Category: People Helping People

By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , ,

I have lived in a housing project of 55,000 people in New York City—so insignificant in the city’s eyes that we didn’t even have a subway stop; we had to bus or walk a mile to one of two different trains, one of which could have easily been extended a mile over Interstate 95. In all, I lived in New York City for about 20 years, including birth to 16. In my early 20s, I lived in four of the five boroughs: Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn.

At the other extreme, for the past 12+ years, I’ve lived on a working farm in a village of about 200 within Hadley, Massachusetts—a town of 4753 people—part of Hampshire County, whose 20 “cities” and towns within 545 square miles increased over the past decade to 152,251. (City, as Massachusetts defines it, refers to a municipality administered by a mayor and council rather than Selectboard and Town Meeting, and has nothing to do with population.) And I actually serve on an official town land-use committee, where we wrestle constantly with shaping the future of our town.

New York City’s five densely populated boroughs comprise just under 305 square miles, and hold 8,391,881 residents. You could move NYC to my county and still have almost half the land area left —maybe to grow enough food for all those residents. My county has 1/55 as many people as NYC, spread out over 1.78 times as much land.

Between the time I first lived outside of New York, in 1973, and settled in Hampshire County, in 1981, I lived in various cities and towns ranging from under 5000 to 1,688,210. All of these communities can offer sustainability wisdom from which other places can learn—either by doing it right, or by doing it wrong (so much so that I could write a book on this—maybe I will, some day). Here are a few of the insights:

  • Vibrant neighborhoods require mixed use. In every city I’ve ever lived in, the exciting neighborhoods are those where people live, work, play, and shop in close proximity. The best US examples I know are Northampton and Amherst, MA, New York’s Upper West Side and Park Slope, and the Fox Point area of Providence. Much of Europe uses this model, and European cities are highly livable.
  • Car-centered cultures adversely affect quality of life. Strong mass transit usually enhances it. In New York City (where a car is a liability), commuting time on public transit is productive. People read, write, get through their e-mail, walk a few blocks to their destination, and don’t feel like they’ve wasted the time. Sometimes they even build friendships with the people they see every day on their commute. In Hadley, the shopping district is suburban-style, with big malls and strip malls along a state highway. Almost no one lives on that road, and it’s not a place for cultural events, other than movies. While the largest food stores actually do provide chances to hang out a bit with neighbors (all arriving in separate cars), having a brief chat with an acquaintance you run into in the produce aisle is not the same kind of community building as you can get in a cafe or a bookstore.
  • A corollary: planning must take into account the existing transportation patterns. Mass-transit thinking can’t just be grafted onto a car-oriented culture, and car-oriented thinking won’t work in crowded urban areas. Those patterns can change over time, but it’s a slow process.
  • A real community transcends ethnic and cultural differences. My current neighborhood of Hockanum  Village has a number of families that have been on the same land for 200 years or more. Some of them trace their lineage to the Mayflower. The whole neighborhood gets together every year for a Christmas party that attracts former residents from as far as Florida, and sometimes a summer picnic along the river. A few neighbors gather at the local coffee shop for breakfast once a week. I could knock on any door in the neighborhood with a request, and people would try to help me.
  • Cities lend themselves well to centralized renewable energy collection—but this potential to make a big difference in climate change and oil dependency has barely been tapped. Instead, many centrally heated buildings in New York are overheated to the point where tenants need to open windows on cold winter days, and that’s crazy.
  • Cities could supply a significant portion of their own food, but again, this potential is not tapped much.
  • Farmers and gardeners understand the food cycle. They know what it’s like to grow food for themselves, their families, and their livestock. They’ve seen crop failure. They pay close attention to weather patterns. Localism is not a theoretical construct; it’s an everyday reality.
  • Homeowners and farmers notice details and patterns, so, for instance, they anticipate and address maintenance issues before they become failures. They don’t expect anyone else to do things for them, though they might ask for help on a big project. Tenants (especially in urban areas) are much less likely to have this attitude.
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By Posted on Posted in Peace and War, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with

I received a notice today about a photo exhibit of Albanian Muslim rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust—taken by a Jewish photographer, Norman H. Gershman. This rescue took place while the country was under Nazi occupation:

