Tiny Houses

I have been living in a dorm room for the past six months and have been surprised by how much I appreciate the simplicity of this lifestyle. I certainly wouldn't want to live in the dorms indefinitely, but I have found that I am incredibly efficient in this room.

And so I have a deep appreciation for what Jay Shafer of Tumbleweed is doing. He says, "My decision to inhabit just 89 square feet arose from some concerns I had about the impact a larger house would have on the environment, and because I do not want to maintain a lot of unused or unusable space."

Here is a tour of his house:


He teaches workshops all over the country, to empower people to build these houses themselves.

Here is a photo of a Tumbleweed house that he built here in Iowa, in Iowa City:





















The man who lives in this 10 ft by 7 ft dwelling, Gregory Johnson, has lost 50 pounds after living here for three years.

He says he is more active and has also begun to eat more healthfully and that scaling back has given him a new sense of freedom.

And there is now a Small House Movement with the Small House Society serving as its voice. This movement is the "result of concerns about what we are doing to the environment, and what the environment is doing to us (wild fires, flooding, hurricanes), as well as a shifting economy. Some people just desire to live simply so that others can simply live."

Wow, there are just so many aspects of sustainability, and I am inspired to see how many different and wonderful things people are doing to leave a smaller footprint on the Earth.

Swap Tree

This is such a brilliant concept! I haven't tried it yet, but it looks amazing!

Here's what it says on their website:

Joining Swap Tree is free, and here is how it works:

List. Choose. Swap.

Simply list the books, CDs, DVDs, and video games you have.
Choose the items you want to receive.
Then just swap your items through the mail.

Choose From Thousands of Items.

Swaptree's trading engine instantly shows you the many thousands of items you can receive in return for the items you are trading.

No Post Office

Swaptree makes mailing your item easy by allowing you to print a perfect postage label right from your computer. There's no worrying about stamps, weights, or visits to the post office.

Free. Fun. Green. Safe.

On Swaptree you can get the media you want for free, learn about new artists and authors, share your media collection with friends and meet people with similar tastes, all in a safe and green community. Free, fun, safe and green, what's not to love?

25 Things About Me

This was a recent "game" going around on Facebook.

If you'd love to share your 25 things, please post them as a comment to this post!!!

Here are my 25 things:

1. There are currently 2275 people in my Microsoft Outlook contacts.
2. I cry often.
3. I feel deeply, and I am learning to appreciate this exquisite gift.
4. I love the beautiful peace lily that I have in my dorm room.
5. I love Facebook.
6. Singing brings me more joy than just about anything else I can think of.
7. I am constantly amazed by both the similarities and eccentricities of people.
8. Traveling is a state of mind for me, and has taught me most of what I know.
9. I prefer to spend most of my time with other women.
10. I experience every day is an epic adventure.
11. Every day, I trust myself a little more fully, and that is one of the most exciting things I can think of.
12. I love writing my blog. http://erinpillman.blogspot.com
13. I am learning to listen to my heart more and my head less.
14. My heart is tender and sensitive, and I cannot remember a moment in my life when it did not ache.
15. I have had to edit #1 about five times since I started writing this because the number keeps getting bigger.
16. Raw chocolate, avocados, berries, and coconuts, are some of my favorite foods.
17. Practicing Yoga with my teacher Dharma Mittra while eating a 99% raw vegan diet in 2006 in New York City transformed my being more quickly and profoundly than anything else I have done.
18. I yearn for so many things – complete union with the divine, fulfilling livelihood, a sense of purpose, a close circle of women friends, singing in front of large audiences, feeling fully supported and empowered, a deeper connection with Nature, growing my own food, living in a place where I feel that I truly belong, living more simply…
19. I’m constantly alarmed by all the plastic I see everywhere.
20. I wonder if our species will die out because we are acting like such idiots.
21. I don’t know where I want to live, or if I want to be in school next semester (which starts in a week), but I’m only mildly concerned.
22. I am in the process of recording a children’s album with Lynwood King, the dean of my university.
23. I am a certified yoga instructor, but I have not taught yoga in a couple of years.
24. I want to start singing and sharing my own music – be the star of my own show – touch people’s hearts – inspire and uplift audiences – bare my soul on stage.
25. I am really glad that I am me.

