There is definitely something to all this Law of Attraction stuff. Consider this: For the past few months, I’ve been putting out a lot of energy around four things:
1. Expanding the public speaking portion of my business
2. Pitching myself as a syndicated columnist writing on Green business (working a long-term plan)
3. Founding the International Association of Earth-Conscious Marketers
4. Working with unpublished writers to help them become well-published and well-marketed authors

Here’s some of what happened today:

“Random” Occurrences Show Me The Universe is Noticing is a post from: Principled Profit

Today marks the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington, and of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Right-wing extremists Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin will dishonor King’s memory by having a rally on the same site, opposed to all the values King held dear.

I’m okay with that, actually. I’d never go, other than to hold a counterprotest sign—but I believe strongly in the 1st Amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. As did King, by the way.

I think Beck and Palin are despicable. I also think they have every right to hold their gathering of the lunatic fringe. And I’m aware that I’ve taken plenty of stands over my career for which others would paint me as “lunatic fringe.” Some of them are now mainstream, such as aiming for zero waste, repurposing rooftop space into food and energy collectors, and getting the heck off fossil and nuclear power sources—but they sure weren’t 30 or 40 years ago. I would not have granted then, and don’t grant now, the right of others to tell me how to think, and I don’t claim that same privilege against others whom I disagree with. The right to try to convince them, certainly—but NEVER to dictate what is or is not acceptable thought.

I remember holding a lone protest in front of the local courthouse when the U.S. bombed Lybia. The first day, I got a lot of middle fingers and angry shouts. By the second day, a few people had joined me. On the third day, with a larger crowd, we were getting mostly thumbs ups and supportive honks. It was hard, on that first day. But I remembered my favorite Abraham Lincoln quote, “It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest.” Taking an unpopular position didn’t take the burden off me to take a stand.

And some of my positions are still out of the mainstream—so far. One such is that a Muslim group has every right to practice that other First Amendment right, freedom of worship—even two blocks from Ground Zero. As Keith Olbermann pointed out recently, there’s already been an Islamic center coexisting in that neighborhood since before the World Trade Center was even built. But even if there weren’t, this country was founded on the principle that people can peaceably assemble, worship the God of our choice (or no God, if we choose), and say what we want to say even if it makes others unhappy. That’s what made us the shining light of Democracy for the world, the example that so many other nations wanted to follow. Those are American values that I hold dear. And I predict that they will once again return to the mainstream of an America that seems to have forgotten its proud heritage.

It means the right to build an Islamic Center—a gathering place for peaceful worship and community activities—on an abandoned site a few blocks from Ground Zero, and it means that Beck and Palin are appropriately permitted for their disgusting festival of intolerance. The appropriate reaction is boycott or counterprotest, not an attempt to silence those we disagree with.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Glenn Beck, and the “Ground Zero Mosque” #blogboost is a post from: Principled Profit

If you think we in the Green movement tend to take ourselves waaaay too seriously, here’s a bit of comic relief.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams describes with excruciating humor all the missteps in building a Green home.

I can relate. In my own Greener home adventures, we’ve discovered…

Dilbert’s Scott Adams Builds a Green Home #blogboost is a post from: Principled Profit

Heck, I’d settle for two days a week as productive as today. I’d be soooo grateful–and so accomplished! Wrote a long blog on public transit, an article about Green marketing, a much-improved of the query letter I hope will launch my syndicated Green and Profitable column, created a new questionnaire for book consulting clients, and critiqued a client’s book proposal (I don’t normally do ANY client work on weekends, but this had a deadline of tomorrow AM and I was off all day Friday speaking at Boston Greenfest), and managed to deal with 150 or so e-mails.

And…shelled a bunch of our garden edemame (tender young soybeans), cooked a three-course dinner of mostly garden veggies, made a batch of tomato sauce, hiked for half an hour between rainstorms, did a load each of laundry and dishes plus hand-washed all the pots and wooden stuff. Also got in some fun time with Dina and a bit of reading.

And now I just wrote this blog, just reflecting on the wonder of it all.