When Hitler’s troops began invading the Balkan States in the early 1940s, Muslims across Albania took an estimated 2,000 Jewish refugees into their homes en masse and welcomed them not as refugees, but as guests.  They disguised these Jews as Muslims, took them to mosque, called them Muslim names, gave them Muslim passports, hid them when they needed to, and then ferried them to inaccessible mountain hamlets.  “In fact, Albania is the only Nazi-occupied country that sheltered Jews,” says Gershman.  The Jewish population in Albania grew by ten-fold during World War II, and it became the only country in occupied Europe to have more Jews at the end of the war than at the beginning.  Records from the International School for Holocaust Studies show that not one Albanian Jew or any of the other thousands of refugees were given up to the Nazis by Albanian Muslims.  “They did this in the name of their religion,” Gershman said.  “They absolutely had no prejudice what so ever.”

If I can manage to get to NYC before January 29, I am so there! I see two key takeaways in this story:

1. Even in the face of unspeakable evil, there will be people who do the right thing, even at great personal risk.

2. This is one of many pieces of historical evidence that Jews and Muslims can coexist, yet another reason to disbelieve the racists on both sides who say such a thing is impossible.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

Nuclear Information and Resource Service reports in a recent newsletter that Congress received 15,000 letters and countless phone calls opposing the inclusion of $8 billion in bailouts (a/k/a “loan guarantees”) for new nuclear plant construction—and that the final interim funding bill to keep the government running did NOT include this boondoggle. The item is not on the NIRS website but you can find the entire newsletter reprinted here.

In other words, the power of an organized populace resulted in a victory, something that’s getting less frequent all the time but is still very much possible. Let’s hope for many more in the coming year.

Do not let anyone try to tell you that nuclear fission is in any way green. It’s an environmental disaster under the best of circumstances, and at its worst, it could make the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico look like a spilled cup of coffee. Here’s a post I wrote some time back that gives some among many reasons to oppose nuclear power (scroll past the feed from this blog).

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By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Demographics/Psychographics, Frugality/Frugal Fun, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life, Web 2.0/Social Media

flashmob:“a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual act for a brief time, then disperse.” (Wikipedia)

For the year or so that I’ve been watching the occasional video of flashmobs gathering in public places to perform, I’ve wished I could be part of one. But I didn’t wish strongly enough to organize one.

All the videos I’ve been sent took places in major cities like Amsterdam and Philadelphia. I live in a very rural area whose biggest city (Springfield, MA) has a population of only 155,629. And yet, to make a flashmob, you only need a dozen or so people.

I think a lot of the allure of flashmobs is that for the most part, we live in a society where entertainment is provided, prepackaged. Until 1877 when Edison invented the phonograph, if you wanted to hear music, you gathered some friends with instruments and songbooks and made some. If you wanted a theater experience, you played charades. Public concerts outside of major cities were few and far between. Now, every tiny town has live music 20 or 30 nights a year, and many have music every weekend night all year long. We are, for the most part, deprived of the opportunity to not only make our own entertainment but perform it for others. The flashmob at the Holyoke Mall had one day’s notice, no rehearsal. Singers were to wear a solid color indicating their part (my alto wife wore green, other parts wore red or white)—and of course, many people who just happened to be there joined in the singing.

Thursday, I received an e-mail from the organizer of a local folk music sing-along: a flashmob would gather the following day to sing Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus at the food court of the largest shopping mall near us, the Holyoke Mall (halfway between our house and Springfield, in a town of 40,005). On a Friday night just before Christmas, it would certainly have an audience. Better still, it was organized by the local opera company; the singing would be worth hearing.

The next morning, my wife, D. Dina Friedman, who sings in a community chorus, got an e-mail about the event that went out to all the chorus members. This was looking better and better. And the timing was perfect; we could drop our son off for the final rehearsal of his school’s winter show, go sing, and be back at school in plenty of time to watch him perform.

The singing was magical. Sound coming from every corner of the large and crowded food court, and a few stunningly stellar voices rising above the crowd. It reminded me of the time more than 30 years ago that I happened to be out on a lawn at my college while the chorus was rehearsing for their upcoming tour, and they invited me to stand within their circle and be surrounded by beautiful sound.

