Last week we talked about volunteering your time to help out. I know how it feels to be overloaded and not have a lot of time to give, but when you do it, it is so rewarding, and it really is a lovely way of helping out, but giving that little piece of yourself to take care of someone, help feed someone, drive your elderly neighbor to the store, or volunteer on a larger scale with a big organization.  Remember, every little bit really does count.

If you can’t find that extra time right now, no reason to feel guilty. How about donating some cash to an organization, or join a supporting group?  Again, there are so many, so find one that really fits with your ethics and esthetics. Join PETA, adopt a gorilla, send money to a cancer research fund. I belong to the Arbor Day Foundation, which helps plant and replant trees. Since I can’t do that work, I can send my support, for not very much money, and get our necessary-for-life trees planted. Simple and rewarding.

Do a little research online, find the cause that suits you, and go…

From Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots organization: Knowledge leads to compassion, which inspires action!

Your turn….

Greetings, after a sunny few days in Sarasota Florida! What a glorious beach, hot sun, and some down time, along with a beautiful beach wedding and pool parties!

but, I continue to think about our One More Thing–OMT.

Have any of you done any volunteer work? What a precious way to give back to the community, by giving just  a little bit of your time to help, whether it be people, animals, the land. Think about how rewarding that can be, even if you are strapped for extra time, even if just a few hours a month.
Someone or something needs a bit of care. And you can give it.

Knowing that you might want to, how do you find the right venue for your beliefs and your time? I”ve wanted to do something to help, and then think of soooo many ways to share my time. I love to work with animals, so the SPCA or Humane Society is a natural. I love to dance, and have been asked by my local retirement home to come and share some movement with the local residents. That sounds great to me, a no-brainer. And what fun too.

How about you? Do you already volunteer? Where at? Got some good suggestions? I’d love  to hear them…

Here are just a few ideas for you to get started…

AARP lists volunteer ideas too. http://www.aarp.org/

The National Park Service is gearing up for its centennial in 2016, and over the next year or so, they’ll really start lining up volunteers for seasonal positions.
To find volunteer opportunities near you, visit http://www.nps.gov and click on “Find a Park.”

Donating Your Time
Going beyond one personal duties to help others in need. Read & Share.

http://www.ResponsibilityProject.com

Volunteer Abroad :  Volunteer 1 to 12 weeks, worldwide. Year-round. Make a real difference!

http://www.crossculturalsolutions.org/

ASPCA: The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

Visit the ASPCA website to learn how to fight animal cruelty, read expert pet care advice, and view dogs and cats available for adoption.

www.aspca.org/

Thanks for all you do, and remember, be remarkable!

Good Monday to you, and yes, it’s time for One More Thing, with your hostess, Paulette!

And I”ve got three items for you on this fine day

(feeling  a little like a game show hostess at the moment…)

Behind door number One…

1. an e-newsletter for you to check out, on healthy and green living…

http://www.care2.com

Behind door number Two…

2. a few weeks back I mentioned using baking soda with white vinegar and hot water to clean and unclog your drains,  go here to read some baking soda beauty tips…

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/13-baking-soda-beauty-tips.html

Behind door number Three…

3. A lovely dancer friend of mine volunteers every January and goes to Hawaii to work with the whales and dolphins and bring awareness to people about their different living and dying situations.  She told me about this film, The Cove, about the horrendous situation that happens every year to the dolphins and in the ocean, which is actually the conversation that started my One More Thing idea. I was devastated and thought that I can try to do something too.

Read this article, then go see the film. Get active…

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/go-see-the-cove.html

*Bonus:

On another note…Here’s a youtube clip a reader sent me. What do you think?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxwG8RxQ5Zc

and you win them all! What do I win? Bring it on….

September brings us into another round of One More Thing!

I hope you will join with us this month, and let’s stay connected as we tread lightly on the earth, we can dance and move with grace and stay strong with our intentions of taking care of ourselves and the planet! Yes?

OK, Proposal for this week:

A waste-free day!

