This is a blog dedicated to mindful living, caring for those around us, and simple creativity, looking back to learn and forward to grow.

I have seen times of want and plenty and can appreciate both. I have lived in the concrete jungle of town houses and strip malls in suburbia and in crowded city apartments with a brick-lined view of the alley out my bedroom window and more languages than I could distinguish spoken outside my front door. Most currently my abode lies atop a mountain where my closest neighbors are 16 Rhode Island Red chickens and the view from my bedroom window is trees, trees, and more trees. Fresh air and well water are abundant. Good ethnic food is not. Diversity in my current town consists not of nationalities, but in the variety of tattoos one can design to paint on one’s body. Five tattoo parlors and not a single Indian restaurant. Four pawn shops and seven thrift stores and no Macy’s or Gap. You get the point.

I have also visited many places, from a garbage dump/slum in Mexico,  AIDS hospice in India and Buddhist temple in Thailand to the streets of Paris and London and the beaches of Jamaica and Maui, with a few stops in between. Which is my favorite? Where would I like to live the rest of my life? I could never choose. You could drop me in any of these locations and more and I am determined that I would live a full life and be pretty much the same person. What I have found in all these towns and homes and hotels are people who are not so different. Different roles, different languages, but all people need and want the same things. Food, clean water, family, security, acceptance, fulfilling work, love, companionship, a warm bed. My tattooed redneck neighbors are not so different from my lawyer friends in suburbia and my no-speak-English immigrant friends in the city as you might think. I have found that I do not have favorities. “Love the one you’re with,”  I guess!

This blog is for anyone anywhere who wants to live a little bit better tomorrow than you did today, and share that with others. Maybe you see the value in planting your own tomato plant and picking it yourself, whether that tomato is on  your 100-acre homestead, the balcony of your high-rise apartment, or a remote village in Tajikistan. You care about things that are invisible and clean wholesome living and would do your best to help your neighbor, whoever and wherever he may be. Please share your musings and ideas as we work to build community in a sustainable world.

Here’s to creating the best version of ourselves!

 

p.s.– I’m moving over my blog posts from blogger to here, because it looks like Google is trying to take over the internet. Just sayin.