The boy in the picture is Jacob Philadelphia of Columbia, Md. Three years ago this month, his father, Carlton, a former Marine, was leaving the White House staff after a two-year stint on the National Security Council that began in the Bush administration. As departing staff members often do, Mr. Philadelphia asked for a family photograph with Mr. Obama.
When the pictures were taken and the family was about to leave, Mr. Philadelphia told Mr. Obama that his sons each had a question. In interviews, he and his wife, Rosean, said they did not know what the boys would ask. The White House photographer, Pete Souza, was surprised too, as the photo’s awkward composition attests: The parents’ heads are cut off, Jacob’s arm obscures his face, and his older brother, Isaac, is blurry.
Jacob spoke first.
“I want to know if my hair is just like yours,” he told Mr. Obama, so quietly that the president asked him to speak again.
Jacob did, and Mr. Obama replied, “Why don’t you touch it and see for yourself?” He brought his head level with Jacob, who hesitated.
“Touch it, dude!” Mr. Obama said.
As Jacob patted the presidential crown, Mr. Souza snapped.
“So, what do you think?” Mr. Obama asked.
“Yes, it does feel the same,” Jacob said.
(Isaac, now 11, asked Mr. Obama why he had eliminated the F-22 fighter jet. Mr. Obama said it cost too much, Isaac and his parents recounted.)
In keeping with a practice of White House photographers back to Gerald R. Ford’s presidency, each week Mr. Souza picks new photos for display. That week, Jacob’s easily made the cut.
“As a photographer, you know when you have a unique moment. But I didn’t realize the extent to which this one would take on a life of its own,” Mr. Souza said. “That one became an instant favorite of the staff. I think people are struck by the fact that the president of the United States was willing to bend down and let a little boy feel his head.”
David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s longtime adviser, has a copy framed in his Chicago office. He said of Jacob, “Really, what he was saying is, ‘Gee, you’re just like me.’ And it doesn’t take a big leap to think that child could be thinking, ‘Maybe I could be here someday.’ This can be such a cynical business, and then there are moments like that that just remind you that it’s worth it.”
Humility of a charismatic president.
6 Ideas for Sensible Homes (via Yes! Magazine)
Note: This work was originally published by Yes! Magazine and is licensed under Creative Commons License
Small, supportive, affordable, recycled—and you can build your own.
Sensible Home #1: It’s Small
Ella Jenkins is building the home of her dreams. It has pine floors and a yellow front door. And it’s 130 square feet, mobile, and currently sitting in her parents’ yard.
Jenkins, 23, is building her little house with the help of her stepdad after years living in college dorm rooms and couch surfing while she studied music in Scotland. She knew her degree in Scottish harp music and Gaelic singing would not be especially marketable, and she found Southern California rent to be “staggeringly high.” “I could not support myself doing what I want to do when I need to pay rent,” she says.
Family and friends weren’t initially sure about her building her own house. Her parents were worried. Her sister thought she was nuts. “I’ve never built anything in my life,” Jenkins says.
But her stepdad, Rick Lanes, has been helping out since she began construction in September, lending his tools and helping her frame her house while she lives with Lanes and her mother in Frazier Park, outside Bakersfield.
Though she’s faced constant challenges in home construction, and “near-death” experiences with ladders, she hopes to be finished with her home this summer. And she hopes it will be an end to the constant moving that comes with young adulthood and earning money as a street musician. “Right now everything’s totally up in the air,” Jenkins said. “What I love about the tiny house is it doesn’t change, it’s your house.”
Photo Essay:
Follow Ella as she builds.
Along the way, she has found ways to cut costs. In addition to borrowing her stepdad’s tools and experience as a carpenter, she has found fixtures inexpensively on the Internet, and her neighbor has helped with electricity and plumbing. Recently, she found a manzanita branch to use as her front porch post.
On top of gaining a home for herself, Jenkins developed a strengthened bond with her stepdad. “It’s been such a fun year. I’m going to be really sad when I have to leave.”
Though it may not be everyone’s dream house, it’s just what Jenkins wants.“I just feel this wonderful feeling of peace,” she says of her house. “I just walk in and feel it’s huge.”—Lynsi Burton
Sensible Home #2: It’s Not Owned By a Bank
Ameen’s president Ajaz Khan at the co-op office. His own house is pictured second row, far left.
Photo by Paul Dunn for YES! Magazine.
Six years ago, Ajaz Khan, an engineer in Santa Clara, Calif., was trying to figure out how to buy a home without violating the Islamic law prohibiting usury, which effectively rules out conventional mortgages. How do you buy a home without a mortgage, especially in pricey Silicon Valley?