What amazed me the most, though, was not the event, but the aftermath. By the time we returned home after Rafael’s show, when I went to post something on Twitter, I found links to at least two different videos, including this very high quality one posted on the Springfield newspaper’s site.

I sent the link around, and got a couple of “wish I was there” or “how did you find out?” responses. And then last night, I went to a different performance, more than 40 miles away from the shopping mall at a retreat center in a really remote area (it happens to be the most beautiful house I know, one I love to visit for this annual storytelling concert)—and at intermission, I heard people talking about the flashmob and wishing they had known ahead.

In other words, even without a big-city backdrop, this flashmob had an impact well beyond the borders of the food court. E-mail made the event possible; social media gave it permanent life. “And I say to myself/What a wonderful world.”

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People, poverty, Social and Economic Justice

Today is another Blog Action Day for social justice, and today’s topic is water. My slant on this, as someone who writes about environmental issues, is that access to clean, safe water is both an environmental and a justice issue. And that the easiest way to promote safe, clean water around the world is for us resource hogs in the developed countries to be much more careful not to squander the good water we are privileged to have.

Here are some facts provided by Blog Action Day (emphasis added):

1.      Unsafe drinking water and lack of sanitation kills more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Unclean drinking water can incubate some pretty scary diseases, like E. coli, salmonella, cholera and hepatitis A. Given that bouquet of bacteria, it’s no surprise that water, or rather lack thereof, causes 42,000 deaths each week.

2.      More people have access to a cell phone than to a toilet. Today, 2.5 billion people lack access to toilets. This means that sewage spills into rivers and streams, contaminating drinking water and causing disease.

3.      Every day, women and children in Africa walk a combined total of 109 million hours to get water. They do this while carrying cisterns weighing around 40 pounds when filled in order to gather water that, in many cases, is still polluted. Aside from putting a great deal of strain on their bodies, walking such long distances keeps children out of school and women away from other endeavors that can help improve the quality of life in their communities.

4.      It takes 6.3 gallons of water to produce just one hamburger. That 6.3 gallons covers everything from watering the wheat for the bun and providing water for the cow to cooking the patty and baking the bun. And that’s just one meal! It would take over 184 billion gallons of water to make just one hamburger for every person in the United States.

5.      The average American uses 159 gallons of water every day – more than 15 times the average person in the developing world. From showering and washing our hands to watering our lawns and washing our cars, Americans use a lot of water. To put things into perspective, the average five-minute shower will use about 10 gallons of water. Now imagine using that same amount to bathe, wash your clothes, cook your meals and quench your thirst.

So…not to leave you sunk, here are a few easy and cheap/free ways to use less water:

Don’t run the water unnecessarily! Whether washing dishes or brushing your teeth, think about low-water methods. For those dishes,  clean the insides with a
soapy sponge and then only turn on the water (at modest force) to
rinse. For tooth brushing, wet the toothbrush, turn off the faucet, brush, wet again to rinse–you’ll use teaspoons instead of gallons.

Unbottle yourself. Save bottled water for places where tap water is not safe to drink. Bottling water consumes vast amounts of water (several times what’s actually in the bottle), energy, and plastic (much of which ends up in landfills). And lots of bottled water is nothing more than expensive public water supply water anyway. In much of the developed world, filtered tap water tastes as good as many bottled brands and has a far lower environmental and financial footprint.

Eat less (or no) meat–see #4, above. As a 37-year vegetarian, I can tell you that the wonderful cuisines of the world opened up to me when I stopped eating meat. I eat healthy, tasty, nutritious food, and I don’t miss the stuff I used to eat.

Sign the Blog Action Day UN Water Rights Petition:

 

(For more water saving tips, please see my e-book Painless Green: 110 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life-With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle.)

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People Tagged with , , ,

Last night, the local organizer for the Transition Towns movement finally got around to doing one in my town. We were a small group including several of the “usual suspects” (old friends from previous organizing campaigns) as well as a handful of others I didn’t know–with a lot of good ideas.

Transition towns organizing involves taking steps to get society off fossil and nuclear fuels, and building community in the process. It’s very much directed by the people who participate, so if a few people want to form a sewing circle to make cloth totes residents can bring to the market, or plant trees, or insulate houses, or work with local government to install traffic calming, or whatever—they do it. And it’s nice and small and manageable, town by town, neighborhood by neighborhood.

