Ka-whoooosh, sssshhhhhhhhhhhhhh, glug-waahhhh…..sssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…. Okay, I did my best. Who can tell me what household object makes this sound? Undoubtedly because my sound effect descriptions are terrible (I need to read more comic books), it is perfectly natural that you have no idea. The correct answer is the humble toilet! And in my case, every time this sound was heard through […]
Exercise #1: The Personal Essay Am I ever going to accomplish something truly significant? Am I too old now for becoming someone that could change the world, or even a small group of people only 1 degree of separation from me – a.k.a friends and family? Am I just not good enough to become someone that important? Or that well-known? […]
How many of you have read this blog since 2020? Probably not too many of you (Hi, mom and dad.). If you are one of those few, you’ll remember a series of reflections I wrote for some Method Initiative exercises (you can still find them on this blog, just search for “Initiative” in the search bar above, or here’s the […]
1:30am. The baby is starting to fuss. He’s hungry. Another 15 minutes and he’ll start really wailing. Time to nip this in the bud and go get some milk. The weight of my body feels like it’s been multiplied as I try to pull myself out of bed, but dreading what will come if I don’t move, I manage to […]
Ever wish you could ditch the guilt associated with throwing away a tube of toothpaste every month? Do you ever go to the supermarket toothpaste aisle and just feel like all the different kinds of toothpastes flavors and benefits are just a bunch of marketing ploys designed to make them all sound better than they actually are? Do you ever […]
First, the tadpoles and frogs disappeared; then the bats and the songbirds left. Dr. Elizabeth Hilborn, a honey bee veterinarian and environmental health scientist, soon realized the bees—the vital pollinators of fruits, plants, and vegetables—were dying. Everything was still and silent. In 2017, after a large flood, most of the teeming life on her beloved family farm in North Carolina […]
Recently, I’ve been fighting with myself and thinking a lot about what I want this blog to be – Asking myself questions like what should readers expect when they visit my blog? What kind of content would resonate best with my target audience? And with me? Who should my target audience be? What suits my writing style and life? High-level […]
Following a February 10, 2022, court order, gray wolves in the contiguous 48 states and Mexico – with the exception of the Northern Rocky Mountain population – are now protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and listed as threatened in Minnesota and endangered in the remaining states. After being nearly eradicated in the 1990s, the gray wolf has made […]
Humans Lived Sustainably for Most of Human History 300,000 years. That is how long humankind lived sustainably – never taking more resources than the planet could replenish or causing irreparable damage. It was an time when we had a deep connection to nature and a profound understanding of our dependence on it. Activities such as tree cutting were carried out […]
Sara Turner is a Sustainability Analyst at Nexii Building Solutions, a company dedicated to innovating and creating breakthrough building systems that prove that planet-friendly solutions aren’t a sacrifice — they’re an improvement in every way over the status quo. Sara has been contributing to the green building industry since 2017, through previous roles that include building science engineering, energy modeling, and renewable […]