Wyzga On Words

Fear Or Compassion? Which Motivates Action?

I've been reluctant to kick the hornet's nest on this one.  Folks seem pretty divided on The Reptile Theory.  Like Paris - you either love it or you hate it.

The notion that we should regard jurors as reptiles to get some huge verdict out of them by playing to their fears has always struck me as cold-blooded, and not a little inhuman.  How we regard people and things becomes how we treat them.  I felt so strongly about this I co-wrote an article with Stephanie West Allen and Jeffrey Schwartz for The Jury Expert entitled "Atticus Finch Would Not Approve."  [Click AllenSchwartzWyzgaTJEMay2010 to read.]  My position has only strengthened.

I used to work with a beekeeper who insisted on calling the honeybees "really angry" when they reacted to us opening the hive boxes.  He treated them as if they were somehow "really angry."  He over-smoked them.  He was tense, jumpy and afraid.  His physical actions conveyed fear.  At the end of the day working with him I was a wreck.

And yet, there was nothing to fear.  We were suited up for the job.  We would get head-bonked by some of the guard bees; but that was normal behavior.  No bees chased us or swarmed us.  A honeybee has to be truly threatened to sting; when she does she rips out her guts and dies.  Not an action to be taken lightly. 

When I was trained as a beekeeper I was told to remember, "No jerks in the beeyard." While I have not yet gotten to the stage where I will work my hives wearing only a veil, I know that to bee Zen keeps everyone - beekeepers and honeybees - calm.

It works with people, too.  The Science of Compassion by the social scientist David DeSteno writing for the NYTimes shares the results of scientific research that shows empathy with the suffering of others is alive and well.  Excerpt:

"As a social psychologist interested in the emotions, I long wondered whether this spiritual understanding of compassion was also scientifically accurate. Empirically speaking, does the experience of compassion toward one person measurably affect our actions and attitudes toward other people? If so, are there practical steps we can take to further cultivate this feeling? Recently, my colleagues and I conducted experiments that answered yes to both questions.

In one experiment, designed with the psychologist Paul Condon and published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, we recruited people to take part in a study that was ostensibly about the relation of mathematical ability to taste perception — but that in actuality was a study of how the experience of compassion affects your behavior.

In another study, published in the journal Emotion, the psychologist Piercarlo Valdesolo and I conducted an experiment ostensibly about music perception — but that actually investigated how feelings of compassion might be increased.

Our hunch was that compassion is easiest to feel when you have a sense of commonality with someone else."

And what did the scientists find?  Excerpt:

"What these results suggest is that the compassion we feel for others is not solely a function of what befalls them: if our minds draw an association between a victim and ourselves — even a relatively trivial one — the compassion we feel for his or her suffering is amplified greatly.

What does this mean for cultivating compassion in society? It means that effortful adherence to religious or philosophical dictums (often requiring meditation, prayer or moral education), though clearly valuable and capable of producing results, is not the only way to go. There is nothing special about tapping in synchrony; any such commonality will do. Increased compassion for one’s neighbor, for instance, can come from something as easy as encouraging yourself to think of him as (say) a fan of the same local restaurant instead of as a member of a different ethnicity.

Simply learning to mentally recategorize one another in terms of commonalities would generate greater empathy among all of us — and foster social harmony in a fairly effortless way."

I am not Pollyanna enough to believe that I can buy someone a Coke and the world will live in perfect harmony.  

I agree that there is fear in the world.  Look at everything from video games to the nightly news to the most recent midnight movie massacre in Aurora, CO.  You will get more than your share of a diet of human suffering. 

But fear does nothing to improve the situation - fear causes us to hide, bar the doors, become complacent.  Ironically, when we feel an empathy, a compassion for the situation we will act - whether for gun control, mental health, local food, a jury verdict, whatever.  How does it work this way?

"What these results suggest is that the compassion we feel for others is not solely a function of what befalls them: if our minds draw an association between a victim and ourselves — even a relatively trivial one — the compassion we feel for his or her suffering is amplified greatly."

Like my friend the angry beekeeper, you get what you name.  Whether or not the honeybees were "really angry," he perceived them as such and treated them that way.  It was how he perceived them that created the expectation of harm. 

I've had enough of fear.  I prefer to be on the side of those who encourage a deep compassion for human suffering and from that place articulate for action to lessen the plight of others.

