“You’ll be my arms, and I’ll be your eyes”

Hi Folks:

If you haven’t seen this yet, it’s well worth watching. We first read about it in an article in the Huffington Post. In China two specially-enabled men, lifelong friends, are changing their world – one tree at a time. When he was three Jia Wenqi lost his arms from a burn resulting from touching a power line. Jia Haixia was born with sight in only one eye, but he was blinded in an industrial accident in 2000. After losing his sight he became despondent. Both men were concerned by the environmental degradation in their area and so they teamed up to start planting trees. With no budget they used only hand tools and planted branches cut from existing trees. In their first year they planted 800 trees; 2 survived. They’ve now planted more than 10,000 trees and hope to cover a mountain.

They deserve our applause, and our support. How can you make your world a little better?

Hugs,
M&M

P.S. A classic tale, also well worth reading, is ‘The Man Who Planted Trees’ by Jean Giono. Originally written in French, it’s also available in English.

P.S. II, the sequel. A story we first heard about in 2012 is a man in India who has planted a forest by himself: The Man Who Made a Forest

Being Green – Finding Inspiration

Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.   Before I get started, if you happen to be in Victoria, BC this weekend, the Cascadia GBC Vancouver Island Branch Emerging Professionals and Jawl Properties are hosting an art exhibition with eight artists on the theme of sustainability.  The exhibit is being shown in the lobby of ‘The Atrium‘, one of Victoria’s newest  buildings, targeting LEED Gold certification.

Okay, the title of this post is ‘Finding Inspiration’.  I was originally going to name it ‘Seeking Inspiration’, but since it’s possible to look for something and not find it, the latter choice of title seemed more appropriate.  In one of his blog posts last month, Seth Godin wrote about ‘Heroes and Mentors‘.   In a nutshell, mentors are great when they’re available, but if they’re not, heroes can fill the gap and provide inspiration for all of us.  Every week I collect links, stories, news articles and information from a number of ‘sustainability’ fields, and I find a lot of inspiration in what I read too.  I thought I’d share a couple of those stories with you this week. Continue Reading →