EcoKeev

H&R Blech.

2012-01-27T16:12:00.002-05:00

Not only did I get another DVD from H&R Block, I got an e-mail. As you may recall, they *assured* me that my email address would not be used for purposes of solicitation.

Cripes. Time for another phone call.

An app to promote mindful consumerism

2012-01-20T09:08:00.005-05:00

You might have heard some of the ridiculous crap that's been going on with the Stop Online Piracy Act, otherwise known as SOPA.

If you don't know what this is: this is an act that will break free speech on the internet as we know it. SOPA is the House version (the Senate's being called PIPA), and it would

grant copyright holders sweeping powers to force websites hosting allegedly-infringing content offline without the need for a trial or even a court order.

(ExtremeTech)

Which is really sort of freakishly scary. No trial, no court order? (My mind's defense against freaking out completely has been to imagine SOPA and PIPA as Pokemon.)

Anyway, some brilliant folks developed an Android app which assists in this technological protest. It's called, simply, "Boycott SOPA." Most smartphones now have a feature that allows you to scan barcodes and QR codes, which may be links to websites, text, whatever. It's a standard feature. Boycott SOPA allows you to scan the barcode of any product and find out whether its maker supports SOPA or not.

I'm excited because of the implications this has on consumerism. With a simple little app (on a massively sophisticated phone, yes), you can go to the store and figure out, easily and quickly, how to vote with your money. Brilliant. Elegant. Love it. I'm waiting for the versions that tell you who supports big oil and who's racking up massive fees in pollution fines.

Follow up (Stop Sending Me Crap)

2012-01-20T08:54:00.004-05:00

Well, you may remember that I went on a rant about H&R Block and how tricky it was to stop their junk mail (which I'm still not convinced; I'll believe it in 6 months).

It inspired me to get a little more aggressive with junk mail reduction. (I tend to do this roughly once a year.) It usually goes like this:

Receive junk mail.
Let junk mail pile up for months.
Chuck it all in the recycling.

Now, though:

Receive junk mail.
Open junk mail and look for an appropriate number to call (or discontinue website! bonus points for Geico!)
Chuck it in the recycling.

It's one simple step. It takes less than five minutes a day, AND it'll help long-term. Booyah.

The scorecard so far:

Geico, yay for you for including an online discontinue option.
Wells Fargo also gets a yay because they're actually doing a "go paperless" thing. If you go paperless statements, they enter you to win prize money (thousands of dollars here). (Little known to them, I'm looking to switch to a local credit union though.)
Amica (my car insurance company) was sending me life insurance mailers. I called them up and I got help from the nicest old lady.
Verizon, decent. No comment, but they did it.
ING Direct. I've stopped receiving credit card offers (www.optoutprescreen.com or call 1-888-5OPTOUT (1-888-567-8688)), but they've been mailing me savings account promotions. They get a gold star because I called at 8:50 in the morning and got helped by a guy who was really cute on the phone and made me laugh.

What?

Orange Seedlings, 3 months.

2012-01-19T18:25:00.006-05:00

They're now 3 months old.

I noticed a little mold on top of the dirt in some of the cups. I took them out of the upside-down-reused-store-bought-cake cover, and cut a few more drainage holes in the bottom of a few of the cups. (Remember, all these containers are re-used.)

I looked it up online, and it turns out that a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and water is both

1) a mold-killer and
2) a plant food.

Go figure.

I watered them a week ago with a mixture of 1c water to 1.5 tsp 3% hydrogen peroxide, and they seem much healthier and happier. The new leaves have been growing in even faster.

This is the same plant as the one pictured in my last orange seedling blog entry (direct link to the photo)

This is the biggest of the new generation of leaves:

I just like how this one looks like a dancer:

Stop sending me crap

2012-01-16T17:07:00.003-05:00

Let's assume, for a second, that you're an environmentally conscious person. You care about ecosystems, and you understand that everything, ever, represents energy or resources taken from somewhere else. Junk mail makes your blood simmer. You recently did a bit of housecleaning. You try to re-use almost everything before it goes in the trash or recycling. It's part of your care for the planet. It's what you do.

You've noticed that in the last year or so, you've received no fewer than six promotional CDs from H&R Block. These get mailed to you periodically in a plastic DVD-sized case. You scratch your little head, you get a little angry. Why did you need six CD's to be sent to your house for no reason? You didn't. Why do they feel the need to use your personal information this way? 'Cause they might make a buck.

You're perturbed by now. But you're a nice person. You conduct business in a civil manner. You have dealt with junk mail before and are aware of some of the frustrations involved. There was also the time when The News Journal wouldn't stop delivering newspapers to your house. You gave them your information, over and over and over. They took your e-mail address and started sending you JUNK E-MAIL. And then didn't stop sending newspapers to your house. Despite half a dozen irate phone calls.

To your credit, you did fix the problem by taping a giant sign to the garage that said "DON'T DELIVER NEWSPAPERS HERE." It was only about 2'x3' and didn't make the neighbors think you were crazy at all. BUT IT WORKED.

Did I mention that you are also someone who runs off on wild tangents sometimes?

Anyway, being the civil-minded environmentalist that you are, and truly believing in the good intentions of people (if not the corporations by which they are employed), you call up H&R Block. Arbitrarily choose some of the options from the automated menu. Explain that you want to be taken off their mailing list. Get asked some mumbled question about W-2's. Re-explain about the mailing list. Hear a mumbled response. Say nothing. Get connected to someone else. Re-explain.

This person seems to know what you want. And you can understand what they're saying, which is a huge plus. They ask for your e-mail. You say that they don't need your e-mail, since you're trying to get OFF their snail-mailing list. (You're also paranoid, thanks to The News Journal.) They put you on hold for 2 minutes. They come back. They ask for name and address. You supply these. They ask for your e-mail. You explain again. THIS TIME, they respond. We need your e-mail, because otherwise how will we know where NOT to send things?

...

...

...

Despite your best efforts, you are really not getting through. But you oblige.

Finally, they think they're done with you. They see the finish line, gleaming up ahead. They can finally get rid of this weird person who hates CD's so much.

You have the ace.

"Well, it's gonna be difficult for you guys to stop sending me things, because you didn't take down my town or state. Do you have that information in your database?"

"...no, ma'am."

They also ask you to spell Delaware.

Which makes you considerably nervous.

