Self Reliance

There is a movement afoot, at least in the magazines that I read, to become more self reliant. I recently read an article about a young couple who significantly changed their lifestyle to live on a 40 acre track of land in Wisconsin.  They built their own home and are living life pretty much off the grid.  It seems like a hard life, and I admire their tenacity.

I often kid with my husband and son that I want to be prepared when the zombie apocalypse arrives.  I want to know how to survive and live off the land.  It is not really the zombie thing that makes me want to do this, but I feel that a more simple lifestyle is really better.  Truthfully, without my electronic "buddies" I would probably be lost, but slowly learning how to grow my own vegetables and make things from scratch is a healthier lifestyle more than anything else.

There is a wealth of information out there on this subject and it makes my head spin, and the more I read about it, the more impressed with just how far technology has brought us.  Whether it is a good or bad thing, only time will tell.  In the meantime, I will continue to learn a simpler, more stress-free way to live.

City Living

I was thinking of what makes a place a good place or a bad place to live in an effort to figure out a way to help the town I live in.  I started my research on Google (where else?) and typed in "what makes a city a good place to live".  I came across a site that has all kinds of listings for cities -  the 10 most exciting cities, the 10 best places, and so on.  Reading these lists gave me all kinds of ideas of things.

Actually putting things in motion is a challenge.  It is not impossible, but there can be many things that stand in your way.  One of the  most difficult one to achieve is getting enough money to do what you want to do.  Short of hitting it big in the lottery - and we all know the chances of that - funding is usually the culprit for ending a project real fast.

Generally though what makes a city a good or bad place to live is one's perception and a lot of that perception has to do with one's own framework.  However, there were some commonalities I found and that is having things to do, things to entertain, work, places to eat, and education.  People generally want what's best for their families and the above short list is a start.  There are some truly happy people in this burg that I live in and it is expressed in this really cool recent video.

Walking

Caught this on a blog this morning: 

Here’s a passage from the book, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, that caught my attention: “Now here’s a thought to consider. Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail, Katz and I walked farther than the average American walks in a week. For 93 percent of all trips outside the home, for whatever distance or whatever purpose, Americans now get in a car. On average the total walking of an American these days —- that’s walking of all types: from car to office, from office to car, around the supermarket and shopping malls — adds up to 1.4 miles a week, barely 350 yards a day. That’s ridiculous.”

Wow!  That is ridiculous.  When you consider that just a decade ago, our national health was in better shape.  Look at the statistic on obesity along which shows that in the United States, obesity prevalence doubled among adults between 1980 and 2004.  If people would walk more that could go down.  Now I am not the world’s fittest individual, but I try.  If there is a situation where I can walk instead of drive I will do that.  I try to ride my bike everyday at least 20 miles if I have the time.  That helps keep my weight down – still have some more to go.  I work to reduce the amount of processed foods that I consume.  I am sure there are other things that I can do.

Changing one’s lifestyle is hard.  I live in a community where driving or not is an option for the most part.  The nearest grocery store is about 5 miles away, which is doable without a car if you are not buying much.  I live 17 miles from work which is not doable when you are rushing to get there in under an hour and the roads on which to get there are very busy, so walking or biking to work is not really doable.    I guess because of my recreational riding I feel as though I kind of deserve to drive because I do a little more that the average person.  But reading the above item makes me realize that there is much more I could do, much more that we all could do.