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Musings, meanderings, wonderings and wanderings about unschooling, natural  parenting, green living, social justice and more by writer, author and Natural Life magazine editor Wendy Priesnitz.  Archives - November, 2008 Be Careful What You Ask For – November 21, 2008 Maybe we’re finally getting it! A piece in today’s Wall Street Journal seems to indicate that. And if it’s true, corporations are worried. What I’m talking about is household energy usage, which, it seems, is down significantly in a number of U.S. states. And power company executives are scratching their heads to explain why. They don’t think it has to do with housing foreclosures or other aspects of the economic downturn. They are speculating that the message some utilities have been sending to consumers to conserve energy just might be taking hold. My, my. Growth is going to be challenged, say the execs. Says the newspaper, “If the trend persists, it could ripple through companies’ earnings and compel major changes in the way utilities run their businesses.” Renewable energy, anyone? Posted: 2008/11/21 12:48 PM No Green Holiday Gift Guide – November 17, 2008 PR types are inundating me with pitches for featuring their clients in Natural Life’s “green holiday gift guide.” Aside from being months too late because the November/December issue was printed in September, these folks don’t understand why we don’t publish holiday gift guides of any color. Our policy is not to review or otherwise publicize products, brands or companies in articles; that is an advertising function. (Keeping editorial and advertising separate is a long-established journalistic practice that is, sadly, being quickly eroded, but we think it is crucial to our editorial integrity and, for that matter, to the integrity of our advertising.) At any rate, since a PR person’s job is about encouraging people to buy stuff, they certainly do not want to listen to my explanation about how going green isn’t necessarily about going shopping. We are not Scrooges and, in past years, we have published alternative holiday guides...see here and here for examples that we will be highlighting on the website soon. They focus on intangible gifts like donations of time or money to charities or advocacy groups, or gifts that you have created yourself (or at least purchased from local artisans) as a tangible reminder of your affection for the recipient. I think the current economy will be inspiring many people to go that route this year. That will no doubt benefit the environment and, I hope, will result in a happier, less stressful holiday season (for everyone but the larger retailers and their employees, of course, who might have to re-think their business strategy in order to adjust to this “new normal”). Posted: 2008/11/17 11:14 AM Reshaping the Economy to Save the Earth – November 15, 2008 For awhile now, I’ve been thinking and writing about the links between economics and the environment. (There were a number of blog postings last month alone.) And I’ve just sat down to write once again on that topic for my editorial in the January/February issue of Natural Life, which goes to press next week. As often happens, serendipity – and, in this case, the folks at Personalised Education Now – pointed me to a series of articles in a recent issue of New Scientist magazine on that very topic. Although not all the articles are posted online for free, there is sufficient food for thought there about how we'll never solve climate change until we reshape our economy and lose the focus on growth at all costs. Oh, and stay tuned for more about how the third E (education) fits into all of this. Posted: 2008/11/15 1:54 PM Free to Be – November 11, 2008 I just had a chat with my youngest daughter Melanie about the fact that this is apparently the 35th anniversary of the book Free to Be You and Me by Marlo Thomas (a birth year that Melanie shares). It was part of the proliferation of books from that era that opposed gender stereotypes. But, more than that, it was about saluting values such as individuality, tolerance and happiness with one’s identity. It became an Emmy-winning television special and an album featuring such people as Mel Brooks, Diana Ross, Harry Belafonte, Carol Channing, Tom Smothers, Rosey Grier, Dick Cavett, Roberta Flack, Alan Alda and more. Oh, and check out this video with a very young Michael Jackson…go ahead, you’ll like it (and there are links to the rest of the video, like “Mommies are People,” which is one of my favorites.)  