FALL 2008
New Simple Living America Guest Speakers Program
By Carol Holst

 
Utilizing the wonders of national phone-ins and a frequent focus on mental health experts, Simple Living America is launching a new member benefit in 2009:  free monthly guest speaker conference calls for one unforgettable hour including Q&A with each.  Here’s the speaker line-up for five months ahead on the overall subject matter of “Our Mental Health in the Culture of Consumption,” never more crucial for the public than today:

January 2009 - Psychologist Tim Kasser, PhD
     Author, The High Price of Materialism

February 2009 - Psychologist April Lane Benson, PhD
     Author, To Buy or Not to Buy

March 2009 - Psychiatrist Peter C. Whybrow, MD
     Author, American Mania

April 2009 - Psychologist Allen D. Kanner, PhD
     Coeditor, Psychology and Consumer Culture

May 2009 - Psychologist Robert E. Thayer, PhD
     Author, Calm Energy

Monthly invitations with the conference call details will go out to the email roster (contact me to be added to the public invitation list).  Simple Living America members can sign up for as many free calls as desired during the year.  Members who don’t want to miss a word of sanity and simplicity but are unable to make a call when scheduled will receive 24/7/365 telephone playback access for any call whether signed up for it or not.

Now enjoy the high-currency, thought-provoking columns just ahead from Wanda Urbanska, Michael Beck, Cecile Andrews and Frank Levering.  Also enjoy the somewhat mischievous new Get Satisfied cartoon from Hollywood animator Mike Swofford, whatever am I going to do with him.  Nationally known psychologist April Lane Benson, PhD has a new book coming out, highlighted below, followed by our regular tribute to Take Back Your Time Day.  Lastly, to wrap up this Fall issue our “Outside the Covers” author is John Sovec in Los Angeles.  Your newsletter input is always welcome at 1-877-UNSTUFF or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Finally, the holiday season is nigh upon us and no one expresses the Thanksgiving spirit better than Danny Heitman, who writes the “At Random” column for The Advocate in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  His Thanksgiving tradition is “a column devoted to giving thanks for things not owned… The inspiration for these annual columns comes from Henry David Thoreau, who once suggested that ‘a man is rich in proportion to those things he can afford to let alone’” and who spent years with almost no possessions writing Walden.  Last year at about this time, as our Get Satisfied book co-authored by Katherine Hauswirth and many others came out, Danny Heitman wrote:

“That’s not the sort of experiment that appeals to most of us, including Katherine Hauswirth, author of a charming essay, ‘Ignoring Walden’… But Hauswirth, like many readers, has concluded that Thoreau didn’t necessarily mean for us to follow his Walden model. His real goal was to inspire people to question priorities and make their own judgments… [Get Satisfied is] a nice book to have on the nightstand at the dawn of a holiday season in which we’ll be urged to find joy at the shopping mall. As Hauswirth reminds us, real joy rests somewhere else.”

One Era Ends in America and Another Begins
By Wanda Urbanska

I’ve shared the same “space” with Al Gore three times in my life. My first occasion was in 1988 when I attended an intimate fundraiser for Gore, then a United States Senator from Tennessee, in suburban Washington DC after he’d thrown his hat into the presidential primary ring. The second time I saw him (from afar) was on July 30, 1998 — my son Henry’s first birthday — when he and then President Bill Clinton came to North Carolina to designate a portion of the New River in Ashe County as an American Heritage River. (My fantasy had been to get a photo of the president and vice president holding baby Henry, but alas, at the end of the day, I was just relieved that our party survived the crowds and scorching sun without my elderly mother and stepfather passing out from heat stroke.)

My third encounter with Al Gore came recently on Saturday, September 27, in San Jose, California, when I heard him give a rousing keynote address at West Coast Green, the nation’s premium green building show, in which I was participating. I don’t remember exactly what Gore said in 1988 or 1998 (can’t find my notes) but I came away from this 2008 presentation with the feeling that Gore was solidly in his element, uncompromised, and passionate about working to retool the global economy into a green economy, with planetary protection front and center.

That Saturday morning program — to a crowd of 3,000 in the historic, Mission-style 1936 San Jose Civic Auditorium — was the moment to which the conference had been building. It was the time that the swarms on the floor left their meandering (or posts) for a cup of inspiration.

