My family is doing an experiment in car-free living. We’re considering going car-free for the winter, mostly because our only car needs major repairs, and it’s too old and unreliable to sink much money into. We want to save money to buy a better, more efficient vehicle next year, and the best way we can…
Do you want to leave the traffic jams, parking, and high gas prices at home when you head out for your vacation this summer? Make it a car-free trip. (Bonus: you’ll feel great about conserving gasoline as we watch oil spew into the Gulf.) Here are a few tips for a successful get-away sans the…
A few years ago, Kurt Hoelting, a wilderness guide and commercial fisherman living in the San Juan Islands in Washington, took an online quiz to calculate his carbon footprint. He was living fairly simply, so he was shocked to find that his carbon footprint was gigantic. The culprit? Air travel. So Hoelting made a resolution….
I’ve been stirring things up on Shareable.net for the last few days talking about Alfie Kohn’s book No Contest: The Case Against Competition and some of his ideas for raising more cooperative, less competitive kids. My post begins: In 2008, an interviewer admitted to Alfie Kohn that she considers herself a competitive person. “As long…
I’m a huge fan of walking. I wrote about why I love it here. I take a walk at least once a day, rain or shine. And every time I wheel my son’s stroller out to the sidewalk in front of our house, I am grateful that we live in a walkable neighborhood. So what…
(Originally published March 1, 2010, reprinted in celebration of National Bike Month.) A couple of years ago, my husband and I were going to plant running bamboo along our back fence. Then we casually mentioned the idea to our next-door neighbor. She looked, well, terrified. Bamboo is an amazing plant. It’s used to make musical…