“Home-based businesses are one of the fastest-growing segments in our economy, and that trend will only continue, as the age of the corporation, which began barely a century ago, now gives way to the age of the entrepreneur.” – Paul Zane Pilzer, Author and Nobel Prize Winning Economist

Join a company for the right reasons. A business has to have a product/service that I feel passionate about. For me, I won’t sell anything that I don’t believe is a benefit to myself, my community and this planet.

There are 1000s of small businesses in my community and yours. Local businesses that you nor I know about. The knowledge of their existance is changing. Enter Groupon, Living Social and The Customer Advantage. These companies are making these small businesses known. They recognize the benefit of supporting local businesses. Local businesses employ 68% of employed people.

Getting In Front of a Trend

Technical and Social Media is changing everything. Look at Groupon. Groupon’s membership grew to 40 Million in just two years. Groupon was able to get in front of a trend (Group Buying). Group Buying is a major new trend and Groupon is now the fastest growing business in the history of business! Faster than Google, faster than Amazon, faster than any company you can think of. Their business is so successful they recently turned down a $6 Billion dollar buy out from Google!

Look at Facebook and how it developed. Mark Zukerberg didn’t have any idea what he was creating when he started Facebook. It was a change that was  ready to happen and was going to happen with or without him. He was able to get in front of the change. Now look at where he is.

There are thousands of great Network Marketing companies out there that offer people a way to GET AHEAD OF A TREND; Trends that Technical and Social Medias are pushing forward at the speed of whatever your modem runs at!

If you are thinking about joining a company, follow these steps before joining. Then when you are satisfied, Jump In! The water is great!

Find — and study — the company’s track record.
Learn about the product
Ask questions
Understand any restrictions
Talk to other distributors (beware shills)
Consider using a friend or adviser as a neutral sounding board or for a gut check.
Take your time.
Think about whether this plan suits your talents and goals[34]

Have fun on your trail to GETTING AHEAD OF A TREND!

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
—Chief Seattle

As I sit in the sun, delighting in the flutter of  wings and reveling at the sight of birds as they feast; cautious, fearful, yet determined to feed, no matter how close I come. As long as I remain still they succumb to bravery and peck away at the bird feeder.  There are hundreds waiting their turn at the feeder. Fluttering and chirping surrounds me. If I move too quickly, they flicker away. What is this invisible line of connection? Drawing them near, then frighten them away with my movement. I’m a giant in their world. Their language and pecking order a mystery. Yet, they too are an intricate thread within the web of life.

“Is there something wrong? I’m somewhat concerned. One of the village men came and said there were stirrings of trouble in the forest. What kind of trouble? The village man said, “creatures are being killed and dying in the forest. Insects, animals and birds are struggling for life.”

- Clive Cussler, Blue Gold, a novel from the NUMA files.

Fiction? We all recognize the ‘trouble’: It’s all around us; fear is nipping at everyones’ heals.The novel brings a glimpse of one mans movement that caused the death of a pod of whales and more. He places an enormous blister on humanities face and bringing imbalance to life and the planet.

How do we begin changing lifestyles and habits?  Until each of us acknowledges what Chief Seattle so eloquently said; ‘all things connect’, the imbalance we’ve created is killing us.  Is it our lack of education? Is it greed that provokes humanity to take such stupid steps? Our rampant and irresponsible development and consumption reveals our societal immaturity on an enormous scale!

Think ‘non-consumption’. Opps, that won’t work…the basis of our economy would go bust! Oh, our economy is already a bust. For me, a good start would be to shift from ‘want’ to ‘need’ as a basic foundation for curing much of what is wrong in our world. We need to tilt the scales back to when we were a ‘need based’ society. We are a society  Starving for purpose, but we need to give up ‘gluttony’! Standing in line at the grocery, I heard a woman say, “I want an SUV! I’m having a mid-life crisis!”. We chase after ‘things’ to fulfill ourselves; never giving a thought about how these kinds of actions affect the world around us. Even when we are aware, we seldom go beyond the name of a thing; at the depth beneath a name and how it connects to everything.

Just as you, I yearn to have a voice, to be heard.  To be understood and respected. I too have a dream:

Stewardship is practiced by everyone. Each of us is a good and loving person. Each of us can take the time to ‘go beyond a name’ and become familiar with the ‘essence of life’ and how we are all connected.  We understand Biology; living organisms and vital processes. We see a beautiful living thing and know how it is connected to ourselves and its environment. We no longer lose all that we hold dear. There is a natural balance and every community thrives.