Former California Governor Jerry Brown — now the state’s Attorney General — was the opening act. “Every election is about change,” Brown observed, “but government is never about change.” He recalled his own dismissal by the critics in 1975 as “Governor Moonbeam” for what at the time seemed like pie-in-the-sky ideas (such as developing solar and wind energy) that today are quickly becoming mainstream. California is now “the most energy-efficient state” in the nation, he said, while noting that the federal government has been “at war” with its efforts for more than a quarter century. “I said we’re entering an era of limits; they said, ‘Brown’s against growth.’ What we need today is a big shakeup.” The word among Californians is that Brown can run hot or cold on the podium, but no doubt about it, he was electrifying that morning in San Jose.

Al Gore was equally explosive, pacing the stage as he spoke, alternately light-hearted and deadly serious, invoking calamity and hope. “I’m a recovering politician, step nine,” he quipped, in his trademark deadpan tone. The talk of the hour was the massive federal bail-out of financial institutions. Al Gore turned the idea on its head by proposing even grander solutions to the crisis, such as “bailing in” renewable energy and green building. Why not create “Connie Mae,” he proposed, “the carbon neutral mortgage association” to underwrite green mortgages?

“We’re running out of fossil fuels,” he said. “Unfortunately, we have enough to incinerate the planet.” However, hope and change are at hand. “The green revolution is the solution to the financial crisis and the national security crisis and the debt crisis.” The time is right for “bold moves,” Gore said. Why not set the goal of obtaining 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy in ten years? “There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come. There are moments in history, when one era ends and another begins.” The present moment, he made clear, is one of those moments.

Representing NCFI, I spent most of my time at West Coast Green, near the SG Blocks ™ Harbinger Showhouse, which was constructed from reused shipping containers with NCFI’s InsulStar® closed-cell spray foam insulation. InsulStar® –considered “the greenest of the green” – was selected to provide significant energy savings to the model home.

Walking around the floor was a feast to the senses. Innovative products and booths and amazing people were to be found at each turn of the bend. At the Caroma booth (home to the world’s leading supplier of water-saving dual-flush toilets), I met Glenn Sheargold, who explained that the dual-flush commode (designed by one of his friends) is “Australia’s little gift to a thirsty world.” I remembered seeing a Caroma toilet when our crew shot at Ed Begley Jr.‘s house. Having had poor luck with my own recently installed dual-flush commode — but very much committed to the concept — I turned to Glenn for advice. What else could he do but recommend one of his models?

Though this was my third West Coast Green conference, it was the first time I had the chance to meet its founder, Christi Graham, and program director Karen Jackson — lively, lovely, visionary women both. I bumped into friends and colleagues David Johnston, Sarah Susanka, Kathleen Redmond and Scott Terrell. SIMPLE LIVING National Advisory board member Stan King biked 15 miles from his home to the San Jose Convention Center to attend the roundtable I hosted about transforming business by becoming an inspirational role model. To me and my colleagues, the entire West Coast Green conference was an inspirational role model, a portal to a new way of living and being.

Truth in Traditional Values
Enough to be Satisfied...
By Michael Beck

“Traditional American values are enough for me.”

Given our nation’s current “culture wars,” who are we more likely to associate this quote with?

* A party-line Republican

* A party-line Democrat

* A political independent

I imagine most people would pick the first option, and this is unfortunate. Consider that Simple Living America is fundamentally about reconnecting people with their values. Therefore, I believe that in line with SLA’s mission to reach out to the broader public, it’s time to lift “traditional values” out of this polarized political context and center them back where they belong: in people’s hearts and spirits.

Examples of traditional values:

* Family and Well-brought-up Kids

* Community Spirit

* Thrift and Planning for the Future

* Self-Sufficiency

* The Self-Made Person (a subset of the above)

* Spirituality

* Independence of Mind

* Volunteerism

These core values are loaded with inner resourcefulness, generosity of spirit, strong families and vibrant communities, all of which endure in our image of (largely bygone) small-town America. 

We do not have to search very far in contemporary society, however, to find a rather different set of values. Pick at random any large group of citizens, and you’ll find a big percentage of them, if not a majority, are grappling with stressful jobs in constant danger of being downsized. Yet these same people live in a media culture supersaturated with promises of the more, bigger and better of everything that will achieve the “good life” if they just work those stressful jobs hard enough.

