Welcome to another installment of “10 Words or Less,” in which I ask brief questions of interesting people, and request brief answers in return. Today’s participant is listed eighth on GreenBiz’s Twitter Index, which is testament to his formidable combination of smarts and charisma. I once went to a networking group on his suggestion. When I sat down at a table with others and they asked how I’d learned of the group, I said simply, “Asheen,” to which the whole table chorused, “Of course!” Please remember: “10 words” is an ethic, not a limit, so please, no counting! Besides, if you think it’s so easy, let’s see you do it.

Name Asheen Phansey
Fahn-SAY? I’ve been saying it wrong. Yes, it means “One who farms jackfruit.” And my first name means “tireless.”
In what languages? "Phansey is Marathi. Asheen is Sanskrit."
Born when, where: "Oct. 15, 1980, 12:23 a.m., Charleston, S.C."
Anything unusual about the circumstances? “The most unusual thing, if you know me at all, was that I was born on time. I think it was the last time."
Resides: Burlington, Mass.
Family situation: "Married, with two kids that I chase around. 1 1/2 and 4."
First world event you recall being aware of The first event that I really understood and affected me was the Exxon Valdez spill. [March 24, 1989] I can’t remember if that was before or after the first Persian Gulf War. [Aug. 2, 1990]

I've written op-eds on other subjects, but today's piece published by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is my first following the line of my forthcoming book, "It Matters." I argue that nature is humankind's pre-eminent guide to survival and that following its lead not only solves our environmental problems, but many personal ones as well.

Please comment here, and share widely.

Via Wayne Maceyka, an accomplished pal in the sustainability realm, I’ve now been confronted with the “ecomodernist,” who believes “technology is the solution and not the problem,” according to writer Fred Pearce.

Unquestionably, I am a biomimicry groupie, and have referenced it many times. I venerate Janine Benyus and Dayna Baumeister, its leaders, and consider the movement to be one of the best combinations of simple and clever that I've ever encountered.

A version of this was also posted today at Sprout Savvy. I'm delighted to share with them, and delighted they invited me to.

One of the first questions people have for me is, Never mind how you lost 155 pounds, how have you been keeping it off for almost 20 years?

I have several answers, depending on how much time we have, but the best, most accurate one is, I finally realized and accepted that I’m a citizen of the planet.

The Globe's Sam Allis trotted out a perennial for his column yesterday, which leaves little doubt of its direction from the opening gun: "Red alert: the gardeners are back. Run to the attic and barricade the door. " You gotta respect the declarative sentence.

In addition to my continued opening to the biomimicry movement, I'm presently reading "Naturalist," E.O. Wilson's autobiography — I was moved, in part, to pick it up recently because I knew that he would be closing the GreenBuild conference last month with Janine Benyus, the biologist who is credited with coining the term biomimicry and who, with Dayna Baumeister, founded the Biomimicry Guild.

Before they sat together, Wilson and Benyus each addressed the very large crowd separately, and she opened her remarks remembering the "microwilderness" behind her house in suburban New Jersey, and how she used to spend as much time as she could out there, observing and communing with the organisms who lived there. Very quickly, she conveyed her love for that place, and the sorrow and offense she felt when the bulldozers came to start phase two of her subdivision.

The story dovetailed (note bio allusion!) very neatly with the tales Wilson tells in his book at greater length, the substance of which he acknowledged when they came together on the stage couch. Both these people went out of doors and fell in lifelong love. I can't relate. I played out of doors too, climbing on rock faces and playing war in the brush in places that also have since fallen to the dozers' blades, but I somehow missed the forest for the trees. They were just there, and so were the animals — musta been. But they didn't capture me.

By any accounting, the closing act at GreenBuild/Boston had to be its finest moment, and it undoubtedly was among all I experienced during the three days. EO Wilson and Janine Benyus spoke individually, and then in colloquy led by Kevin Klose, president emeritus of National Public Radio.

I once said in print that Jean-Luc Ponty was the greatest jazz violinist alive, and a friend who was a more seasoned music critic blanched at my boldness — who was I to opine so broadly? He was certainly right — I'm nowhere near the authority on such a matter. But I also felt that not only was it a defensible opinion, but who was anyone to say otherwise, definitively? No objective standard exists to settle the point.