Luckily, since you're paranoid, you recorded the whole thing. So when you get the next CD, you can be even more irate.

You know, in a civil kind of way.

Feelin' clever

2012-01-12T12:03:00.003-05:00

I've learned a few things in the last few weeks that made me feel pretty clever.

Flax seeds can be ground in a coffee grinder and added to oatmeal. Great way to get some omega-3's into me.
Extra virgin olive oil can be used to grease baking pans AND can be used as a hand moisturizer.
Not only can salsa jars be reused as drinking glasses - if you keep the lids, you can use them to store extra smoothie. All you have to do later is take the lid off and drink.

Time audit: first full week

2012-01-08T23:16:00.006-05:00

Despite any claims I make about being a hermit, I spent 23 hours just hanging out with people last week.

16 hours on social media, 12 hours on driving.

14ish hours on doing music stuff. (Record-keeping or open mics or anything inside or out of the house.)

8 hours just preparing for things (like, to go to work in the morning or whatnot).

5 hours vegging or journaling.

5 hours dancing... ^^ (I think that includes the potluck.)

That's 83 hours. Of the 168 hours that are in one week. Non-work, non-sleep hours. 50% of my week.

Then there are about 7 categories that are less than 3 hours: church; eating; cleaning; errands; etc. 7% of my week.

Then there's work (27, I am only part-time during non-summer months) and sleep (46). 43% of my week.

Reactions:

In general, I probably do not have 23 hours each week to hang out. It was an odd week. Plus the hanging out does include some time that should have been allotted to "church" because it's a kinship group.

I also don't have 16 hours to be on social media. F'cripesake. But I think what I'll do is step myself down. Try to get it to an hour a day instead of 2. I've tried cold turkey and other stringent methods and I just go right back. To be honest, just logging the time has helped me to at least stop being on Facebook after midnight, which is pretty huge.

I need to start thinking of prep time for work as part of a time block that also includes work and the driving time. It's so strange how my mind currently isn't wired this way.

Time and how I perceive it

2012-01-02T19:09:00.002-05:00

Well, my experiment in auditing time was a failure for last week, because, HOLIDAYS! I'm starting anew with the new year.

Here's some preliminary findings, though:

Social Media time averages 2 hours EVERY DAY
My mind thinks that it takes no time to get ready to go somewhere. So I was confused when I had to categorize blocks of time I spent preparing to go places. It's still weird.
I only spend about a quarter of my time asleep.
During Christmas week, zero hours were allocated to practicing, 16 allocated to hanging out, and 12 hours on social media. Hmmmmm.

Orange Seedlings, 2 months. Plus, a little happy avocado.

2011-12-30T10:38:00.004-05:00

My orange seedlings are now 2.5 months old!

Given my track record with seedlings, I find I'm constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop... trying not to hope too much, or get too excited about anything... Honestly, though, these are a TON easier than the apple seedlings I was always trying to grow. Apples are so susceptible to root rot. Overwater them even a little, and they're done.

Citrus is different, somehow. Either that, or I've learned not to fawn all over the things. There's an art to knowing how much water to give to a plant.

I got all excited because they unfurled their first true leaves. Then they settled in for awhile, and didn't do anything. Which is something that always makes me nervous, because when the apple seedlings stopped growing, it meant they were dying. I think, though, that in healthy plants, they alternate growing upwardly and downwardly.

Within the last week or so, they started putting out a second set of leaves. I think I need to give them some compost tea soon.

And here we have a little avocado pit. I had no intention of sprouting an avocado pit, but Shane said, "try it," so... I did.

I have two of them going, but only one put out a root. It's pretty easy to start them, just put them pointy side up in some water. They need to be suspended because the root needs some space to descend. I peeled off some of the skin to speed things up. Most of the instructions I saw called for folks to actually stick toothpicks in the pit to keep it suspended, but I didn't think it was good practice to put holes in a seed, so I'm using an old onion mesh bag. I'm probably going to cut it a little bigger around where the root is so that it doesn't get strangled.

Eco-friendly Christmas: Wrappin'

2011-12-17T12:23:00.002-05:00

Guess what these li'l guys are wrapped in?

Pages from last year's Eddie Bauer Christmas catalog.

Merry Christmaaaas!

Easy good acorn squash recipe

2011-12-17T12:16:00.005-05:00

Holidays means potlucks. And you sometimes get folks that are vegan or vegetarian or lactose intolerant or glucose intolerant or I don't know what.

So I found this recipe. I like acorn squash because they are one of our native vegetables. And they're TASTY!

I thought this recipe covered all my bases but I guess not. Apparently even if you substitute margarine for butter, it depends on the kind of margarine whether it's fully vegan or glucose-free. Anyway, it was still pretty tasty and easy and not cost-intensive, and it was well-received amongst my peers, so I thought I'd share it.

(from http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Acorn-Squash-Slices)

Ingredients

2 medium acorn squash (about 1-1/2 pounds each)
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup maple syrup
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1/3 cup chopped pecans, optional

Directions

Cut squash in half lengthwise; remove and discard seeds and membrane. Cut each half widthwise into 1/2-in. slices; discard ends.
Place slices in a greased 13-in. x 9-in. baking dish. Sprinkle with salt. Combine syrup and butter; pour over squash. Sprinkle with pecans if desired.
Cover and bake at 350° for 40-45 minutes or until tender. Yield: 6 servings.

Christmas makes you spend time differently.

2011-12-17T12:10:00.006-05:00

Realizing that the Christmastime season isn't a good time to do my time audit, but I have a super-cool spreadsheet to put things in now. (I designed it myself because I'm nerdy like that.) Plus, it's good to do a little dry run so that I can figure out how it's going to work. For example, some of the time I spent doing errands yesterday was technically spent driving, but I didn't count it that way, so I need to figure out how and why I want to do that bit.

The chart automatically adjusts when I put numbers in ^^

If anything, this exercise is just helping me to be more aware of things like, when I'm on the computer and not working on the mile-long list of Stuff I Gotta Get Done Today.

I would like to add that I don't ordinarily ever sleep this good. Data is definitely being skewed by something or other.

TIme audit

2011-12-15T00:39:00.000-05:00

I began an experiment today.

I'm auditing my time. I'm tracking how much time I spend doing what during the day.

Time is valuable. You track finances. Time is easily equally important. I realize if I feel crunched for time, the best thing to do is to try to get an honest look at where it's going.