Take a look at the end of each year. To the extent that we do not celebrate our traditional religious holidays of love, family togetherness and generosity with an even bigger convulsion of overspending, stress and debt than the previous year, pundits declare that our economy (and by extension our society) is going downhill.

I do not question people’s right to claim that this lifestyle brings them fulfillment (though I might question their definition of fulfillment). But I simply cannot accept that this social setting expresses traditional American values. Deeply indebted, overworked, time-starved citizens have little energy to devote to the well-being of their communities, their religious traditions, or even their families.  These stress levels reflect a fundamental imbalance in our current system: traditional, largely inner-driven values are giving way to a single overriding external one: the care and feeding of lifestyles that by historical standards have grown lavish.

Material well-being has always been part of the American way.  But our modern version of it has come at a high price, for we have seen our civic commons shift from the active engagement of Main Street USA to the “virtual” USA of the TV screen and 24-7 commercialization. No wonder people yearn for the memory of small-town America even while they achieve material abundance.

That old-fashioned community spirit underlies the mission of SLA. Numerous psychological developments (www.getsatisfied.org/science ) have demonstrated that social connectedness correlates much better with satisfaction than mere financial success. Yet our culture does not particularly foster the balance and peace of mind that nurture healthy relationships. At SLA, on the other hand, we celebrate them as part of the core of the simply lived good life.

A helpful way of moving in that direction – and one we highly recommend – is for individuals to assess their options to find that general standard of living where they can honestly say, “This is plenty to be satisfied.” This comfort level automatically helps to center people and to free up energy for family, friends, and community, in fact for all the traditional values that are our birthright.

Sustainability and Community
By Cecile Andrews

People are finally understanding the importance of sustainability. We’re beginning to realize that we must change our ways — in particular, we’re beginning to understand that climate change is forcing us to reduce our use of oil. 

In response, we’re trying to drive less, keep our heat turned down, use compact fluorescent light bulbs, and so on.  But there’s one thing we often neglect — something that should be at the top of our lists: building community.

Why community? Because it helps you cut back on consumerism, the issue at the heart of oil reduction. 

We overconsume because we are confused about the nature of happiness. We think that if we’re rich and have lots of stuff, we’ll be happy — so we throw ourselves into the pursuit of money and things. But the research shows very clearly that, after a certain point, more money does not bring more happiness. 

What does? Warm, supportive relationships with others — community. 

But since we don’t understand this, we go along with the consumer society, working long hours and spending our time at the malls, growing more depressed and frantic. In fact, over the last several years happiness has declined just as community has diminished.

Further, we consume because we don’t have many alternatives to the malls. There’s not a lot of fun, free things to do in most people’s neighborhoods. But what if people had vital community lives? What if people knew their neighbors and took the time to gather together to talk and laugh. Who would want to go to the mall?

So building community is central to sustainability. As we support our local businesses, we create a vital and congenial street life where people will hang out rather than drive across town for costly entertainment. As we get involved in community activities, we have no desire to wander the department stores. 

Above all, community is where people transform themselves from consumers into citizens. In a democracy, people must be engaged at the local level. To paraphrase Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone: the culture in which people talk to each other over their back fences is the culture in which people vote.

Ultimately, it is the experience of community that teaches us to care about the common good. It is in community we learn that we’re all in this together — that our individual fate is connected to the fate of others. That's the heart of sustainability and simplicity.

Embracing "The Other"
By Frank Levering

As an election nears in which an African-American may well claim the White House, it's astonishing to be alive in Virginia, cradle of the Confederacy, where current polls show Obama holding double-digit leads. To be sure, likely the race will tighten here; likely, too, some of us white Virginians have told pollsters why, sure, of course we're gonna vote for Barack! -- and then -- that old bugaboo -- once we get inside that voting booth we won't quite -- no, not quite -- be able to touch the button for this guy. We meant well -- and we certainly don't see race as a factor, do we? -- but voting for Him is asking a little too much.