Sometimes You Just Need To Step Away. And Rescue A Swarm Of Bees.

So there I was working away on business at the computer in the office when the call came.

A swarm had taken up residence in a plum tree in a backyard.  The family's two-year old toddler had been sitting at the base of the tree playing happily when the parents noticed what was over his head about 6 feet up.

I was told that the swarm measured about 18 inches across and 12 down. 

So now what?

Sometimes you just need to step away and rescue a swarm of bees.

I waited til mid-afternoon, suited up, put my gear in the trunk of the car and drove over to the home.  I gotta tell you, this was a beautiful swarm: healthy, quiet, peaceable, looking for a place to call home, raise their brood, have something nutritious close by to eat and a source of water to drink.

Before a swarm leaves the colony with the old queen, maybe some virgin ones, the worker bees gorge on honey.  Who knows when and where the next meal will be.  The queen is starved to slim down so she can fly.  At a signal, the queen and a number of her worker daughters leave home.  They may go only 200 yards away and alight in a safe rest stop while scout bees seek new real estate.

In this situation the bees are relatively calm: they are exposed, perhaps chilled, protecting the queen.  Of course, it's no excuse to go up and poke them.  But the homeowner and I stood just underneath the swarm and watched and listened to the quiet hum.

When I was ready to get to work as a volunteer bee rescuer, the homeowner and her toddler son watched from inside the house.  I like to spritz a little honey water on the swarm to give them a bit of food and distract them as they lick off their bodies.  I don't use smoke - there is no need.  After positioning a tall step ladder under the swarm I balanced a hive body on top and climbed up on the stone wall you see in the photo.  Once close to the swarm I gave the branch a big WHACK! to encourage as many of the honeybees as possible to drop into the box in a clump.  There was quite a flurry of bees in the air but they were not interested in me.  Many of them regrouped on the limb before they realized that the queen was in the box. 

Over the next hour we watched as bees stood along the rim of the hive box fanning their wings to let the rest know that the queen was in the box and they better hurry "home."  When I was sure that I had just about all of them I covered and secured the hive box, slid it into the trunk of my car and took the swarm to my apiary.  Finding a good spot to locate the new colony I removed all the screening and duct tape, reduced the hive entry to the size of a single bee so the colony could defend itself against any robbers, and then sat for a while realizing that at that moment I was the luckiest Lady Bee Wrangler in the world.

It's not a waste of time to break up the day, get outside, take in a breath of fresh air, listen to natural sounds, or even rescue a swarm of bees.  Our souls need such times.

 

Not All Organic Food Is Created Equal. Big Companies Are Co-opting A Good Thing.

When I became a beekeeper I took on the task of educating folks about raw, unfiltered, unheated, untreated honey and the high fructose corn syrup stuff masquerading as honey on the shelves of our markets.  Not all honey is created equal.

Nor, does it seem, is organic food.

Stephanie Strom reporting for the NYTimes in her detailed article "Organic Food Purists Worry About Big Companies' Influence" reveals that Big Food is exploiting what Americans are learning to choose: organic food over processed.  Excerpt.

Highlights:

