My parents are both from Vermont, very old-fashioned New England. We heated our house with wood my father chopped. My mom grew all of our food. We were very underexposed to everything.
I think our communication strategy has been very disciplined as being a back-to-basics mayor and about focusing on making City Hall work and jumpstarting our economy.
One returns to the place one came from.
...in the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in the streets or villages...in the woods we return to reason and faith.
No man finds it difficult to return to nature except the man who has deserted nature.
I grew up in rural Oregon in a log house with bark left on inside and out. We had no electricity, a massive stone fireplace, a grand piano, and tons of books.
I don't like technology and all that. I'm a farm boy. I would rather live in that time when you had to provide for your family. I don't know. I'm a country kid, so I don't like modern technology.
Going back to a simpler life based on living by sufficiency rather than excess is not a step backward.
I started out as a drummer, and now play with a back-to-basics rock band called the 'Luddites.' I'm happiest when I'm behind the kit.
What I miss is being close to nature - collecting your own water and generating your own electricity, catching your own food. I still dream of doing that with my own family, even if it's just for a year-long experiment, I would love to have tried that.
It may be that America has become too big and complicated for most people to deal with being part of. People are longing for a smaller, stupider reality.
There's something to be said for going back to a simple form of living-nature and family. There's something very...there's safety in that.
Going back to a simpler life is not a step backwards.
Technology is a many-headed monster and perhaps it would be better to regress to a safer past and avoid technological change; it is tempting to think like that.
High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks - chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring
I buy a lot of cookbooks. Some of them you just kind of read, and you try one recipe, and it doesn't really work. So then you don't go back to it. The new Ina Garten cookbook, which is called 'Back to Basics,' I have not had a failure with. It is the most fantastic cookbook. I think I bought 20 copies of it for friends.
There is nothing more guaranteed to reduce a man to the essentials than to live beneath the sky.
As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth.
When we were on the farm, we were isolated, not just by geography but by the primitive living conditions: no electricity, no running water and, of course, no computer, no phone.
Like, a lot of people I know are wanting to get back to the Earth in some way and not raise their kids in this world of Apps and Internet all the time. I grew up on a river in New Jersey and I was in fantasy land. I could do anything.
I'm a farm boy. I would rather live in that time when you had to provide for your family. I don't know. I'm a country kid, so I don't like modern technology.
We'd all do well to start over again, preferably with kindergarten.
I want to retreat back to living off the land and just being in nature, experiencing life in the most pure, natural way possible.
