Part II - You MIGHT be an Environmentalist.....

Part II - - You MIGHT Be an Environmentalist…

..if you drive through the Cherokee National Forest and feel the spirit of ancient native people.

..if you attend a baby shower, see the mountains of plastic stuff and know that it never used to take this much fossil fuel to have a baby.

..if you’ve ever sneaked onto your neighbor’s construction site and pulled the perfectly good lengths of 2X4 out of the dumpster to use on a backyard project.

..if you wish that “bio-accumulation” were a collection of critters.

..if you get an ulcer whenever you catch a glimpse of clear cut beyond the “beauty strip”.

..if you’ve ever had a small part on an appliance repaired for $125 when you could have bought a new one for $135.

..if you have ever attended a public hearing in defense of national forests.

..if you ever hugged a tree and felt like it was hugging you back.

..if you ever skipped doing laundry for 3 weeks cause you were waiting to wash a full load.

..if you ever left a beautiful rock right where it is, because God put it there.

..if you’ve ever bragged about your compost heap.

..if you regularly visit earthmama.org to check on the latest news.

..if you’ve ever had to explain to someone why Earth Literacy is vital.

..if any of your heros are George W Carver, Rachel Carson, Chico Mendes, David Suzuki, Johnny Appleseed, Donella Meadows.

..if you’d rather be outdoors.

..if you know the names of 4 endangered species.

..if you know what IPM is.

..if you’ve ever dreamed of living in a tree.

..if you can name your 3 favorite creeks without stopping to think.

..if you give your cat lessons in mouse hunting.

Part I - You MIGHT be an Environmentalist...

Holiday Wreath made from discarded sheet music.

Part I --You MIGHT be an Environmentalist….

..if you insist on your coffee being organic, shade grown (to protect the songbird habitat) and labeled “fair trade”.

..if you tote your rotten apple core 74 miles home to put it in your compost pile rather than pitch it in a trash can.

..if you limp when you walk because you recently darned the holes in your socks, and it is a new skill, so they are lumpy!

..if the only cleaning supplies in your house are salt, baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice and borax.

..if you haven’t used a chemical on your lawn since you read the ingredients and knew the dandelions and butterflies wouldn’t like it.

..if every time you see a child having an asthma attack and silently cuss out makers, sellers and drivers of SUV’s.

..if you only want to go to the food store when you have four items left in your refrigerator and none of them are tofu or fresh fruit.

..if you count down the days to Household Hazardous Waste Day to dispose of your used batteries, paints, solvents, household chemicals and computers and parts.

..if you think that Julia “Butterfly” Hill should have been Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for the two years she tree-sat in Luna.

..if you always cheer for the Indians in the old westerns—and you still regularly want to defend native peoples.

..if you watched 3 people on your block die of the same rare disease and begin to study eco justice issues.

..if you use leftover water in glasses from meals to water your houseplants instead of dumping in down the drain.

..if you can describe the difference in mission of Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense Fund and Audubon Society.

..if you struggle with the issue of living sustainably in a consumer world.

..if you’ve held a child in your arms as you read about degraded air and water quality and whispered, “How can we do this to you?”

..if your favorite “good clothes” came off the Final Clearance rack at Goodwill.

..if you’ve ever asked a loved one to save their bath water so you can use it next, knowing aquatic life downstream need the next tub full more than you do.

..if you’ve read about sustainability successes Kerala, Curitiba, and Gaviotos and thought: "Why can't we do this in more communities?"

..if your jewelry collection is made mostly from rocks, string and dried mushrooms.   

..if you shopped your entire Christmas list while only buying things from groups that are committed to Earth restoration.

..if your friends can recite by heart your speech about the dangers of pesticides to children.

..if you’ve ever saved all your dryer lint to stuff a pillow.

..if you hang wet clothes all over the house, rather than use the dryer, because besides saving power it humidifies your dry winter house.

..if you’ve ever called the hotel desk and asked them to leave the same sheets on the bed  for the 4 days you’ll be in the room.

..if you’ve ever stood in your backyard in the rain in your skivvies laughing at how good it felt.