1. "Organic food has become a wildly lucrative business for Big Food and a premium-price-means-premium-profit section of the grocery store
2. Bear Naked, Wholesome & Hearty, Kashi: all three and more actually belong to the cereals giant Kellogg. Naked Juice? That would be PepsiCo of Pepsi and Fritos fame. And behind the pastoral-sounding Walnut Acres, Health Valley and Spectrum Organics is none other than Hain Celestial, once affiliated with Heinz, the grand old name in ketchup.
3. Over the last decade, since federal organic standards have come to the fore, giant agri-food corporations like these and others — Coca-Cola, Cargill, ConAgra, General Mills, Kraft and M&M Mars among them — have gobbled up most of the nation’s organic food industry. Pure, locally produced ingredients from small family farms? Not so much anymore.
4. Many consumers may not realize the extent to which giant corporations have come to dominate organic food. Then again, giant corporations don’t exactly trumpet their role in the industry. Their financial motivation, however, is obvious. On Amazon.com, for instance, 12 six-ounce boxes of Kraft Organic Macaroni and Cheese sell for $25.32, while a dozen 7.25-ounce boxes of the company’s regular Macaroni and Cheese go for $19.64.
5. Between the time the Agriculture Department came up with its proposed regulations for the organic industry in 1997 and the time those rules became law in 2002, myriad small, independent organic companies — businesses like Cascadian Farm — were snapped up by corporate titans. Heinz and Hain together bought 19 organic brands.  Eden is one of the last remaining independent organic companies of any size, together with the Clif Bar & Company, Amy’s Kitchen, Lundberg Family Farms and a handful of others.
6. BIG FOOD has also assumed a powerful role in setting the standards for organic foods. Major corporations have come to dominate the board that sets these standards.As corporate membership on the board has increased, so, too, has the number of nonorganic materials approved for organic foods on what is called the National List. At first, the list was largely made up of things like baking soda, which is nonorganic but essential to making things like organic bread. Today, more than 250 nonorganic substances are on the list, up from 77 in 2002.
7. Cornucopia began taking a harder look at the history of the addition of carrageenan and other substances to the accepted organic list after a bruising battle last December over the addition of docosahexaenoic acid algae oil, or DHA, and arachidonic acid single cell oil, or ARA. Its research led to a paper titled “The Organic Watergate.” “After DHA got onto the list, we decided to go back and look at all of the ingredients on the list,” Mr. Kastel says. “The average consumer has no idea that all these additives are going into the organic products they’re buying.”
8. The Organic Foods Act calls for a board consisting of four farmers, three conservationists, three consumer representatives, a scientist, a retailer, a certification agent and two “handlers,” or representatives of companies that process organic food.  There are no farmers on the board.
9. Similarly, the three consumer seats have never been filled by anyone from a traditional consumer advocacy group like the Organic Consumers Association or the Consumers Union. Instead, those seats have largely gone to academics with agricultural expertise and to corporate executives. There are no independent consumers on the board.
10. Driscoll’s was the only company that allowed an employee serving on the board to talk to The New York Times. The rest — even Cropp, the 1,400-farmer cooperative that sells more than $700 million in products, many under the Organic Valley brand — had more senior executives do the talking. Organic Valley's board representative, Wendy Fulwider, has voted with the corporations,voted to keep carrageenan on the organic list, voted to let organic egg producers give their chickens just two square feet of living space, when Cropp requires its own farmers to provide five and, most controversially, she voted to add DHA and ARA (docosahexaenoic acid algae oil, or DHA, and arachidonic acid single cell oil, or ARA) to the list for use in baby formulas."

So, here's what you need to learn:

what are you eating,

what are you drinking,

where does it come from,

how do you know what's in it, and

for those folks living in food deserts who will educate and feed them?

I saw a bumper sticker on a semi: "Without trucks America stops."

What's worse: Without sustainable, organic, community-supported, local farms, America starves.

Q&A Tuesday: How Do You Get The Honey Into The Jar?

Q:    How do you get the honey from the bees into the jar?

A:    Slowly, carefully, step-by-step.

The small frames you see are being readied for extraction.  I choose to remove only the surplus honey from a hive so the bees have what they need for themselves and their brood.

The bees build honeycomb on the frames, fill the comb with honey and cap it off.  The first step is for the beekeeper to go to the beeyard and collect those frames, transport them to the extraction room and remove the beeswax cappings with a hot knife or a pick. 

You can see the difference between a capped frame (the one in my hand) and the uncapped one leaning on the bridge in the capping tub.  There is another example in the opaque tub. 

While we're at it we remove any extra beeswax comb on the outside of the frames to make it easier to slip them back into the hive box.  It's hard, sticky work and bees are buzzing around to keep us company.

The uncapped frames fit longways into a motorized stainless steel tub (which is not in the picture) and the honey is spun out with centrifugal force.  The collected honey is gravity-strained into a bucket and then gravity-strained a second time through a fine mesh cloth sieve to collect any stray bits of beeswax.

This pure, raw, unfiltered (filtration takes out good honey properties), unheated (heat destroys some honey properties like enzymes), untreated (no sugar, high fructose corn syrup, pesticides, mitricides, or antibiotics) honey gets bottled.  The extraction and bottling process takes the better part of a day depending on how many frames one has collected.

The work isn't over then.  The "stickies" are returned to the hive boxes in the beeyard so the honeybees can clean up all the honey the extractor did not spin out.  Since we left the honeycomb intact the bees do not have to build it out all over again; just fill and cap.

