Kids Need Play, Not Commercialization

We're beginning to realize that playing is important for kids. It develops their imagination, their creativity, and now, something they call "self-regulation." A story on NPR's Morning Edition reports that something momentous happened in 1955 that no one really noticed: Companies started massive advertising for kids' toys. Since then, kids' play has become more and more involved with "things" instead of imagination.

Further, because of parents concern about safety, kids have less chance to roam freely. And finally, with our concern about achievement, both parents and teachers spend time trying to build cognitive skills so the kids can go to top colleges. Even the schools have cut back on recess to have time to prepare for all the tests.

To put it simply, psychologists have discovered that when kids don't play and build "self-regulation" -- the ability to learn from and control their emotions -- they have less self-discipline, less ability to pursue their goals.

The moral of the story is "Bring play back." This seems to be very important. But how will we adults react? "OK, you kids, I want you to spend the next hour playing, or you'll never get into Stanford." And if the kids are playing, the grownups can catch up on their work!

Obviously, unless adults learn to play, or experience leisure, the kids are not going to learn it. Kids learn from what their parents are doing. Leisure often looks like you're doing nothing in particular. Can adults still do that?

Farmers Markets: Social Groceries

It’s clear that we must create a vibrant sustainable culture that resists the lethal corporate consumer culture. One of the most exciting things happening in this arena is the food revolution. As Michael Pollen writes about farmers markets, it’s not just that you get good food, but you also participate in community:

“We like what happens socially at the farmer’s market, which is quickly emerging as the new public square in this country. If you compare what happens in the aisles at the grocery store with the farmer’s market, think about what a world of difference that is. At the farmer’s market country meets city. Children are introduced to where their food comes from. People politic. They have petitions. They schmooze. It’s an incredibly vibrant space.”

Farmers markets reduce the use of energy from shipping food thousands of miles as well as contribute to people’s health with their fresh and organic food. I value the farmers markets for the lesson they teach Americans: How to hang out with each other for the sheer joy of it.

Enjoy Your Life, and Others Will Too

We’re supposed to be enjoying ourselves. People on the right are often filled with hate, but those of us on the left are angry or self-righteous a lot of the time. The best way to draw people into our movement is to welcome people and help them enjoy themselves. One of our longtime progressives, Barbara Ehrenreich, reminds us of that in her new book, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy.

She shows how essential collective joy is to us, as human beings, and how dancing always threatens those in power. Where are our liberal dances! Bring back rock and roll parties. Let’s scare the people in charge!

Catch Barbara's message in a New York Times piece.

Working Too Many Hours: Flexibility Needed

The root of the problem of our time crisis is the workplace. We work too many hours. In the past, we got people’s attention when we told them that we work nine weeks more than the average European. But now that example isn’t going to work as well. Even though there is much evidence that the French 35-hour work week is successful by many criteria, the French have a new leader who opposes it. Maybe we should talk about “flexibility” in the workplace. A story posted on Tom Paine makes such a suggestion and presents a good argument.

"Workplace flexibility is about innovations in how work gets done. It includes flexibility in the scheduling of full-time hours, flexibility in the number of hours worked and the location of work, career flexibility with multiple points for exit and re-entry into the work force and the flexibility to address unexpected and ongoing personal and family needs.

"The implementation of flexible workplaces can be achieved without sacrificing employers' strategic business and organizational objectives. It does not have to mean businesses suffer. In fact, groups from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to Corporate Voices for Working Families maintain that flexible workplace arrangements can help businesses recruit and retain employees."

Many professionals already have some flexibility, although not often in the length of working weeks. But so many people think we can’t have laws that give us a longer vacation or a shorter work day, that talking about flexibility might be the foot in the door.

Limo'd Schoolkids and the Damage Done

In a recent New York Times article we learned a little more about how our growing gap between the rich and the rest of us is affecting our way of life. The story told of the children being dropped of at the prestigious 92nd St. Y Nursery school. It’s the same school we heard of a few years ago where “in 2002, a government investigation found that Jack B. Grubman, then an analyst with Citigroup, had bragged in an e-mail message that his boss, Sanford I. Weill, had helped get his twins into the Y’s nursery school after Mr. Grubman upgraded his rating on a stock as a favor to Mr. Weill. Meanwhile, Mr. Weill arranged for Citigroup to donate $1 million to the 92nd Street Y.”

In the current story, kids are dropped off at the school by “hired drivers” (otherwise known as chauffeurs). Apparently this “driver” experience has become a real game about who is more important and who has more money.