Eat the View

"Agriculture... is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals and happiness." --Thomas Jefferson, 1787

"Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds." --Thomas Jefferson, 1785

I am so tickled and enlivened by the ideas presented by this organization called Eat the View. When Americans see the President of the United States eating food grown right in his lawn, this will be a huge inspiration for people to grow their own food, one of the most empowering things people can do!

Here is what it says on the Eat the View website:

"Eat the View!" is a campaign to urge the Obamas to replant a large organic Victory Garden on the First Lawn with the produce going to the White House kitchen and to local food pantries.

"Eat the View" is coordinated by Kitchen Gardeners International, a Maine-based 501c3 nonprofit network of 10,000 gardeners from 100 countries who are inspiring and teaching more people to grow some of their own food.

Since its launch in February 2008, Eat the View! has been featured in over 450 newspapers including the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.

Our videos The Garden of Eatin' and "This Lawn is Your Lawn" video have been viewed thousands of times on the internet. The latter was chosen as one of the winners of the "Climate Matters" video contest and shown on national TV to an estimated audience of 50 million households.

"Eat the View!" has also won the Grand Prize in the OnDayOne.org contest where citizens are helping to set a positive, global agenda for President Obama.

Please direct all inquiries to Roger Doiron, (207) 883-5341

The future is going to be more fresh, juicy and delicious than a lot of us realize. That's because edible landscapes are going to be more integrated into our yards, neighborhoods, towns, and cities in the future than they have in the recent past. So, rejoice: good, clean food is on the way!

To make this happen, though, we need more people asking for and digging these landscapes. Please join our campaign. Here are a few things you can do to help:

1) Identify a landscape near you that you think should be "edible-ized". Chances are that you won't have to look far. Start with your own yard, neighborhood, or child's schoolyard. Then, why not ask your elected officials at the state and local level to lead by example. The Governors of Maine, North Carolina and New York are already eating from gardens planted at their official residences.

2) Sign our "White House Food Garden Petition" which we will deliver to the Obamas along with a diverse collection of heirloom seed packets.

3) Contact President Obama directly here. Tell him you'd like him to replant an organic garden on the White House lawn. There's an opportunity to attach a photo to your request. You can grab one here.

4) Buy a virtual parcel of the First Lawn and donate it back to the American people for the digging of a food garden.

5) Join this campaign and website. Use this site to share your stories of edible landscapes you're creating, planning, or already eating.

6) Join our Facebook Cause

Green Drinks

I love networking more than almost anything else that I can think of. I also love sustainability - people creating solutions to the environmental crisis we are currently facing on our beloved Planet Earth.

So I am very excited about a great networking organization that I recently discovered. It is is called Green Drinks. There isn't a group in Fairfield yet, but there are groups in over 460 cities worldwide! It's so inspiring to imagine these beautiful, vibrant people meeting up regularly to discuss sustainability!

Here is the description of Green Drinks from the Green Drinks website:

Every month people who work in the environmental field meet up at informal sessions known as Green Drinks.

We have a lively mixture of people from NGOs, academia, government and business. Come along and you'll be made welcome. Just say, "are you green?" and we will look after you and introduce you to whoever is there. It's a great way of catching up with people you know and also for making new contacts. Everyone invites someone else along, so there’s always a different crowd, making Green Drinks an organic, self-organising network.

These events are very simple and unstructured, but many people have found employment, made friends, developed new ideas, done deals and had moments of serendipity. It's a force for the good and we'd like to help it spread to other cities. Contact your local node to get the latest info about coming along.

If there is no Green Drinks near you, you might want to set up a Green Drinks in your City.