Category — SPIRIT

World of Wildcraft

Why would a successful American physician choose to live in a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot cabin without running water or electricity? (more…)

From red shoes to pink flamingos

A former soft porn writer and her film director husband have developed “a passion for living off-grid after three years in the middle of the African desert,” reports The Daily Express.

British-born film director Matt Aeberhard and his wife Melanie Finn spent three years living in a stone house formerly occupied by missionaries on a hilltop in the Tanzanian wilderness to make Disneynature’s first and documentary about flamingos,Crimson Wing.
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Off-gridders White & Teter - Yurt and VW sales will boom

American Olympic snowboarder Hannah Teter has returned to Vermont — to live in her yurt. “Mom has a huge garden and fruit trees,” she told People magazine “and I love it there.

“I helped my parents get solar power this past year, and I’ll be running on solar and hopefully wind power with my yurt so I can be completely off the grid.”

Meanwhile, Olympic gold medalist skateboarder Shaun White says he is anxious to return to his 1969 Volkswagen Van.

Hannah Teter, however, is the off-grid flavor of the month. (more…)

Symbol of a sick society

George Clooney’s starring role in “Up in the Air” is a movie about a special class of off-gridder – the business traveller – living in a peculiarly amoral world, of airports, corporate hotel rates and frequent flier cards. George Clooney plays a smooth-suited consultant whose job is firing people at a time when downsizing is the fastest growing industry in the US.  “We take people at their most fragile and we set them adrift,” says Clooney’s character.

Directed by Jason Reitman, the hero of Up in the Air inhabits an entirely new state: Airworld, where the hometown paper is USA Today, the laptop-plus-executive-lounge is the office, a mobile phone is the only permanent friend, the indigenous cuisine wilts under heat lamps, and the citizenry speaks a Byzantine dialect of upgrades, expense accounts, and market share. (more…)

Now, lie back and relax

by Susan France Bonner, Author of Opening a Registered Nurse’s Eyes: A Life Altering Journey Across North America.

The health care debate in the United States of America has reached critical mass. Over 16 years as a Registered Nurse with a Bachelors Degree, I have seen first hand the problems as well as the possible solutions.

The problem for affordable health care  is “government involvement” and the solution is called “personal responsibility”. Let me give ya’all some background on the United States health care system. (more…)

Humanure Handbook

Sit, flush and forget, that’s what most of us do, multiple times a day. Composting toilets are the answer.

We use perfectly good, drinkable water to flush our waste —  what a waste it truly is! After we flush, we don’t think about all the water that is used/wasted to process the sewage that is created, chemicals are pumped into our water system, the water we DRINK, so that we can do it all over again.

I’m starting to sound pretty green aren’t I? (more…)