Today's revelation:

WORK: 6.25 hours (41%)
HANGOUT/JAM: 4 hours (26%)
SOCIAL MEDIA: 2 hours (12 %)
DRIVING: 1 hour (6%)
PREPARING FOR THINGS: 1 hour (6%)
MEETINGS: 1 hour (6%)
LESSON: 1/2 hour (3%)

Oddly, my two income sources are sandwiched, there. The one I spend the least amount of time on earns me my best hourly wage.

Hmmmmmm.

I can DEFINITELY cut back on social media. (What was I really doing on facebook for two hours that was *SO* important???)

Stream of Consciousness/BUSY

2011-12-11T17:04:00.006-05:00

A few things I'm dealing with going into the Christmas season.

I'm a victim, again, of being BUSY. BUSY is an acronym. BUSY means "Bound Under Satan's Yoke." A friend and mentor shared that with me, and frankly, I love it.

God's plan was not for me to be so burdened with obligations. That was the plan of my squirrelly little mind. We can get caught so easily in the trap of thinking that our minds are superior to all other aspects of our selves. Someone kindly reminded me today that this isn't so. Mind is subject to the spirit. You know things in spirit that the mind doesn't understand. I know it's important to be kind to other people, and my mind can generate several good and logical reasons to be kind to people. But the mind does not understand love as simply and purely as the spirit does.

In my mind, I often think to myself how grand it is to keep on keepin' on. Get things done. Do good things. Make people happy. Then, feelings of responsibility seep in. Then, you can tie your own failure to the notion of letting people down. Then, you get caught up in a sneaky spiral of self-hatred.

Because it's good to do good things, but ultimately, God's got things under control. There's no need to stretch myself so thin that I snap. There never was.

I tie this into the environmental cause because so much destruction is caused by basic behavior patterns. We are trained to be so busy that we need fast food just to get through the day, and then we sit around in a stupor watching TV at the end of the day. When we slow down, let God be in control, and only take on obligations prayerfully and carefully. God will sometimes tell me to do a thing I wouldn't ordinarily think about, or tell me NOT to do a thing I was really excited about. There has usually never been a negative repercussion for disobeying; I just don't get really blessed, or I don't feel God's presence about whatever it is I'm doing. Which is so key to my existence.

Being so busy has caused me to falter in basic things like praying and reading my Bible. (And other things, like laundry and having food available for consumption). In my mind, these things are time-consuming and getting in the way of MY achieving. Darnit. In passing these things aside, my spirit starves, I don't hear from God as frequently, I don't feel His presence, I'm not calm, I'm not assured in myself. The word "frenetic" comes to mind. Frenetic is fun for about five seconds. Then it feels like an eternal caffeine overdose.

So, I'm trying to lay aside the notion that I'm responsible for things, put them in God's hands, and ask Him to come and cut out some of the craziness I've gotten myself into. It's always so easy to take things on and harder to wriggle out of them... but if my relationship with God comes first, and it does, I'll ask Him to help with it, and He will.

Food Fight: Co-op versus Farmers Market

2011-11-16T21:41:00.004-05:00

I finally did it. I made it back to the Newark Farmer's Market.

I keep going back to Acme, Safeway, etc. whatever's on the way home from work. Monday, though, I don't know what got into me, but... I've recently been having this notion hammered into me. Faith without works is dead. Talk is cheap. Say whatever you want, it's actions that make up who you are and what you stand for. Go support your locally owned produce market, if you believe in it so much.

And I do.

And I do it because... well, essentially, local is better. Corporations are too big, have too much influence, and their main priority is to produce sustainable legal income. Some corporations do care about the environment, but when you look at the structure: their PRIORITY is to make money. Period. I don't trust something that operates that way. Aside from that, I think "love thy neighbor" sums it up. I am loving the people in my community by supporting what I think is a well-run local business. I am putting my money in their hands instead of in the hands of corporations. I just like it bettah that way.

It's not really a farmer's market, per se. When I think "Farmer's Market," I think about a spot where you can buy foods from the farmers what grew 'em. That's not the case with this place, but I like it for what it is.

It's inside of an old department store. (I remember when it was still Best. I remember that there was a phone shaped as a football that was entrancing enough to write about in my journal later.) I suppose it's renovated, but when you go in it still has that "rough around the edges" feeling. Which is a feeling I kinda like. It makes things feel like, "yeah, we're a store, and we're real people running a real store, WHAT. Were you expecting something nicer than a concrete floor? Go to Wal-Mart for all I care."

I still have a tough time buying food around here. I got spoiled in Takoma Park. Best place I ever lived for eating. And dancing. And aikido. (Remind me why I left, again??) Their farmers markets, you knew you were buying local. Their co-op was the bomb for prices. Comparatively, I'm less than thrilled here.

I do shop the co-op for bulk foods. They have organic brown rice (need to buy organic for brown rice because the hulls really cling to any pesticides). They have nature burger, and they finally got that refried bean mix. Glorious. But when I'm at the co-op, looking at the produce... aside from a few tags in PA, MD, and DE, a lot of the stuff is still coming in from California.

I can't figure what the difference is between shopping at the co-op and shopping at the farmer's market. Both are small local groceries, which is what I want, to stop voting for the existence of corporations with my money. Both get their produce from just about as far away, which is to say, probably some local but not all. The Farmers Market has a HUGE selection, though, and they have cheese made in New York, and you can get out of the store without damaging your wallet.

Shrug. If I wanted to be super-good, I'd get on a CSA. To be honest, CSA's scare me. I've never done it before. I do like stepping out of my comfort zone, but I don't do it all the time. There are times to try new things and take new steps. Anyway, I'm afraid of a few things. I'm afraid that I'll end up investing a lot of money (don't have a ton of extra cash lying around) in too much food (buying for 1 person = many things go bad before you can eat them) that I don't know how to cook (I've tried the whole "buy this and figure out how to make it" method, it ends up getting ignored and rotting in the fridge).

I think it's in the future, it's just a not-now kind of step. Meh.

Orange Seedlings: Timelapse

2011-11-09T18:20:00.005-05:00

You may be getting the vague impression that I'm REALLY EXCITED about my li'l orange seedlings...

You'd be right!

The Hairsperiment, Following Up...