Take one day this week (at least) , and don’t use anything disposable. No lunch bags, water bottles, no grocery bags to throw away. We can do it! Pay attention. Make your lunch, yummy! with all that beautiful produce, take a few minutes to make your snacks. Make iced tea  with herbs from your garden and take it with you in a thermos or your reusable bottle. Eating healthy and not throwing away anything.

What else can you do?

Bring it on. Tell us here in out comment area…Share the wealth of your ideas!

I’m back from my teaching trip to Edmonton, Canada, and it was a delightful long weekend. Teaching four mind bending, thought provoking, and body working workshops over two days was fabulous and the dancers left with lots of information and ideas to build their tribal repertoire on. I also got a chance to perform solo (!) and watch the local troupes strut their stuff and show off their interpretations of tribal and fusion dances at the hafla, and played percusiion as Jeff as showed them what the zurna and mijwiz was all about! He also captivated the dancers in the class we taught together with his haunting and exquisite ney playing.  We visited with wonderful friends, and even caught a couple of plays at the Fringe Festival. As always, it was a quick but packed weekend.  And me without my computer! Oh my…

Back at it, I’ve been thinking all weekend about how to make One More Thing stronger. I have a couple of die-hard participants, and I love you! But I need to reach out and stay consistent, so that you do too, as we all sometimes need to do, in so many areas of our lives, right?

So how does one do that? By setting an intention. In dance class, I always say, dance with intention, just like we need to move through life with intention. Take up space and mean it. First, before we take a new challenge, we need to look at the purpose. In setting life in order, you want to figure out why you want to build new habits. With One More Thing, I want to not only empower myself to keep taking that next step in helping to build a stronger planet, but I want to bring it to you and see you be motivated also. Sharing and networking is one of the biggest motivaters. We all  know that it is necessary to keep taking steps, wether they are baby steps or a huge leap, we must all be active in this practice to keep a sustainable, healthy, and thriving living situation. So my intention is to keep this running weekly on my blog, which also helps me to think about it in my daily life. No guilt factors here, no need for resistance, just intention and awareness.

So the intention should bring clarity and simplicity. Nothing too big or daunting. Simple. Easy. But meaningful to you. An intention that is authentic with fuel the change. Then you can focus and keep your vision strong so you can sustain that change and develop effective habits, over time, like learning a new dance move and getting it into your muscle memory. It can happen quickly or take weeks of practice. But if that is your desire than you can achieve it. And I really want you to achieve it.

How about it? Intention? One more thing?

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Recently in One More Thing, we’ve started discussing eco-cleaners. I’m all for making these household products that are easy, inexpensive, and a natural fix for not using chemicals in your home. Let me add a simple recipe if you haven’t tried this yet. Here I am, a tribal dancer, telling you how to clean and unclog your bathtub and sink drains! Imagine! But when I first used this I was amazed and how effective and easy and green it is. 

Pour 1/2 cup baking soda into your drain, then follow that with 1 cup white vinegar. It will fizz up. When it stops, pour in boiling water to wash it all down. How easy is that? (Draino, be gone.)

OK, your turn, and thanks for hanging around!

Ok, so, I keep thinking about one more thing, and sometimes, I can’t think of one more thing. Life keeps on, fills up, obligations take over, work is too busy, the farm animals are needing urgent care, and I still want to do one more thing for the planet. But my mind won’t come up with the one more thing. Sometimes, you know how it is I’m sure, when you need to think of something, or recall what you just thought of, and you go blank, well, here I am… You can beat yourself up, for not being the best, for not fulfilling your obligation, pulling your own weight, or, you can just let go. Relax, and let it go…

The main thing is that you know you are doing the best that you can, you have faith in what you do, you act with integrity, (and you dance with integrity), you move forward with intention, from your heart, and you rule! And you can let go of the should do’s, maybe switch that word to could do and remove should from your vocabulary. How about that? Who needs the extra guilt? We are human, afterall, even though sometimes we feel  (or want to be) invinceable, like wonderwoman. Or Zena!