He turned to Ameen Housing Co-op, the nation’s first Islamic real estate investment trust. Ameen purchases primary residences with money from other homeowners and investors within the Muslim community. A typical homebuyer puts down 30 percent and then rents the home from the co-op based on local fair-market rents. Part of the rent goes to pay the investors and part goes to buy back shares of the house. All that mortgage interest that would have gone to a bank—one of the largest budget items for middle-class households—becomes, instead, modest quarterly dividends for investors, keeping the money within the community. After the final shares have been bought back from the co-op—this has taken as little as three years and as many as 11—the house is appraised, and the gain or loss in value is shared.
So far, 15 homes have become fully owned by members since Ameen began in 1996, and 25 more are in process. Ameen currently funds only four houses per year. Khan is now the volunteer president of Ameen and works with homeowners when they have financial difficulties. “The whole intent is to help provide homes. The goal is not about profit or loss,” he said.
The idea of communities stepping in where mortgage banks have failed seems to be catching on. Khan has had recent inquiries from Muslim and non-Muslim groups about how to set up similar cooperatives. “Any group of people can do this, especially if they can put helping each other above profit.”
Sensible Home #3: It’s Built With Reused Materials
Video: Recycled Houses
Raid the dump, not the lumber aisle.
Dan Phillips is a rare hero of the built world. He combines artistry, eco-thinking, and social justice in his company Phoenix Commotion of Huntsville, Texas, which builds— crafts, actually—one-of-a-kind homes made 80 percent from construction site cast-offs and landfill-bound materials. He builds them specifically for low-income families and requires clients to help him build the house. His ultimate goal is to challenge the building industry. Freed from the “tyranny of the two-by-four and four-by-eight,” he says, we can build a house out of anything. And he’s proved it.
Sensible Home #4: It’s Not Full of Stuff
Theologist Dave Bruno wrote the book on minimalist living. The 100 Thing Challenge: How I Got Rid of Almost Everything, Remade My Life, and Regained My Soul documents his family’s rejection of consumerism and its quest to get unstuck from all the stuff they had accumulated by paring down to 100 things. “For years I lived with stuff instead of contentment.” Through the book and his guynameddave.com blog, he is guiding thousands of people through “The 100 Thing Challenge,” directing earnest discussions such as “does each fork count as one thing, or is silverware one thing?” He gets a lot of questions about what stuff to get rid of, so YES! Magazine asked him what he decided to keep among his 100 Things. His answer: Books. “Our lives are such wonderful stories. There is nothing like a physical book at home.” Also, comfortable furniture, for family and friends to tuck into for a long conversation. He knows some minimalists who have only a couple of chairs and a bed. “If we’re going to invite people into our lives and tell them that they are more important than stuff, we should be able to offer them a place to comfortably hear about it.”
Sensible Home #5: It’s a Hub
Sensible Home #6: It’s Supportive
Carmel Sullivan and her son.
Confronted with post-divorce anxieties about living alone, Carmel Sullivan started connecting with other single moms. In addition to a shared sense of loneliness, Sullivan learned of the harsh living arrangements many single mothers were in. She felt there should be a reliable resource to help single mothers connect with one another for shared living. Enter CoAbode.org, whose mission is to provide support and services that connect women raising children alone. Through partnerships with organizations around the country, CoAbode connects single mothers with affordable housing, support groups, educational scholarships, and community outreach. The online membership application is free. Once a good housing match has been made, mothers either move into a new living space or into one of their existing homes. They pool finances and resources to improve living conditions for themselves and their children; they share meals, household chores, and parenting responsibilities. According to Sullivan, “The difference between what we are helping to facilitate and just ‘renting a room’ is that our clients really do end up sharing lives. They are not just roommates—they become blended families.” —Heidi Bruce
YES! Magazine encourages you to make free use of this article by taking these easy steps. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License 
Commuting by bike is green and fast. But It’s not be the safest way to go around in most cities where there’s no bike lane or safe bike parking due to lack of political will to implement sustainable living policies and poor urban planning . Worst of all, in many countries people always just look down at anyone who rides a bike.
An 86-year-old, real-life Robinson Crusoe (by sumigal010)
He bought an island in the Indian Ocaen in the 1960s, planted trees and rears 120 giant tortoises. He refused to sell the island for use as island resort. The Moyenne Island has recently been declared by the Seychelles government as a national park.
