Raising my boys on healthy doses of competitive sports over the years, I have had many opportunities to talk about what it means to have a game feel fair, regardless of win or loss. Teaching young players a healthy respect for their teammates, their opponents and the opportunity to do their best is what most of us parents really want our kids to get out of their sports experience. Now there is a company FairTradeSports.com that has taken the idea of respect and not only made it their ball’s trademark design, but brought the idea of building respect into the games of life to a new level of social entrepreneurship.

This company is a model of what good business can do and bring to our global community. By aligning themselves as a Fairtrade Labeling Organization they are committing to paying their partners in production a living wage for themselves and their families. If adults can pay for shelter, food, clothing, medical needs, emergencies, and expenses for education, then children no longer have to contribute to family income.

In addition the company also pays a 20% premium, which is used for improving the lives of the workers, their families and their communities. Programs which have been instituted include community clinics and healthcare insurance – a first in this industry – as well as micro-credit loans and more. These are major improvements for the some 44,000 people in Pakistan who are involved in making 70% of the world’s soccer balls at wages far below any standard of living.

Somehow, when I consider the number of balls my boys have gone through in their soccer years, it seems like I should have known some of this, but like most of what we buy, their source and the labor that went into it is disturbingly not part of the marketing package. In addition with all the good that you can do buying one of these fair trade balls, the pricing is remarkably competitive to what you would pay in any store.

So its a win-win all they way around. We get to throw our purchasing power into some truly respectable projects supporting the people in the world who make our games possible, and with every toss or kick, we teach our children through words and actions, that the real goal is in playing fair. For more information or to get one of these great balls for your kids upcoming season go to www.FairTradeSports.com

Having friends over to celebrate Earth Day and don’t know what to serve?  Let Earth Dinner help you plan your meal for your family or your community.

This event was started three years ago by America’s largerst collective of organic farmers: Organic Valley, to honor Earth Day with it’s own special meal.  This is akin to what we Americans do at Thanksgiving.  It has now grown and is taking root all over the nation.

“Many Americans are detached from what they eat and the tremendous impact of their food choices,” says Theresa Martinez, Earth Dinner Founder.

Go to their website, Earth Dinner to see which public events and fundraisers are taking place near you, or for recipe ideas for your own dinner.

The other day, I was watching my 5-year old niece, Chloe, at work, and one of my coworkers asked me why I started Fridge Box. I turned to my niece and asked, “Chloe, what color is a mermaid’s hair?” To which she answered, “Red!”

Red. The only mermaid Chloe has ever been exposed to is Disney’s Ariel: a trademarked character designed to fit within a stable of characters that a multinational corporation owns. In Chloe’s mind, there is only one mermaid, and she looks a certain way, and comes with certain friends and accessories (an orange crab, a blue and green fish, a white dress with a gold crown). But most importantly, Ariel the mermaid has red hair. Why does she have red hair? Because at the time, Disney already had a raven-haired character (Snow White), two blondes (Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella), and a brunette in the works (Belle from Beauty and the Beast). Ironically, their logic was probably, “Children like variety.”

Ask any child the name of an orange and white fish. 99% of them will answer, “Nemo!”

I’m not knocking Disney. I grew up on Mickey Mouse and Cinderella, and if you asked me, when I was 5, what an elephant’s name was, I would have said Dumbo. But, when I was 5, global media conglomerates didn’t control almost every story I heard as a child. I read a lot of books without pictures or movie tie-ins, so the pirates in my imagination weren’t advertisements for a whole division of merchandise made in China. I could make a pirate sword and hat from newspaper without feeling inadequate because my parents didn’t buy me the Jack Sparrow Deluxe Pirate Kit from the Disney Store. Most importantly, I had an imagination that was strong enough to see a Deluxe Pirate Kit where grown-ups could only see the Sunday Times. It’s a great thing, the imagination.

I hear a lot that technology will save us from global warming. What no one asks is, “Who will own that technology?” Because whoever owns it, will control the world, literally and figuratively. Disney owns Ariel, and it controls, in a very subversive way, what our children think about mermaids. And what will happen to those children, who have inadvertently sacrificed their imaginations in exchange for packaged solutions? They will be running the planet in 40 years – right around the time the last of the petroleum is circling the drain. If they are not already in the habit of imagining creative solutions to everyday dilemmas (like boredom), if they have been spoon-fed alternatives to resourcefulness and critical thinking their whole lives, how will they overcome the economic and ecological challenges coming down the pipeline at them? They won’t. They will be lost, and they will turn, once again, to those multinational corporations that solved their problems as children, because they never cultivated resourcefulness and creativity as essential survival skills. The scariest part is, I don’t know what’s worse: Disney not being aware of the long-term ramifications of controlling mermaids and pirates, or being totally aware of it and controlling them anyway.

