Vision Magazine

april cover

Feature Stories

Grow Your Own: The Biofuels Revolution - A Conversation with Josh Tickell

by Elyssa Paige

Fasten your seat belts and get ready for change. Your fossil fuel enslavement is about to become a notion of the past.
Ironically, the concept of growing your own fuel is over 100 years old. Rudolph Diesel invented the diesel engine to run on vegetable oil grown by farmers. No foreign oil required.

Missive from the Front Lines: Getting Green Done - A Conversation with Auden Schendler

by Sydney L. Murray

We live in a time of great promise, as well as great change. What we do will affect tomorrow. I spent last night during the third annual Earth Hour in quiet contemplation of my daily actions and considered how I could impact global change.

Astrology April 2009

astrology sign Aries: Hanged Man (Ace of Pentacles)
3/21-4/19 Take a breath; in fact take a few. This month, your plans and projects remain at a standstill. The goal is to develop more patience and consistency. However, the challenge is to accept the fact that difficulties are part of this process. Because there is no way to force the situation, your energy would be better spent reviewing the details and adding final touches. A small investment made around the 22nd is a great opportunity, although you may not see the rewards for at least a year. Slow and steady is the axiom for the month.

Visionary Artist

Viewpoint

Moving Closer to a Sustainable Future

by Dan Jacobson

What a difference an election makes. We have gone from one of the worst environmental presidents to one of the best and things are already moving in the right direction.

Mind States

A Sustainable View of Energy

by David Cottrell

What is energy? How do we relate to it? Mostly our perceptions begin with, “I flip the switch and the light comes on. What powers the light is energy.” From this point of view we move to, “the cheaper it is, the better I like it.”

A Lesson in Rawhide

by Patricia Alfano

It all sounded so exciting—a camping trip with a group of artists to the ghost town of Rawhide, Nevada to paint, write, draw and take photographs in the quiet, outstretched desert.

Living Arts

Agroecology:
Sustainable Food for a Sustainable Future

I grew up around farming. It’s hard for most people raised in Iowa not to be. For the better part of my childhood, my backyard ended in a field—corn one year and soybeans the next. I “walked beans,” which is a term used for weeding soybean fields, and I detasseled corn for a seed company. This is farming in the Midwest.

Green Made Easy
An Interview with Chris Prelitz

by Sydney L. Murray

Contrary to popular belief, going green doesn’t have to be a painstaking or costly process. Not only can it be easy, but it can even save you money.

LifeQuake™

Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor
Dr. Toni Galardi

Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor Dr. Toni Galardi Spring is here. Traditionally, this represents the season of change. Unfortunately, this year our country appears to be in somewhat of a frozen emotional paralysis—in avoiding change, many people aren’t spending money, changing careers, or leaving dead relationships.

Holistic Products

Pheylonian Beeswax Candles

evil In ancient times, beeswax was considered sacred and used in churches and temples. The geometric form of the honeycomb represents the fundamental shape of the universe—not surprising, considering that the pollinating power of bees is central to our life system.

Society Threads

evil A pioneer in the eco-friendly apparel industry and the conscious business world, Society Threads is a diverse and creative company with a savvy way of doing business. One of their sayings is “we can feel good all the time for no reason simply by choosing to focus on the positives in any situation.”

Holistic Living

Think Globally, Eat Consciously

by Marilyn Beidler

It’s Monday morning. With your alarm clock still ringing in your ears, you stumble into the kitchen, pour some corn flakes into a bowl, and douse them with soy milk.

Sustaining the Vine: Biodynamic Wines

by Michael Cervin

It’s easy to label something “green” simply because it purports to create less waste, use fewer chemicals or contain recycled content. It seems everyone these days believes they are acting “sustainably,” but few seem to understand the actual concept.

Reviews

The Toxic Consumer:
Living Healthy in a Hazardous World

breast cancer A kitchen full of organic fruits and veggies cannot fully save us from the daily toxins that we unknowingly put into our bodies on a day-to-day basis.
Where are these chemicals and how can we avoid them? The Toxic Consumer: Living Healthy in a Hazardous World, by Karen Ashton and Elizabeth Salter Green answers these questions in a step-by-step straightforward style.

You Can Save the Earth

breast cancer Greenhouse gases, plastic floating in the ocean, and melting polar ice caps don’t paint a pretty picture. The environmental issues we face may seem daunting, but there is hope.
You Can Save the Earth: 7 Reasons Why & 7 Simple Steps, edited by Hatherleigh, is an inspirational book that doesn’t gloss over grim realities, but rather, gives the facts along with the message that together we have the power to change the world.

Vision Cafe

Art, Sustainability and Fashion

breast cancer by Janese Maricelli-Thomasson

My love for art grew out of learning to love myself.
As a young adult, like many in this world, I struggled with coming to terms with myself and exactly what my purpose in life was. I knew that I enjoyed people and nature and that one day I wanted to be in a position to increase environmental awareness in some way.

Christian Science Reading Rooms Celebrate International Open House

breast cancer The first Christian Science Reading Room was established in 1888 by Mary Baker Eddy to make her groundbreaking book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, more widely available. This seminal book on the Bible and spiritual healing established her as the leader of the worldwide Christian Science movement, which includes church members, lecturers, teachers, and healing practitioners.

Regional

A Sustainable Healthcare Model: Urban Remedy Acupuncture

by Chrysalis Hyon, MA

Eric Baumgartner is a third generation doctor, father of three preschoolers, and the founder of Urban Remedy Acupuncture, an innovative community clinic located in Venice, CA.

Culture

The Invisible Ones: Homeless Combat Veterans

by Patty Mooney

How many times have you passed up a sleeping figure underneath a blanket or tarp on the darkened streets of your city? Have you ever considered that this could be one of our war heroes?

Greek to Me

Sustainability’s a Bitch

© 2009 by Michael Raysses

I’m an inveterate linguaphile—I love words. Being a writer, that stands to reason. But wrangling words is just part of how I have come to have such boundless affection for them.

Inner Healing

Sustaining Our Wholeness

At the moment of our conception, we begin life with the potential for wholeness. We are then birthed into the physical world with a full sense of aliveness: balanced, connected, and attuned to ourselves and those around us.

Earthwatch

Think Natural: Ways to Save Water

by Sean Nash and Jennifer Cole

Whether a recent transplant, a life long native, or a seasonal visitor, anyone who has spent time in California will tell you that The Golden State lives up to its reputation.

A Final Word

Spring: Nature’s Season of Birth

by Clarissa Vargas

Spring seems to be the best time for cleansing. We can look at the detoxification of our bodies in the same way that we look at maintaining our automobiles. Our bodies are designed to run on the pure, unpolluted unprocessed fuel from Mother Earth.