Happy non-gluttonous trails!

Take a step back in time; December 23, 1913

“I am a most unhappy man, I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominate men”

- President Woodrow Wilson

What Did He Mean

when he said, “I have unwittingly ruined my country”? He was referring to; on December 23rd 1913, he signed the Federal Reserve Act. With all opposition out of the way: Benjamin Guggenheim, Isa Strauss and Jacob Astor; the three richest men in the world had sank with the Titanic; the way was laid clear for the Federal Reserve Banking system; a private bank, owned by private stock holders for their on personal profit!

Spirit, Heart and Mind

I did a search on Google; ‘Who Rules the World’? If you are here, you probably already know what the video reveals, however, you might want to check it out and forward to others.

“Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it”

-President Woodrow Wilson

We Need Audacious Leaders!

We need audacious leaders to carry out our demands! Our livelihood has suffered enough. We are playing with Big Boys; details of their frolic have dominated the headlines. They do not wish us to see the details of their frolic. They bail themselves out and we reward them with almost a TRILLION DOLLARS! We need not look far to see how our politics and lifestyles are severely oppressing people, destroying the planet, and bringing extinction (one in four mammals face extinction) to those we share the planet!

These are very big Boys and they are not playing; they keep a keen eye on the bottom line. They would have you believe the economic crisis is an accident. The truth is that citizens of the world have been enticed (public relations or propaganda) into believing it is important to ‘keep up with the Jones’ and to buy into frivolity at an unprecedented pace! All on credit! Invisible money slipping through business and banks like water. The poisoning of the environment and the people are a natural occurrence.  Who benefits? Our Health Care system can not cure or keep up with the disease of it’s people. Pharmaceutical Companies are the only ones who seem to be benefiting in this time of crisis. They talk about cures and drugs; no one in power wants to address  the causes.

Lets take a long look into centuries of food industry practices. Practices which began innocently enough, but, in many instances have developed into a dark and dangerous business; endangering the planet and it’s inhabitants!

The food industry continually strives to cut costs and expenses in order to increase profit; they hypnotizie the population with their glossy color ads and their promise of miracle foods’; all the while their GREED seeps in a sea of muck! This will become very clear if you are brave enough to follow the slippery trail.

‘The Truth Will Sit You Free’

While doing research into the ongoing Pet Food Recall tragedy and its continued impact to our pets, what seems most important after reading hundreds of these reports is to pass on what I’ve learned; and to keep linking together with others who have similar concerns. Doing so gives more credibility and a more effective means of convincing people to change what they and their furry friends eat!

A startling discovery: most people don’t want to know about this ongoing tragedy! For knowing means you find a truth. Truth. As always, what you do with ‘truth’ is up to you! My advise is to take the journey. Take a deep look into the food industry before you make any decision. For me, the journey has taken some horrific and dangerous trails.

What’s Cooking?

From Rendering Plants to our dinner table! Ever thought about what a ‘rendering plant’ job looks like? Probably not. Here you go:

Rendering plants are like huge kitchens. What do they ‘cook up’? The stainless steel pot contains; dead animals, slaughterhouse wastes, supermarket rejects, pesticides via poisoned livestock, euthanasia drugs that were given to pets; some dead animals have flea collars containing organophosphate insecticide, fish oil laced with bootleg DDT, insecticide Dursban in the form of cattle insecticide patch, other chemicals leaked from antibiotics in livestock, heavy metals from pet ID tag and surgical pins and needles: all go into the ’stainless steel pot’. The mixture then goes into various products’ known as recycled meat, bone meal, and animal fat.

Who would want this job? Well, that’s a whole other story. Rendering plants have different specialties. Some of the end product-label names are: meat meal, meat by-products, poultry meal, poultry by-products, fishmeal, fish oil, yellow grease, tallow, beef fat and chicken fat. Who buys the products from ‘rendering plants’? The livestock, poultry and pet food industries! They use it as feed additives.A 1991 USDA report states that approximately 7.9 billion pounds of meat, bone meal, blood meal, and feather meal was produced by rendering plants in 1983. Of that amount:

12 percent was used in beef cattle feed

34 percent was used in pet food

34 percent was used in poultry feed

20 percent was used in pig food

Scientific American cites a dramatic rise in the use of animal protein in commercial dairy feed since 1987. If these truths don’t set you free, I can’t imagine what would. My previous post on ‘The Power and Politics Behind What We Eat’ offers an intricate account of the cause of much of the disease to the inhabitants of our planet. Unfortunately, there are no labels to identify the above ingredients that have gone into our livestock and poultry feed…and passed onto humans.

