From a spiritual stand point it is much easier to be in touch with the energy that is local to me as I am part of the land and the climate that I live in as I previously noted. For me the impact is much greater on the personal level if I can interact, visit, and even participate in blessing the lands where my food is produced. One step closer for me was to join a Community Supported Agricultural business (CSA). The one that seems to be working the best in our area also happens to be organic and heirloom. Out of the two for me finding varieties that where once developed for my specific local climate and that have stayed out of the modern homogenization process of Corporate farming means I have a greater likelihood of getting food that has more nutrition per serving and as I get older and more “smooth” around the edges this has become an important consideration. Since it is my personal view that I am one component of the greater divine eating within my climate contributes to being holistic.

As many ideas that occur my take on food consumption did not form in a vacuum. People close to me influenced me first then key pieces of literature, podcasts, and finally “formal” movements.  I was influence by the people close to me in both positive and negative ways. The positive is what this post is about the negative is the observation that many of my fellow pagans eat a lot of snack and fast food. Along with a lot of extra weight the modern American diet has left a lot of people I care about with health problems or increased risk of health problems. If you have not read “Fast Food Nation“, by Eric Schlosser then you should make that one of your starting points in understanding just what kind of barrel pagans are spiritually put over.

In the web article “Eating Local: A Matter of Integrity“, John Ikerd gives a good over all cultural perspective of the reasons for the new buzz word “Locavore“. I believe it is important to put any movement in context and to think about the complete plan you have for eating what you do. Just eating local does not mean your doing all that you can do to eat within your climate or to do what has the biggest impact to help live with our Mother.  As pointed out in the study conducted by Christopher Weber & Scott Matthews of Carnegie Mellon University published in “Environmental Science & Technology“ the type of local food you choose can have a greater impact than the distance it has traveled to your table from a climate stand point. “Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more [greenhouse gas] reduction than buying all locally sourced food,” Weber and Matthews wrote. Keeping this in mind is key when you plan your diet or join a challenge like the “100 Mile Diet“.  Of course if your vegetarian or vegan then the steps to managing your food within your local climate may have a head start and we can all further that start with growing what we can in our own yards. After all working and worshiping directly with the soil is one of the most sacred things we as humans can do and its even good for you.

Then next time you sit down to eat think about and thank those that grew your food, those that helped get it to your table, and Mother Earth for the chance to continue to enjoy her bounty.

For additional reading you may want to try “The Omnivores Dilemma A Natural History of Four Meals“ or “Exposed The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products - Who’s at Risk and What’s at Stake” which take you down a couple more related paths on being aware of our world.

Much of the food we buy is grown in other places and transported to markets or restaurants where we live. Some people have tried to be “locavores,” consuming only locally-grown food or products, in an effort to reduce the environmental impacts from transportation, cold storage, or others.

Photo & Photo Editing

First, is a great online tool from the industry standard Adobe, Photoshop Express. It gives quick and easy access to the popular photograph storage websites and has the intuitive feel and all the basic tools you would need to edit a picture.

Second, is my favorite storage website photobucket. This site for me beats the heck out of Flickr and any other competitor because of its ease of use and the fact that you can use it as the default place to easily share your work across all your social networks.

Third, is Google’s offline and online service Picasa. This is a great free tool that offers a combination of the to services above if you need one stop editing. Picasa does have a few bugs that have always seemed to make it a bit more of a challenge to use and it does kind of force you into view your pictures how it wants you too but over all if your a beginner then give it a try.

Now if your an intermediate user to advanced user of photo editing tools and need them offline but can’t afford the full on version of photoshop then I highly recommend “The GIMP“. This is a open source (free) software package that has given me 90% plus of all the advance tools and brushes that I had in photoshop. It is also capable of reading a large variety of formats and saving in them as well. This program will require you to do some learning but a simple search for GIMP tutorials and you will find all the help you need.

Graphics, Layout and Art

If your like me taking and showing pictures is not enough. There is always some project that needs to have graphics added or created for their own sake. These next programs are designed with the non-photo elements of creation in mind.

First, is a program called Paint.net, it is a great cross over program that allows you to work on photos, but also do more with layouts and other artistic elements. The interface is similar to most of the other graphics programs that you will run from your HD which means its not completely intuitive, but again there are tutorials out there that will help you out.

Second, is Inkscape. They say it better than I can so I will quote: “An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.”

Third, is ArtRage 2. I found this program just last night and already I think its going to be my favorite program for general creativity. It has a free version and a paid version ($25) and I just went ahead and bought it last night because it is all about recreating the artists experience on paper. It is so simple to use that it almost feels like just picking up a pen/brush and getting started.

Finally in this group is Scribus. Again to quote “Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of “press-ready” output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.” I like to make zines, do posters, newsletters, etc. and Scribus has been a perfect free solution for me.

3D Drawing and Modeling

Most of the art and creation I do is good old two dimensional work. I am not one that thinks well in 3D anymore even though in my younger days I had a ton of Drafting training. However I know a lot of you find 3D work to be exciting and lets face it the “wave” of the future. Now I have had the least amount of experience with these programs so I am going to just list them for you. They are all free so give them a go.

