Active Living

minimum wage was created, President Roosevelt declared its purpose was to “maintain a minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency, and general well-being.” With every increase the same objections and fears are brought up about inflammation, the loss of jobs, and essentially economic suicide. However, the minimum wage has been raised nine times now to keep up with the cost of living and America is still standing. Both critics and advocates of raising the minimum…

The Benefits of Raising a Vegetarian Child In the last decade, many Americans have transitioned to a vegetarian diet. With this shift, they have also transitioned their children into these diets as well. This change has been very controversial because most think that children will not receive the correct nutrition on a vegetarian diet. In the article “Against Meat”, written by Jonathan Foer, the idea of raising children vegetarian is discussed a great deal. Jonathan Foer is an American…

The modern homesteading community, is one of people seeking self-reliance and independence for a myriad of reasons through small scale independent farming and food preservation and crafting. The homesteader is more that just a famer and embodies a broad and contradictory spectrum of motives, affiliations, and material practices. (Wilbur, p.154). As Rebeca Kneale Gould states “the homesteader has converted to a new way of life in which the practice of everyday life is a chosen ‘answer’ to a…

homesteaders and began to look for more information. The autobiographies of other homesteaders become like a sacred text with guidelines of how to live this lifestyle. “Many have well-stocked libraries of books and magazines on simple living with serve as testament to a way of living that is both practical and philosophical, not just ‘how-to’ but ‘why you should’” (Gould, 1999, p.191). She goes on to say that if one considers the autobiographies as the sacred text, then nature itself becomes…

Living Does anybody know what the true meaning of life in this world or what it takes to be stress free or even to be successful in life? Well a person may ask his or herself these questions because he or she is trying to find the real reason to continue to live in this opinionated world or what is his or her true destiny is in life. In the story, “Walden”, by Henry David Thoreau wrote about the events and thoughts that came to his mind while he was living at Walden Pond. In 1854, Thoreau lived…

In his essay, “Walking,” Henry David Thoreau discusses a number of ideas on wilderness and society, and makes several bold claims about society’s detrimental effect on the “wild.” He begins by expressing his affinity for taking long walks on which he “saunters” outdoors. Thoreau explains that not everyone is equipped with the necessary disposition for these types of journeys and says, “no wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which are the capital in this profession.”…

have difficulty getting along with others, yet he has “great qualities of intellect and character,” as his close friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne described. Thoreau was an adventurous man who wanted to find out what life is. He tries to figure this out by living a deliberate life in the wood at Walden Pond. As Thoreau described, “I Went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it has to teach, and not when I came to…

In “Walden” Henry David Thoreau he describes his two year experiment on living with only the bare necessities of life. One of the themes of this story is “Economy”, he describes how he lived working and spending money on only the minimum to survive, and in the process he explains how he became spiritually free in the process. A work we read in class that had many similarities to “Walden” was, “A Way to Wealth” by Benjamin Franklin, he tackles many of the same viewpoints and beliefs about the…

wage or to establish a living wage or does it keep both and just vary by workers. First, what is a living wage and how does it differ from a minimum wage. A living wage seeks to provide a minimum standard of living versus a minimum wage, which is the lowest wage permitted to be paid by an employer and enforced by the state and federal government. On top of that living wage standards do not help those who actually need it; ie the poor and low skilled workers. Typically a living wage ordinance…

In early 20th century China, a soft wind glides the petals of a lotus tree across the spring sky. In the town, scents of fresh fruits and steaming rice from the markets flood the air. The pitches of venders and cries of beggars resonate throughout the street. Water sloshes and plunges to the cool ground from water carriers stumbling in and out of the town’s gates. Outside of the village walls, is a simple house made of earth. Here Wang Lung sits in the cold iron cauldron for a bath. In contrast…