People tell me all the time, “You know, as soon as Fridge Box takes off, someone’s going to copy it. You should get a patent on it.” Patent the cardboard box. That’s what we’ve come to. It’s all kids have left, the cardboard box! I hope every multinational corporation starts selling their own cardboard boxes. Because if 5 year olds around the world are turning cardboard boxes into pirate ships instead of buying Jack Sparrow Deluxe Pirate Kits from the Disney Store, we might still have a chance.

When Chloe said, “Red!” my coworker smiled and nodded. “I get it.” I shook my head a little. “Kids have no imagination anymore, you know?” I said, “It worries me, because that’s what’s going to save us from global warming. Not technology or multinational corporations. Resourcefulness and creative thinking. These will be the survival skills of the future, and they have to learn them now, so by the time they really need them, they’re prepared.”

April Capil is Director for Fridge Box, Inc. (www.fridgeboxworld.com)

Photographs by Rachel Capil

If you’re ready to encourage resourcefulness and creativity in your children, here are Ten Tips to get started:

1. Read to your child. Read, read, read to your kids!! It requires so much more thinking, listening, and comprehension skills than watching a movie or TV show filled with commercials for toys. Reading gives you connection time and encourages children to cultivate a love of reading and storytelling, which are essential to creative thinking.

2. Choose books without movie or product tie-ins. Whenever possible, pick books with original characters. We all like the Cat in the Hat and Curious George, but supplement these corporate-owned “classics” with original stories from lesser-known authors, or classic stories (like Strega Nona and Stone Soup) that haven’t been merchandised as much.

3. Beat Disney to the punch. The original Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie, was one of my favorite stories of all time, and I was lucky enough to read it before I saw a movie version. I was horrified to watch Disney’s animated Peter Pan and see Hook plant a bomb in the Lost Boys tree! If you want to introduce your child to a classic that’s already been appropriated, start with the original text.

4. Kick it old school. You don’t have to abandon TV and movies altogether; for many parents, TV is an integral part of family life. Think about content, though, and some of the older books and movies you grew up on that might not have had corporate-produced merchandise tie ins, but still carry the same messages you want your children to hear. Many are even available on DVD for the first time (Little House on the Prairie was always my sister’s favorite).

5. Play storytelling games. Ask your child to start a story with one sentence, like, “Once upon a time, there was a duck named Fred…” Take turns telling the story with your child, two or three sentences at a time. If the story starts to veer towards a movie or book you’ve read before (“Fred met a mouse named Mickey…”), re-direct it.

6. Don’t buy Halloween costumes. I was appalled that I only saw one original Halloween costume last year! When I was a child, all my Halloween costumes were homemade (with the exception of one year, when I was allowed a plastic Wonder Woman mask to go with a homemade outfit). This year, force your kid to use their imagination, and make time to help them make their own costume.

7. Get close to Mother Nature. You don’t need to go to a corporation-owned theme park to have fun. Take a local class in wilderness awareness (REI sponsors several Outdoor School classes), and look for ones that allow you to bring your children. It’s not as hard as you think to get to know the outdoors, and with the Internet, National Park Recreation Areas are easier to find than ever. Whether you’re at a lake, in the mountains, or on the beach, the outdoors can be a more amazing playground than any theme park.

8. Build something with your child. Start with a fort in the living room using blankets and sofa cushions, and graduate to a treehouse in the backyard. Instead of buying a plastic Barbie cottage from Toys ‘R Us, take a weekend and help your child build her own. Architecture and design involve all those critical thinking skills that are important to cultivate in future leaders.

9. Make room for inquisitiveness. I know, I know – questions, the bane of every parent’s existence! But they’re important! When your child asks, “Mommy, why is the sky blue? How do planes fly? Where do eggs come from?” instead of giving pat answers, make room for your child’s questions. Set aside a time once a week and call it “Three (or Four, or Ten) Questions.” Allow your child to come up with a certain number of specific questions each week, and write them on a white board or piece of paper on the fridge. On your set day, go to the library (or your in-home encyclopedia, or Google, if you feel comfortable) with your child and find out the answer to the questions together.