• Google Sketchup
• Blender
• Sculptypaint
• MayaPLE

Other

Here are a few other graphical toys that you may find useful. Each website linked gives a good rundown of what the software is for, enjoy.

• Ript
• PostRazor
• Piclens

To finish this post off I want to mention one other software tool I find myself using daily, Jing. Jing is a media capture program that allows you to take images, make “movies” and share this content in a variety of ways. If you have been wanting your pictures to replace the 1000 words of explanation the Jing will make your life a lot easier.  If anyone has additional resources they love and want to share please leave a link in my comments.

• Keep your engine tuned (buy a book learn to do it), maintain tires at the correct pressure (Free Air!), change the air filter regularly (costs less than one night out), and use energy-saving motor oil.
• Avoid aggressive driving such as rapid acceleration and braking.  It can lower fuel cost up to 33 percent on the highway and 5 percent around town.  This can save as much as 49 cents per gallon.
• Watch your speed - high speed creates more wind resistance.  Driving faster than 60 miles-per-hour can cost an additional 30 cents per gallon for every 5 miles per hour increase. Michigan highway limits are 70 mph so that is 60 cents/gal more than at the recommended speed. Now if you drive at speed (80-85mph) then your spending up to a $1.50 more per gallon. Check this Link for more information.
• Be aware that running electric accessories like air conditioners can also reduce fuel economy by 5 to 25 percent.

What are your benefits?

If your an employee or an employer the following book could help you with setting up your own incentive program for your company; Carpool Incentive Programs from the EPA. Michigan’s Central website for saving money related to transportation “Save Money” is a half hearted attempt compared to other states, you would think we would be the national leader instead of some place like California.

What are your Choices?

What is iCarpool? iCarpool is an online service which helps you find carpool partners. Unlike a ride share bulletin board, carpool listing service or zip code matching service, iCarpool uses high precision trip matching to find the best carpool match. Whether you wish to drive, ride or share - iCarpool will help you find great carpool matches for all your trips. iCarpool is one of the fastest growing carpool networks today. You must sign up to use iCarpool. If you use Facebook, you can now use iCarpool’s Facebook application to carpool with friends and members from your networks.

Another service which offers some of the same services, but which I have not tested is erideshare. Check it out and remember using the tool that works for you may take a bit of work.

Like many people I did not put a lot of thought into the quality of the water that I was drinking from the bottle, although I have noted in the past that many bottles of water have way more dissolved solids in them than when I tested my own tap water. Yet those facts where not quite enough to make me walk away completely. So this morning when I was doing my weekly review of environmental news I came across “How to green your Water“. I am proud to say that I do many more of the things noted in that article than I thought but my ability to live “in tune” is still not completely developed because I am the occasional user of bottled water.

One of my goals in this life is to find a way to do what I can to live smarter. This does not mean going back to the old ways of getting water from a well or from the local stream but how to narrow my personal impact. So when I realized my gap around bottled water I have to ask why is it that any of us use bottled water? The first answer I came up with was that it was convenient. I don’t have to find a glass, get the water, and then wash the glass. Great! all I have to do is throw down some cash and I am literally good to go.  The second reason I came up with was that bottled water tastes better and is safer than water from my home taps, more great reasons!  Only one problem with my reasons, I had not personally verified I only assumed and in my day job assumption generally only brings you in conflict with environmental law and what makes economic sense.  The table below is the first comparison that I found between the legal requirements of a bottle water company and your local tap water supplier.

As you can see there is little to no substantive control of content or quality of the bottle water industry and in my experience with manufacturing industries in general if it is not mandated it is not done.  As Quoted from the linked article from the NRDC: “Ironically, public concern about tap water quality is at least partly responsible for the growth in bottled water sales, which have tripled in the past 10 years (1999). This bonanza is also fueled by marketing designed to convince the public of bottled water’s purity and safety, marketing so successful that people spend from 240 to over 10,000 times more per gallon for bottled water than they typically do for tap water”. So it seems that I have been caught by the assumption for quality and clarity of my bottled water.

Because I always like to do my research backwards I next looked for verification that taste and convenience where valid reasons not to be on the tap water wagon all the time. Well just by digging into some of the links I found with a simple search I found that some companies add (yes add) mineral salts to the water to make it taste better. Things like magnesium sulfate, potassium chloride and sodium chloride are all put back into what otherwise would be bottle tap water! Those minerals above are often removed during water treatment when they occur naturally. So the waters wonderful taste is not naturally occurring but comes from industrial sources; could we fiddle with it some more please?

Finally I am down to convenience, I looked at the bottle of water in my back seat of my car and noted that it could be easily replaced by a reusable container that would take as about as much time to rinse out and refill as it would for me to drag my bottom to a vending machine and make a purchase. I also found that I can do the same at work and home with a nice big (22 oz) ceramic mug purchased from a local artisan. So convenience is a myth as well, the cost of my placement of reusable containers for water is less than a case of bottled water! Unless I am a klutz and damage one of my contains it could also be a near one time purchase.

Concluding that the potential for mistakes, poor quality, and huge industrial resource consumption (bottling plants, transportation, distribution) all make bottled water a bad choice if I want to honor Mother Earth and honor the spirit of living within the world and not from it.

