Modern Hippie Mag » Media

Sow Your Own

Steve McAllister — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 14:00:05 +0000

Cafe Direct is the United Kingdom’s largest 100% Fairtrade hot drinks company. By following their mission of changing lives and building communities through inspirational, sustainable business, they focus their social and economic impact in the developing world, by investing 50% of their profit back into the growers, positively impacting the lives of over 1.6 million people in 14 different countries. Through their new Sow Your Own project, they are affecting even more.

The project was started ” to inspire even the most garden-starved urbanites to grow their own great-tasting food.” Although Cafe direct is not available in the United States, I recently spoke with Jacquie Bance about the impact Cafe Direct has on so many people and how the Sow Your Own project is inspiring the United Kingdom to start thinking more sustainably.

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.

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

Rock Meets Soul – Nice & Rough

Jaszy McAllister — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:00:57 +0000

Love rock ‘n roll? Yeah, me too. But did you know there are a number of women bellowing out rock and soul as good, if not better than some of the greats that have been in the limelight for ages? With influences from legends like Jimi Hendrix, Tina Turner, The Rolling Stones, and Sly & the Family Stone, there are women of color who are epitomizing the spirit of rock ‘n roll in ways that are more than worthy of recognition.

Shelia J. Hardy

Filmmaker and producer Sheila J. Hardy endeavors to do just that in her documentary film Nice and Rough – Black Women in Rock.

Nice and Rough, an Eve’s Lime Production, is a film that seeks to “honor the true spirit of the American dream: the freedom to pursue our goals and not be limited by race or gender.” Featuring the stories and talents of Joyce Kennedy, Siedahh Garrett, Cindy Blackman, Star Cullers (the first and only female to play in the 18-piece P-Funk All-Stars band until she left to start her own rock group) and others, Nice and Rough gives voice to some amazingly talented ladies in a world typically not open to women, let alone African-American women.

Listen to my interview with Sheila Harding to learn more about the film, her production company Eve’s Lime, and her other documentary and commercial projects.

Watch the trailer for Nice and Rough and be sure to stay updated with the production.

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.

Rock Meets Soul – Nice & Rough is a post from Modern Hippie Mag your online resource dedicated to hip, healthy conscious living & environmental sustainability.

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

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

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.

Urthbags.com, Eco-chic Handbags

Jaszy McAllister — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:00:21 +0000

UrthBags are hand-crafted from recycled materials by Fair Trade Women’s Organizations & Artisans – Purses Made with a Purpose!

"Bridgette" Magazine Bag

By owning an UrthBag, you are not only helping to protect our planet, but also to provide jobs to underprivileged women world-wide. UrthBags are durable, ultra-stylish & can be used for almost any occasion as they come in many different styles and are all handmade from recycled & salvaged materials so you can feel good about owning one while making a bold eco-fashion statement.

Monica Ralli, founded Urthbags to help inspire people to develop a stronger sense of eco-consciousness while making a stylish, green fashion statement. I had the pleasure of speaking with Monica recently to learn more about her vision and what’s in store for Urthbags.

"Jenna" Magazine Bag

One very fortunate Modern Hippie Mag reader will have a chance to own a “Jenna” Magazine Urthbag made from recycled plastic and features popular fashion magazine images, a $76 value!

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!)

Follow Urthbags on Twitter, @Urthbags.
Show that you like Urthbags on Facebook.
Tweet this: {Giveaway} Urthbags, Eco-Chic Handbags http://ow.ly/2d9qE @Urthbags #earthbgs
(Tweet often but don’t forget to add #earthbgs to your tweet so that we can keep track!)

For additional entries, chat us up!

Blog about this giveaway and link to this post.
Share this giveaway on your Facebook wall.
Add Modern Hippie Mag to your Blog Roll or Featured Blogs list.

(Remember to leave a separate comment for each requirement for more chances to win!)

More details:

Open to U.S. entrants only.
Recipients chosen at random using Random.org.
Won something in the last thirty days? Last month’s winners are ineligible for this giveaway.
Giveaway ends 12 midnight EST, on Monday, August 2, 2010. Winner will be announced on Tuesday, August 3, 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.

Big thank you to Monica Ralli for sponsoring this giveaway!

Urthbags.com, Eco-chic Handbags 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.

Weekday Vegetarian

Steve McAllister — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 16:00:27 +0000

Ever since reading The World Peace Diet, I’ve been toying with the idea of becoming a vegetarian and vaguely considering the idea of actually making the shift to veganism. For those of you who have made this shift, you know that it can sometimes be difficult. For those of you who haven’t, you probably think it impossible.

For me, it’s not necessarily that it would limit my epicurean options. After all, I have Natalia, a wonderful raw food chef, who shows me several vegan recipes in our video series In the Kitchen with Natalia. Nevertheless, eating meat has been ingrained in me since I was but a young ‘un. Other than the mornings I had cereal or oatmeal for breakfast, pretty much every meal I had revolved around some type of meat – pot roast, spaghetti with meat sauce, broiled chicken, barbecued kielbasa, pork tenderloin… okay, you get the picture. I mean, I was raised as a Baptist. We have barbecue for communion, for goodness sake.

Yet I know that American meat consumption is way over the top. The new KFC Ultimate Double Stack Artery Blocker is a testament to that (replacing the buns with fried chicken breasts? I mean, come on!). I know that the methane emitted by beef cows is not good for the environment and a possible contributor to global warming. I know that the practices used by many of our factory farms is far less than humane. I know that it takes more crops to feed livestock than it does to feed people. And I know that the runoff from these factories causes a great deal of our pollution. Even with all of that knowledge, giving up meat is no easy task.