Still, it's a breathtaking moment, watching Obama storm into Roanoke, as he did two days ago, and speak to a roaring crowd of 8,000 supporters. Just ten miles from where I live is Laurel Hill, birthplace of Jeb Stuart, a dashing figure, devoted father, and brilliant soldier -- and white supremacist. All across western Virginia, the rural stronghold of the state, McCain-Palin signs sprout defiantly in yards great and small, spanning the spectrum of prosperity, binding the wealthy and not-so-wealthy in ties whose subtext is: "Obama is not one of us." As a whole, despite electing Doug Wilder, a black man, governor some twenty years ago, Virginia has not gone Democratic in a presidential election since LBJ in 1964. Might we do it again? -- especially with a man who many still believe to be Muslim. Or worse. As the sixteen-year-old daughter of a neighbor informed me recently, eyeing my Obama bumper sticker, in a flat, matter-of-fact tone: "A nigger is a nigger."

I hesitated to share with you that last little bracing anecdote. Rural Virginia, and the rural South in general, have long suffered the slings and arrows of stereotypes and gross oversimplifications. I hesitate to say this -- but many a big-city reporter, hearing that pretty, drawling girl so effortlessly dehumanize Obama, would be tempted to paint a broad, harsh, red slash of racism across our region of the country. The truth is, while racism and that very human fear of "The Other" still bedevil rural Virginia, other forces, just as powerful or more so, are deeply integrated now into the mix. Talk to hundreds of people -- or hear them talking -- in the rural fabric of America that Sarah Palin has called more "pro-American" than urban areas, and what you learn is that -- here's a real shocker -- people are people. Many of them -- as I just did, picking apples for seven weeks alongside a native of Mexico -- work closely, and affectionately, with co-workers of other races and ethnic origins. Often as not -- and contrary to conventional wisdom -- economic challenges, the common struggle for family cohesion and the sheer complexity of getting a hard job done have brought people of disparate backgrounds together, a reality Obama himself understands, and can build on, if elected, in his vision of bringing us together.

Perhaps that vision is merely utopian. Perhaps not. The trick is to give it a chance, building, as Obama does, on the positives. Curiously, the same teenage girl who informed me of Obama's place somewhere below the bottom of the pecking order has formed a fast, trusting friendship this year with the immigrant apple picker I worked alongside, often babysitting his brown-skinned kids as he worked, and cradling them affectionately. Her racial epithet burning in my ear, I reminded her of this fact, and told her that I suspected that if she met Obama, spent time with him, she wouldn't stick to her opinion. My lecture, gently couched as it was, didn't seem to impress her very much; she flashed a knowing, superior smile. But as with the rest of the rural enclaves of America, time, I think, is on my side -- and, ultimately, on the side of the girl's mind opening wider. I am, after all, old enough to remember racial segregation, the "Whites Only" water fountains, schools where never the twain could meet. From that we have gone, in the state where Senator Harry Byrd told us there would never be integration in Virginia, to just possibly being the key "swing" state in this election.

This coming week I travel north to Charlottesville -- a college town sure to go for Obama -- to talk about a new book I've written, "Welcome to the Country," a guidebook for urban folks relocating to rural areas. Politics won't surface much in my talk. But what I do want to talk about is a topic related to that of this column: embracing "The Other." What the book argues, in essence, is that folks moving into rural areas -- typically well-to-do and with urban tastes -- are well-advised to first study and affirm what's positive in rural culture rather than inveighing against the negatives -- and quickly demanding change. While not everyone will agree with my argument, I think the genius of Obama -- a key dimension of his appeal -- is that we sense that, first, he listens. First, he seems to try to acknowledge the reality, and the merits, of "The Other." He tries, respectfully, to cross the bridge of Difference. Then, and only then, I would argue, without shedding one's own identity and values and forcefulness, is it possible to build trust and a sense of commonality.

In the course of my research for the book -- much of it in the Charlottesville area -- I discovered -- shamefully, for the first time -- a relic named Thomas Jefferson. I had thought I had known Jefferson, in the standard way we worship him in grade school, and because I once reviewed a new edition of his classic "Farm and Garden Notebooks," in which Jefferson the passionate farmer and gardener meticulously chronicles that passion.

It is Jefferson, in fact -- slaveowner and probable father of numerous racially mixed children -- who, in Virginia, at least, looms mythically over this election. Here is the Virginian whose words gave America its first enduring utopian dream. Who despite the failures in his often torturous life gave us something magnificent to strive for, as Obama now does.

