As I sit in my room no. 1 of the quaint Pousada Dona Zilah, a family owned and run inn located in the trendy Jardim district of São Paulo, a two story building surrounded by 10 to 15 story apartment blocks.
It’s raining and about 17 degrees in the Brazilian high summer (with usually 30+ degrees). Two days ago it rained and six people died (and three are still missing), mostly in favelas, the shanty-towns that were washed away by the storm. In one hour it rained as much as usually in one month.…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on December 5, 2009 at 1:00pm —
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Replanting a Rainforest began in earnest three weeks ago on October 20th, after having received a generous donation from WeForest.com. And things started happening in a big way.
Almost immediately a group representing our local partners, Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza (FAF) and the local NGO Grupo Ecológico Olho D’Agua, and neighbors with lands bordering on FAF, went to inspect and study more closely some of the areas which had been defined to be a part of the total project of almost 300 hectares;…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on November 11, 2009 at 6:00am —
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October 24th will surely go down in history for the many events, actions, rallies, and meetings. It's United Nations Day and it's International Day of Climate Action (
www.350.org). At Open World Café we are contributing by having an "Organic (Low Carbon) Food Day", one of more than 4500 actions in more than 180 countries (and we hope you join us, or any other 350.org event around the world)!
I would like this to go down in history as
Awareness…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on October 24, 2009 at 3:34am —
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We didn’t need the financial crisis to tell us that something was wrong. We didn’t need the environmental crisis to tell us something was wrong. Social injustices coupled with ignorance and poverty has been with us for a long time. There is no justification or excuse for the fact that more than half the population of the world, that’s more than 3,500,000,000 human beings, are unable to lead dignified lives; where fathers and mothers can’t bring home enough food for the family to eat a healthy me…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on October 18, 2009 at 9:00am —
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The Summer Olympic Games in 2016 will be held in Rio de Janeiro! What an opportunity to put "A Cidade Maravilhosa" (The Marvelous City) back on the world's map!
The Olympics are of course debatable; do they bring prosperity, or do they just cost a lot of money at the expense of other more important projects? Rio has many challenges, too many to think of (we lived there 2000 - 2002), but nothing comes close to the beauty, the friendliness, and sheer "joia" (joy) of it's it's people the "Carioca"…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on October 3, 2009 at 10:14am —
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For pictures from the event at Casa Decor UK
click here.
Coming from Stockholm to London is always an experience; the city is literally cooking with activity, you can feel the energy all around you; business is very much "happening", crisis or no crisis. I made the assumption that activities to alleviate the social, environmental and economic pressures on society and the planet would be equally powe…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on September 28, 2009 at 9:30am —
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From GreenBagTag, 2009-09-07 released at 15:00
With "Replanting a Rainforest" GreenBagTag™ and OpenWorld Foundation™ show how focusing on sustainability and biodiversity can put change on the fast track. "Replanting a Rainforest" is a project in three parts:
• Replanting of trees and flora and restor…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on September 16, 2009 at 3:56pm —
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Please enjoy this article on the benefits of SLOW, reprinted with permission from
Positive Psychology News Daily.
Savoring: In Praise of Slow
By Bridget Grenville-Cleave - August 26, 2009
The aim of life is appreciation - GK Chesterton
Why is it that the older you get, the faster time goes? When I was a kid, summers were always long, lazy, languid. Time seemed almost to stand still. The school vacations lasted…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on August 27, 2009 at 8:00am —
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... if we don't begin to think really hard about what we eat, will we have any chance at solving the physical and mental challenges we face as a species? And is it surprising that the western world (the so-called developed world) with fast-food and the processed food industry is responsible for the cataclysmic effect of man on the environment? How can we turn this trend around?
Let's think about what we eat, so that we can think clearly about the things we need to do.
Today is the last…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on July 30, 2009 at 6:00pm —
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The three "R's" can't be repeated often enough, so here is a small contribution. What is so good about the three "R's" is that it gives me a structure to pin my activities, and requires less conscious thought on my part, so I "think" about these things. But what do I do?