10. Pay attention. Diane Sawyer once said, “There is no substitute for paying attention,” and I have to say, I wholeheartedly agree. When you hear your child start to refer to all lions as “Simbas,” recognize the writing on the wall. It’s time for a trip to the local zoo to broaden their experience.

It isn’t just “in your head” anymore, an international study of two million people from over 70 countries confirms what many of us have always assumed: the happiest times in our life span make a “U” and with the “up times” early and late in life. In the middle of the dip are our middle years.

If, like me, you are knee deep in the mid-life dip then imagine your  relationship and your capacity to love as tools to stretch out the curve and soften the bottom of this bumpy life transition.   Remember the intensity of the love you invested in easier times and bank on it now, even if you can’t always feel it. The initial investment is still there. Take the time out of the busy schedule to listen, take a walk, or have a physical conversation.  Reach forward in time and realize how golden this will all feel when looking backwards.  Admittedly sometimes I can’t imagine it ever feeling golden, but I do know that there is a tenderness and connection that replaces and restores the bruises of moving through hard times.   No matter where you are in the life cycle of love, commit yourself to finding the love that surrounds you.

The scent of desire, it turns out has more to do with our biological imperative than we might have ever imagined. That magical x factor in seeking and connecting to your special someone is actually right under your nose- or at least in it. Author Rachel Herz’s new book The Scent of Desire will be the first of many volumes on the often overlooked olfactory system that will forever change how we think about our relationships. And even though I have long been promoting smell as our primary sexual sense, I had no idea that its reach went to the very core of the species regeneration.

Our sense of smell and what attracts or repels us, is blueprinted in our immunological gene structure called the MHC. Every individual’s own genetic scent makeup is as unique as their fingerprint. What’s more, when it comes to reproduction, the healthiest progeny comes from two individuals whose MHC is most distinct and different from each other. This assures that any offspring has the widest range of immune function and therefore is the most disease resistant. This actually makes perfect sense in terms of our biological imperative to go forth and multiply, but it also profoundly affects the whole courting process as well as the likelihood of making your love sustainable. MHC compatibility is a predictor of not only bearing healthy offspring, but relationship longevity and frequency of cheating on your partner.

Even more remarkable than the biological compatibility of scent between partners is the new recognition that our ability to smell is completely intertwined with our ability to feel.
Recent research on people who suffered anosmia (scent blind) usually from a traumatic injury to the head, shows that they also became unable to feel a wide range of emotions. “Our sense of smell and our emotional experience are fundamentally interconnected, bi-directionally communicative and functionally the same.”

Suddenly the axiom to “Wake up and smell the roses” is not just good advice but actually may save your life. Without scent, we lose the texture and depth that makes life the rich and varied tapestry that it is. Imagine not being able to smell or taste not just a ripe melon, but your lover, it would make the experience almost inaccessible. Practice smelling, indulge in scent and taste and bear witness to the emotional response that accompanies this. It will surprise you.

I have been promoting the use of true scent products that enhance your own natural chemistry for years, intuitively knowing that products made chemically are not just bad for your most sensitive tissue, but also covers up your own natural odor and may just interfere with our ability to find and smell our true mates. So take this message to heart and as you breathe- inhale deeply, build your vocabulary and experience of scent especially around the people you love most. It will make you feel better.

A great review of this topic can be found in the article Scents and Sensibility in this month’s issue of Psychology today(psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20071228-000001.xml ). The book is also definitely worth the price.

On February 14th 2008, Valentines Day rolls along beckoning us Green Girls (and Guys) to wonder how we can celebrate a holiday meant to embody the spirit of LOVE without necessarily feeding into the consumerist frenzy.

So I thought I’d write my first piece for Green Girls Global about ways to Green our Valentines Day celebrations with the true intention of celebrating our LOVE not only for our sweethearts, but also for Mother Earth. As a Green-solutions based Consultant and Holistic Health & Wellness Counselor for Eco Umbrella, here are some wonderful tips I’ve come up with for your green and gorgeous selves:

1. What’s Valentine’s Day without FLOWERS, right? Well, how about planting some lovely potted flowers in your yard with your honey instead of buying a bouquet. Or better yet, plant a tree together in honor of your love for each other (and mother earth) and watch it grow each year, change with the seasons, and grow some roots. If you must buy flowers, however, I’ve got a list of lovely florists that grow the ORGANIC kind – a much better alternative for the earth and your loved one. Just email me at KSurla@EcoUmbrella.com and I’d be happy to suggest some. Go for the local and organic kind if you can!

