Elisa's Green Scene

Treehugger rains on the Green Festival parade?

I recently posted about the upcoming Green Festival in San Francisco, today Treehugger throws a little rain on the parade by asking if such festivals aren't really just a bunch of people preaching to the converted. And if so, does the festival really live up to its marketing message that it is "building a movement"?

To be honest, my reaction to the first question is: "so what if it is?" People united by a common cause often need to occasionally come together, if for no other reason than to re-affirm their beliefs and re-ignite their passion. More power to them. And if you represent a minority viewpoint you do have to work a little harder to make sure the majority doesn't trample all over you. Showing up in force, whether for demonstrations or expositions, helps do that. It says, "we are here. We are a force to be reckoned with." Oh, and by the way, this one also says, "We have money to spend and will spend it in the right places."

I'm a big believer that the way you spend your money is your economic vote every day of the year.

As for whether the Green Festivals help "build the movement", well I haven't been so I can't really say. But I do know that is some percentage of attendees brings along a person or two who is not already in the fold, then the movement is being built. How else do such movements get built? Person by person.

I'm sure building such a movement is like sales or marketing: a numbers game.

Even I, a person more committed than most to causes, only respond to a percentage of the donation solicitations I receives, only sign a percentage of online petitions, only contact my Congresspeople a percentage of the time.

But if you don't keep providing the opportunities, and rely solely on proactivity? Well, the numbers will go down. That's human nature...easily distracted.

Feel good design

One of the reasons I started hip & zen was my belief that great design stirs the soul.  In my mind, good design should always say something new to you, and that is what inspires us.  We are so bombarded by mass-produced, formulaic products that it is just wonderful when someone creates something new and different (if you haven't figured out that I'm passionate about finding unique ideas and creations that move us forward, you soon will). 

One such visionary is Chip Conley, the brilliant creative mind behind the Joie de Vivre boutique hotel company.  I have long been a fan of his, because each of his hotels is completely unique and a feast for the senses.  I was very honored to recently be invited to his party bash by my wonderful PR queen, Debra Amador of Mindful PR.  His bash was at his new hotel which just opened on the Embarcadero in San Francisco, the Hotel Vitale.  Take a look at the pictures of the hotel - the place is truly stunning. I spent the whole evening drooling over all the dozens of small details that are just so gorgeous to behold.  The textures and colors everywhere you look are organic and sensuous, and evoke such a feeling of tranquility and beauty.  The place is truly hip & zen. 

This guy is so ahead of the curve - he gets what it takes to make people feel good.  Here is his view of what he does: "People actually have emotional experiences when they stay in our hotels. Sometimes I've used the term "identity refreshment" to describe this dynamic. People who stay in a hotel that feels worldly, artistic, literate, creative and sophisticated, feel just a little closer to that themselves when they leave - that's an "identity refreshment" ".  To this end, there is a yoga studio and a spa, which includes a rooftop bamboo garden with private hot tubs overlooking the bay.  My personal favorite little detail is that you can order warm cookies and milk to your room before bed. Now if that doesn't make you feel nurtured and special, nothing will.

More hip & zen blogs

Am loving the fact that there are so many hip & zen blogs to add to our blog roll. I'm finding some on my own, some because they're linking to us, and some because they're emailing me.

The two new ones for today:

The Naked Vegetarian

To paraphrase an old jam ad: with a name like "The Naked Vegetarian" it's got to be good! And it is...a really good resource site, first and foremost. Lots of links about vegetarianism and animal issues. I intend to spen some time perusing their vegetarian recipe blog.

Great Green Goods

Sure, you could say that Great Green Goods points to "competitive" sites, but they also have pointed to hip & zen plenty of times, and I like to think that the propagation and promotion of stores selling hip, cool, progressive, green products will help all boats rise.

Check them out.

Carnival of Healing #14 is up at Intuitive Innovations

Check out the week's best posts about wellness, healing, life balance...all good hip & zen topics.

I submitted Karen's great post about the new breed of wellness-oriented video games.

But be sure to check out all the great ideas at the Carnival of Healing.

The San Francisco Green Festival

For those of you who are in our beautiful San Francisco Bay Area, you may be interested in attending the San Francisco Green Festival on November 5 & 6 at the following hours:
Saturday 10AM - 9PM
Sunday 11AM - 7PM

The Festival is taking place at the San Francisco Concourse at 8th & Brannan St in San Francisco, CA.

Green Festival is a larger organization with some pretty lofty and admirtable goals:

"Green Festivals is a movement building event. Our intent is to diffuse an economic model based on life affirming values, an economy built on human rights, equity, art and an understanding that all life is interconnected and interdependent."

Feel free to report back if you decide to go.

Checking out the schedule, this looks like a perfect hip & zen event!

My sister is planning to buy an SUV!! Why, Lord, why?

Well, she was happy to tell me why.

My sister and her husband have two cars, a Mercedes sedan that's a few years old, and a 2-door Nissan sport coupe that is about 15 years old.

They also now have two small children, both still car seat age. They also have a third teenage son who is over 6 feet 4 inches tall, but he no longer lives with them, so he's gone from a regular passenger to an occasional one.