One in four deaths is from cancer; given the livestock and poultry practice of feeding the products produced by rendering plants to livestock and poultry; and then we eat (well I don’t) the livestock and poultry: might there be a possible significant connection to cancer’?

Are there any labels on beef, poultry, or pork? Do you know how they were raised? What they eat? Are they stressed? Do you know if stress does anything to the quality of the meat? Do you care? Who has the time or wants to take the time to know this stuff? Isn’t that what we pay our tax dollars to do? We put our trust in the United States Government to safeguard its people! To take the time to monitor and inspect what is meant no nourish its people.

Warning from the Past and Present!

The Jungle (1906) is a novel by American author and socialist Upton Sinclair. It describes the life of a family of Lithuanian immigrants working in Chicago’s Union Stock Yards at the beginning of the 20th century.

Silent Spring is a book written by Rachel Carson and published by Houghton Mifflin in September 1962. The book is widely credited with launching the environmentalism movement in the West.

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (2001)is a book by investigative journalist Eric Schlosser that examines the local and global influence of the United States fast food industry.

Chew on This is a book for younger readers by Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation) and Charles Wilson on the subject of fast food.

Amazing Discoveries reports, “Food borne illness is on the increase worldwide and in most cases animal products are implicated as the main source of infection.”

Food, Inc. Eating can be one dangerous business. Don’t take another bite till you see Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc ., an essential, indelible documentary that is …

Vote with your Dollars!

This is something you can do this very instant! Vote with your pocket book. Truly, this is the only language industry understands…that’s how we got ourselves into this tragic predicament; we bought into industries glossy color ads and their promise of miracle foods’. Read the labels. Ask questions.

“Of every dollar that an American shopper spends for food, on average, 81 cents goes toward the marketing of that food. Only 19 cents goes back to the farm.”

Currently I’m feeding my canine Pieper ‘Newman’s Own Organic Dog Food’. Everything is on the label. It’s certified organic by ‘Oregon Tilth’. Oregon Tilth has been certifying organic farmers since the early 1970s.The organic industry is a realistic approach to many of my concerns about the health of Pieper, myself and the environment.

MSNBC reports, “This year, retail sales of organic foods are expected to exceed $15 billion — with more than $32 billion projected by 2009. While the conventional food industry still dwarfs the organic sector with $550 billion in yearly sales, it is producing an unappetizing 2 to 3 percent annual growth rate, while the organic industry has savored several years of 17 to 20 percent growth.”

What does this growth say about ‘why’ people are buying more organic food? They are voting with their dollars; taking responsibility for the health and well being of their self, their furry friends and the environment!

From 1987 to 1990, while working at The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) as Humane Sustainable Agriculture Coordinator, I toured organic livestock farms throughout the United States; these livestock and poultry farmers were proud to show me their operation; the livestock and poultry at these farms were allowed to pursue their innate characteristics.

Happy Trails!

Rocky Mountain Splash

A February 2008 view of the Stratton Open Space resevoir from the Ponderosa trail. The resevoir is at the bottom of Cheyenne Mountain near the Will Rogers Sun Shrine. From a distance it looks as though the reservoir has a swirling funnel; opining up and swallowing the water. As we arrive closer we see the water is frozen. I love the contrast from the winter terrain, the pines against the water and the tawny horizon, as blue upon blue defines the sky. Our relationship to the planet seems so serene in this time and space.

Dabbling Ducks

The three tiny dots on the water are ducks; I’m outside a chained and locked gate. A chain link fence surrounds the reservoir, keeping people and animals out; the frozen lake is dangerous to unsuspecting large animals who might wander onto the ice.

No Humans Allowed!

In the summer, rangers open the gate, allowing people and animals to enter. Canines are permitted to swim in the summer and early fall months.

At one time the reservoir was closed to everyone; however, people kept cutting through the fence. Finally after a few town meetings and months of debating, a decision was made to open the reservoir during the summer and early fall months to everyone. However, humans would not be allowed to enter the water; just the animals…no matter how tempting the water is on a hot day, just the dogs get to swim.

Last summer a golden retriever searches for unknown treasure; leaving me panting on the bank!