If I have not urged you to make a choice to walk away with me from a system that except for emergencies like floods, hurricanes, and other natural impacts on our lives just does not make sense then I will leave you with this link, it is a quick calculator on how much water you use at home period. If you read all the items I have referenced in this post that calculator should help you seal the deal on using your water more wisely.

What do find to be the biggest challenge when setting up rituals for a group of people?

As a leader you will find that to have success in resolving what ever challenges are put in front of you there will be a need for you to learn, adopt, and live some new ways of thinking. It does not have to happen all at once and mistakes are the signposts that lead us on the path of life but you will have to do a bit of growing. Some of you may already be in this position of experience and with that in mind I invite you to read the rest of this post as a refresher.

Win-Win Mindset

Win-Win sees life as a cooperative, not a competitive arena. Many pagans think in terms of dichotomies: strong or weak, win or lose, right or wrong. But that kind of thinking is fundamentally flawed, because it is based on power and position rather than principle. Win-Win means that agreements or solutions are mutually beneficial, mutually satisfying, With a Win-Win solution; all parties feel good about the decision and feel committed to the action plan.

focus on the development of three character traits: integrity, maturity, and an abundance mentality.

1. Integrity. Integrity means treating everyone by the same set of principles. Conforming reality to our words - keeping promises and fulfilling expectations. Being loyal to those who are not present.
2. Maturity. Maturity is the balance between courage and consideration. Expressing feelings and convictions with courage balanced with consideration for the feelings and convictions of another person requires maturity, particularly if the issue is very important to both parties.
3. An abundance mentality. Abundance flows from a deep inner sense of personal worth and security. It is a paradigm that states that this is a world of plenty and that there is enough for everybody. It results in the sharing of prestige, of recognition, of profits, of decision making. It opens possibilities, options, alternatives and creativity.

You may recognize these traits from many different spiritual, ethical or moral teachings. This is the case because to be an enlightened individual all faith paths recognize the need to have these things present with you.

The “Interest-Based Relational Approach (IBR)”

This conflict resolution strategy respects individual differences while helping people avoid becoming too entrenched in a fixed position. In resolving conflict using this approach you should do the following:

1. Make sure that good relationships are the first priority: Make sure that you treat the other calmly and that you try to build mutual respect. Do your best to be courteous to one-another and remain constructive under pressure;
2. Keep people and problems separate: Recognize that in many cases the other person is not just “being difficult” – real and valid differences can lie behind conflicting positions.
3. Pay attention to the interests that are being presented: By listening carefully you’ll most-likely understand why the person is adopting his or her position;
4. Listen first; talk second: To solve a problem effectively you have to understand where the other person is coming from before defending your own position;
5. Set out the “Facts”: Agree and establish the objective, observable elements that will have an impact on the decision; and
6. Explore options together: Be open to the idea that a third position may exist, and that you can get to this idea jointly.

By following these rules, you can often keep contentious discussions positive and constructive.

A Conflict Resolution Process

Step One: Set the Scene
If appropriate to the situation, agree the rules of the IBR Approach (or at least consider using the approach yourself.) Make sure that people understand that the conflict may be a mutual problem, which may be best resolved through discussion and negotiation rather than through raw aggression.

• Restate
• Paraphrase
• Summarize

Step Two: Gather Information

Here you are trying to get to the underlying interests, needs, and concerns. Ask for the other person’s viewpoint and confirm that you respect his or her opinion and need his or her cooperation to solve the problem. Try to understand his or her motivations and goals, and see how your actions may be affecting these. Also, try to understand the conflict in objective terms: focus on factual issues and leave personalities out of the discussion.

• Listen with empathy and see the conflict from the other person’s point of view
• Identify issues clearly and concisely
• Use “I” statements
• Remain flexible
• Clarify feelings

Step Three: Agree the Problem
This sounds like an obvious step, but often different underlying needs, interests and goals can cause people to perceive problems very differently. You’ll need to agree the issues that you are trying to solve before you’ll find a mutually acceptable solution.

Sometimes different people will see different but interlocking problems - if you can’t reach a common perception of the issue, then at the very least, you need to understand what the other person sees as the issue.

Step Four: Brainstorm Possible Solutions
If everyone is going to feel satisfied with the resolution, it will help if everyone has had fair input in generating solutions. Brainstorm possible solutions, and be open to all ideas, including ones you never considered before.

Step Five: Negotiate a Solution

By this stage, the conflict may be resolved: Both sides may better understand the position of the other, and a mutually satisfactory solution may be clear to all.

However you may also have uncovered real differences between your positions. This is where your win-win mindset is the most useful to help everyone find a solution that to some extent satisfies everyone. Remember there are three guiding principles here: Be Calm, Be Patient, Have Respect…

Finally, although this advice is about resolving conflict, be aware that conflict cannot always be avoided (especially when fundamental differences, as opposed to perceived differences, are involved) and not all conflict is negative (sometimes it ‘clears the air’). The important thing is to keep wasteful and damaging conflict to a minimum and, when it does occur, use the relevant techniques to resolve or at least ease it.