“You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
…And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”
- Max Ehrmann

When I was still in college, I spent four months of my senior year living at the Audubon Center for the Northwoods in Sandstone, Minnesota. It was one of the most wonderful times of my life and I learned more in those four months than I did during my entire four years of college. This was thanks to, primarily, the incredible and motivating teachings of Mike Link and his wife Kate Crowley.

Which brings me to the reason for this post.

The Full Length Mississippi Kickstarter Project

Last year, Mike and Kate took on Lake Superior, walking around the entire freshwater resource, educating and creating awareness for their beloved great lake. Next year, the pair want to bike up and down the entire length of the nation’s largest river system. Their adventure has sparked the creation of the Full Length Mississippi Kickstarter Project.

In less than 48 hours, the Full Length Mississippi Kickstarter project will end and they still need about $500 to reach their goal. This is an all or nothing campaign – if they don’t meet that goal, they get nothing.

I am reaching out to all of you to please donate even just a little big. This endeavor can’t happen without you. Mike and Kate aim to raise awareness and educate the public about the health of our natures freshwater ways. They will bike the river and use their knowledge to create educational programs for schools and organizations and share what they discover along the way both in person and online. It’s an incredible journey and you can take part and help make this happen.

Support The Mississippi River!

Please support this project. I owe Mike and Kate a lot – they are inspiring people and have taught me so much. Help me help them by donating to this cause. Please support Full Length Mississippi!

Update 4.19.12, 8:12 CST: We did it! Thanks to you amazing people, Mike and Kate reached their Kickstarter goal with 22 hours to spare! You all rock! THANK YOU!

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves ‘who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?’

Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us; its in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

- Marianne Williamson, Return to Love

That’s a picture from Big Dog Rescue’s Facebook page. They’re located in the Austin area, and their Vice President just had her house burned down and they’re looking for fosters to take in animals displaced. The Bastrop County Animal Shelter was evacuated as well and thanks to the awesome folks at Austin Pets Alive and the Austin Humane Society, all the animals were saved and they’re looking for donations and temporary fosters.

If you’re in Texas and want to help in some way, check out the Help For Fire Victims Facebook page and keep updated with the news on the Statesman, they’ve been on top of everything. It’s been crazy down here, and today is supposed to be worse. If you haven’t heard, Central Texas is being hit HARD with fires right now. The biggest being the one in Bastrop that has burned up to 25,000 acres since yesterday, jumped the Colorado River twice, and has desecrated more than 300 houses. Over 5,000 people have been evacuated so far, and a mother and her 18-month-old child were killed. The winds from the recent hurricane aren’t helping. You can check out the placement of all fire activity on this page.

Ash and I are in east Austin and while the fires are supposedly moving away from us, we’ve still come up with our evacuation plan (packing up 20 animals is no easy feat). Standing outside in our front yard, the smell of smoke is strong. It’s scary. If we didn’t have so many fosters already, I know we’d both be at the shelter taking in animals right now. I’ll be continually nagging friends all day to make sure they’re okay.

Please send good thoughts, positive vibes, and lots of rain.

Field Guide to Chrysalies They’re Not Faeries

Paul Keskey is a New York painter with a passionate dream to introduce the world to Chrysalies, sentient beings that often mistaken for the more commonly known faery. Using his subtle paintings and carefully written observations, Paul has created a field guide to the natural world of this little creature. In order to bring his dream to reality, he has utilized Kickstarter to get the word out about it: A Field Guide to Chrysalies, They’re Not Faeries.

As of this post, Paul has a total of $4,400 and needs to reach $10,500 in seven days, September 11th. I believe it’s doable. And Kickstarter makes it easy for you to help. All you have to do is make a pledge to donate any amount of money to help him reach his goal. You don’t have to pledge for nothing – Paul has some awesome incentives for different levels of pledgers, which you can check out on the kickstarter page. You could get postcards, prints, hand-drawn thank you cards, or even a copy of the very book Paul is trying to make. And everything Paul makes is a work of art. You can check out his personal art gallery page at MorningMist Studios. Oh, and if you haven’t gotten enough of Paul, check out the interview I did with him for Fuel Your Illustration.

More Incentive: Hurricane Irene

Why else should you pledge to donate for Paul’s project? Well one, it’s just plain beautiful and I think everyone would benefit for having such a gorgeous book in their house. But another good reason is a simple one: to support Paul and his family. Living in New York means that his family was located in the path of the recent Hurricane Irene. His neighborhood, and his yard, was flooded, and I know that making his goal would be one hell of an awesome way to make his week better as he deals with all the weather issues. This morning he sent me these pictures of what he’s working with right now and it made me want to help him even more.

Make Your Pledge To Support Paul

Paul is awesome and he’s got an amazing talent to bring fantasy to life. His paintings are right out of my own childhood. Why wouldn’t you want to donate to his cause? Pledge your support and donate to A Field Guide to Chrysalies, They’re not Faeries!

Do you know Victoria Klein? If not, you should. This woman is out to change the world. She is a blogger, a book author, a model, and a woman with a message. I was given the opportunity to read her newest book 48 Things to Know About Sustainable Living and ask her a few questions. Come get to know this awesome woman and learn a little more about what inspired her to write such a rockin’ book.

The Interview!

