Modern Hippie Mag » Books

Buddha’s Brain

Steve McAllister — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:00:58 +0000

Regardless of your religious or cultural background, the image of the Buddha inspires visions of peace, tranquility, and well-being. Through the practice of meditation and the idea of being at one with the world, this mindset transcends religion and helps millions of people gain peace of mind in the midst of tumultuous times. Dr. Rick Hanson explores this phenomenon in his latest book, Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom.

Rick Hanson

“With the new breakthroughs in neuroscience, combined with insights from thousands of years of contemplative practice, you, too, can shape your own brain for greater happiness, love, and wisdom.”

I recently had the chance to speak with Rick about his inspiration for the book and some practical ways that we can calm our minds to find clarity, happiness, and greater productivity in our daily lives.

Steve

In addition to serving as Managing Editor and contributor to Modern Hippie Mag, Steve McAllister is an actor, musician, accomplished author, filmmaker, and the man behind Your Daily Groove. His most recent novel, The McAllister Code is available as an e-book at www.themcallistercode.com. Find Steve on Twitter, @InkenSoul. Read his reviews and articles here.

Buddha’s Brain is a post from Modern Hippie Mag your online resource dedicated to hip, healthy conscious living & environmental sustainability.

Source4Style.com – Connecting Designers with Sustainable Fabrics

Jaszy McAllister — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:00:42 +0000

Summer Rayne Oakes

Summer Rayne Oakes is certainly no stranger to the world of eco-fashion. As a world renowned model, fashionista, and environmental activist, she is once again making waves with her newest venture – Source4Style.com. Presently in the beta stage, the intention is for Source4Style to become a hub where designers can search and source sustainable fabrics and textiles as well as engage in educational workshops on sustainable design and responsible sourcing techniques. Additionally, Source4Style.com may become the destination site where designers and vendors can network – an added feature Summer and her team hope to include in the final site release this fall.

Listen to my interview with Summer to learn more about Source4Style and this awesome lady on the eco-scene!

Jaszy

Jaszy McAllister is the woman behind the curtain of Modern Hippie Mag. She is also the host for ModernHippieMag.com video and podcast interview profiles and a Green Guru for TheGreenGirls.com. Find her on Twitter, @msjaszy or connect with her on LinkedIn. Read more articles by Jaszy.

Want to have your company, product or service featured in a video or podcast? Contact us! Watch our video profiles and listen to our podcast interviews.

Source4Style.com – Connecting Designers with Sustainable Fabrics is a post from Modern Hippie Mag your online resource dedicated to hip, healthy conscious living & environmental sustainability.

Working for Good

Steve McAllister — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:00:20 +0000

I first became aware of Jeff Klein through LinkedIn when he was offering a free eBook to augment his latest book Working for Good: Making a Difference While Making a Living. I was immediately inspired by his theories on social entrepreneurism and was very excited once the book hit the shelves.

Jeff Klein

Beyond the book, Jeff puts his theories into practice through his company Working for Good, Inc. and Conscious Capitalism Inc. a non-profit dedicated to “Liberating the Entrepreneurial Spirit for Good,” which was cofounded by John Mackey of Whole Foods Market. In both of these endeavors, Jeff inspires people of business to find and follow their purpose, merging their passion for their business with their passion for their community.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Jeff about conscious capitalism and the opportunities available in this economic climate.

Steve

Working for Good is a post from Modern Hippie Mag your online resource dedicated to hip, healthy conscious living & environmental sustainability.

Possum Living – How to Live Well Without a Job and With (Almost) No Money

Steve McAllister — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:00:24 +0000

I recently had the privilege of spending some time speaking with Dolly Freed, author of Possum Living: How To Live Well Without a Job and (Almost) No Money. Dolly wrote the book, which has since become a cult classic, at the age of eighteen in the late seventies. When she was thirteen, she and her father began an extraordinary adventure. He quit his job, and the two of them spent the next five years living off the land in a humble house on half acre just outside of Philadelphia. The book gives an engaging, often funny account of how they managed to make ends meet and the bliss they found by forging out a life based on simplicity and happiness.

Since then, Dolly got her high school diploma by educating herself at the public library and put herself through college. She has worked as an environmental educator, a college professor, a NASA aerospace engineer, a wife, and a mother of two. Possum Living has recently been re-released in paperback, and Dolly has begun to blog about bringing the lessons of simplicity she learned when she was younger into her modern life.