In her lifetime a worker bee may supply less than 1/2 teaspoon of honey.  She has to visit millions of flowers to gather the pollen and nectar that goes into making honey.  What the worker bees are foraging on, the time of year, weather, heat, drought conditions and the like changes the look, flavor and fragrance or honey - just like wine.  What you taste in the Spring will be different than another time of year or region.

When you get a treat like real honey - just what the bees bring in - it's a labor of love on the part of nature and beek. Plant a garden and invite the bees.

 

 

 

Suiting Up For The Next Generation.

Saturday last saw me all suited up and talking to upwards of 50 folks who came to The Ecology Center to learn about honey bees (Apis mellifera), pure local honey, and becoming a backyard beekeeper or "beek."

Click here to access the link to the Q&A blog with an observation hive video.

The adults posed many questions showing lots of interest and concern about the plight of honeybees (the canary in the mine of our world), Colony Collapse Disorder, how to distinguish real honey from the store bought fake stuff, and so on.  I felt like I was on "Stump the Beekeeper."

But the real excitement, equally insightful questions and "ah ha!" moments were shared by the young people.  There were eight year old farmer wannabes, ten year old girls taking pages of notes with pencil in spiral bound notebooks so they could prepare for a class report, six year old hands held in the air so long to ask a question that first one arm and then the next and then back to the other were raised.   The teenagers were so engaged they did not text during the hour - well, as far as I could see.

I passed around honeycomb taken from the wild when I rescued swarmed colonies, frames of built-out comb used to raise brood and store honey, frames of old comb where bees had died emerging from their cells, and showed off the beek basics I carry around in my beek box.  The young people were ecstatic when I displayed a photo of lavishly drawn designs painted with wild colors on stacks of hive boxes - no bland white boxes for these kids.  Everybody wanted to get into the act setting up a backyard hive.

Some days despite my Aquarian tendencies I can present a pretty cynical face about the future of the planet.  As I posed for the last cell phone picture and packed up my beek gear I knew that just as we "let bees be bees" the same applies to kids: give them some ideas, support and direction; then let them be as they find their way.  

I believe we are going to be just fine. 

It Was My Own Damn Fault.

 

Thank you to Brushy Mountain Bee Farm for the Master Beekeeper Suit image.

Some of the best stories begin with, "It was my own damn fault."

For a beekeeper ("beek" for short) this time of year can be wildly uncertain.  One day it's 85 degrees and sunny - then overnight cold winds come down from Canada dumping snow in the mountains and rain on the lower levels.  The hives have been quiet over the winter months but now they are beginning to ramp up along with the blossoms.  Swarms will begin soon as the stronger colonies outgrow their homes and look for roomier digs.  We wait and watch.

My plan was just to tend the bee-yard: weed around the hives and add oil to the paint cans that hold the frame stand legs to keep out the ants.  It was too cool to get into the hives. At about mid-40's Fahrenheit the scout bees go out looking for nourishment.  At about the mid-50's range more foragers go out.  And by the time the mid to high 60's hit the foragers can be in full flight swing. 

But beeks ideally need a day that's in the sunny 70s with no breeze so the colony does not get chilled when you go inside the hive box.  Even when you get good weather, take care.  If the previous days have been cool and cloudy (as ours were), the bees can be as cranky as toddlers penned up without TIVO.

There's a small gap where my beesuit zippers to the veil.  Just enough for a honeybee body to get through if she's looking.  Then she and I are trapped in there together.  With more of the colony swarming around it's a good idea to just walk away until they lose interest in me - but there is still the matter of getting to the honeybee (or bees) who are inside.  And taking off the veil is not an option.  Having learned my lesson the hard way I slap a small piece of duct tape over the hole when I plan to work the hives. 

This is where I get to: "It was my own damn fault." This day I broke all my own rules:  I left off the piece of duct tape to cover the gap.  I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to quickly work one hive.  I did not fire up my smoker ahead of time.  I don't like using one but it's a nice idea to have it lit and ready in case you want to calm cranky bees.  The weather was not the best.  The bees were cranky.  And they let me know it.

I can't blame them that a few facial stings later I look like a Shar-pei with mumps.  It was my own damn fault.

TIPS: The price of experience: Be prepared.

