Conscious Holidays

-- Quote of the Day --

“I believe the greatest gift you can give to your family – whether it’s your family at home or your work family – is your time. Not just to have the time, but “real “time. What I mean is that you’ve got to be present and in the moment… one of the definitions of “being” is “conscious existence”. We need to be consciously awake, alive and present when we are spending time with our loved ones”

~ Randy Cohen’s book: Ticket to the Limit

-- Conscious Celebrations --

Candle Night Summer & Winter Solstices 2009
Turn off the lights, take it slow.
December 22, 2009
8:00p.m.-10:00p.m.

http://www.candle-night.org/en/


Today, the 22nd of December, is officially the – First Day of Winter with Christmas Eve just 2 days from now... how time flies.

Dave and I wish you all a Warm & Relaxing Holiday Season!

-- Conscious Discussions Radio --

Conscious Discussions Talk Radio welcomes return guest Cathy Nesbitt to discover the fascinating role that worms play in managing organic wastes and in creating healthy soil. Some of our listeners may recall that on the 28th of in august back in 2007, Cathy joined us to give an introduction to vermiculture: Wiggly Worms Eat Our Waste. Cathy is very active in her passion and is a member of numerous organizations, has an informative newsletter and website, offers speaking and lecture appearances and she has won a number of environmental awards. Today we delve farther into the discussion of Vermiculture.

Find Dave & Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, information about their radio shows & free resources & articles at www.brummet.ca

Holiday Exhaustion

-- Quote of the Day --

If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.

~ Albert Einstein


-- Chatter --

I'm exhausted - Are you? After weeks of baking and delivering of most of the xmas gift trays of goodies - appointments, interviews and traveling for business purposes... dealing with my parent's farm sale and their needs, along with their escalating illnesses... Whew - I really do feel exhausted. Yesterday, after returning from two day's of travel, we bathed the dogs and filled the fridge for the next week's worth of meals and did a pile of laundry - some day off! (ha, ha) Today, once my office-do's have been attended to, I have a long list of phone calls and a house that needs cleaning.

I do wish to send out apologies to all our blog readers who expect me to be posting every single day - as I normally do - however this last month has been a little less consistant due to our schedule constraints.

Dave and I wish all of our blog readers a warm and relaxing holiday season!

-- Author's Read Radio --

Sandra McLeod Humphrey - retired clinical phsychologist, the award-winning author of seven children’s & young adult books presented Hot Issues, Cool Choices: Facing Bullies, Peer Pressure, Popularity, ad Put-Downs - a collection of 26 vignettes depicting various forms of bullying with thought-provoking questions following each vignette. Check out today's archived Authors Read episode by clicking on the hyper-links here or look to the right side of this blog for recently aired Authors Read Radio episodes.

Find Dave & Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, information about their radio shows & free resources & articles at www.brummet.ca

Interview with Authors for Authors

Authors Nanette Buchanan, Lillian Brummet, and Lorraize Elzia offer insight to inspiring authors who are taking that step toward being a published author: 5 PM - 6 PM (pacific) tonight! Dec 19th... archive will load soon after the show's conclusion and can be accessed at your convenience:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/asa-blog-talk/2009/12/20/write-that-book

Find Dave & Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, information about their radio shows & free resources & articles at www.brummet.ca

Compost

-- Composting --

Last night we went out to a new restaurant in town and though it was not one of the best meals we had, it was presented well and filled the empty holes in our stomachs just nicely. One thing I found of interest was the waitress, Karen, said that the restaurant's organic waste goes to a pig farm! Very cool.

This piece below was sent to me in an email and I wanted to share it with you today:

Why Composting holds the key to solving four critical problems facing our planet:

1) Global climate change
2) The depletion of soil of key nutrients
3) Unemployment, especially in large cities
4) Energy conservation

1) Global Climate Change. By sequestering carbon in the soil, it reduces the global warming which would be otherwise caused by the carbon dioxide, released rapidly when this material is burned, or the methane that is more slowly released in landfills. Also, in as much as the addition of compost to soil, reduces the need for topsoil, derived from other sources like peat, and from energy intensive synthetic fertilizers, it further reduces global warming impacts.

2) Soil enrichment. It goes without saying that composting on a massive scale will replenish the depleted soils of vital minerals and other nutrients and therefore is of critical importance not only to agriculture but also to human health.