I have two more hours left, probably, before I crash. Going to try to get through another 100 or so emails and then five miles on the exercise bike with Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, “Lacuna.” And then a well-earned rest.

All this while everybody’s complaining that Mercury is in retrograde and they can’t get anything done.

If I Could Always be So Productive…#blogboost is a post from: Principled Profit

Yesterday’s postal mail brought an invitation by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation to survey our driving habits.

I live in a rural area, along a state highway but between two college towns. Green as I’d love to be, I go most places by car. Occasionally, I’ll have enough time to bike to Northampton or Amherst, but it’s about 50 minutes each direction, and that’s a big chunk out of my day. It’s also not a very pleasant ride, along a busy, very hilly highway with lots of curves and potholes and big stretches without a shoulder.

I’m a lifelong fan and USER of public transportation. Growing up in New York City, I was eight years old when I switched from the school bus to the public bus—and that was with a transfer. I’ll often take buses instead of driving to Boston or New York (and I’ve actually booked Amtrak for my next trip to Washington). When I travel out of my area, I rarely rent a car unless the destination city is the start of an extended driving trip. If I’m just staying locally, I use buses, trams and subways (and the occasional taxi.

There’s a local bus that runs past my house. But even though I’m a public transit guy, I’ve lived here 12 years and have never taken it. Why? Because it’s set up to fail. The local transit authority, in its wisdom, runs full-size coaches three times a day in from Northampton to South Hadley and twice a day back to Northampton. I have lots of reasons to go to Northampton, but I can’t do it on the bus. The first trip to Northampton that passes my house arrives at 5:30; the last bus back departs Northampton at 5:35. So that leaves five minutes, after business hours, to do my business. Ha, ha.

If I happened to want to go the other way, I could have a whole hour in South Hadley, between 5:05 and 6:05 p.m. Whoopie! Oh yeah, I could also arrive at Mount Holyoke at 8 a.m., and if I happened to somehow discover nine hours of things to do in sleepy South Hadley, I could catch the 5:05 back home. Thanks a lot.

I can see these rare buses go by my house, and they’re usually very uncrowded. What a surprise! Set up a bus service to fail, and then complain that nobody takes the bus.

But how’s this: what if instead of a 40-passenger coach scheduled as to be unusable, there was a 10-passenger van or minibus, going, say, every two hours. Labor cost would be higher, as a driver would have to be diverted from a more popular route. But the other costs of operation, such as fuel, would be sharply less for each run. And my whole family would probably use the bus several times a week, especially if the route were extended three miles past Mount Holyoke to the high school my son attends, at the beginning and end of the school day. Probably so would a number of other people. Maybe enough to make the route viable.

Why Set Up Public Transit to Fail? #blogboost is a post from: Principled Profit

This time of year, we spend an astonishing amount of time dealing with food: harvesting from our garden, making salads, cooking, preserving, giving or occasionally selling surplus…but it is SO worth it!

Long before we had a garden of our own, I’ve been an advocate of local community food self-sufficiency. Not that a neighborhood or village would grow all its own food, but even the most urban could grow some vegetables and herbs, some berries.

Food is a basic necessity, and as such should be a right (ditto for drinkable water and health care, among other things). But in many poor communities, there are few gardens and not even any supermarkets. Rooftops, vacant lots, and even windowsills could change this—and in the process, empower residents, break down barriers, form friendships, save people money…and introduce folks to the absolute joy of eating fresh organic produce grown right where you are.

Yesterday, I made a batch of pure tomato sauce: no oil, no water, no herbs, no onions or garlic, just fresh ripe garden tomatoes, cooked in their own juice for several hours, until the sauce was about a third of the original volume, and had a flavor so royally rich you’d think it was made of 24-karat gold. Today, it was Dina’s night to cook. Earlier today, she went and got a couple of pounds of green beans out of the garden (along with another 40 full-size and 125 cherry tomatoes, enough corn for our lunch, celery, eggplant, edemame, zucchini, and I forget what else). She cooked the beans lightly for a few minutes in my super-intense tomato sauce and served them over couscous. WOW! Served with a salad of our own cucumbers and tomatoes and lettuce from our local CSA farm, plus some Turkish olives and feta cheese, it was a fabulous dinner.