The movement started as an outgrowth of the permaculture movement in Kinsale, Ireland and Totnes, UK, and has spread widely.

Now, with a few years under its belt, it may be one of our best hopes for avoiding catastrophic climate change (on which the window is getting smaller) and the great hardship of massive price shocks on all the things based in fossil fuels—which is pretty much everything.

Resources:
Transition Towns organizing site for the US
The “get moving” page on the international website (which I found after getting distracted by some wonderful storytelling about live in past generations in a British village
The simple little WordPress site for Transition in my own community of Hadley, Massachusetts

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , ,

There is definitely something to all this Law of Attraction stuff. Consider this: For the past few months, I’ve been putting out a lot of energy around four things:
1. Expanding the public speaking portion of my business
2. Pitching myself as a syndicated columnist writing on Green business (working a long-term plan)
3. Founding the International Association of Earth-Conscious Marketers
4. Working with unpublished writers to help them become well-published and well-marketed authors

Here’s some of what happened today:

  • While listening to a teleseminar with a syndicated columnist, I asked a question–and he offered to give me contacts at his syndicate
  • Got interviewed for a radio show and book about public speaking—and the interviewer may become a book publishing consulting client…and spent a half-hour getting acquainted with another marketing consultant, and he too is thinking of doing a book and letting me help
  • I did a little Green business of my own today, selling five pounds of surplus organic hot peppers from our garden to our neighbors’ farmstand (I had more to sell, but that was what I could easily carry on my bike)—it’s such a hoot for me as a New York City native to sell farm vegetables to my neighbors, whose family has been farming this land since 1806
  • Responded to a HARO query from a reporter, and the reporter wrote back that instead of just using my short quote, would I be interested in writing a regular column?
  • Received an invitation to speak at a high-level international conference in January, and a contract from a different organization for a talk I’m doing in December
  • Had a brief teleconference with a subset of the IAECM Steering Committee. I continue to be so impressed with the creative thinking of this talented group.
  • And still managed to get out and vote early (I was #16, so I could get the car back in time for my son to drive to school)…get several hours of billable work done…get in a lovely hike.

    It’s feeling like a pretty abundant day :-). I’ll even forgive the mice for chewing up the spout to our can of Chinese sesame oil, forcing me to change my dinner plans. (I went for Italian instead, and it was delicious. Guess the mice don’t like or haven’t discovered the olive oil.) I like it that I’m putting energy out on these four things, and permutations of those four are coming back to me.

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    By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, privacy Tagged with , , ,

    Guest post by Steve Ostrow

    [Editor’s note: I was sent a review copy of this book, and enjoyed its playful approach to an intimidating subject. So when I was asked if I’d give Steve a forum during his launch, I gladly agreed.]

    Congress has spoken! Anti-telemarketing legislation has been passed. Under reasonable restrictions, certain tactics by telemarketers are prohibited and court actionable. Violations can be enforced by the State via the attorney general’s office, the public via class action lawsuits or private lawsuits, and individuals via the small claims court.

    The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) started the ball rolling. Congress was torn between the special interest lobbyists and the people’s vote. The green cash of the lobbyists stalled the legislature for numerous years, but eventually the annoyance of the telemarketing industry became too much. The door opened and the unfettered invasion of free speech was outweighed by the consumer’s right to privacy. After strong objection and outrage by consumers groups, the common sense legislation protecting the privacy of one’s own home was long overdue.

    The 1991 original law was pretty weak and without sharp teeth. A free bite at the apple was given and the first offense by a telemarketer to a residence was forgiven with only a simple apology. A second offense was required in order to make an unsolicited commercial call actionable. Basically business did not change under the original law. In 2003, over great objection from the special interest groups, came the National Do Not Call Registry. Yes, 2003 was a great year for the peace and quiet in a consumer’s home. Instead of a consumer requesting individual companies from not calling the home telephone soliciting their service, a residential consumer could sign up at one location and prohibit almost all telemarketers from calling the home phone number. The burden shifted to the telemarketing companies to check “the registry” rather than having the consumer contact the merchant and opt out. Penalties were instituted which are collectible by attorney generals, lawyers, and individuals through the small claims process.
    Under the TCPA and the Do Not Call Registry, there are several different violations which are collectible. The most popular ones are:
    1. Calling a residential telephone number that is on the National Do Not Call Registry;
    2. Using a pre-recorded dialing device to initiate a commercial sale;
    3. Using a blocked telephone number when initiating a commercial sale;
    4. Soliciting a consumer before 8am or after 9pm;
    5. Failure to provide a copy of the company’s Do Not Call Manual after demand for a copy.