2011-11-09T18:00:00.009-05:00

My non-hair-washing experiment went so well that I forgot I was running it.

I now wash my hair about once per month, and I'm back to a baking-soda-paste scrub, which I prefer on ecological principles. (Shampoo = many ingredients = much energy = I polluted more; Baking soda = one ingredient (which can be used for many purposes) = less energy = less impact.)

I went to get my hair cut about a month after I first began the experiment. We did the whole intro: sit down in the chair, stylist plays with your hair, you tell her what you're thinking about the hair, she tells you what she thinks about what you thought, then you go wash the hair.

Right before we got to the sink, I confided that I hadn't washed in a month. She was totally floored. (In a good way, don't worry, she was cool and wasn't grossed out at all.) She hadn't been able to tell at ALL, not from touching it, or even smelling it. Most people really can't tell. My mom hasn't said anything in these few months, and she's the olfactory queen, so either she's obliging me or she hasn't detected a thing.

Can I tell? ... I can. The only thing that gives it away is that the hair has more body, and generally lies flatter. I've got thick hair, and I usually keep it cut really, really, really short, because I just think it's a hassle. (I got things to do, okay? I made it a policy long ago that I would not be one to waste my life away in the bathroom or in front of a mirror.) But now, I've let it grow long... it's even touching my neck, now, without assistance. And I credit the length with a couple of things... Firstly, I'm ~~a cheapskate~~ thrifty. Secondly - because my hair has more natural oil in it - not to make this sound gross - it stays put when I brush it away. I can wake up in the morning with total bedhead, and it brushes out. And I repeat, it's NOT greasy. It's just got more oomph to it. It's like it's actually got life in it. To summarize: I find my hair is healthier-looking, healthier-feeling, and easier to manage now, as compared to when I washed it daily.

One tip, though - if you're going to do this, get a comb. A fat-toothed comb. Or a brush that cleans easily. I have a brush and it works fine, but there is some grease that accumulates over time, and I generally found it works well if you can clean it easily from your brush or comb a few times a month.

Winninnnnng

Orange seedlings

2011-10-31T14:28:00.003-04:00

Sprouted around October 10, planted October 15. (I dunno if that's 2 or 3 weeks of growth.) They're still alive, and hopefully will continue to grow. Sunlight's getting weaker and I've just got the one little CFL to supplement their growth. Plus, it's chilly in here (air temp is 60 degrees) so I put a little heat pad under them (with auto shut-off) to try to boost the soil temps.

I put up a little timelapse on my tumblr, 'cos it's easier to scroll through the pictures.

2011-10-28T22:41:00.003-04:00

A beautiful variegated fritillary. Released today to brave the rain and snow tomorrow. Either that or to become food for some other critter.

Which really begs the question, why did I bother to nurture this thing whose chances out there in the world are slim to nil? 'Cause, I don't know. I, too, am tasked with equally impossible things. I, too, sometimes crash and burn. But I am glad to have had the chance to crash and burn, and maybe there is something redeeming that will arise out of it, and maybe I only know that I cannot know what it is. Some days, the best I can do is to give God a chance. To let him into my life. To nurture a thing to its full potential and then release it into the teeth of a snowstorm. And then, wait to see what beauty He may work of it. Patiently. Expectantly.

2011-10-27T16:43:00.005-04:00

After The. Worst. Day. Of. Work. I came home. And I just want to sit down and cry.

But I came home and found out that SOMEONE BROKE MY CHRYSALIS!

And then I realized, nope.

I guess I'll release him tomorrow. You know, before the FREAKING SNOW STORM THAT'S GONNA RUIN THE HALLOWEEN HOOT.

I might still have that cry after all.

Anntiiiiciiiipaaaaaaaaatioooooon

2011-10-26T16:53:00.004-04:00

October 21 versus October 26. It's roughly day 10 of the variegated fritillary's life a a pupa. Probably it'll hatch at some point when I'm too busy having a life to watch butterflies be born :(

Li'l autumn hike in White Clay

2011-10-23T15:08:00.008-04:00

Hikin'! On the Penndel trail on the PA side of the White Clay Creek preserve.

I made a trail buddy today. I ran into a nice gent on the trail with a bandana tied scout-style around his neck, somehow we ended up talking about Sycamores and eagles and things. (I don't remember ever being this gregarious growing up, but my friend from first grade tells me that our initial contact was me saying, "hey, you wanna be friends?" So despite my memory's infidelity, there's apparently a historical precedent.)

Sycamores on the other side... (the bark peels and they look white)

Sycamore leaves get biiiiiiiig!

This is why we leave fallen trees. They become new habitat and eventually, new dirt!

I took this photo to show what a trail blaze is. See the little blue mark on the tree on the left? That's a trail blaze. It is said that certain local park systems actually prohibit the use of trail blazes because it would ruin the trail's aesthetic appeal. Personally, my thought is that getting lost on a trail with the sky going dark is the thing that ruins aesthetic appeal, but what do I know.

Splash'a red!

Why go hiking? Welp. Before I even knew God very well, I knew that nature was special. And when I finally began to know God, I was surrounded by a pristine Alaskan wilderness, and looking around, you can just tell there's something big out there, and it loves the planet very, very much; why else would it be so beautiful?

Every time I'm in nature, I revert to my purest form. I can just be. Every time I've ever been in nature, I become simultaneously satisfied and even more curious. Eyes that have been trained to see pick out the familiar and the unfamiliar. Ears discern the calls of common birds and demand attention over those less heard. There are messages in all of it, and they are all from God.

Variegated Fritillary

2011-10-16T09:16:00.008-04:00

It's a Variegated Fritillary. I figured it out after a little more searchin'. And the plants are wild violets, which they sometimes feed on.

Right before pupa stage.

With half its caterpillar skin still on. I think people think that a chrysalis is just a caterpillar that hardens on the outside. It actually pupates on the inside, then sheds its old caterpillar skin. Last night at 0030.

Skin shed complete (the skin is that crumpled up thing on top) this morning at 0900.

So pretty! This doesn't give you any perspective on the size. It's about a half-inch long (as wide across as a dime) and as big around as a chopstick.

Excite!

2011-10-14T23:11:00.004-04:00

Black swallowtail caterpillar successfully made it to the pupa stage. I was a little nervous because he went into his "j" pose for like 24 hours. (That's the last thing they do as a caterpillar - they start webbing themselves onto whatever surface suits best, and the next time you see them they're in a chrysalis.) Anyway, I came home from work today and found his last little skin shed on the floor of the tank, and him all brown and camouflaged-lookin'.

