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Total number of posts: 23657
The economy shrinks and life gets better
Imagine a world where less money is spent on defense, a world with fewer weapons and bombs to fall into the wrong hands. Would you feel safer? I know some people believe guns buy safety. But more guns, a lot of guns, don’t make society safer. So when less money is spent on military stuff, I Read More...
Rise and dance
"I am over how long it seems to take anyone to ever respond to rape. I am over Facebook taking weeks to take down rape pages. I am over the hundreds of thousands of women in Congo still waiting for the rapes to end and the rapists to be held accountable. I am over the thousands Read More...
A small act of rebellion
Janisse Ray calls them revolutionaries: the seed savers, thousands of Americans who plant historic and endangered seeds in their gardens or on their farms and eat the results. In The Seed Underground (published by Chelsea Green), she explains why this small act of rebellion against the monoculture Read More...
Ancient healing in the modern world
Brant Secunda beats on his drum and mumbles incomprehensibly. Now and then I catch the name Wali, which is the name of my son, who is sitting beside me. We both stare at the smoke rising from the little dish of glowing coals on the table before us. Secunda stands and brushes Wali’s body with a Read More...
The yogurt mamas
Every morning, 56-year-old Elizabeth Gabeal from Tanzania goes to work in a small community kitchen in her village in the Mwanza region. The kitchen is known as Jiko la Maziwa Imara, Swahili for “the kitchen for healthy milk.” Here, she makes yogurt that she sells to friends and family. In Read More...
Help for the heart
Having trouble walking up stairs and experiencing tightness in your chest? If the arteries around your heart are clogged, your doctor will try to remove the blockage by performing an angioplasty. If that doesn’t help, the only remaining option is open-heart surgery. But does open-heart Read More...
December 21. Happy birthday to you. Yes, really!
Happy birthday! Yes, today is a birthday for all of us. Today humanity is transitioning into a new era. Today is the date that the Mayans marked as the end of their calendar centuries ago. They knew that today would be a new beginning for our world. Right at this moment, around the world many Read More...
The best of 2012
We hope you look back on a wonderful year! It has been a very special year for us. In 2012, Ode changed her name. She is now The Intelligent Optimist. Ode was always about open-minded optimists and pioneers of the possible looking for solutions.Ode was a song of praise, a tribute to the people Read More...
Warrior of the human spirit
"Let’s see ourselves as ‘warriors of the human spirit,’” says Margaret Wheatley, who has just published So Far From Home, a book about “how we ended up in a world that nobody wants.” (See an excerpt on page 52.) She sees perseverance as the way that these warriors get through. “I Read More...
Ode to the Treehotel
To call it a tree house would be almost insulting to Sweden’s Treehotel. The Lapland lodging opened its doors—or, rather, dropped its ladders—in 2010. Since then, thousands of guests have taken in the Lule River valley views from its treetop windows. The Treehotel has five different rooms; Read More...