Spirit

Spirit

UK couple abandon money

Damian Smyth is giving up everything.

He and his wife Victoria Groom are giving up their rented six-bedroom house in the British countryside, their tennis court, their swimming pool, even their Audi convertible.

In fact, they are almost finished giving away all their possessions as the prepare to promote Damian’s new book, DO NOTHING!
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“We’ve had enough of living from the ‘outside-in’,” said Damian, a graphic designer who is reinventing himself as a life trainer.…

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Spirit

Health tips for the heatwave

To keep safe the Health Department recommends that people:

• Slow down and reduce outdoor activities, especially during the hottest part of the day, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

• Dress for summer. Wear lightweight, light-colored clothes.

• Drink plenty of water or other non-alcoholic, caffeine-free fluids. Check with your doctor if you are on diuretic medications or have a problem with fluid retention.…

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Now marketers want a piece of off-grid

Alleluyah – The London Sunday Times has discovered unplugging.

‘Welcome to our “always on” society,’ journalist Laura Atkinson informed readers yesterday.

‘Whether we like it or not, we’re now used to “bleisure” (the blurring of business and leisure). Our work lives bleed into our social lives, and being constantly connected — whether to our smartphones, tablets or just the office in general — is par for the course.

What if the constant wall of noise — Twitter, Facebook, email, conversations — means we’re never scratching beneath the surface, where our real creative juices lie?…

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Spirit

Conservative press goes potty over toilets

Lot of stuff about off-grid toilets in the right wing media at the moment.

At the top of the tree, Fox News has been contemplating the horrors of composting toilets. At the other end of the media power spectrum, the Sun newspaper in Corsicana Texas has been railing against men who defecate in the wild.

We had a conversation in our office the other day about men who want to leave their modern lives and go “off the grid,” says the papers prim writer.  Essentially, the women in our office were wondering why anyone would want to sacrifice indoor plumbing, while the guys were simply saying “who wouldn’t want to?”

Meanwhile at Fox they are sniggering about the crazy people who compost their poo:…

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Spirit

Holistic parenting

California March 2nd — Redlands mom Lara Carlos is part of a parenting movement that bucks the mainstream.

Her three children, ages 7, 6 and 4, have never touched fast food. They were breastfed well into toddlerhood, carried close to their mom in a sling and are home schooled.

The Carlos kids, whose father, Kerry, is an acupuncturist, have never been seen by a medical doctor or taken antibiotics. Discomfort from illnesses is eased with herbs and chiropractic adjustments, never Tylenol. The youngest was born at home with a midwife, as will a fourth baby due any day…

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Community

Homesteading-book review

Homesteading, it’s a buzzword that means different things to different people, back in the day, it meant getting land for free as long as you lived on it and improved it for x number of years. It was a way to get people to move west (in the USA), back when travel was slow and painful, even dangerous.…

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Off-Grid 101

Chassidy gets a Headcold

Chassidy Fitkin is learning to be a herbalist. She continues her diary of discovery as she dumps the MD and conquers, you guessed it, a headcold…

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