The spiky guy is doing something... I finally put a few sticks in his tank and he started going nuts. I've never seen a caterpillar web like this before.

(A better photo of him, now that I got my camera batts all charged)

(THE WEBINATIONNNNN)

AND, the orange seeds are sprouting. YAY!!!

Botanical anecdotes in Autumn.

2011-10-12T17:56:00.002-04:00

Autumn!

Leaves!

Red maple and red oak. We’re seeing a lot of red, but I saw some poplars the other day that were starting to show off their yellow. The reds are my favorite, though, especially when you see that one tree that seems almost neon red, popping decisively from the autumn wash of landscape.

Anyway, I’m trying a thing.

In the history of seeds I’ve sprouted, there was once an orange. I think it lasted a week before I finally fried it out in the sun. That was 2009. I’ve learned a thing or two since. Primarily things about patience with tiny delicate organisms.

I am constantly on the lookout for seeds. If I eat a thing that has seeds, I will try to save the seeds and sprout them. I’ve sprouted probably hundreds of apple seeds. And now, hopefully, a batch of orange seeds from a really seedy orange I knew once...

I’m not good at plant care. Like, at all. There’s a friend of mine who’s awesome at it, and she had the incredible misfortune of hiring me to mind her house while she vacationed with family this summer. She didn’t leave long enough for me to do permanent damage, but there were all kinds of things in her instructions that I was pretty sure I would have figured out eventually.

I enjoy caring for plants, though, because I always find little messages from God.

Mint, for example, a tenacious little plant, can be encouraged to root if you mash a sprig of it into the dirt. And cutting it off at the top, the main bent of its growth, forces it to branch out. So, if you find yourself facedown in the dirt, or if you are suddenly stopped - look for the other ways you can grow.

My strawberry plant returned this year with a vengeance. It had rooted its runners into every other pot before I even noticed. Not every runner found a spot to root, but most did. Lesson learned: rabid enthusiasm breeds success.

I cared for my own first tomato plant this summer. (Yes, I somehow got to be this old without ever having my own tomato plant.) I found out that tomatoes need a TON OF WATER. In fact, I kept having little hard green tomatoes that refused to ripen until I began dousing the thing with water. Just another notion of fairness not being equalness, but being “everyone gets what he or she needs.”

And, despite having just the tomato and the pepper plant - I lost some veggies just because I didn’t pick them when they were ripe. If a thing is ripe, PICK the darn thing. Don’t sit around waiting for bugs to eat it. Cause they will.

Anyway, enough of these botanical anecdotes. With any luck, I’ll have the patience to properly care for some orange seedlings, once they (hopefully) start to sprout...

Caterpillar update.

2011-10-12T17:49:00.005-04:00

Well, I did quite a lot of caterpillar care this summer. We had a batch of black swallowtail butterflies hatch from the little guys I found on my parsley. But there were two that didn’t hatch. They ate, and pooped, and ate, and pooped, and they went to chrysalis, but they never hatched.

The question was posed: are they dead?

Well... from what I can tell (aka, Google search!), a dead chrysalis turns brown/black. (And I actually had the misfortune of encountering a dead monarch chrysalis out in the park, and the stench was incredible.) These guys, though, they haven’t done that. They’re just... sleeping. Apparently, with black swallowtails - if it’s late in the season, they just stay in there all winter and come back out... later. June?

That was a relief, but now I’m stuck with two chrysalises that are sleeping in, in a huge way. Pfff.

My friend Beth recently found that she had a black swallowtail cat on her parsley. Which really had me doing a triple-take. It’s October, f’goshsakes. Anyway, I stuck it in there with the two chrysalises to overwinter. It kind of reminded me of the Dawn Treader, not the crappy movie version, but the awesome and authentic story by C. S. Lewis. I’m going from memory, so I could be wrong, but... near the end, they found the last two lords asleep at a stone table. They had collected one lord from the island of darkness, or fear, or whatever, and he was so shaken up from being trapped there for so long that he wasn’t in a state to adventure forth anymore. They left him at the table with the other two and he fell asleep, to be woken later.

(Here he is with a sleeping chrysalis to his right. He may be getting ready to do the same since he's crawling on the ceiling and not interested in food anymore.)

Maybe a little dramatic to describe my little caterpillar situation, but I kinda like it.

There was also this red and black caterpillar with spikes:

I didn’t know what it was, but Beth had plenty of its host plant since it was some unknown weed that she was pulling out of the garden. I opted to take this one home, too, though it’s a bit of a mystery bug. The closest thing I can find to it is a Gulf Fritillary larva. The problem is that Gulf Fritillaries ONLY feed on passion flowers or passion vines. And I have no freaking clue what this plant is, but why would it be growing like a weed in Beth’s garden if it was a passion flower?

(Then again, what business does a black swallowtail cat have, being born in October?)

What a weird world it is. Anyway, I’m kinda excited to see what happens with my mystery cat. It’s still eating and pooping (actually it has gravity-defying turds that stick on the side of the container...), so I’m pretty optimistic that I’ll find out within the next few weeks.

Black Swallowtail, first instar

2011-07-17T09:55:00.002-04:00

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee~!!

I put out parsley hoping this would happen, and it did! Black swallowtail butterflies loooooove parsley. They will lay their eggs on parsley, because that's what the baby caterpillars eat. These are first instar, no bigger across than my pinky finger (and it's a skinny pinky finger!)

I safely collected 8 of these guys and put them with some parsley in a jar (with holes in the lid, obviously). Last year, we took some of these to Tri-State Christian Camp and the kids looooooooved them. The folks who run the camp already left, but luckily I have a couple camps at my work who'd love to see these guys mature into butterflies.

Joying

2011-07-09T10:06:00.007-04:00

Part of the work of healing the spiritual rifts between us and God is en-joying His creation. I believe this is true. When you are invited to someone else's workshop or gallery, it is appropriate and kind to offer compliments on the works you see there. And in the offering of compliments, you will create a bond between yourself and the maker. Shoot, he might even give you something to take home.

So here's one way I've been en-joying creation.

By GETTING SURROUNDED BY IT!

