Beauty exists irrespective of financial circumstances.

Making conscious choices about what we eat, based on what the earth can sustain and what our bodies need, can help remind us that our whole society must begin to balance sustainable production with human need.

With organic approaches, women - who have been gardeners for millennia and mothers forever - can rise because of their intimate knowledge of nature.

Women can succeed in villages all over the world today without relying on heavy machinery or debt. They can take leadership roles in agriculture, eliminating hunger and inequity.

I think back to when I was growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, in the 1950s, during the [John] McCarthy era, with two parents who founded a Unitarian Church. We lived in a little frame house, and my bedroom was just down the hall from the kitchen. My favorite memories of childhood are of the smell of coffee wafting into my bedroom as my parents and their friends talked about the big, important things - about racism and about how to move our country to live its values.

I never like to use those terms [like pessimistic].

A teacher told me this story some time ago: She asked her students to line up in order of how much power they thought they had relative to the others in the class, and they all fought to be last in line. They didn't want to acknowledge that they had personal power.