The letters to the editor the next few days, had some astute comments. As one said: “These parents scramble to give their kids the best opportunities and the most protected environment, yet with one-upmanship, they teach their children the value of image, class consciousness and materialism. These are not the traits necessary to get us through the challenges of the 21st century. What about compassion, honesty, humility, selflessness and curiosity about th world around them?”

It’s interesting to realize again that children learn from their parents. When they see their parents so concerned about success and status, they learn that these are the things to pursue. Happiness research shows that when people pursue status, they become more narcississtic which, in turn, undermines their social abilities. And it is social abilitities, the talent for making friends and connecting with others that brings people the most well being in life.

Slow Life Slow Food voluntary simplicity Cecile Andrews Take Back Your Time green lifestyle Slow Is Beautiful simple living ecovillage phinney ecovillage

New York Times' Bob Herbert: Everyone should be a part-time politician

In his New York Times column this morning (also available here if you lack a NY Times subscription), Bob Herbert says that it looks like we can hope for little action at the top. Everyone is just playing it safe. Our only hope, he says, is the citizens taking action. We’ve done it before: the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and on and on. We can change things.

He calls for us to turn off our TVs and protest, attend meetings, circulate petitions. Run for office!

He’s talking about practicing democracy, of course. But he’s also talking about building community. At its heart, democracy is community, because it’s people coming together for the common good.

And it’s so much more exciting and fulfilling than TV or shopping! Every time you stop to talk to someone, you’re not only building community, you’re practicing democracy, for John Dewey said, “Democracy is born in conversation.”

What was so inspiring about the column was his final quote from Eisenhower, who said in 1954: “Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.”

This is why those of us in the Take Back Your Time movement feel so strongly that we must work for shorter work time policies to do something to counteract our sickness of overwork and time poverty. Democracy takes time!

Slow Life Slow Food voluntary simplicity Cecile Andrews Take Back Your Time green lifestyle Slow Is Beautiful simple living Bob Herbert New York Times

Creativity, Leisure and the Slow Life: How Disruptive Thinking Happens

Today's Seattle Times has a great front page carrying translations of a warning about using charcoal grills and gas generators indoors. Our region has been hit by a spate of tragedies, including 12 deaths, from a terrible windstorm that left hundreds of thousands without power. A family of four was found dead from using a generator in their garage. The primary problem may be that warnings on the devices are not translated into enough foreign languages for the terrible danger to be understood.

There's an interesting story behind the front page having to do with leisure, the slow life and creative, disruptive thinking.

What is leisure? Maybe the easiest way to describe it is "time away from work." For some it might be video games, for others a visit to the art museum. Certainly there are huge variations in the level of fullfillment gained from leisure: surely painting a picture is more fulfilling than watching television. (Although there is the same variation in watching television: Watching Masterpiece Theater is a much different experience than watching Bachelor or Elimidate.)

But leisure has been referred to as "the basis of culture" because it is the core of creativity. All the creativity literature asserts that good ideas come when your mind is far away from the details of work.

And so it happened for Seattle Times executive editor Dave Boardman who came up with a breathtaking front page. It came to him, he said, when he woke up at 5 a.m. to go to work. Like a flash. Almost like a religious experience. He saw it in his mind's eye as he showered. In his excitement he started sketching it out in the mist on the shower door.

The night before he had been thinking, as so many of us had, about the tragedy of the families who had lost power and had died from carbon monoxide poisoning because they used their outdoor barbecues and gas generators indoors. He spent the evening writing Christmas Card notes.... it was a calm and peaceful evening, even though in the back of his mind he kept coming back to the families.

The next morning the breakthrough came to him, and he suddenly knew what to do.

Thank you, Dave Boardman!

Slow Life Slow Food voluntary simplicity Cecile Andrews Take Back Your Time green lifestyle Slow Is Beautiful simple living ecovillage phinney ecovillage

Barbara Ehrenreich: Fight for Your Right to Party

Barbara Ehrenreich: "According to anthropologists, human festivities--probably going back to the Paleolithic era--featured the universal ingredients of feasting, dancing, costuming, masking and/or face painting, for days at a time. These things didn't happen indoors, within the family circle, but around bonfires, in the streets or on the "dancing grounds" of prehistoric civilizations. Holidays bonded whole communities together, not just families."

In my book Slow Is Beautiful I spend a lot of time discussing the concept of joie de vivre, the French phrase for "joy of living." We're supposed to be enjoying our lives! Joy is the energy that drives love, creativity, and gratitude, concepts at the core of happiness. Even seemingly dour Henry David Thoreau said, "Surely joy is the essence of life"! Kay Redfield Jamison, professor at Johns Hopkins and author of Exuberance: The Passion for Life, sees joy and exuberance as "the wine of the gods," and she states boldly that when it begins to disappear from a culture, the culture is dying.