So be the beauty that you are, and find beauty in what you do and all you see, love and enjoy!

On this glorious Monday morning, I wanted to share a few things for our gathering today! When I was in Australia last year, my dancing friend Dee gave me a book called, Living the Good Life: Simple strategies for sustainable living, by Linda Cockburn. It is an adventure story of sorts, of how one family—husband, wife, a and child, along with a goat, changed their world from their own backyard. They grew most of their own food, recycled everything, did not spend any money buying unnecessary items (in fact they bought next to nothing for six months) That in intself would be quite a feat! They were fed up with consumerism, and I can relate to that, especially after moving to our land and having to downsize, a lot, to fit into new little home. I relaized how little I really need to be happy, and donated or sold lots of items from our larger home. Simplify, was my main goal. Unload, clear out. That has made my life better, and easier, and I too, spend little on goods these days, cutting back to necessary items, with a pair of cowboy boots thrown in !

Linda wrote about being self-sufficient, riding their bikes instead of driving, making their own bread, setting up a grey water system, included yummy and thoughtful recipes. And she shared their joys and frustrations in succeeding toward their goal. I loved reading this, devoured it in fact, and wanted to share it with you for our One More Thing! Could you undertake not spending a penny for six months? Reading this makes me wish I could. I have always loved trading and wish the barter system worked in our society. I do trade for classes and such when I can. It really honors each person’s value much more than the cash system.

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I was also reading in the AARP magazine about a upcoming video series titles, Wisdom Keepers, directed by Dr. Joe MacInnis, who will be profiling remarkable people. Here are some quotes by a few of his wise ones!

Jean-Michael Cousteau, Oceanographer: All of us who live on this astonishing planet have to realize that the ocean is our primary life-support system. We have to stop abusing it. We have to stop overfishing its depths and destryong its coastal habitats.

Jane Goodall, Primatologist: Everone—not just the youth—must understand that we can change the world if we spend a little bit more time thinkg abou how the choices we make affect the earth.

Robert Kennedy, Jr. Environmentalist:  There are a lot of defeats in the field I”ve chosen but I detach myself and say, ‘The only thing I control is my won conduct.’ I fight as hard as I can to  make sure that the world I leave my children has the same good thealth as the world my parents gave me.

What do you say? Make a dfference, be remarkable!

The week flies by, I am swamped with my intensives in town this week. It has been fabulous so far, and I have two more days to go. The dancers are delightful, it is very hot, we dance and sweat and talk and dance, and then eat, drink wine, and celebrate our accomplishments. Some are on the road home, to take home what they learned, to share the love, and some are still here with me. Working, dancing, thinking… a lot about tribal. What does it all mean?

I guess that is my one more thing. My contribution towards our dance community, this week. More on that to come!

Either that, or I need you for my one more thing, I need to know what are you doing? I want to hear about your inspiration and ideas. We are all in this together, and how fabulous is that?

Thanks for all you do.

Ah, so many ideas to blog about this week, but I cannot forget this one (the Monday one!), neither can you, for the sake of our own well being and that of our mother earth!

I read some great stuff in this month’s issue of MaryJane’s Farm. There was a section on making your own house cleaning things. I’ve read similar articles over the years, but have never “made” my own. I have been using natural, organic, safe cleaning products, along with simple baking soda and  vinegar for cleaning, but who needs to buy those bottles of stuff all the time when you can make your own, fast and quick. So that is my plan. And I think I will get my farmgirrrls in on it at our next meeting!

What about you?

Ahh, on the road, and what do I notice about traveling?

The waste on the airlines and at the airport, mostly, but even at wonderful family gatherings, the paper plates and napkins, plastic utensils, and all that goes with it (not to mention those dang plastic water bottles again!)

so just to bring a little more awareness to that, I stepped up to wash plates at a dinner party, so as not to use paper plates…

how about you?

come on dancers and friends, let’s hear it! we all need you…