Reduce: When our two daughters moved out and away from Sweden to study, my wife and I moved from our 280 m2 rented house to a 120 m2 rented house 50 km north of the city, we also went from a gasoline station wagon using…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on July 26, 2009 at 4:37pm —
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"It's Too Late To Be A Pessimist"
Last week I received this link from a friend here on the community; Rafael Smart from "Cielos Patagónicos" in Argentina:
http://www.youtube.com/homeproject
Watch it! I urge you! This 90+ minute documentary is not only breathtakingly beautiful in the scenery of the Earth filmed from the air, it is a document of our time, with brilliant narration, and facts of human impact on the planet presented in a comp…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on June 8, 2009 at 9:57am —
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This is a chapter from the book by J. Krishnamurti; The Urgency of Change - `How to Live in this World'. My book edition is from 1971, printed by Victor Gollancz Ltd. the book is out of print as far as I know, but rare copies can be found in bookstores and online, and the whole text is available on the newly opened
JKrishnamurti.org site. For The Urgency of Change go…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on May 20, 2009 at 8:00am —
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OWEEP for the Earth!
Send us a Smile for an Open World!
All smiles going up on the Community and on "The Wall" at Open World Café Stockholm.
Upload your photo
here (or go to "Photos" and click "Add Photos") and/or add the photo as a comment below (click on camera icon).
Thank You!
The Open World Team
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Added by Christer Soderberg on May 19, 2009 at 9:30pm —
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What an opportunity!
Countryside living, organic fruit, vegetables, meat, and dairy. Inspiring dialogue, networking, and learning. Horses, Yoga, Zazen, river-rafting, trekking and relaxation. Experience an organic farm and sustainable community first-hand on the 850 hectare (2000 acre) Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza - FAF (
www.fafbrazil.com).
Times are challenging, for many of us. These challenges have helped make me aware, aware of the need for an alternati…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on May 11, 2009 at 9:27am —
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It's Sunday morning, and I'm sitting here in the kitchen looking out over the cove on the island where we live just north of Stockholm, part of an archipelago of over 40,000 islands. Spring is well on it's way, with crocus and snowdrops in full bloom, and birdsong a continuous background twitter announcing the light and the warmer weather. I am aware how fortunate I am, to have this experience and the time to think about it. But my thoughts are elsewhere.
Just over a week ago I found myself in…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on April 19, 2009 at 11:30am —
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I recently added the Terms of Use and a Privacy Policy to the left margin of the community page. The need evolved from some inappropriate activity of a since removed member.
I would greatly appreciate your feedback on these terms and policy items to make the community as open as possible, while respecting the integrity of members. I will of course choose to add or remove any items which you feel will help improve the Open World Café™ Community.
Looking forward to your comments and suggestions.…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on March 31, 2009 at 1:30pm —
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Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is making four separate grants - each for $200,000,- payable over 5 years, to support work on reducing climate change. We have entered our project, and need your vote to make one of these grants ours. Please visit (and vote!):
http://www.justmeans.com/competitionidea/9295/promoteidea.html
This is our project description:
Humanity has a problem, and it won't go away unless we change the…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on March 14, 2009 at 12:00pm —
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I am writing to tell you about a very happy event. In an agreement between Open World Foundation and Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza (Igaraí, S.P. Brazil), we have, effective immediately, begun a cooperation to replant 200 hectares of land with native Brazilian trees. The planting will begin in October and take place in lots of 10 hectares. October is the beginning of the planting and rainy season; raining regularly everyday (for a brief afternoon period of most days).
We are addressing individual…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on February 24, 2009 at 7:00am —
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Received this e-mail today, and want to share it with you. It's more than funny.
(To respect the copyright, please note that the author's website is:
www.wakeuplaughing.com)
Swami’s 2009 State of the Universe:
The Shift Has Hit the Fan: Welcome to the Sane Asylum
By Swami Beyondananda
Humanity has shifted its karma into surpassing gear, and political climate change has come to America. Thanks to a grassroots up-wising, we the people huffed and puff…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on February 17, 2009 at 8:35am —
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I found this story today on the blog of
Pausha Foley;
A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician pla…
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Added by Christer Soderberg on January 26, 2009 at 2:37pm —
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