From the right, we have: aloe, bamboo, a tiny little oak which I believe is not living anymore, some scorched basil, and mint out the wazoo. I put them behind the sink because they are all too sensitive to be out in the blazing summer heat, but I now really en-joy having them there, because it makes washing the dishes a little bit more fun.

I scorched the mint pretty badly. Mint is my first love, though, and the cure to all black thumbs, because it is just like the Terminator: "I'll be back" --

I like the image of this little mint bud rising up under the shadow of its shriveled predecessor. As long as it's got one or two roots still living under the soil, it'll rise up again, no sweat no doubt.

I think Walt the fish likes having a little jungle of mint, too:

But I love the smell of burning rice...

2011-07-07T21:34:00.005-04:00

In some respects, I am a well-oiled organizational machine. If I latch onto a thing, I organize myself and other people, make spreadsheets, create e-mail groups, plan meetings with prepared agendas so they'll run as efficiently as possible, contact necessary players in the community with polite and motivational messages...

In other respects, I am a complete space case. Always have been, always will be. There's a story from my childhood about how I entered a room to take a test at school, and proceeded to walk across every single chair in the room in order to get where the proctor was. Certain things about normal, everyday life just don't click in my mind.

My mother knows this about me. She's a good mom, so when she saw that I had posted more than one facebook status concerning burnt rice -- instead of judging me and ostracizing me, she decided to love me for who I am instead and bought me a rice cooker.

My environmentalist brain rarely shuts off, so while I am emotionally pleased with the gift (very pleased!! ^^), my brain is ticking away. Having more gadgets doesn't simplify - doesn't it create more clutter and involve more energy to make more things?

This is true. The rice cooker is a product that took energy to make.

However, the rice cooker is also designed specifically to do one thing, and to do it well, wasting less energy than a pot on the stove. The stovetop is not a great energy-efficient way of doing things, unfortunately - it's beaten out by the microwave and pretty much anything else designed for one purpose, like a rice cooker or a hotpot.

So the trading point is: am I going to use this gadget? How much am I going to use this gadget? Is it a worthwhile investment of the planet's energy, or would it be best in someone else's hands?

Fortunately, since my eco-friendly lifestyle involves eating copious amounts of brown rice (less processed = less energy + more natural nutrients + happier digestive system), the rice cooker is totally worth it. I made a big ol' mess of brown rice and it didn't even burn. Also, I steamed some broccoli and it was really tasty.

Thanks for following me through that weird thought process. Here's to the end of the days of burnt rice ^^

Hair washing.

2011-06-25T22:43:00.006-04:00

Currently I am measuring the necessity of washing my hair. To date, no one has indicated to me in any fashion that they've noticed I haven't washed my hair in the last 3-4 weeks. In fact, the only comment made about my hair in that time was Michael asking if I had highlights put in. I told him yes - in February. You're not unobservant, Michael. For some reason, they're way more visible now that I've stopped washing my hair. :) (I am rinsing, though.)

For those that might wonder - while I do work in parks, I am not entitled in any way to be a dirty hippy as far as my employment's concerned. Appearance needs to be professional and generally non-frightening. It's not an act of rebellion and yes, if my hair was grungy (or gets real grungy), I'd wash. Rather than defiance, this is just me trying to eliminate having to buy a product I don't need. Plus, it cuts down on water consumption and shower time. Live simply that others may simply live.

A thought.

2011-06-23T19:46:00.002-04:00

I found this thought that I scribbled down (despite having scads of notebooks sometimes the occasional thought slips through onto a piece of scrap paper).

"Right now we live in a society that chooses how to live without regard for the Earth and then spends its resources proving that it can't prove how long the Earth will be around. How about if we just choose a lifestyle that assures the existence of the planet?"

Good thought, past me.

Thoughts on the impossible.

2011-06-14T21:18:00.004-04:00

A friend, Mary, recently gave a teaching at a women's retreat, and it still sticks with me: sometimes God calls us to the impossible so that when we achieve the impossible, we can't possibly claim the credit. The glory is God's and it's blatant to everyone with eyes to see, including those who follow Him and those who don't.

Time and again, God has used non-believers to do His work. I never forget this, especially in our battle for harmony with creation. Christians ought to be leading the charge, but as they're not - God will use whomever is willing to hear His battle cry.

I once saw a grown man, an advocate of nature whose career is based in a love of parks, walk out of a short film depicting the destruction of coral reefs. This image comes back to me over and over again as I try to walk this out. Many people, regardless of their understanding of God, can sense the spiritual side of this battle. It is more than just destruction of the planet, it's a destruction of self, the defacement of our own dignity. It's like waking up one morning and realizing you've been using your bed as a toilet for the last year. Or worse, someone else has been using your bed as their own toilet, continues to do so, and they can't understand why you're so upset with them.

It seems impossible. Daunting. Because the solution is not policy change, new laws, or innovative technology. The solution is a lasting personal change in the hearts of men and women. The solution is an understanding that our planet is sacred. Understanding that it's actually really unhealthy to soil your own bed. It won't be accomplished with pamphlets, facts, figures, rants, or anything like that. It will be accomplished with simple and self-sacrificing love, just like anything else that God does.

Jesus only did what he saw the Father doing.

What's the Father doing?

EcoGod

2011-06-12T09:39:00.003-04:00

I had a thousand options for things to do yesterday. Music festival, friends' bands playing, bonfires, parties, etc... there was no reason I should have been in my house.

Except that God asked me to stay in.

I've done things against what God's asked me to do and it usually turns out fine, but that's it. It turns out fine. I don't get blessed, revitalized, nourished. I just keep on existing. Go me.

So I stayed in. And I got the revitalization I needed just from sitting around and journaling and backtracking in old journals and watchin' Narnia and playing music and watching thunderstorms (and, yes, standing out in the thunderstorms, because I wanted to become an active participant instead of just an observer).

In my life, there are a few flavors of journals and notebooks, and I'd strongly advise whoever cleans up my stuff after I die just to chuck 'em, because there's going to be a lot of them and it would take years to go through them all. I'm only 25 and I've got a stack of journals as high as my arm.

Anyway, I've got diaries, which are for blabbing about current life events; I've got notebooks, which are for poetry and writing music; and I've got my little red book. The little red book has only existed a couple of years now and I think it's a type of journal I'll be continuing. The little red book is easy to carry in a small bag or a large pocket. It started as a place to jot random song ideas but it's turned into my little red book of personal revelation from God. Whenever I feel Him talking to me, I write in it.