2. CHOCOLATE – a dear friend once told me that chocolate might be one of the best things about Valentines. I don’t know if I necessarily agree, but it has been part of the “tradition” as far back as I can recall. So what can you do? Give some lovely hints about how Organic Chocolate is the way to go both for the taste and overall impact on the environment. Fair Trade and Organic Chocolate is even better! Some yummy brands I’ve sampled are Seeds of Change which gives 1% of net sales to “advance the cause of sustainable organic agriculture worldwide”; Divine, which is Fair Trade Certified using Fair Trade Cocoa from a cooperative of “smallholder farms in Ghana”; and Travel Chocolate which is both Organic and Fair Trade. I picked some of these up from the most recent Green Festival in San Francisco.

3. So now we head to the ROMANTIC Candle-lit Dinner. Instead of going to an overpriced fancy shmancy restaurant, I suggest staying in and cooking a lovely organic meal together. If you’re a Green Girl with a garden, use some of the lovely fruits, vegetable and herbs you’ve been growing. Pick them off together, wash them together, cut & dice and slice them together and prepare a lovely romantic, personal and (soy-based) candle-lit dinner in the wonderful privacy of your own home. Who can resist an organic, home cooked, prepared-with-love meal? Food is the key to many hearts, including mine – especially the aforementioned kind.

4. But if you can’t cook, then make a lovely date and go to a local farmers market to pick out some fresh produce, lovely fresh baked breads, and some gourmet dishes straight from the local farms that may make their own cheeses from happy and free roaming cows & sheep. Try out some new organic produce that you’ve never had a chance to taste and share. Create your own lovely picnic basket fresh from the farmers market.

5. After a stroll through the local farmers market, take a bike ride or walk to a local park, beach, or desert – whatever lovely nature spot tickles your fancy – and have a romantic picnic. Bring your own re-useable utensils from home and enjoy each other’s company in nature – a wonderful way to celebrate with Mother Earth herself.

6. So I’ve covered the flowers, chocolate, romantic dinner and food as well as some potential locations out in nature, so let’s get to the best tip of all, and my most favorite…. – for the non-conformist in all of us, why not make Valentines a celebration with friends, family and loved ones instead. Sometimes its not just about the two of you, but about the community around you – so incorporate some of the tips from above and make Valentines a festive gathering of your most beloved. Invite your friends to celebrate Valentines with you together out on the beach or go for a picnic. Share the LOVE and maybe even make it a Tree Planting Valentines gathering to give a little back to Mother Earth herself. Make love with each other. Be love. Give love.

I hope you have a fabulous Valentine’s day in 2008!

“You are what you love, not what loves you. That’s what I decided a long time ago.” I have remembered this concluding line of a conversation between Nicolas Cage and himself (when he played the twin writer brothers in the 2002 movie “Adaptation”) for over five years. I have many times thought back on it over all the stories of unrequited love that I have heard since then. Donald knew something most of us miss, sometimes for a whole life- that the love we feel for who or what ever we feel it, is our own. Loving is not something we are given permission to feel or a feeling that anyone can take away.

This might be one of the biggest misconceptions ever perpetrated about love. There is this pervasive embodiment of the experience as a coupled experience, it’s legitimacy resting in it’s reciprocation. When love is withheld, rejected or takes some other form, the one who loved first is belittled, even if only in his/her own mind. Maybe that’s why I have always remembered Donald, who couldn’t care less whether, Sarah, the object of his love felt that way too. He knew that the gift of the experience was his.

The stories of unrequited love and the range of tragedy and heartbreak from love unmet has filled the airways since we began to sing or tell our stories. The universality of the loss experienced by love gone wrong, or never really given a chance, or interrupted too soon by tragedy is something we all share. The pain is as deep and real as any cut with a knife. The sadness and loneliness of loving and losing the object of our love is searing like a burn and shadows us for weeks, sometimes months. This is the story that many of us never get over, sometimes keeping us away from the prospect of loving again for years.

Why we can’t celebrate the love we feel without it being reciprocated has a lot to do with our latent feelings of unworthiness (Don’t worry it’s not you- it’s the whole culture). As soon as you are not good enough, the original experience of love, which is the highest feeling we can experience degenerates in less than a minute to a feeling of shame. Or if we are angry, then it is easy to find blame, making the object of our love not worth the feeling to begin with. Either way, we lose access to the purest and most instructive feeling we can muster.