![unconsumption:
Repair Cafes: An Effort to Bury a Throwaway Culture One Repair at a Time
There’s so much to love about an effort that involves volunteers — helping each other while strengthening a sense of community — and encourages people to repair items they already own. (All key aspects of Unconsumption, as many of you are aware.)
Our friends at Do The Green Thing recently wrote about Repair Cafes. (Green Thing’s post is here.) After reading the Green Thing post, I made myself a note to research the cafe project, and am pleased to see The New York Times covering it today:
At Amsterdam’s first Repair Cafe, an event originally held in a theater’s foyer, then in a rented room in a former hotel and now in a community center a couple of times a month, people can bring in whatever they want to have repaired, at no cost, by volunteers who just like to fix things.
Conceived of as a way to help people reduce waste, the Repair Cafe concept has taken off since its debut two and a half years ago. The Repair Cafe Foundation has raised about $525,000 through a grant from the Dutch government, support from foundations and small donations, all of which pay for staffing, marketing and even a Repair Cafe bus.
Thirty groups have started Repair Cafes across the Netherlands, where neighbors pool their skills and labor for a few hours a month to mend holey clothing and revivify old coffee makers, broken lamps, vacuum cleaners and toasters, as well as at least one electric organ, a washing machine and an orange juice press.
“In Europe, we throw out so many things,” said Martine Postma, a former journalist who came up with the concept after the birth of her second child led her to think more about the environment. “It’s a shame, because the things we throw away are usually not that broken. There are more and more people in the world, and we can’t keep handling things the way we do.
“I had the feeling I wanted to do something, not just write about it,” she said. But she was troubled by the question: “How do you try to do this as a normal person in your daily life?”
Inspired by a design exhibit about the creative, cultural and economic benefits of repairing and recycling, she decided that helping people fix things was a practical way to prevent unnecessary waste.
While the Netherlands puts less than 3 percent of its municipal waste into landfills, there is still room for improvement, according to Joop Atsma, the state secretary for infrastructure and the environment.
“The Repair Cafe is an effective way to raise awareness that discarded objects are indeed still of value,” Mr. Atsma wrote in an e-mail.
More: Amsterdam Tries to Change Culture With ‘Repair Cafes’ - NYTimes.com
[Thanks to Estelle H. for helping to ensure we saw the NYT story!]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3rfvjJq401qzv12bo1_500.jpg)
Repair Cafes: An Effort to Bury a Throwaway Culture One Repair at a Time
There’s so much to love about an effort that involves volunteers — helping each other while strengthening a sense of community — and encourages people to repair items they already own. (All key aspects of Unconsumption, as many of you are aware.)
Our friends at Do The Green Thing recently wrote about Repair Cafes. (Green Thing’s post is here.) After reading the Green Thing post, I made myself a note to research the cafe project, and am pleased to see The New York Times covering it today:
At Amsterdam’s first Repair Cafe, an event originally held in a theater’s foyer, then in a rented room in a former hotel and now in a community center a couple of times a month, people can bring in whatever they want to have repaired, at no cost, by volunteers who just like to fix things.
Conceived of as a way to help people reduce waste, the Repair Cafe concept has taken off since its debut two and a half years ago. The Repair Cafe Foundation has raised about $525,000 through a grant from the Dutch government, support from foundations and small donations, all of which pay for staffing, marketing and even a Repair Cafe bus.
Thirty groups have started Repair Cafes across the Netherlands, where neighbors pool their skills and labor for a few hours a month to mend holey clothing and revivify old coffee makers, broken lamps, vacuum cleaners and toasters, as well as at least one electric organ, a washing machine and an orange juice press.
“In Europe, we throw out so many things,” said Martine Postma, a former journalist who came up with the concept after the birth of her second child led her to think more about the environment. “It’s a shame, because the things we throw away are usually not that broken. There are more and more people in the world, and we can’t keep handling things the way we do.
“I had the feeling I wanted to do something, not just write about it,” she said. But she was troubled by the question: “How do you try to do this as a normal person in your daily life?”
Inspired by a design exhibit about the creative, cultural and economic benefits of repairing and recycling, she decided that helping people fix things was a practical way to prevent unnecessary waste.
While the Netherlands puts less than 3 percent of its municipal waste into landfills, there is still room for improvement, according to Joop Atsma, the state secretary for infrastructure and the environment.
“The Repair Cafe is an effective way to raise awareness that discarded objects are indeed still of value,” Mr. Atsma wrote in an e-mail.
More: Amsterdam Tries to Change Culture With ‘Repair Cafes’ - NYTimes.com
[Thanks to Estelle H. for helping to ensure we saw the NYT story!]