Filled with amusing anecdotes, recipes for roadkill, directions on making moonshine and dandelion wine, and all sorts of other tips on living simply, Possum Living has made a resurgence lately as a new generation seeks out methods of living sustainably. I had a great time speaking with Dolly and we look forward to her becoming a contributor to Modern Hippie Mag.

Steve McAllister

In addition to serving as Managing Editor and contributor to Modern Hippie Mag, Steve McAllister is an actor, musician, accomplished author and filmmaker. His most recent novel, The McAllister Code is available as an e-book at www.themcallistercode.com. Find Steve on Twitter, @InkenSoul. Read his reviews and articles here.

Possum Living – How to Live Well Without a Job and With (Almost) No Money is a post from Modern Hippie Mag your online resource dedicated to hip, healthy conscious living & environmental sustainability.

The Soul of a Citizen

Steve McAllister — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 14:00:05 +0000

Originally published in 1998, Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in Challenging Times by Paul Loeb has recently been re-released in a new, revised edition to speak to the new challenges facing our times. With over 100,000 copies already in print, Soul of a Citizen has become required reading for anyone who wants to have a positive impact on their world. From budding social activists to veteran organizers, the message of changing the world through building communities and fostering forgiveness has helped forge a generation and is now moving into the next.

Paul Loeb

Also the author of Generation at the Crossroads: Apathy and Action on the American Campus, Nuclear Culture, and Hope in Hard Times, Paul Loeb also served as the editor of the motivational compendium The Impossible Will Take A Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear. His writing has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, AARP Bulletin, Boston Globe, Psychology Today, Utne Reader, Redbook, Parents magazine, Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones, Salon, and the Village Voice to name just a few.

Paul was kind enough to take some time to speak with me about bringing activism into the new generation and how we as citizens can have a greater effect on what goes on in the world around us. For more information on Paul and his work, go to www.paulloeb.com.

The Impossible Will Take a Little While

Modern Hippie Mag Podcast

Steve McAllister

The Soul of a Citizen is a post from Modern Hippie Mag your online resource dedicated to hip, healthy conscious living & environmental sustainability.

The Urban Homestead

Steve McAllister — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 20:00:25 +0000

Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen started a blog called Homegrown Evolution to keep an account of how they took their life in Los Angeles back to simpler times. From gardening to beekeeping, they adapted practices used by earlier generations to create a simpler, more sustainable lifestyle. That blog turned into the book The Urban Homestead, which has recently been re-released in a revised and updated edition.

Nestled in the hills of Silver Lake, their “homestead” and the blogs and book that derived from it are based on vegetables, hooch, chickens, bicycles and cultural alchemy. Along with some of their neighbors, they offer stories and tips on using greywater, solar power, solar ovens, and several more innovative ideas that have been around for generations, but forgotten about by today’s society.

I spoke with Kelly and Erik recently about living simply yet abundantly. Give a listen to our podcast interview.

The Urban Homestead

Modern Hippie Mag Podcast

Steve McAllister

The Urban Homestead is a post from Modern Hippie Mag your online resource dedicated to hip, healthy conscious living & environmental sustainability.

The Gospel According to the Earth

Steve McAllister — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 17:00:37 +0000

Dr. Matthew Sleeth

Though his career as an emergency room doctor allowed him to offer help to the lives of many, as Dr. Matthew Sleeth watched the degradation occurring in the world around him he felt a new calling to help the world in a different way. Leading through the example of his own lifestyle by working with his family to cut back on their fossil fuels by two thirds and electricity use by nine tenths, and building upon his Christian faith, Dr. Sleeth began a new charge toward Creation Care.

Founding Blessed Earth Ministries with his wife Nancy, Dr. Sleeth started taking the message of environmental stewardship to churches around the country and introduced his first book Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action to an audience that had become very lukewarm to the call of environmentalism. However, as the fervor grew and more Christians started realizing that the Earth was indeed their responsibility, Dr. Sleeth wrote the introduction to the Green Bible, a New Revised Standard Version of the Bible which includes eco-conscious, inspirational essays from key leaders such as N. T. Wright, Barbara Brown Taylor, Brian McLaren, Pope John Paul II, and Wendell Berry.

Dr. Sleeth was kind enough to spend some time speaking with me about his latest book, The Gospel According to the Earth: Why the Good Book is a Green Book, and why Creation Care is a necessary and integral responsibility for today’s Christian.