This is an excerpt from November 13. I had just wrapped up a 3-day young adult conference in Worcester, MA.

Yesterday, Jay [Pathak, our guest speaker] asked if there was anyone with a holy discontent on them, on their hearts, something felt of God's heart. I began sobbing. My chest started just to heave of its own accord.
And I tried to hide it.
It was like I was embarrassed to feel this way. The feeling was like, why can't I just be normal like everyone else? Why can't I just be happy living and not thinking about how bad the environment is getting?
What a terrible thought, but, you know, healing the environment is a great and terrible task. I have enough worldly knowledge about it now that I know it's a nearly impossible task.
...
I feel silly believing that I could feel the anger of God towards the destruction of His planet. But I have to believe it. I've known that the environmental attitudes of people is a spiritual deficit - I've known that it must upset God - I've just ever known that God would actually lift the walls between our hearts and let that feeling flood into me.
...
One thing... one thing that I need to say... is that I feel overwhelmingly pressured by other people [Christians] that God's heart is for people and not the planet. And certainly God's heart is for the people. Especially the poor. But God... God loves the things He has made. And He hates that those things are marginalized and set aside as "something to do after everyone gets saved."

See, I honestly think God stopped me from writing in here for a bit while He did some work in me. I used to get words when I first started going to my church that I wasn't ready to do anything, that it was just time to wait on the Lord and let Him build a good foundation that we can work from. Unfortunately, I'm impatient and impetuous, so this was frustrating to me.

But there is a great sweet joy in having a relationship with the Lord and I'm always happy when we spend good quality time together, like yesterday, and like all the time He was building our foundation.

When I first became a Christian, I was very shy about it. I wanted more than anything to follow God and not be a Christian. My prayer was, please, God, I love you, but please don't make me have to be a Christian. See, Christians were very scary people to me. They were the people that rabidly proclaimed God's hatred on most of how I lived my life or the values I held. Certainly not personally - just the impression I got from how they conducted themselves toward everyone else. So I guess I figured if I started calling myself a Christian, people I knew would begin to think of me as a terrible person.

But I didn't have a choice. God had me hooked. I knew He wanted to have a relationship with me, I began to understand that he was Love and not hate, and knowing this, I found it impossible to ignore His call.

So now, here I am, blabbing all about it. Why's it relevant to environment? Because it's not just "the environment." It's God's. He loves it. He made it. And when people get disconnected from what He has made, they're disconnected from Him. Even those who profess to follow Him.

I will no longer be ashamed or afraid to talk about Creation and God's love for it. I will no longer prance around the issue on this blog. This is who I am now.

I'm in a rut... multiple ruts... this metaphor just exploded.

2010-12-10T15:56:00.002-05:00

I can't seem to focus on this blog, so here's the obligatory "I might not be blogging for awhile" post. Look out, here it comes:

Yep, folks, whoever is reading this thing, it's not because I don't care about the planet. I just don't have the time to blog. Time management continues to be one of those skills that needs refinement. So while I always keep my love for creation close, here's the skinny: I work, I run a choir, I host a bible study, I give guitar (and banjo) lessons, I try to snag the occasional gig or two, I'm looking to record, I practice, and... I have to do all the normal people things, too, like shop for groceries and yell at Comcast about how I don't think I should have to pay sixty bucks for internet.

Right now I just want to focus on my job, my music, and drawing close to things that give me life. Unfortunately, the eco-blog doesn't currently rank on that list, but I'm hopeful that it will, someday. Possibly there will be a music blog, but I'm not keen on crossing the two different types of blogs. I dunno. I'll think about it. If you have an idea, I'm all ears.

Thanks for understanding. Catch ya on the flip side.

Go Veg, one day a week!

2010-10-31T16:15:00.006-04:00

Ghent, Belgium was the first city in the world to go vegetarian one day a week. According to the article on Vegetarianism on Wikipedia:

In May 2009, Ghent was reported to be "the first [city] in the world to go vegetarian at least once a week" for environmental reasons, when local authorities decided to implement a "weekly meatless day". Civil servants would eat vegetarian meals one day per week, in recognition of the United Nations' report. Posters were put up by local authorities to encourage the population to take part on vegetarian days, and "veggie street maps" were printed to highlight vegetarian restaurants. In September 2009, schools in Ghent are due to have a weekly veggiedag ("vegetarian day") too.

It's just one city in a world of cities. But the decision is huge.

First things first -- your meat was once an animal. It ate a lot of food and drank a lot of water. The food it ate (probably some sort of grain) was grown somewhere. The food needed lots of water to grow.

From Time.com:

To produce 1 lb. of feedlot beef requires 7 lbs. of feed grain, which takes 7,000 lbs. of water to grow. Pass up one hamburger, and you'll save as much water as you save by taking 40 showers with a low-flow nozzle.

So, going vegetarian reduces water consumption. And note -- that's not "all hamburgers for the rest of your life." Just ONE hamburger = 40 showers (provided you're using a low-flow nozzle, probably about 5 gal/min).

Now, your pre-meat animal also contributed a lot of greenhouse gases. (Air pollution.) In 2006, the UN released these facts and info; meat production was found to have contributed 9% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions; 35-40% of the world's methane; 65% of the world's nitrous oxide; and 64% of the world's ammonia.

(And just FYI: In terms of Global Warming Potential (GWP): methane is about 21 times worse than carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide is 296 times worse than carbon dioxide.)

So, Going vegetarian reduces greenhouse gas emissions. And even if you don't believe in global warming, you should know that the World Health Organization estimates about 2 million premature deaths can be blamed on air pollution.

Finally, your pre-meat animal, as we said, ate a lot of grain. Did you know that people can eat grain just like animals can? Did you know that in the US, in 1999, 70% of all corn and grain produced went into the bellies of our pre-meat animals? Did you know that, according to Cornell ecology professor David Pimentel, "If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million"?

So: Going vegetarian increases the amount of total food in the world. Seriously... 800 million people?

I'm sorry if writing all this down makes meat-eating seem a bit... selfish. (But on the other hand, maybe it is and maybe a little guilt won't hurt you any.)

