Living Lightly means less consumption, more happiness

By Rick Yencer

MUNCIE, IN - Local diva  Jennie DeVoe has a simple way for living lightly as some of her songs go.

 "Be happy and don't be an idiot," said DeVoe, told family, friends and others while she played at the Minnetrista Cultural Center on Saturday.

 The mellow sounds from her Blue Sky Big Sun album besides the great energy of being home was a great end to the Living Lightly fair that features plenty of ways to stop mass consuming and recognize that living on less is good besides a way to save a world that locally experienced extreme drought this summer.

 DeVoe mentioned she was happier than she ever has been even laughing about how it could be the first stage of Alzheimer. She told road stories like using one of her musician's belt and looking like the Beverly Hillbillies when the band went to blues festival in Terre Haute the night before.

 An extremely talented and gifted woman, DeVoe was glad she survived growing up in Muncie and continued to turn out music that feels and sounds great.

That feeling could be felt throughout the fair as activists and experts talked about how to reduce consumption and protect the environment.

 Bob Schildgen, better known as Mr. Green, talked about how to live green whether it was using the right kind of low energy water heater or cleaning up after the animals. His columns in Sierra Magazine tell the story of the world and its pollution by plastic and chemicals, coal and oil and how to stop that in favor of paper, geothermal, and solar power.

 That crazy Bag It movie also was on the agenda that points out how 60,000 plastic bags are used every five minutes by endless consumers in checkout lines, fast food drive through or just cleaning up the yard.

 Some of the local stories about sustainability were about saving the local landscape besides going solar besides cutting down on all that wrapping.

 Phil Tevis was helping out at his usual place of the White River watershed booth, talking about his recent visit to the Burning Man Festival. There he found the organizers of Occupy and how the movement went from its true origin of less consumption to fighting money, Wall Street and the government that continues in dozens of cities by shutting down California ports,  standing with striking teachers in Chicago and still being in the face of Wall Street in New York City.

 Barry Banks of the Red Tail Conservancy, was the Bob Braun of the festival, announcing events and the countdown of DeVoe's concert. He continues to grab wetlands and wildlife habitats and protect then for the good of everyone.

 Yorktown Greenworks developer Robert Ginsbach was offering deals solar power systems for as little as $8,500 that included equipment and labor. The savings comes around 30 percent of an average customers' electric bill from Ready Kilowatt better known as Indiana Michigan.

 And a couple of naturalists from the Gene Stratton Porter Historic Site and her Limberlost land  talked about efforts to continue to preserve those significant lands on the 100th anniversary of the girl who wandered the farm and lakes and telling stories to hundreds of thousands of children who read her books, including "A Girl of the Limberlost."

 In all, several  hundred people hung out at the fair including plenty of Muncie's hippy crowd and other hipsters that believe that happiness can be found in living lightly.