Category Archives: Whole Life Times

November, 2007

To bring us our daily cup of coffee, nearly 30 million farmers in more than 50 countries toil in conditions unimaginable for most drinkers. “All of the major issues of the twenty-first century — globalization, immigration, women’s rights, pollution, indigenous rights and self-determination — are being played out through this cup of coffee in villages and remote areas around the world,” writes Dean Cycon in the prologue to his new book, Javatrekker.

Cycon is well-placed to show readers what it means to use global trade to consciously create a better world: he’s a founder of Coffee Kids, a nonprofit that uses donations from coffee companies to improve the lives of children in coffee-growing regions. And Dean’s Beans, his Massachusetts-based Fair Trade coffee company, is the epitome of a successful and proactive progressive business.

Read it on the Common Ground site…

September 2007

The 11th Hour is the latest major documentary examination of civilization’s difficult relationship with the natural world. Produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, in many ways the film picks up where Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth left off, offering potential avenues out of the impasse we have created. (more…)

March 2007

Paul Katzeff remembers the call he received back in 2005 like it was yesterday. A young woman who was just back from working as an aid worker in Uganda had called Katzeff, owner of Thanksgiving Coffee Company in Fort Bragg, California, out of the blue. “She asked me a simple question,” he recalls, ‘Would you buy five sacks of Ugandan coffee?’ I rolled my eyes and thought, ‘Oh no, another Peace Corps worker who made some promises that she should not have made.’ I could hear the desperation in her voice.” (more…)