50 Shades of Green: Reinventing Community Reconnecting Humanity

By Catherine Elizabeth

Ok, I admit it. I am trying to trick you with my choice of title. I want to get your attention. The parallel with the fifty shades of grey production is absolutely intended. Of course you only understand what the heck I’m talking about if you’ve read the books or seen the movies. Anyhow, if I tell you right away that there is not much suspense or sexual content in this book, you may put it back down and I don’t want that. So let’s see if I can manage to get you excited about what excites me. Sexual energy is energy after all, and energy put towards any goal tends to yield results. My dream may already be your dream, maybe not yet, but it’s about making our common world a little better, a little greener. Any shade is good, because let’s be honest, we don’t all have the same level of motivation or opportunities; but a little greener is always possible. And a little greener over time means we are going in the direction of living more sustainably on this planet, in better balance with the natural world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jun 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9798765228098

Catherine Elizabeth

Grew up in Montreal, with two older brothers. French as a mother tongue, although fairly fluent in English by first grade. Skiing is a family affair. One turn at a time led to many a trip to mountain tops across the world, culminating in a few years of Downhill and Super G racing on the Alpine World Cup circuit in the mid 90’s. This preceded a five-year engineering study, NCAA skiing, and work adventure in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on scholarship as a member of the UNM Ski Team. Never a typical athlete, nor a typical engineer, but as fate would have it, Norway becomes home in 2001. Old continent but new world, new life, new language. Work in the petroleum industry, marriage, three kids, a farm purchase, and then a divorce steered towards a five-year retreat back to native roots. Newly returned to the land of the Vikings for round number two of life living, of learning & hopefully enough love spreading…

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ISBN: 979-8-7652-2808-1 (sc)

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Balboa Press rev. date:  06/16/2022

table of contents

fifty shades of what? huh?

it all starts with awareness

do not fear standing out

constantly becoming

the view from my bubble

one day baby we’ll be old

empowering

walking our walk

for the people

list of to do’s

take the plunge

spreading love

namaste

about the author

fifty shades of what? huh?

Ok, I admit it. I am trying to trick you with my choice of title. I want to grab your attention. The parallel with the fifty shades of grey production is absolutely intended. Of course you only understand what the heck I’m talking about if you’ve read the books or seen the movies. Anyhow, if I tell you right away that there is not much suspense or sexual content on the following pages, you may put the book back down and I don’t want that. So let’s see if I can manage to get you excited about what excites me. Sexual energy is energy after all, and energy put towards any goal tends to yield results. My dream may already be your dream, maybe not yet, but it’s about making our common world a little better, a little greener. Any shade is good, because let’s be honest, we don’t all have the same level of motivation or opportunities at every moment in this life; but a little greener is always possible. And a little greener over time means we are going in the direction of living more sustainably on this planet, in better balance with each other across the globe and in better balance with the entirety of the natural world. It means we finally understand our dependency on all other living things, and maybe we understand our own selves better too.

In order to make sustainability the new sexy, we need to understand the bottom line. The human body itself is made of stardust from the big bang, a collection of the exact same elements that are found all around us in all that we call nature: water, minerals, and organic matter. All that is being recycled over, and over, and over again through the cycle of life and death. Even the flesh of our ancestors literally becomes the dirt, the grass, the flowers, and the plants eaten by animals that, if fed to us, becomes part of our own flesh. It is undeniable that our bodies are part of the cycle. With this in mind, if we are made of the same stuff as the earth, then by treating the planet poorly, aren’t we treating ourselves poorly too? By not being mindful of our actions every single day, can we really grasp their impact on the planet?

It’s become quite obvious that human presence on Earth is increasingly disruptive to the entirety of the natural world, including ourselves. Seems we have collectively come to expect to receive the abundance of the natural world without taking responsibility to care for it in return. And there are so many of us now. What if we all started considering ourselves gardeners of this Earth? Ha! Ha! Ha! Ok I realise that sounds a bit odd, I known. Oh! And add a permaculturalist mindset to that and all problems would be resolved within a short time right? Ok, I’m dreaming still… I’ll be the first to admit that that’s pretty farfetched. In a way though, part of me thinks that the understanding of this alone would create a shift, and I hope you’ll understand why and how as you read through these pages. What I firmly believe is that this slight shift in mindset will create immeasurable changes.

I heard of a several weeks long conference on environmental issues that took place in California some years ago where the participating researchers and experts actually concluded that the absolute best way to fight climate change or to repair damages that we have caused the globe would be removing all humans for a while. The scientists essentially determined that the planet would repair itself if we humans would just stop meddling with it. I like to think that we may all prefer to change our ways a bit and adopt a different attitude about the planet instead.

And in any case I refuse to believe that removing us is the ONLY solution, or that it’s too late, despite the increasing media frenzy about climate change and global warming. I sometimes like to imagine this existence as a playground, where we all like