..if you wretch every time you hear the word disposable.

..if you compost because you know that  “a rind is a terrible thing to waste.”

Where Did This Come From? Link to song

Where did that come from? 
Where has it been? In what other forms?

I love to play “Where does this come from?”, picking any item in a room and tracing the path of a book or chair, iPad, or cookie all the way back to it’s basic components.  A tree in Asia, sugar grown in Florida? Rare Earth element from Africa for an electronic component?  What kind of energy transported it to each step of its making? How many times did it need to be handled. What was the cost in air and water quality? 

This is a wonderful car game for families. It helps us see in our possessions just how interconnected we are on this planet.
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First Law of Ecology: You can’t do just ONE thing. Everything is connected.


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My love of planet Earth comes from such a deep spiritual place, that it has no words. When I play “Where does this come from?”  it inevitably goes back to the beginning of the Universe.

Surely along the way of Where Did This Come From, you will find a song to sing about a place or resource, so Sing Out!


Songs connect the whole world in weaving wonderful way!

My work has taken me from schools in the Hawaiian Islands to cathedrals and concert halls throughout North America. Nature centers and converted barns have been favorite places to sing and share the joy of wonders of Earth.  Whether at a University or a House Concert hosted in someone’s home, there is no sweeter music to me than when people join in and sing along.  Pete Seeger used to say that “Singing together strengthens the bonds of community.”  I think we can sense that power when we join together in song.

If You Need a Chair— Act Locally for stronger communities

IF YOU NEED A CHAIR BY JOYCE ROUSE 

Happy Chairmaker by Todd Price ©2013 Original oil painting. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

This song is on my CD  “A Sense of Place” by Earth Mama. One of the main themes of the album is to honor whatever place you chose to live in. I love our local farmers market and meeting the people who grow our food.  As we discover more local products, I have greater respect for the artisans, growers, crafters, and creators of useful items we have right here in my community. And probably in yours! I wanted this song to have a global musical feel and honor many cultures, with humor, fun rhymes and places to sing along with “la la la” syllables.  I hope people will get up and dance around and sing harmony when they hear this song. And perhaps inspire people to make stronger communities by shopping for locally made goods. Maybe it will even promote supporting local music...  La La La La LA!

For music and lyrics click here: If You Need a Chair

This was first posted on the Children's music network blog in september 2015. reposted here with their permission

Buy Local Music, Song of Community!

Another way to Buy Local...

Ten to twenty thousand dollars to produce, record, and manufacture a CD.  Yup, your favorite local band or singer-songwriter finds a way to scrape together the money for studio time or very expensive equipment, hire a graphic designer, and order a thousand units, just so their fans can buy a CD, to play in the car, at a party, on their computer.

Buy their CD, you get the songs, liner notes and musician credits, artwork, the songs playing in an order designed to build for your enjoyment. All this for $15!

The musician gets to use the proceeds from the sale to pay for the project and to keep making music for you. Or you can buy a song by download on iTunes or Amazon and the artist will get paid anywhere between 4¢ and 65¢.  Hear it via a streaming service and musicians get paid  .000007.  Burn a copy of the music for yourself or a friend and you break a musician’s heart.  Creators of music have come to refer to services such as Spotify or Pandora as “digital parasites”  because the service makes millions, artists and musicians now make —this is
 really the term on our statements—micro-pennies.

So, if you want to hear music in your community, and support local economies, please support your local musicians.  If you like their songs, please buy the CD.  If they are using social media, connect and share them in your network. If they are connected to a rising indie label, check out the other artists on the label. The photo in this post is my dear friend, Jim Stoltz, or Walkin' Jim as he is often called. He walked thousands of miles across the United States, performing and supporting environmental activism in communities where people came together to raise money AND for music!

We all have these generous souls in our communities.These are the same musicians and bands that show up and donate their time and talent (and equipment and gas) for every good cause and fund raiser in the community.  Please show them a little love and appreciation and buy their CD.  For yourself, or for a friend.

Music, the universal language. Support it locally. Thank you.