But I did challenge myself to become a vegetarian for the month of July. And I must say that I’ve done pretty well. The first nine days went off without a hitch. I was eating plenty of leafy vegetables, Boca burgers, and raw foods. I even had a Chipotle burrito without the carnitas. Then my wife had a craving for a rotisserie chicken and I fell off the wagon. Nevertheless, I crawled back on, and I’m proud to say that I went to the all you can eat buffet at Troyer’s Amish Restaurant and managed to eat no meat. I had a great salad, potatoes, stuffing, corn, green beans, broccoli, and topped it off with cake and ice cream. And while I humbly admit that I slipped up in my vegetarian commitment, I’m not beating myself up over it.

What’s important to me is cutting down on my meat consumption. One of these days, I’m sure I’ll become a total vegan (especially if they invent a barbecue tree), but for the time being, I’m taking baby steps. I think too many people, myself included, get so caught up in the “all or nothing” mentality that they end up hating themselves for faltering while trying to change a lifelong habit. I’ve got plenty of things to get mad at myself about. I’d rather rejoice when I do well than get down on myself when I do bad.

Recently, I saw the following video on TED by the founder of Treehugger, Graham Hill, where he talks about his own struggle with going vegetarian. He brings up some pretty good points, and I thought I’d share it with those of you who are considering the transition, but become grim when holding your “last” hamburger in your hand. As for me, I’m taking one day at a time.

Steve

Weekday Vegetarian 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.

Cultivating “The Garden”

Steve McAllister — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:00:14 +0000

After the Los Angeles riots broke out in response to the Rodney King trial, thirteen acres of land in South Central LA were converted into a community garden at 41st and Alameda. The land was tilled and cultivated into a thriving garden and source of food mostly by the Hispanics of the community, which make up 67% of the neighborhood. Twelve years later, Councilwoman Jan Perry and activist Juanita Tate of Concerned Citizens of Los Angeles attempted to convert the land into storage warehouses and a soccer field for the community. They story of these 372 farmers and their fight for their community is told in the Academy Award nominated documentary film The Garden.

The film shows both sides of the issue, with most of the time given to the farmers, the legal battles they pursue, and the infighting that unfortunately comes with the ravages of battle. While Jan Perry and Juanita Tate are given fair time to explain their sides of the story, they are without a doubt painted as the villains of the story, showing little mercy or compassion to the immigrants who have found hope in the simple of pleasure of growing their own food. Perry and Tate had already developed another soccer field at the corner of Slauson and Main, an endeavor which took six years and $4.7 million dollars for a level dirt field and a single port-o-potty.

In her defense, before being developed into the largest community garden in the United States, the land was bought by the city to build a garbage incinerator, a move that was stopped by Juanita Tate. Nevertheless, due to using her activist credentials to raise money, she was seen by some of the farmers as a “poverty pimp.” By the end of the film, Tate and her sons are under investigation for misuse of funds.

Of course, Perry and Tate are minor villains. The true enemy of our seed planting heroes is the developer Ralph Horowitz. “In 1986, the city paid Mr. Horowitz five million dollars for the land. In 2003, the City Council agreed to sell it back to him for the same price.” Mr. Horowitz, in turn, offered the land for the selling price of $16.3 million.

In true Hollywood fashion, the farmers band together to raise the money, gaining the support of celebrities like Joan Baez, Willie Nelson, Martin Sheen, and Darryl Hannah. Nevertheless, even after the farmers raised over $16 million dollars in less than sixty days and offered to buy the land, on June 13, 2006, police blocked the farmers from entry, arresting several while bulldozers plowed the garden back into dirt. Mr. Horowitz, once agreeing to sell it if the farmers raised the money, said he wouldn’t sell it to them for any price.

Though the parting shots of the dormant land two years after the destruction of the Garden do not offer the happy ending we may have hoped for, the experience actually helped the farmers to carve out a better future for themselves. The city eventually offered the farmers another seven acres in South Central LA to cultivate another community garden, and many of the farmers started an eighty acre garden in Bakersfield, the harvests of which they sell at farmers’ markets around the region.

The majority of the film is in Spanish, but the message is clear in any language. The Garden inspires us to always fight for our rights, to never give up, and to realize the value of community.

Steve McAllister

Cultivating “The Garden” is a post from Modern Hippie Mag your online resource dedicated to hip, healthy conscious living & environmental sustainability.

Vote for our Hot Raw Food Chef Natalia!

Jaszy McAllister — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 15:00:56 +0000

Natalia, Hot Raw Food Chef!

Our own Natalia KW of Glowing Temple is looking to be the next Hot Raw Chef. The Hot Raw Chef competition showcases the cream of the crop in raw, culinary genius. Each of the twenty-seven contestants has submitted a video demonstrating how to make one of their favorite raw recipes. The Grand Prize winner will receive a coveted demo spot at the upcoming Chef Showcase: Hot Chefs, Cool Kitchen where they will offer a live demonstration which will be streamed worldwide across the Internet plus other prizes totaling about $1,100.

For Natalia’s part, her recipe is an entirely raw, vegan Creamy Peppercorn Ranch Dressing. She had planned to save the recipe for her upcoming book, but the lure of the contest convinced her to release it a little earlier.

As you’re probably aware, Natalia has been sharing her recipes with Modern Hippie Mag for a few months now, and we are proud to support her in this endeavor. As an added bonus, when you vote for Natalia you’ll receive a free eBook of ALL the recipes that twenty-seven chefs have prepared in their videos. So go show the love and support Natalia!

Vote for our Hot Raw Food Chef Natalia! is a post from Modern Hippie Mag your online resource dedicated to hip, healthy conscious living & environmental sustainability.