01. First off. I love this book. Not only is it inspiring because of its topic, but you made every step super easy to take and you have a great style of writing – it’s light, fun, and has a great conversationalist tone throughout. Obviously, this is something that’s been dear to your heart before you started researching and writing the book. What was your first introduction to a sustainable life?

First off, thank you; I’m elated that you enjoy my book. It was very much a labor of love to write. I was introduced to sustainable living before I knew it was sustainable living. My grandma & mom learned a lot of their household habits from their family, most of which grew up during the Depression era. That means they made the best of everything they had, reused & repaired something instead of buying new, grew a garden, spent family time at local parks … etc.

So that was my childhood – lots of time outside, food from the garden, mended dresses and jeans, drinking tap water, plastic baggies and aluminum foil that was washed many times over. I didn’t realize that those things were “sustainable” until after I had moved out, got my own place, & started maintaining my own home. I ended up reverting back to everything my grandma & mom had done when I was a kid, which led me to seek out more similar tips online & in books. That’s when I learned about “green living” & I knew I had found my passion.

02. Speaking of research, how much research did you have to do for this book? Are there steps in the book that you didn’t know about before you had the idea for the publication? What sustainable tips did you learn along the way?

Before I could even start writing the book, I had to get the table of contents approved by my publishing company. It took me about 2 weeks to decide on what the final 48 Things would be & what order to present them in. Having been an eco-focused freelance writer for a half-decade, researching the book was easy because I knew just where to look for the info I needed. Though most of what I included in the book was info I already knew, there were some surprises along the way. I was surprised how much sealing up your windows & doors can impact heating & cooling bills (Tip 10); how quickly the telecommuting trend is growing (Tip 27); & extensive options available for vacationing near home (Tip 35).

03. Along with sustainable tips, was there anything else you learned during the process? This is the second book you’ve written, so how different was it writing this book from the last one?

This book took me twice as long to research & write compared to the first one. While there is a lot of history & variation to the subject of yoga, sustainable living is an undeniably larger scope of a topic. For both books, one thing was clear – I had to establish a defined schedule to be sure that I had the time to do all the research, writing, and editing I wanted to do before the final manuscript was due. I stuck to my schedule very closely; if I hadn’t made a schedule to follow, I probably would still be working on the books!

04. Green is the word of the day! Who is your favorite “green” activist? Who inspired you while you wrote this book? And for fun, who is your favorite green-colored fictional character?

Picking one person is going to be really tough – I have met & keep in-contact with so many amazing eco-activists. It would be so unfair to just pick one because every person has their own personal sustainable subject that they are passionate about. (I know, not a very fair answer, huh?)

When I was writing this book, all I could think about was my family: my grandma, mom, father (RIP), and my new husband. If I could write a book about sustainability that they could understand & enjoy, then I would be proud to share it with others.

Oh, that’s an easy one: Captain Planet! He wasn’t completely green-colored, but he made carrying for the planet super cool when I was a kid.

05. And lastly, there are 48 tips. For our readers who haven’t yet picked up this book (and they really should!) let’s give them a quick summary. If you had to pick 10 of your favorite tips for leaving a sustainable life, which would those be? Feel free to add any tips that aren’t in the book.

Just 10? You really are giving me a challenge … here it goes: my top 10 sustainable living tips:

1. Separate your “wants” & “needs” (Tip 1)
2. Embrace the 3 Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle – in that order!; Tip 3)
3. Start small (Tip 4)
4. Taste the benefits of sustainable food for yourself (Tip 5)
5. Find sustainable alternatives to your bathroom products (Tip 9)
6. Make volunteering cool (Tip 32)
7. Try second-hand shopping (Tip 42)
8. Become a library geek (Tip 43)
9. Try DIY (Tip 44)
10. Read more about eco-issues & options (Tip 46)

In Conclusion

Thank you for an awesome interview, Victoria! If you’re interested in picking up her book 48 Things to Know About Sustainable Living, you can find it quite a few indie bookstores as well as bigger sites like Amazon and Barnes & Nobles.

Victoria Klein has written numerous Web articles on sustainability for GreenOptions.com, LiveNeutral.org, and Green LivingOnline.com, as well as articles on green living that appeared in publications such as CRAFT, Venus Zine, ReadyMade, Yoga Journal, and Office Solutions. Victoria is also the author of 27 Things to Know About Yoga (Turner Publishing). She resides in Connecticut and can be found online at www.victoriaklein.net.

The theoretician believes in logic and believes that he despises dreams, intuition, and poetry. He does not recognize that these three fairies have only disguised themselves in order to dazzle him…. He does not know that he owes his greatest discoveries to them. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.” – Ayn Rand

According to my spiffy Twig the Fairy calendar, today is Fairy Day! If you know me, you know of my love for all things magical and fantastical and child-like. Twig (who you can see in the above picture – she’s on the left) is my favorite part of all the Renaissance Faires I attend and I always make it a point to find her. More often than not, she is surrounded by children with their parents standing just beyond the circle, oftentimes more awestruck of her than the kids.

Make sure you spread the love and happiness today. You can find out more about the beautiful Twig at her website, facebook, or twitter. Have a happy and glittery Fairy Day!

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. ~Henry David Thoreau, 1854

(Plugging. Please click on Nate Zeman’s name – he is one of the best photographers I’ve ever seen. I’m in love with all his images.)