Realizing that we are what we love and not what love’s you is a revolutionary approach to opening your heart and discovering a capacity to embrace the world that you might not have known you are capable of. Loving builds emotional literacy and gives you the courage to feel the loss of love with grace and forgiveness. A loving and compassionate heart begets more love. The more you practice love with out the shame or the blame, the more love comes to you. Guaranteed.

When it comes to resolutions, think small and work to remain consistent.  Someone told me a long time ago that if you can change any area of your life by a consistent five percent, the effects will be remarkable.   The truth of this is mirrored in the reality of global warming.   Even changes of a single degree can change everything.  Just a few years ago what was imperceptible even to scientists, was altering the landscape of our collective future.   This 5% rule applies to our personal ecosystems as well.   The smallest of changes in how we communicate in, show up for, and think about our relationship can and does alter its course.

Bad things happen fast, good things take time.  This is the caveat about how the five percent rule works.   Accidents, illnesses, forces of nature like hurricanes or tornados arrive in a moment, often with no warning.   Personal catastrophes like divorces can fall into the middle of your world like a tidal wave.  How is it possible that we could not see these things coming?   Relationships are fragile eco-systems and just as in the aftermath of a storm, rebuilding and recuperation is a process which takes the time and patience that is the daily work of sustaining.

It is easy to get burnt out in this daily work of relating, it is the hardest work that we are asked to do.    People are annoying, even the very best of them and especially when you live with them and are charged with their care.   This fact can apply to growing families or aging parents as easily as it does to our primary partner.    Keeping relationships healthy and being willing to heal the ones that are ailing is not a quick fix solution, it is a resolution to keep the five percent rule in action.   It is being willing to do the one extra act of kindness each day.  It is taking the time to listen even when you have heard enough.  It is finding the energy to be intimate even when you don’t feel connected.  It is the laundry and the dishes and one more trip to the grocery store.

The five percent rule is a good resolution to take on no matter what your life situation.  Another way of thinking about it is the continuous improvement plan, where we agree to remain vigilant to our own attitude and willingness to participate.  It acknowledges that we aren’t going to be perfect or expect perfection, but rather with realistic intentions, we strive to be just a bit better than yesterday.   It respects the time that it takes for small, seemingly imperceptible changes to be felt and experienced.

Making a resolution to live with a five percent improvement plan is a heroic act.  Not only do you courageously embrace the unpredictable and certain falling apart that happens in every life, but you simultaneously hold your heart open to trying to make the small acts of living softer and more bearable for the people you love.    It is a resolution that you can keep because it commits you to a process rather than an outcome and gives you the freedom to miss the mark some days.

So go ahead, resolve to get better at whatever you choose- or what the heck, just resolve to get better in your whole life, but just go for five percent.  It’s plenty.

Every now and again we are given the gift of true presence. Usually it is when we are faced with the stark reality of life ending, whether it is through the death of someone or something beloved. The details that we often think of as life itself, fall away and the mystery of our frail human form and relationships that make life meaningful is all that we have, and all that we ever really had.

This naked place of pure presence is not an easy one to live in- we know in these moments of pure love and connection, pure loss and loneliness that our emotions are not thoughts in our head, but physical weighty forces that fill our physical body so completely that they have the power to alter our senses. Falling in love is a full body experience, one that alters how we see everything- a more powerful drug you can’t find on the planet.

The same is true for grief, especially grief that we don’t allow ourselves to experience. Feeling the weight of our own sadness is frightening. There is no deeper emotional access to the present moment than our sadness and grief. Yet feeling the full force of these emotions often reminds me of my kids when they were three years old, just old enough to get their experience but without a big enough body to contain it or a language to express it. Witnessing the trauma of a full on tantrum is enough to make any sane adult choose to repress it, the power of the feelings are as large as any force of nature.

When it’s over, I want to say: All my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. Mary Oliver

Giving yourself or someone you love this gift of pure presence is the most amazing and life changing gift you can offer. Here’s the truth… it doesn’t work to repress our feelings. Our experience of life deserves to be witnessed and shared. All that is not given the air and space in the world around us will like any force of nature so transform and alter our internal landscape that we can’t find our presence- with ourselves and not with the people we long to love the most.

Eternity is not waiting to happen after you die, it is happening right now- and the meaning and love that you have the chance to make in your life is the only gift that will really count when your days are over. So instead of just exchanging physical gifts this holiday season- open your arms wide to the stories and feelings that make our presence real and our relationships sustainable.

My gift for the season was launching my new website www.goodcleanlove.com.  Come visit and share your stories of sustainable love.