Today, I made another batch of that good sauce (most of which we’re freezing for the winter), a batch of zucchini pickles, and a batch of dried tomatoes. Dina processed the leeks for freezing. I confess, we’re putting in a couple of hours a day. It really helps that I work at home and that Dina doesn’t have to go teach at the university in the summer. Seems like every break I take from the computer I am dealing with food. But come January, when the produce you can buy is almost inedible, we will pull some of our bounty from the freezer or from the dried stash in the pantry, and we will enjoy locally grown meals almost as good as those we’re feasting on now.

It’s an experience that should be shared widely. I feel very sorry for those people who’ve never had a REAL fresh tomato. Comparing it to a supermarket tomato is like comparing a perfectly aged French triple-cream gourmet cheese with Velveeta.

And I feel grateful not only to live in a place where we can have a garden, but in a time when consciousness of local organic and fresh foods is high, and where food is helping people know their neighbors and boost their nutrition.

Yes, a tomato can change the world.

Can A Tomato Change the World? is a post from: Principled Profit

My friend Ken McArthur blogged about his internal struggle in not confronting racist remarks from his substitute barber. I gave him this advice:

It’s not too late. Go back and find him. Tell him, in a respectful, not angry way, “Ever since you cut my hair, I’ve been thinking about some of the things you said and how much I disagree with them. I’ve been beating myself up for not challenging your racism when you expressed it. So today, I’m going to stop beating myself up and tell you that I didn’t appreciate your put downs of those who look different from you, and I’ll not have you cut my hair again.” Then stand still and listen for dialogue. It may be quite vitriolic, but you may be able to go deeper. And you owe him that much.

You do this, not for his soul, but for yours. But there may be a side benefit of reaching his, too (maybe not right away).

Thanks for being brave enough to share this post. I look forward to the follow-up post about what happened when you went back. And how lucky you are that you have the opportunity to “undo the not doing.” I can remember a couple of incidents in my teens where I failed to interrupt racism or sexism on the street and never knew the identities, never had the chance to back and make it right. 40 years later, I still feel guilty.

Mind you, I’m no saint. I have successfully confronted oppressive behavior at times, left it unchallenged at times, and confronted the behavior without effecting any change at other times. Once I got an obscenity-laced tirade directed at me by name and religion, and that was scary (she later called up to apologize). But I’ll always be proud of the time I intervened with a child whose mother was about to lose it over his tantrum in the supermarket (I got the kid laughing by quacking at him)–and always be ashamed that I did nothing to intervene years earlier when a man was verbally abusing his girlfriend on the streets of New York.

A Chance to Confront Racism is a post from: Principled Profit

Hiking through the rainforest at night in a rainstorm? Are we crazy? Not at all. We had good flashlights and a naturalist/guide, and it was magnificent.

We’re in Santa Elena/Montverde, Costa Rica, and there are several “night walk” tours available. We asked Cristina, the all-knowing, ultrafriendly concierge at our hotel (Claro de la Luna), which was the best, and she told us it depended on what we wanted: popular or quiet. We chose quiet, and we were the only customers walking with Greyving (our guide) through the former Finca San Francisco de Assisi (Saint Francis of Assisi Farm). Arriving just before dark, we were awestruck by the majesty of the tall trees shrouded in mist, the sounds of the many species of insects, the thickness of the understory.

Dozens of mammal, snake, and bird species live in this reclaimed forest, now conservation land: sloths, agoutis, quetzals, porcupines, and monkeys, to name a few. But Greyving warned us that we weren’t likely to see many animals in the rain, and in fact we saw nothing with four legs. But we saw plenty of insects and spiders, including walking sicks, moths, crickets, grasshoppers—and two tarantulas. He was able to coax one of them—an orange-kneed tarantula about six inches in diameter, which he said was a very common type—out of its hole, and it came within a foot of us. I grabbed for my camera but she skittered off. The other one was busy eating, and couldn’t be prodded out of its tree trunk no matter what. But it’s quite something to peer into a hollow log and see these deep eyes staring at you from a twisted collection of black hairy legs.