Marlo Thomas (perhaps better know as “That Girl” from 1970s television sitcom) turns 71 in a few weeks – yikes – and is married to the wonderfully progressive talk show host Phil Donahue. I read the book aloud over and over again and, apparently, my young daughters took the message in. Unfortunately, not everybody did and the book and music and their message are still needed today. Posted: 2008/11/11 8:30 PM Hope is Contagious – November 5, 2008 Yes, the U.S. presidential election was competitive, but the loser was gracious in defeat. Yes, massive amounts of money were spent – especially by the winner. And, you bet it was competitive. But reportedly, the voter turnout was unprecedented. And Barak Obama is today the president-elect of the world’s superpower due to a grassroots effort. This morning, people are feeling part of something larger than themselves...and perhaps a little closer to their government. Both Americans and those in the rest of the world are also apparently feeling hopeful. Hope is contagious. I hope this is the beginning of change, where we all strive together to solve our economic and environmental problems. Posted: 2008/11/05 11:00 AM Imagine Cooperative Politics (and everything else) – November 3, 2008 As I’ve been observing the U.S. presidential election and Canada’s recent federal election, one of the things that has struck me is the extreme competitiveness of politics. The terminology of sports competitions and of war is often used to describe elections. Ethical standards are compromised as candidates try to boost their chances of victory. Massive amounts of money and human resources are spent on the contest. And the process often changes people, prompting normally mild people to turn aggressive and cease walking their talk (as I discovered during my brief tenure in the 1990s as leader of the Green Party of Canada.) This thrust for political power also motivates governments who, in turn, compete with other countries for power, sometimes leading to war. Nevertheless, competition is seen as central to democracy. There’s even something called the Center for Competitive Politics dedicated to ensuring a more competitive – and therefore a presumably fairer and more democratic – electoral process! Some social Darwinists claim that competition helps determine the best-suited group – not only politically, but economically and ecologically. But it can also be traced backwards to the schoolyard and even to the classroom, where it doesn’t foster excellence or even survival. As Alfie Kohn wrote in No Contest: The Case Against Competition (Houghton Mifflin, 1986), competition has a negative effect on the achievement level of students and “turns us all into losers.” So, instead of being a community dedicated to helping students learn, schools are mind-deadening institutions with adults focused on forcing kids to churn out the best test scores. And, in the same way, competition turns government into a “them-versus-us” thing. Although one of the fundamentals of democracy is supposedly self-government, the competitiveness seems to create cynical citizens who feel neither empowered to get involved and create change nor interested in the game. In the same way that learning about the world and how it works needn’t be competitive (and works better when it isn’t), governing ourselves in the best way possible shouldn’t be about competition or power over others. It should be about people working together for the benefit of everyone. Yes, there will always be philosophical and practical differences among us, different ideas for how to solve problems, but in the ideal world, governments (and the electoral process that creates them) would enable people to work together to improve their own lives and those of their neighbors. Tom Atlee, founder and director of the non-profit Co-Intelligence Institute, in an article about Transformational Politics, identifies a number of types of politics, including co-operative politics (“Politics is public life, the shared solving of problems. We come together to make things better and to co-create our common future”) and holistic politics (“Politics is our conscious participation in the whole [system, community, history, ecosystem, universe]. By increasing our consciousness of – and taking responsibility for – our connections to each other and our place in the whole, we can tap the wisdom of the whole and play a constructive role in its evolution.”) If we could find a way to have more of this sort of politics and less of the competitive stuff, I bet we’d see more women in politics. The Latin root for the verb to compete is “competere,” which means “to seek together” or “to strive together.” Imagine. Posted: 2008/11/03 6:20 PM Return to current weblog Comments? Suggestions? Email me copyright © Wendy Priesnitz 2008

Topics & Passions life learning / unschooling simplicity environment natural parenting creativity / writing books ~ Monthly Archives Oct, 2008 Sept, 2008 Aug, 2008 July, 2008 June, 2008 May, 2008 Apr, 2008 Mar, 2008 Feb, 2008 Jan, 2008 Dec, 2007 Nov, 2007 Oct, 2007 Sept, 2007 Aug, 2007 July, 2007 June, 2007 May, 2007 April, 2007 Mar, 2007 Feb, 2007 Jan, 2007 Dec, 2006 Nov, 2006 Oct, 2006 Sept, 2006 Aug, 2006 July, 2006 June, 2006 May, 2006 April, 2006 Mar, 2006 Feb, 2006 Jan, 2006 Dec, 2005 Nov, 2005 Oct, 2005 Sept, 2005 Aug, 2005 July, 2005 June, 2005 May, 2005 April, 2005 Mar, 2005 Feb, 2005 Jan, 2005 Dec, 2004 Nov, 2004 Oct, 2004 Sept, 2004 Aug, 2004 July, 2004 June, 2004 May, 2004 April, 2004 ~ What I'm Reading Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008) Unbowed: A Memoir by Wangari Maathai (Knopf, 2007) The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization by Thomas Homer-Dixon (Vintage, 2007) ~ What I'm Listening To Zydeco by various artists (Putumayo, 1999) Keep it Simple by Van Morrison (Exile Productions, 2008) ~ Fav Bookmarks Daughter Blog The Mother/Daughter Project TED: Ideas Worth Spreading Organic Consumers Association Grist We Are What We Do Free Rice Mothers Movement Online Personalised Education Now ~ Fav Quotes Art, Writing, Creativity Life and Living Men and Women Learning Environment and Peace