Projects

As long as I can remember, I’ve been an innovator. I started a school for the neighbor kids – before I could read. This is typical – I start things I have no idea how to do… and then learn on the “job”. That’s where the fun is. Here are the ones that have been designed for social change:

• Your Money or Your Life. Joe Dominguez and I wrote this book based on his 9-step program for personal financial transformation, developed in the 1960s, lived fully in the 1970s, taught as a seminar in the 1980s and published as a book in 1992. In 2008 I updated and revised the book with new information about saving, spending and investing money, new stories and stats and a new introduction for our times. In the Fall of 2009 Tele-Classes begin to help you deepen your understanding of the approach and to do the steps of the program.
• Conversation Cafes. In Summer of 2001, two friends (Habib Rose and Susan Partnow) and I ran an experiment in drop in dialogue, wanting to help create a culture of conversation. We asked, “What’s the minimal structure that will allow friends neighbors and stranger, in pubic places like cafes, shift from small talk to BIG TALK?” Out of that came the “Conversation Cafe method“. After 9/11 we commited to spread this method “everywhere”, launching a city-wide Conversation Week in January 2002.  During the 2004 election we launched Let’s Talk America (dialogue across the Red-Blue Divide) on the CC platform.
• New Road Map Foundation. Currently NRM’s focus is a set of study and teaching tools for the 9-step program at www.financialintegrity.org. In 1984 Joe Dominguez, several friends and I started NRM to spread the 9-step program in YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE and distribute the proceeds to other non-profits. Over a decade and a half we gave away a total of a million dollars to 800 small groups. Over time we expanded our work to health, relationships and more to, as our mission said, “foster a cooperative human community in a diverse yet interconnected world by creating and disseminating practical tools and innovative approaches to personal and cultural change. We promote love and service as routes to personal and social well-being.”
• Transition Whidbey is “catalyzing our community to work together towards greater food, energy and economic self reliance”. Inspired by a Transition Towns member’s visit in September 2007, some friends and I started TW which has grown to a network of almost 250 members who serve on action groups, participate in Potlucks with a Purpose and are personally committed to sustainable living.
• Turning Tide Coalition is a heart-centered think tank of successful social innovators, convened in 1999 and meeting to this day. Seeking to “turn the tide” towards a sustainable, just and thriving world, we asked “What is the intersection of utter necessity, what we must do to survive, new possibility, what we can do now that we couldn’t even 5 years ago, and human longing, what people would do in an instant if they only knew how?” From our intensive work came a structure and content of a communication which was a building block for the Symposium, as well as the Conversation Cafes and the Simplicity Forum and other books and initiatives.
• Sustainable Seattle was formed in 1990 by a small band of early sustainability adopters including Alan AtKisson, Richard Conlin, Steve Nicholas, Nea Carroll, Alex Steffen and more. We wanted to make sustainability relevant to every aspect of city life – and our Indicators of Sustainbility reports put us – and sustainabilty – on the map.
• Liberating Limits is what I call my work, post Your Money or Your Life, on rethinking freedom in a world with limits – or helping Americans fall in love with limits the way they’ve fallen in love with freedom. This is the unpublished postscript to Your Money or Your Life.