This was a female, he said. Females live about ten years and spend their whole lives inside one place, in this case a hollow log. Males spend their days walking around the forest, and as a result—being a tasty snack for many of the four-legged creatures here, and also at risk of being killed and eaten by the female following impregnation—live only a couple of months.

We passed an enormous strangler fig that he estimated at 200 years old. And, he says, in the nearby parks there are some specimens five times as large and four times as old.

In all, it was a fascinating hour and a half.

Up Close and Personal with a Tarantula: A Night Hike in Costa Rica is a post from: Principled Profit

For decades, going back to the 1970s, I’ve had two major passions in my life: making the world better (with a particular focus on environmental activism, land-use planning, and the safe energy movement) and marketing/writing. In fact, my earliest published articles were the coverage of peace and environment demonstrations that I wrote for a high school underground newspaper back in 1972, when I was a 15-year-old student. And one of the first articles I sold as a freelancer, in 1977, was coverage of the Seabrook nuclear power station site occupation and the arrest/incarceration of 1414 protesters—including me.

For most of my career, these two passions were both active, but separate. Starting in late 1999, when I formed a group called Save the Mountain to protect the Mount Holyoke Range (near my home in Western Massachusetts) from the desecration of a large housing development, they began to come together. That campaign, running from the housing project’s announcement in November 1999 to our victory in December 2000, harnessed together everything I knew about organizing for social change AND everything I knew about marketing. And also taught me how much I still needed to learn, as we had people in our large group who knew far more than I did about such tactics as lobbying government officials, working with lawyers, and successful visibility marketing.

I wrote about that campaign in my 2003 book, Principled Profit, and I also included sections on various Green visionaries and the kind of world I want to live in. And I began to discover that there were plenty of other people like me who shared those two passions of Green and marketing. This really accelerated in 2010, with the publication by a mainstream house of my eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson). All of a sudden, I’m finding Green marketers everywhere—and most of them feel very alone.

As carbon footprint, global warming (what an innocuous name for such a dreadful phenomenon) and similar issues have finally reached a critical mass to come into mainstream consciousness, the time seems ripe to move our threatened planet forward. And marketers have to be there, leading the charge, marshaling public opinion, and moving from consciousness that we need to save the planet to actually doing it. I envisioned an organization that would not only provide support to each other, but stake out advocacy positions that would enable governments, businesses, nonprofits, and the public to go more Green and do it faster.

Getting this right will take some thinking and planning, and I hope you’ll weigh in with your ideas. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you more. Meanwhile, if you’d like to be on the notification list, you can leave your e-mail address on the “coming soon” website I’ve set up.

Why I’m Starting a Trade Association for Green Marketers is a post from: Principled Profit

150 words a day for seven days. I can do this!

When Michelle Shaeffer first told me about Jeannette Cates’ Blog 30 Challenge to write 30 posts in June, I decided not to participate. It was already a week into the moth when I learned about it, and I knew that with my sister’s family of six coming for a week, I was going to be way behind (and in fact, my inbox ballooned by 1000 unread e-mails while they were here).

Jeannette has set up all sorts of systems that build on this commitment to get more traffic, Twitter fans, etc., and I was disappointed that it wasn’t going to work for me.

But now they’ve gone home again, life is getting a bit more sane, and Jeannette just announced a more do-able version: 7 posts in 10 days. Except that 3 of the 10 days are already gone, so for me, it’ll be a post a day for a week. Or two posts today while I’m in the groove .

I think I’m going to use these seven days as a laboratory to explore my next big project: a trade association for Green marketers. Stay tuned—and PLEASE comment on the ideas I’m exploring. If I find your comment especially useful, I’ll even send you a nice surprise.

OK, I’m In: The Seven-Day Mini #blog30 Challenge is a post from: Principled Profit