3) Unemployment. Once the organic fraction is removed from domestic waste the remaining material is far easier to store, handle and mine for its reusable objects and recyclable fraction. Once cities have removed organics from their discard stream it is a relatively easy task to use large warehouse type facilities to recover glass, metals, plastics, wood, ceramics etc and create both large and small businesses and a large number of jobs in the process. In Brescia, Italy the city leaders spent over 300 million Euros to build a giant incinerator that only produced 80 full-time jobs. In Nova Scotia (a province of Canada) spent far less money on a curbside collection program for compostables and recyclables, and created 1000 jobs collecting and handling the discarded materials and another 2000 jobs in the industries using those secondary materials for re-manufacture.

4) Energy conservation. By expediting the recovery of more objects and materials for reuse and recycling, far more energy can be conserved (the embedded energy) when these materials and objects go back into commerce. Recycling reduces the energy involved in extraction and shipping primary materials around the globe; reuse of objects reduces both extraction impacts and manufacturing impacts. ICF, a Canadian consulting company, indicates that about 10 times more energy is saved recycling plastics than obtained by burning them to produce electricity and for one particular plastic, PET, 26 times more energy is saved. Overall Jeffrey Morris indicates that 4 times more energy is saved by recycling the total domestic waste stream than obtained by burning it to produce electricity. A report from Europe indicates that a combination of recycling and composting reduces the emissions of global warming gases as much as 46 times more than incineration producing electricity.

Find Dave & Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, information about their radio shows & free resources & articles at www.brummet.ca

Prize draw, E-cycling

-- Quote of the Day --

"The true measure of a man is how
he treats someone who
can do him absolutely no good"

~ Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784)

-- Reminder: Prize Draw Contest! Enter Today! --

Prize draw (Dec 1-20th) is for the following:

Cathy Nesbitt is offering a copy of her DVD "Squirm"
&
a stainless steel water bottle (www.cathyscomposters.com)

-- Nora Weston has offered a copy of: Paranormal Pleasures Digest (www.noraweston.com)

-- Lillian Brummet's poetry e-book: Towards Understanding (www.brummet.ca)

To enter the draw all you need to do is:

Email me at: ldbrummet @ yahoo . com (**remove spaces before sending**) with the word "prize" in the subject line. *We never use email address for anything outside of this contest. Deadline: Dec 20th @ noon (pacific).

-- Positive Eco-News --

The Weekender newspaper (serving the Boundary region of BC, Canada) reported that Teck E-cycling a company based in Trail began by recycling televisions computers and a few other electronic items on a trial basis in 2006 and has since grown to process 25,00 metric tones of e-waste and currently handles about 40% of the e-waste generated in the province of BC. Today they now accept televisions, fax machines, computers, monitors, desktop printers, keyboards, mice and other peripherals (speakers, cords, etc) and expect to grow their production line by 40% in the upcoming year. With 20 people currently employed by the company, they fully expect to hire new employees to help them grow to meet this demand.

-- Announcement --

Lillian's brother, Gary sent her a notice about an article he and his son were interviewed for regarding the family's work with Free Geek - a non-profit e-waste organization:


"Kado and I were interviewed for a Vancouver Courier article about Free Geek, where we volunteer. The article is also online:

http://www2.canada.com/vancouvercourier/news/story.html?id=f7c0ef6d-116f-4267-b83e-6152734f35e4

There is also a video of the Free Geek in Portland, which is the model for the Vancouver based one... titled "Helping the needy get nerdy!" at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=625LPUACix0 "

We are so proud of Gary and his family for the work they do to make the world a better place. I certainly appreciated Gary's comments about how participating in programs like this is a great way to bond with family members, by doing an activity that has no relation to their household issues. You can find Lillian's brother at: www.shangrila-jewelry.com & Free Geek at: www.freegeekvancouver.org

** Kudos to Gary, Kado & family!

-- Little Known Fact --

Did you know that Dave's uncle, Tony Brummet, was once an environment minister in Canada? We did some research on his work during his tenure in office and were very impressed to find the incredible impact Dave's Uncle Tony has had, including the creation of parks in our region - one of which we had the pleasure of visiting several years ago! I think his actual title was: B.C. Minister of Lands, Parks and Housing wa& has been in the world of politics from 1979-1991 according. Uncle Tony is more like a distant relative to us, however just living his life the way he has, the effect is that he has influenced our work as well. He is credited for this influence in our upcoming Trash Talk - Its Easy to be Green! e-book series.