The Gospel According to the Earth

Modern Hippie Mag Podcast

Steve McAllister

The Gospel According to the Earth is a post from Modern Hippie Mag your online resource dedicated to hip, healthy conscious living & environmental sustainability.

Green Barbarians

Steve McAllister — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 17:00:44 +0000

Starting as an organic landscaping business in the S.F. Bay Area in 1980, Ellen Sandbeck allowed her knowledge and passion to flow through her pen and is now the author of four books on organic gardening, housekeeping, and most recently greenwashing. After the success of her books Organic Housekeeping and Green Housekeeping, where she offered a multitude of simple solutions to cleaning your home without toxins, Ellen started to notice some not so positive trends in the eco-conscious movement. To this, she answers with her latest book Green Barbarians.

Filled with wit, wisdom, and plenty of creativity, Ellen guides readers through a multitude of tips on how to live a healthy, eco-conscious lifestyle. Inspiring us to lessen our carbon footprint while having fun in the process, Green Barbarians also teaches us how going green can save money.

Ellen spent some time discussing her new book with me and sharing some of the ideas and insights that went into its creation. For more on Ellen, go to www.ellensandbeck.com.

Green Barbarians

Modern Hippie Mag Podcast

Steve McAllister

Green Barbarians is a post from Modern Hippie Mag your online resource dedicated to hip, healthy conscious living & environmental sustainability.

Twelve by Twelve – A One Room Cabin Off the Grid & Beyond the American Dream

Steve McAllister — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:00:35 +0000

In 1999, William Powers went to Liberia with the mission of fighting poverty and saving the rainforest. The life-changing experience then turned into a riveting read when he penned the page-turning memoir Blue Clay People. Later, he followed his passion of helping the less fortunate in Bolivia and offered up the book Whispering in the Giant’s Ear. A 2004-2005 recipient of the Open Door Foundation for non-fiction, Powers’ books read more like novels than actual accounts as the characters and places that created the tapestry of his adventures spring to life through his words. His latest book Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid & Beyond the American Dream is sure to be no different.

William Powers

Based on forty days of living in a twelve by twelve foot, off-the-grid home on No Name Creek in North Carolina, his latest book and the experience which inspired it came about as a result of the author’s return to America after a decade of living in third world cultures and the culture shock that followed. Twelve by Twelve is Powers’ way of following his creed to “learn to live in harmony with each other and nature.”

I was honored to spend some time speaking with Mr. Powers about his books and the hope that flows through them. For more information on William Powers, go to www.williampowersbooks.com.

Twelve by Twelve

Modern Hippie Mag Podcast

Note: To be eligible you must be a Modern Hippie Mag subscriber receiving our updates via email, or RSS, Facebook fan, and/or Twitter follower (tell us your Twitter name in your comment below).

(Complete the following in separate comments below for more chances to win!)

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More details:

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Giveaway ends 12 midnight EST on Thursday, June 24th 2010. Winner will be announced on Friday, June 25th, 2010.
Winner will be contacted via email and/or Twitter. You will have 48 hours to respond at which time another winner will be randomly chosen.

Steve McAllister

Twelve by Twelve – A One Room Cabin Off the Grid & Beyond the American Dream is a post from Modern Hippie Mag your online resource dedicated to hip, healthy conscious living & environmental sustainability.

Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution

Steve McAllister — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:00:42 +0000

Heather Rogers

In one of the most riveting podcast interviews I’ve had so far, Heather Rogers speaks about her latest book, Green Gone Wrong, and what we can do to make the environmental revolution bring about the changes we actually need.

“Green Gone Wrong takes the reader into forests, fields, factories, and boardrooms around the world to draw out the unintended consequences, inherent obstacles, and successes of the products and practices that pledge to remedy today’s environmental woes. Reporting from a large-scale export-driven organic farm in Paraguay, a super low-energy “eco-village” in Germany’s Black Forest, biodiesel plantations in the slashed and burned rainforests of Borneo, and drought-plagued Southern India where trees are being planted to offset carbon emissions in the United States and Europe, Green Gone Wrong pieces together a global picture of what’s happening in the name of today’s environmentalism.”

Green Gone Wrong

Modern Hippie Mag Podcast

Steve McAllister

Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution is a post from Modern Hippie Mag your online resource dedicated to hip, healthy conscious living & environmental sustainability.