    Each violation is actionable separately, or can be “stacked” together when multiple infractions are incurred. Even though the courts are supposed to punish each violation with a $500 penalty, different judges will approach cases differently. Some judges will allow you to “stack” as many violations into one case as possible. Others may limit you to one, two, or three causes of action. Regardless of the amount of the judgment, you are able to prosecute the invasion of your peace and privacy in your home through the small claim courts.

    Penalties under the TCPA may be “trebled” when the court finds that the violation is intentional. It can be tedious to understand when a telemarketing violation is intentional and when it is not. Rationally thinking, all solicitations by telemarketers are intentional; they are intentionally picking up the phone at their boiler rooms and randomly telephoning as many people as possible making their commercial pitch. It is not accidental that your number may be called, just random bad luck. I guess the easiest way to understand the intentional tripling of damages is using the playoff basketball foul analogy. Some fouls are hard basketball fouls, some are flagrant one fouls, and others flagrant two. Sometimes you just shoot free throws, other times you get ejected from the game. Sometimes the court awards you $500; sometimes the atrocious call telephone solicitation can be awarded $1,500. It’s all up to the ref.

    If you are a Democrat and you get a telephone solicitation from a Republican candidate, slow down before you start licking your lips about bringing the opposing political party to its knees. Under the TCPA, certain types of speech are exempted from lawsuits under the Act. Always remember, the violations under the TCPA were balanced with the First Amendment Right of Freedom of Speech. Certain solicitation exceptions are specifically carved out:
    1. Tax exempt non-profit organizations, including political parties and campaigns;
    2. Organizations with which you’ve had a prior business relationship;
    3. Organizations with which you’ve given prior written permission and not expressly revoked;
    4. Calls which are NOT COMMERCIAL.

    Convenience is a big part of our lives. All of us would like to nail these pesky telemarketers; sometimes it is easier just to hang up the telephone. However, if you are in the mood to make some cash and fight back against these commercial parasites, the good news about small claims court litigation is that it can prosecuted in our home backyard. Since the violation occurred at our telephone, the proper jurisdiction for the action would be our local court.

    Steve Ostrow is an attorney, celebrity impersonator and the author of the new book How To Sue A Telemarketer: A Manual for Restoring Peace On Earth One Phone Call At A Time. To date, Steve has successfully sued, or settled, won and collected, over 10 judgments against telemarketers. To find out more and order his book, go to www.howtosueatelemarketer.com

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    By Posted on Posted in Blog Tour, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking, People Helping People, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , ,

    I’ve just signed up for the Ultimate Blog Challenge (Twitter hashtag #blogboost), which means a commitment to add ten posts between now and the end of the month. Especially nuts because I’m speaking in Boston tomorrow and probably won’t even get on the computer. Fortunately, I happen to have one post already scheduled.

    I’ll be honest. Despite the many benefits of participation (increased visibility, exposure to other people’s networks, and of course a nice boost in the search engines, etc.)—the main reason I’m doing this is because Michelle Shaeffer, a/k/a SmallBizMuse is one of the organizers (along with Michele Scism, who I hadn’t known before, but who seems to offer a lot of useful resources for solopreneurs). She’s been my Virtual Assistant for something like eleven years, and I’ve taken a sort of nachas (Yiddish word meaning pride in the accomplishments of one’s family) in watching her develop some marketing chops of her own, and a dedicated fan base, over the last year or two. She has 4989 followers on Twitter! All organically acquired, as far as I know; I only have 3395.

    So my joining her blog challenge is as much a public thank-you for all she’s done for me these last 11 years as anything else. You, of course, will have different reasons for signing up.

    Of course, when she’s rich and famous, I’ll probably have to go out and find a new Virtual Assistant. So it goes.

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