If you are going to court, be prepared.

If you are going to the hospital, be prepared.

 If you are making a meal, be prepared.

And when you screw up because you were not prepared, the responsible thing to do is admit it, make apologies or mea culpas (if needed) and move on.  Life is short and sweet as honey. 

Our Fate - Like Fruit Trees In Winter.

Standing all raggedy, twiggy and forlorn in my backyard is a peach tree. Its naked form reminds me of a piece by German poet and novelist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

"Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter.  Looking at its sad appearance who would think that those stiff branches, those jagged twigs would turn green again and blossom and bear fruit next spring; but we hope they will, we know they will."

I believe that one of the most difficult and courageous things we can do for ourselves, our families, friends and clients who look to us for a little encouragement is to acknowledge a time of fearful barrenness, that hum of panicky anxiety.  And only then turn coax an expectant face toward spring.

This photograph reminding me that the honeybees are soon on the local blooms was taken by friend and fellow beewrangler, Janet Andrews of Backyard Bees who creates some of the most remarkable honey creams and lip balms you will find anywhere.  Even my pure honey and beeswax cappings find their way into her luscious product.  Family in the chill mountains of Colorado and the dry indoors of New Hampshire swear by its restorative properties.

Every one of us every day needs a little something good.

Let Me Be Clear: Doctors Practice Medicine; Lawyers Practice Law; Litigation Consultants Practice Removing The Blinders.

I'll be the first to admit it: I'm biased. I'm biased toward two heads being better than one.  I'm biased toward more hands helping the project go faster.  I'm biased toward getting outside objective help that will encourage one to take off the blinders and see things as they are - not as we are.  Especially when it comes to clients and cases.

Over the years as my practice evolved my approach to focus group research has evolved.  I have come to learn that we take literal responses to questions at our own peril.  That's true whether we are listening to deliberations, moderated discussions or reading written responses on a questionnaire.  Yet, I hear this time and again when I am asked to review attorney-run research: "When he said X he meant X because he said X; therefore, X must be true". 

Imagine my professional concern when I come across copies of written questionnaires I prepared time out of mind for cases long since resolved that have been re-used and recycled just as they were written.  And not for the reason you think.  As much as the next person I owe what I know in great part to learning from the work of others.

My concern comes from seeing some lawyers churn out copies of written questionnaires in lawyer-run focus group research with little heed to what is being asked or why.  And compound the problem by not knowing what to do with the information they might have gotten.

I'm going out on a limb here because I believe this.  Yes, I have said: Get trusted, professional help to design, conduct and analyze the focus group research. Do not go it alone to figure out liability and damages.  Work with a litigation consultant to uncover your case landmines, blow them up, walk the decision-maker around them, and incorporate them into the story.

I say this with a measure of confidence because I know that despite my achievements as a practicing lawyer, do I feel I can try a case today?  Not with the same skill set I had when I was a practicing lawyer. 

My professional role has changed and my skill set along with it.  My medical and legal training brings a depth of knowledge to the trial table. What I know I can do is help develop a forensic fact pattern into a real life drama that will persuade the decision-maker.

Let me be clear: I am not averse to lawyers practicing as litigation consultants or even testing their own cases - as long as they do it with thought, care, consideration, objectivity, and arm's length dispassion about the subject matter with carefully chosen research participants who are not off the "been there done that" assembly line.  Know what you want to know, what you are asking, how you are asking, and how to interpret the response.  "It's not what we say - it's what they hear." [Frank Luntz]  And it's not what they say - it's what we hear.

A Focus Group Is Like An Observation Hive.

For folks who do not get the up close and personal experience of working honeybee hives as I do, there is the observation hive to see the inner workings of bees going about their daily lives.

I love the focus group research process for the same reason: it gives me a way to look inside the inner workings of a group of community members to learn what matters to them about a particular story.

In my experience, two key elements stand out:

1.    Gaps.  In ways unimagined and in directions unforseen focus group research participants will take your story and create their own because of gaps in what they heard the lawyers say.  When they say, “If only....” then we know they are well on their way to telling their own stories.  Remember, "It’s not what we say; it’s what they hear." 

Now that we know what they heard we can re-write the story.  This is also our opportunity to corral what I call "sidebar stories" by clarifying and emphasizing what we want the decision-maker to focus on.  Think of what you are doing as akin to herding cattle down a chute and closing off the gates to the eventual exit.  