The Nissan can't accommodate the kids, and if only one car can carry kids, then only one parent ends up shouldering the responsibility for dealing with the kids and day care and transportation etc. Not acceptable in a balanced household.

So, they knew they need another car, and space or room was probably their #1 desired feature. And not just space and room for the kids, but space and room and ease of storage of their stroller and all the other baby accoutrements. Plus the occasional trip to Home Depot and Ikea.

My sister was very resistant to the idea of an SUV and fuel economy was another major desired feature. So how did they end up in a Toyota Highlander? Read on and find out...

What is hip & zen search?

You may notice a new box in the left-hand side bar under the title "hip & zen search." I'm trying out a new beta product, and thought I'd use my hip & zen readers as guinea pigs. The product is call Swicki, from a company called Eurekster.

I set up a list of words that I think readers of this blog might be interested in searching on. As you can see I chose words all around the topics we discuss here, from wellness to fair trade to lifehacking. The search results come from the regular suspects, Yahoo Search and blogs etc. But by choosing specific words, and then by tracking the behaviors of the people who use the Swicki, the software begins to learn what is both relevant and popular with the particular group of users who use that particular Swicki.

As you use the Swicki, the words that get searched on more often grow in size, the ones that don't shrink, and the Swicki also "learns" what results seem more appropriate.

I'm trying it out on just a couple of my blogs, the hip & zen pen being one.

Please do send me feedback if you try the app, and whether you think it's hip & zen...or not.

Today we say goodbye...

To a hero.

To a woman who stood up by sitting down.

To the activist who launched a thousand activists, far better than being the face who launched a thousand ships, don't you think?

Yes, I'm talking about Rosa Parks. Not a tired out seamstress who simply couldn't bring herself to stand, as much as that story seems more romantic. No, she was actually already a civil rights activist who was "tired of giving in." her actions sparked a movement and brought about changes. Not all the changes they could have. Not all of the changes that we still need. But changes that changed our country. From one that had "unimaginable" policies in place (according to today's youth.)

Other people are writing about Rosa today, here and here and here.

The bloggers are different, but we're saying the same thing: we admire this lady. How she lived then, and how she lived even until today.

February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005
Miss Rosa Parks

Making money with bees

We at hip & zen love to sell products from third world cooperatives, because we feel that it makes an immediate impact in some person's life.  Most of the cooperative members are women who earn almost nothing. Extra cash earned as an entrepreneur rather than a minimum wage employee makes a huge difference in their lives.  We've also heard about how strong the community benefit has become for these women, and how they create 'knitting circles' to do their crafts together.  Well, here is another one that just warmed my heart.

HoneyCare Africa helps subsistence farmers in Kenya to become beekeepers, paying them fair trade prices for their honey.  The idea is brilliant because bees don't need a lot of land, they feed themselves, they pollinate crops, and they gather nectar from the wild blossom, which encourages the farmers to leave the forests intact.  Most the farmers manage to double their annual income with their honey production.  HoneyCare has joined with NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) to assist farmers with financing, training and setup.  Co-founder Farouk Jiwa plans to offer HIV/AIDS education to the farmers as the next step.  Kenya's life expectancy has plummeted to 43.7 years because of AIDS.  According the the Red Cross, if AIDS were not a factor, the life expectancy would grow to 69 years by 2010.

What a great life's work.

Calming computer games?

A friend sent me the following quiz by a noted ADD expert recently to see if I had Attention Deficit Disorder, and although I have suspected for the past year or two that I might have it, I was shocked by how many of the questions were 'me', and how many personality quirks of mine are actually related to ADD.  I scored way high on the test, and have been trying to figure out ever since what to do about it.  I don't have many of the really serious manifestations of ADD in my life, but there are some aspects that have gotten a lot worse lately, and I would dearly like to change.  For instance, it seems lately that I spend at least 20 percent of my day looking for stuff I have lost, I forget absolutely everything, cannot focus, and have trouble sleeping because my mind is all over the place.  So in true ADD style, I bought 3 books on the subject, and am reading all 3 at once, none of them from start to finish.  I have looked at dozens of websites.  What I know so far is that I do not want to take drugs. 

I did find one fascinating alternative called neurofeedback (similar to biofeedback).  The patient basically plays computer games with probes on their bodies, measuring different things such as skin moisture, brainwave frequencies etc.  The computer games change based on the readings, so that when the patient is drifting off into space, the game starts degrading, bringing the patient's attention back to the game.  There are many other ways these games work, by making you more aware of your body, and training your brain to regulate itself.  Over the course of a few months, the brain apparently trains itself to behave differently, and the results are permanent, whereas often drug therapy results are temporary.  There is more about neurofeedback at http://www.eeginfo.com, including where to find practitioners.  There are some interesting case studies at http://www.eegspectrum.com/faq.

Another direction is neurofeedback at home.  There is a new genre of computer games for the consumer that are called 'wellness' games, that teach you how to relax and regulate your body.  I already talked about Heartmath Institute's Freeze Framer a few weeks ago. Another one, endorsed by Deepak Chopra, is the Journey of the Wild Divine.  What a great alternative to the sea of violent computer games out there.