And now, one of my favorite writers, Barbara Ehrenreich, puts it beautifully in her forthcoming book, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy. She shows that the impetus toward joy is present in every culture and expresses itself in the human festivities of dancing and feasting... that is, until the power imbalance grows and the powerful try to stamp out the "dancing in the streets" for fear it can lead to a revolution! Ehrenreich argues that maybe the best thing we can do for social change is to throw a big party and dance the night away. It's deja joie all over again!

Slow Life Slow Food voluntary simplicity Cecile Andrews Take Back Your Time green lifestyle Slow Is Beautiful simple living ecovillage phinney ecovillage

Slow Is Beautiful: Lexicon and Meme

The New York Times Science section lead article today is called "Slow Is Beautiful" in print editions. Intriguingly the phrase does not show up on the Times Web site, however.

No doubt they're worried SlowIsBeautiful.com will sue for copyright infringement. But hey, we don't do that in the "slow culture," it's against our values!

Slow Life Slow Food voluntary simplicity Cecile Andrews Take Back Your Time green lifestyle Slow Is Beautiful simple living ecovillage phinney ecovillage

Can Los Angeles Get Slow?

We had a wonderful time in L.A. staying with our friends in Sherman Oaks and giving talks at Vroman's Bookstore, the Bodhi Tree Bookstore and the Los Angeles Ecovillage. Now L.A. is not the first place you're going to think "eco," but the Ecovillage there is for real and may represent one of a kind. You're not going to find too many intentional communities in the heart of a teeming, speeding, freeway-jammed megalopolis like L.A. Nevertheless it's strikingly impressive what the LAEV has been able to accomplish in reclaiming land, water and public space.

Vroman's had a great lively audience with lots of comments and questions. I've given several talks there over the years and always come away with a wonderful feeling. It deserves its reputation as one of L.A.'s leading bookstores. If you're in Pasadena be sure to stop by. As up to date and "well-groomed" as Vroman's is, it still retains the bookish, library atmosphere of old-school bookstores we grew up with.



I had never been to the Bodhi Tree in West Hollywood before, but it apparently has an avid following. The place was bustling with all kinds of readers, from UCLA students to old New Age types (if that's not a contradiction). My reading was introduced by Carol Holst of the Simple Living America project, which sponsored the Leavenworth WA conference in November that I blogged about earlier. A good group, with much discussion after my talk.

My visit to the LA Ecovillage was a real revelation. I've always said that the Phinney Ecovillage I founded a few years ago in my north Seattle neighborhood was an "ecovillage lite," in the sense that it was an unintentional community based on the happenstance of location rather than a philosophical matrix.



Well, the LA Ecovillage is walking the talk. The village itself has about 35 residents, about half of whom are actively "intentional." In a 2-hour tour, leader Lois Arkin (Alan Arkin's sister) showed us a stormwater-filtering Eco Park, a rabbit run, dozens of tree plantings, a garden, a composting-soil project, a stormwater catch-basin (natural ground built up around 3 feet to absorb runoff) and on and on. Lois and the rest of the Evillagers can be congratulated on how much they've accomplished, even if Lois sometimes sounded as though they've barely made a dent with all the plans and projects still to be done.



The most memorable point of the tour may have been its starting point, in the middle of the street in front of the village. Under a City Repair project, the street is decorated with a colorful circle and various other designs. As Lois began to tell us about the Ecovillage, cars approached and we instinctively began to edge to the side of the street.



"Oh no," Lois said firmly. "We don't move for traffic here." She went on to explain that blocking cars is part of "retraining" traffic to slow down and go around. People use the street as a shortcut, and during rush hour "there's a lot of retraining to be done," Lois said. Some of the drivers, gesticulating angrily for us to move, also indicated an unwillingness to be retrained. But a surprising number just glided around us.

I'd never heard of traffic retraining before, but it sounds like an integral part of any slow lifestyle philosophy. Maybe we could learn from the yellow magnetic-sticker movement by cyclists who've been passed too closely by motorists. We could just make a sticker saying "Slow Is Beautiful" and slap it on cars as they drive by!

We left L.A. once again reminded of SoCal's central contradiction. As fast-paced, smoggy and hellish L.A. can be, some of the world's most interesting people live there. We even had the treat of arriving right after a storm and seeing the place through clear air. It's impressively green and beautiful when visible!



Slow Life Slow Food voluntary simplicity Cecile Andrews Take Back Your Time green lifestyle Slow Is Beautiful simple living ecovillage phinney ecovillage