2.    Questions.  The other thing I welcome are the questions.  Often you will hear, “What I want to know is....”  “How come....”  "Don't you think that...."  "What if...."  Their questions are clues to the gaps in the story which must be addressed or answered so we don't run the risk that the decision-maker will apply their own answers to fill in the gaps for themselves and come up with a different story.

What's been your experience?

There's Something To Be Said For Resilience, Research, and Self-Reliance.

What a dismal year this has been.  Retirement portfolios (hah!  the very idea) continue to hemorrhage, able-bodied workers have been cast aside, 20% of our children live in poverty, we are being over-taken by relatively poorer and less democratically adept countries like China and India, and no one who is supposed to be leading us - or would like to lead us - has a clue about what to do. 

I am reminded of an old cartoon.  Picture a man in a business suit, briefcase in hand propped up like Flat Stanley against a city building.  The caption reads, "Paralyzed by the fear of success."

No one is going to do it for us - we may as well do what we can with what we have.  More and more Americans are taking matters into their own hands - and what began reluctantly may end up being preferred.

Read and be inspired by Susan Gregory Thomas writing for the NYTimes, "I Went Back To the Land to Feed My Family," as she adds one more story to the stack of those being written by Americans who have taken it on the chin but refuse to go down.  Excerpt.

"I’m not interested in being hip or a hippie. Nor does my happiness particularly hinge on artisanal cheese. (Odd, perhaps, given that I grew up a stone fruit’s throw away from Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif.)

As a 42-year-old Brooklyn mother of three, what I care about is lunch, and feeding my family on a tenuous and unpredictable income. And so I have 20 fresh-egg-producing hens and a little garden that yields everything from blackberries to butternut squash to burdock root.

My turn with spade and hoe started a few years ago when I found myself divorced and flat broke. My livelihood as a freelance writer went out the window when the economy tanked. I literally could afford beans, the dried kind, which I’d thought were for school art projects or teaching elementary math. And I didn’t know how to cook.

Luckily, my late father had hammered into me that grit was more important than talent."

In that spirit, there are people spading gardens on rooftops, in backyards, and in weedy, over-grown patches in the neighborhood.  Others are discovering the healthy thrift of Community Supported Agriculture and farmer's markets.  Chickens share yard space with the household pet.  And bees are coming back into their own with a hive or two squirreled away, humming, helping pollinate those gardens and producing honey as a result.

Is it all rosy?  Heck!  Not by a long-shot!  In this household we have slashed, burned, eschewed, and are now down to shaving any and all expenses.  As my mother reminded us for decades as she and my dad raised 7 children on a shoestring, "We're rich - we just don't have a lot of money." 

Maybe part of this coast-to-coast churn is realizing that "America Is #1!" may have worked in the past.  But it does not today.  What does it mean to be "#1" when our economy is in shambles, we cannot educate our children, what prosperity we had is squandered on foreign wars, industries hibernate, factories rust, and in an effort to gouge every little red cent the banks once again want to extort fees for using the debit cards they promoted as a cost-savings to check writing? 

It's a mess. More and more of us are turning away from "America Is #1!" to ask what do we want as a country?  Is being #2 really so bad?  It doesn't hurt AVIS who capitalized on the ranking.  How do we measure ourselves?  In Gross National Product?  Goods consumed?  Landfills topped off?

What about beauty?  What about resourcefulness?  Imagination?  What do we really want to be best at?   And, do we need or even want to lead?   As Thomas decided, all you need is a little hunger.

"It is a lot of work. You have to be organized and able to improvise on your feet. But, frankly, it’s awesome. Before we embarked on this Waldenesque life, the only thing I had ever used my hands for was picking up a book or typing on my keyboard; today, my family and I are living our own scrappy take on President Obama’s promise of “Yes, we can!”

Even if things turn around financially, I don’t think I could stomach going to Whole Foods (except maybe for olive oil) because my biggest revelation in terms of self-sufficiency is this: It is no big deal. You can tell yourself anything is too difficult, or you can just do it. And you do not need to reconstruct your worldview or take issue with others.

You just need to be hungry."

In the spirit of "less is more," what changes are you and yours making?  What 365 small steps are you taking to get you to next year in some way better than you are today?