It's really easy to figure out why I love what I love the holidays and food. I know the difference between having them and not having them.

I think the biggest thing is clean as you go. Wash all your knives cutting boards dishes when you are done cooking not look at a sink full of dishes after you are done. Cleaning as you go helps keep away cross contamination and you avoid having food borne bacteria.

I don't want to spend my life not having good food going into my pie hole. That hole was made for pies.

I first got involved with ending world hunger and I got hip to the facts about it - what a huge problem it was and how it wasn't a matter of not having food or not knowing how to end it but it was a matter of creating the political will.

There's enormous progressive activism and more often than not success at the grassroots level - everything from living wage campaigns to efforts to finance our elections are having terrific success.

But having said that what's happening with campaign finance reform and our political culture is devastating.

It's not the having it's the getting.

A big part of financial freedom is having your heart and mind free from worry about the what-ifs of life.

Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants.

My optimism is not based primarily on the successful march of democracy in recent times but rather is based on the experience of having lived in a fear society and studied the mechanics of tyranny that sustain such a society.