And I don't mean only this notion of equality, of a society where class and race -- morally, at least -- have no ground to stand on. Jefferson, as well, touted -- and to some extent lived -- the life of what historian David Shi calls "Republican simplicity." In such a life, farming and the culture of farming were central to our sense of selves, to the fabric of democracy; ostentation, conspicuous consumption, the sort of values that have come back to haunt us all now, in corporate culture and on Wall Street, in the life of excess for many of us across America, had no stature in Jefferson's vision of what a new democracy offered its citizens. As Jimmy Carter told us when we interviewed him for the "Simple Living" television series, Jefferson was our first great advocate, in the political arena, of simplicity.

If Obama is elected, and if, in some measure, his vision can be achieved; and if, by some miracle, the Jeffersonian vision of simplicity - never more needed than it is now -- can finally be realized in the political arena, as we find our way out of the rubble of excess.....Think what a great country we can have, again! Not only for ourselves and for our children, but for the world itself.

December 2008 Arrival: To Buy or Not to Buy

The premise of To Buy or Not to Buy: Why We Overshop and How to Stop is simple and compelling: overshopping is a doomed attempt to fill emotional needs with material goods.  In her new book, out December 30, 2008 from Trumpeter Books, April Lane Benson, PhD draws on decades of clinical experience and research to offer comprehensive, effective help that braids together intellectual insights, personal discovery, and a host of proven tips, tools, techniques, and strategies. Demonstrating that “you can never get enough of what you don’t really need,” she invites and enthusiastically guides overshoppers to reclaim control of their lives.

April Lane Benson, PhD is a nationally known psychologist who specializes in the treatment of compulsive buying. She has appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, Fox News Weekend Live, CBS Evening News, ABC News Now, and the BBC World Business Report. In addition, her insights on overshopping have been cited in The New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, and the Christian Science Monitor, as well as in Time, Money, Kiplinger Personal Finance, Simple Living, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar, Redbook, and Marie Claire. She lives in New York City. Visit www.stoppingovershopping.com for more information.

Hooray for Take Back Your Time Day

If Take Back Your Time Day has passed when you see this (October 24 each year) it’s never too late to keep up the great nonwork!  This year’s celebration is extra special -- as executive director John de Graaf says, “This October 24th is the 70th anniversary of the passage in Congress of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which gave us the 40-hour work week and minimum wage and was supposed to contain a paid vacation provision.  Now we want to bring it up to date with a vacation law.”  Take Back Your Time is a major U.S./Canadian initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships, our communities and our environment.  See all the news at www.timeday.org 

Outside the Covers: Honoring Other Get Satisfied Stories
Each Simple Living America newsletter highlights one of the 500 diverse samples received about The Satisfaction of Enough that is not included inside the covers of our book.  Post your own story at www.getsatisfied.org/post.

Featured writer this issue:
John Sovec in Los Angeles, California

Car horns blaring; airplanes roaring overhead; radios and televisions constantly chattering and snarling; this chaotic cacophony is the soundtrack to the urban landscape of the life I inhabit living in Los Angeles. It seems impossible to escape the relentless barrage of external stimuli that hum like static just below perception, demanding attention whether I am conscious of it or not. There is constantly a call for more and a frantic search for the next best thing. Being seen at the right place with the right people wearing the right clothes is the call of L.A.

Over time this constant stream of stimuli and excitement took a toll on my concentration, centeredness and sanity. I become addicted to the need to fill my space with some kind of sound or activity just to distract from the unrest in my mind. Though the demands of often-overwhelming commitments would preclude carving out time for calming practices like silent meditation sessions or cleansing yoga classes, all hope was not lost for this urbanite seeking a respite from the cacophony of my own life.

The discovery for me was finding the secret magic out there just under the surface of that seemingly omnipresent soundtrack; a treasure chest waiting to be opened which contained a means of finding islands of tranquility amid the whirlwind of noise. When I took just a brief moment to pause and listen carefully, there were cracks in the cacophony that offered opportunities to enjoy moments of stillness within my active life. These silences are often fleeting but their potential for healing is vast. Rather than feeling that I was trapped in the huge web of doing I found myself able to take small sips of being that encouraged me to let go of image and land succinctly in the fullness of simplicity.