re At Now With Growing And Buying Food

Since this is our first year in our own garden, we are not consuming as much food from the garden as we’d like. The established perennials are several mulberry trees (going crazy with black fruit right now!), a few strawberry plants with itty-bitty but tasty red fruit, a mysterious mint, chives, and some wild plants like edible violets, dandelions, ground cherries, and an old pear tree with unknown fruit quality. We have eaten almost all our reserves from our internship on the organic CSA farm last year. One jar of pear preserves left.

We try to buy bulk at Whole Foods, but the three bulk items we consume the most – raisins, walnuts, and oats – are often out of stock at our local stores. We will start to buy bulk online or from a buying club most likely…or find a local organic source. We just discovered Whole Foods has a refillable dispenser for things like laundry and dish soap. Would like to try soap nuts. You can also grow or wild harvest plants that contain saponin for soap. We already have clematis in the garden! Quinoa seeds also have saponin, which must be rinsed before eating. The soapy rinse water can then be used to wash clothes or hair. (We learned about using clematis as soap in the book When Technology Fails: A Manual For Self-Reliance And Planetary Survial by Mathew Stein).

By the end of this season, the majority of our food will hopefully come from the garden, plus food to share with others, and more will come from bulk and local organic sources. Farmers market are just beginning around here, as is our garden, as is our income from new jobs to buy large bulk purchases…so our Food stats have lots of room for improvement.

Please note: We buy almost if not all 100% organic foods, that is all or majority organic ingredients. We would never eat a local apple sprayed with toxic chemicals or eat GMO corn instead of an organic apple or organic corn just because the former are locally grown. The environmental impact of non-organic agriculture is far worse, in our opinion, than the environmental impact of shipping. The impact of non-organic on one’s body and health, always not the preferred choice. The ideal choice would be local and organic. An interesting perspective is which non-local foods are able to withstand long-distance shipping traditionally, using horses for example. Water content of food affects amount of time it can remain edible. Dried sea vegetables and sea salt, though not harvested in the Midwest, can still be sustainably traded, in theory. Stuff like bananas would not survive the journey.

Estimated percentages:

“Local Organic” – est. 15%, almost all from our garden, will significantly go up when we harvet potatoes, quinoa, cabbage, tomatoes, and other goodies

“Dry Bulk” – est. 25%, including bulk grains, beans, tea, other food, seeds, recycled toilet paper, etc.

“Wet Foods” – including bodycare, est. 60%, purchases are organic, not conventional, but mostly shipped from a long distance.

A note about Food as Medicine

For the 90% project, Housing and Healthcare are not listed, because the project assumes you are not building a new home, and that you are doing what you need to for your health. One’s diet, the food and plant-based medicine that a person consumes, is also very much part of Healthcare. So one factor to consider in the Food category is food that is not just food, but also medicine. Coconut oil, kava kava, agave nectar, and some other foods come to mind that are not at all local to the Midwest, but we use them for health and healing. Of course, what would we use if we went totally local? Other options do exist, and we incorporate local options into our diet/medicine too. Each plant has its own different, unique effects on health and healing, that are unique to the individual as well.

Some 90% thoughts:

The 90% project is really motivating. You can feel good about what you are doing, and find motivation & enthusiasm to do more. It can get you down to see other people doing so much, or it can be inspiring. Ultimately, I think it helps to stay focused on what you want to achieve, to hold that image in your mind and heart every day, and believe. Several weeks ago, at the Bennigan’s Restaurant across from the Art Institute in Chicago, a song I had never heard was blaring in the restroom. Above the din of the restaurant, the lyrics told me to hang on girl, for your tomorrow will not be your today. How true. I wonder what song or band that was.

One last thought inspired by the word austerity. The story of Gautama Buddha says he lived a life of a king, and then chose to live as an ascetic. After realizing the Middle Path (somewhere in between king and ascetic), he became enlightened. What the Middle Path means for each person is unique. The Middle Path can mean harmony with all of of life, including one’s heart. We hope the 90% project will be a harmonious journey of many discoveries…

End note: We have been very inspired by the incredible Ringing Cedars book series by Vladimir Megre (you can read our book review here), which paints an awesome example of a sustainable and harmonious relationship with the earth and animals. Steven Foster, author of A field guide to medicinal plants and herbs, said:

“The Ringing Cedars Series will impact a new generation of readers, like the works of Carlos Castaneda did for a previous generation – only this time through awakening the latent spiritual connection each of us has with nature. This is not about a walk in the woods, rather these books catapult us to an entirely new way of being on planet Earth.”

You can check out the books and read sample chapters at the website of the independent U.S. publisher Ringing Cedars Press at:

www.ringingcedars.com.