Find Dave & Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, information about their radio shows & free resources & articles at www.brummet.ca

Recycling #'s & The 3-P's in Life

-- Recycling Numbers --

Recycling By The Numbers, an article written by Michael Gardner & Mike Lee, shared these interesting US recycling stats:

5 cents: The minimum California Refund Value, or CRV, for cans and bottles

74 percent: Bottles and cans recycled in California

21.9 billion: CRV bottles and cans purchased statewide last year

$1.2 billion: Annual CRV money collected by the state

1,200: Recycling stations near shopping centers statewide

160: Estimated recycling stations closed statewide since July

The last number there is a little scary because it shows that there are some infrastructure & financial issues in the recycling system. Widespread closures of recycling centers would hurt, for example, middle-class families who rely on recycling revenue for small luxuries & homeless people who count on bottles & cans for pocket money.

Dave raised the point this morning, when we discussed this issue, that situations that cause these shutdowns could result in a shock to consumers who have paid a deposit fee for those containers at the till & then discover that they will not receive a rebate.

However these returnable containers are still recyclable – even if your area no longer has a place to give you a rebate, you can still place the items in your existing recycling collection system along with your paper, glass & other recyclables…. plastic pop bottles in with the plastics, glass wine bottles in the glass bin… & aluminum cans in the same bin as soup cans, or metal collection bins, etc.

-- Conscious Discussions Radio --

Our guest today is small business coach, author and owner of Clarity to Business - Christy Strauch. The focus will be the 3-P's in life: Passion, Plan & Profit - we will cover common obsticles and how to overcome them, inner issues that may be holding us back from reaching our dreams, comparing business plans with book marketing plans, what is involved in starting a business & much, much more.

Join us for this hour-long discussion live at 10 AM (pacific) this morning - or access the archived interview at your convenience by clicking on the hyper-links located above, or to the right side of this blog's page.

Find Dave & Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, information about their radio shows & free resources & articles at www.brummet.ca

Interviews, interviews !

-- Quote of the Day --

“…Sometimes the best way to find out about true friendships is when something bad happens. …And I think you just have to realize that if you are always trying to have a positive impact on someone then your energy isn’t wasted. …If you do grow apart – that is OK… Don’t get upset about it; just think about it as something that needed to be there at the time. …One thing I do with my students is to teach them how to give back, such as writing a letter to the veteran’s hospital or care packages for the soldiers. The most important thing I can do right now is to teach the little ones that they can give back and they get so excited and look forward to what they can do next and then the parents get involved. …We can look at our neighbors to see how they are doing and if they need any help. …Don’t just hear a story and say “oh that’s sad”; we need to do something about it… be a mentor, a tutor or fill some need.”
~ Oct 27, ’09 - Michelle Atha

Today's quote originates from the Strength from Volunteering & Friendship interview that aired on the Conscious Discussions Talk Radio show on Oct 27th - check out the archived interview by clicking on the hyper-links here.

-- Announcements --

I just received an announcement from Ranga, an Author Success Manager at BookBuzzr.com, that our book Purple Snowflake Marketing is featured in the "Story Behind the Book " page today on their fReado home page. You can check it out at www.freado.com - the big box at the top is where you'll find us, use your mouse to scroll to the 4th page there to find our work featured.

I will be interviewed later this morning @ 10 AM (pacific) by Hugh Reilly - host of the Liquid Lunch Show, based in Toronto, Ontario (Canada). This will be a one-hour interview that airs live, however it will be archived for those who cannot make the live broadcast. http://www.thatchannel.com

-- Authors Read --

Today's featured guest on Authors Read Radio will be Yvonne Perry - a very good writer-friend of ours that we met many years ago and have had a wonderful networking relationship with. Yvonne Perry is a freelance writer, author and keynote speaker who enjoys assisting people. Yvonne is the owner of Writers in the Sky Creative Writing Services - a team of freelance writers and editors. She is the author of The Sid Series ~ A Collection of 12 Holistic Stories for Children, that build self-esteem and empower young ones to follow inner guidance and overcome fear. Today, she will be reading "Sid's Fairy ~ Learning About Inner Guidance" from the Sid Series book. Click on the hyper-links here or look to the right to find recently aired Authors Read Radio episodes.

Find Dave & Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, information about their radio shows & free resources & articles at www.brummet.ca