Sustainable Skills = Quality of Life

Curious about the Future? How do you spend your Curiosity?
Worry is emotional curiosity, wondering is intellectual curiosity. I do plenty of both and discovered, the ability to direct curiosity toward the intellectual wondering and away from the emotional worrying is a valuable skill. It changes the question from "What is going to happen to me?" to the answerable "What can I do to sustain my quality of life given these uncertain times?" The method we choose most often becomes the stronger skill.

The more skills, the better. I attended a lecture by Dr Ross Greene, child psychologist and founder of the Collaborative Problem Solving Method of parenting spirited or challenged children. This style of teaching/communicating/parenting is a good basis for any relationship I can imagine. It's all about having and sharing skills. Children act out and act up when asked to do a thing because they don't have the skills to do what is asked. Same as anyone who is faced with a task, if you don't have sharpened skills there may be; a confidence crisis, a stressful situation to face, a mistake made, a second choice turned to... all manner of not-great things can result from not really knowing the best or smartest way forward.

Most often, we have a a system in place and follow habit, such as buying gas and groceries, doing the laundry....  actually 40% of what we do in a day is pure habit. Reference Dr. Charles Duhigg and his book, The Power of Habit to learn a valuable skill. He describes how habit works in our psyche and in our life, then describes the how to replace the habits that don't serve you well as you learn better ways. Brilliant information, can you imagine how much easier our teen life would have been if we had Psyche 101 in 5th grade? We all have a personality, a psyche, and no one learns how they work unless you end up in counseling at 40 something or you spend big money and study it in college. A fifth grader could easily understand the basics described by both Drs Greene and Duhigg. It's all about skills, my darlings.

Lewiston Adult Ed is an excellent resource for learning skills. That is where I taught myself to teach. I  audited the Sustainability Class' Senior Seminars at USM's Lewiston/Auburn College. There I experienced a room full of enthusiastic students and the marvelous Professor Nemeroff, each one learning and sharing the very skills we, our community and our culture need to maintain our quality of life for the 21st Century. I've been so blissfully steeped in learning and teaching skills lately, I can't get enough. So, I am hosting the first annual Festival for Sustainable Skills at my urban farm, Town Flower Farm, at 42 Fern Street, in Auburn on May 31st.   The Festival is presented by Green Path Journey, a new organization coming into being with this event. Green Path Journey is education based, promoting healthy lifestyles by teaching sustainable skills and providing alternatives to the dangerous chemicals in everyday household and personal care products. cool, eh?


                                                    Festival for Sustainable Skills
                          May 31st, Town Flower Farm @ 42 Fern Street, Auburn, Maine
                           easy access from I 95 Auburn Exit 75 or from Route 4/100
                                       11:00 to 3:00 pm      *      Rain or Shine

Speakers will have a room with seating, demonstrations in the adjoining kitchen, garden tours, BYO Picnic and music will be outdoors and will not conflict with the indoor events.

confirmed speakers/demonstrations
Safe Effective Inexpensive Homemade Evergreen Cleaner 
          Betty Allen of Maine*taine
Safe Effective Inexpensive Homemade Body Lotion  
         Jessica Keneborus of Green Path Journey
Hobby Gardener to Urban Farmer in Auburn  
         Betty Allen of Town Flower Farm
Tour of the Herb Gardens   
         Leslie Williams , Herbalist
B Y O Picnic  picnic tables provided by
          A. Perron contracting

I have asked: Grow L+A, Young Living Essential Oils, the Weston A Price Foundation for Wise Traditions, Auburn City Hall's Planning and Permitting Department, Garbage to Garden community composting in Portland and a few others to speak or play music. Speakers will  have 20 minutes or so, and start on the hour and half hour.

May 8th is my deadline for confirmations, I will post and print the advertisements shortly thereafter, for 3 weeks of exposure.

I am having so much fun putting this together and the Festival will be even more fun. I will post more info after this week's gathering of speakers is completed.

Read The Power of Habit, I guarantee your quality of life will spike having gained the skills to use your habits to your advantage, not to advantage those entities who control the most predatory of influences, advertising.

Read any of Dr Ross Greene's writings on Collaborative Problem Solving. Every relationship you have will benefit from the skills you will learn.

It's all about the skills. Be well, my darlings.