I should note that I, myself, am not completely vegetarian. I limit my consumption, but unfortunately I sort of forgot what I set as my limit. Originally it was supposed to be that I could eat meat two days a week, keep them lower on the food chain (poultry or fish). Red meat could be consumed about once a month. Honestly, I've slipped a little -- but reading facts like this is a wake-up call to myself about the reality of what I'm eating.

Anyway, take a note from Ghent, Belgium. Are you eating meat all week? Think you could go veg just one day? I believe that you can. Are you eating just a bit? Think you can cut back more? I believe that you can. Try it and see.

I'm an addict. An e-addict.

2010-10-20T18:33:00.004-04:00

I need to confess something.

I’m addicted to the internet.

Checking e-mail becomes a 3-hour episode of “let’s look at everyone’s pictures on facebook.” Looking up a song to add to my repertoire becomes five hours of watching cats jump in boxes.

It sounds funny. It is kind of funny, but I find myself completely exhausted and kind of disillusioned about my ability to do anything.

I lose time, and time is precious when you’re a guitar teacher naturalist singer-songwriter choir director. So there’s that.

There’s also the notion that I don’t actually like being on the internet. I’m a tree-hugger, for cryin’ out loud. I don’t actually like sitting in front of a glowing screen all day. So it’s kind of bizarre that glowing screens can so easily ensnare me.

And then there’s the environmental side that I’m thinking of. Not so much my own computer – most personal computers these days are getting pretty energy-efficient. What I’m thinking of is the internet in general. How much electricity does it take to keep all these servers going, all the time, 24/7, and to air-condition the buildings they’re kept in? (They have to be air-conditioned, otherwise they could run too hot.)

I’ve got a general idea that each site or service has its own set of servers, and I vaguely understand that the more activity a site or service has, the more servers it needs. But I don’t get much beyond that, if there is anything about that.

The most electronics-deficient I’ve ever been was in Alaska. We had 20 minutes of satellite phone time a week. We also had a laptop that we’d use to input our data. We had electricity and all – just most of it we used to power the freezer, and some for the lightbulbs at night. I love situations where I’m working outside and I’m too busy for the internet. I always come home thinking, “YEAH, I’ll just stay off forever!”

I’m on again in less than a day.

Wendell Berry railed against "hypertext." But now people use it without even knowing that they use it. How simply can I be living if I have facebook, myspace, flickr, and a blog? Not to mention, some old website stuff on comcast. It's just such a huge part of our culture and our relationships now. I tried deleting facebook -- I think I lasted like a week, maybe. Best week ever, but... I have scads of friends in North Carolina who I enjoy spying on.

Anyway, I’ve tried setting boundaries for myself and they’re just so easily ignored. I don’t really know where to go from here.

Hold off on that ark.

2010-10-02T10:32:00.006-04:00

Yesterday, I was trying to get to work at the White Clay Creek State Park nature center, and I ran into a minor obstacle.

Much of the east coast got slammed Thursday by remnants of a tropical storm... or was it a hurricane? Anyway, it rained more than Hurricane Floyd. The flooding uprooted this bridge (which normally allows for car access to the nature center).

It turns out that the schools were all canceled anyway, which put a nix on the geology program we were supposed to run. That's probably a good thing, since the gravel bar that we normally go to was very much underwater.

According to the staff, the flooding will "recharge" the gravel bar, though, which basically means that the old rocks will move out and we'll get some new and exciting rocks.

This year, the White Clay Creek celebrated its tenth year as a National Wild and Scenic River. It's not a national park, but the designation is a partnership between locals and the National Park Service. In light of this flooding, it's a good thing that this land is all preserved.

In the first place, trees and other plants are HUGE help when it comes to preventing floods. Instead of going into the stream, water gets absorbed by trees. Their roots also aerate the soil, helping the water to go into the ground.

In the second place, most development that happens today actually increases flooding. This is basically because we like to create impermeable surfaces like parking lots, driveways, and rooftops, where water just slides right off where it used to be absorbed. So preserving land and protecting it from development helps decrease flooding.

Given these facts, it seems like it would be nice if we could develop responsibly -- making efforts to put back what we take from the earth, put those natural flood barriers in place when we remove them as a part of development -- but I'd argue that it's not only "nice." It's our responsibility.

Plus, everyone likes a parking lot with some trees in it anyhow.

The Onion's water bottle article

2010-09-19T23:40:00.005-04:00

This is sort of a cop-out as a blog post, but I really think that the Onion captures the destructive force of nonchalance and false justification.

Click here to read the Jan 19, 2010 article: 'How Bad For The Environment Can Throwing Away One Plastic Bottle Be?' 30 Million People Wonder

It's funny because nearly every single one of us is guilty of at least one of those thoughts -- and we know it. It's not the behavior that really needs attention, it's the attitude behind it. Once you turn nonchalance into a sincere care for the Earth, you won't need to force behaviors down throats in order to get people to choose what's best for themselves. Recycling and reducing consumption will be an absolute must, and it will be by popular demand.

That's what the Earth really needs. It really just needs its people to care about it. A lot. Maybe just as much as - or more than - they care about themselves.

A happy little joyful thing

2010-09-15T21:27:00.002-04:00

A monarch caterpillar!

Which I found at work. (I'm a part-time naturalist.) (Which is not the same as being a nudist, which one or two of the pastors at church may erroneously believe.)

I get real wrapped up in how terrible everything is going for the environment, and I'm pretty sure that's not really healthy. So it's good when I just get a little moment to just feel some joy without any guilt or anger attached to it.

And look! There it is. A little bit of joy, just crawling along a leaf of milkweed. He gets to eat, and eat, and eat, and then he melts down and re-forms and BAM, butterfly wings. And let's face it, no one else could pull off that fashion statement. Just sayin'.

Corporate Lies

2010-09-09T17:38:00.006-04:00

Today, I took an hour to enjoy the weather. Hurricane Earl swooped by last week, and ever since, it's been windy, dry, and decidedly NOT boiling hot. So it actually feels like autumn. I really love autumn. Mostly what I love is going hiking along streams or creeks in autumn. It's something about the wind and the water moving, and the leaves blowing in the wind and falling in the creek, and everything pretty and jolly but kind of melancholy all at once.

So I came home, feeling like planet Earth is pretty cool, and I decided to go tend my gosh-darn compost for once. I started composting about a year ago. I live in a row of townhouses with about ten square feet of backyard, so a for-real compost heap is more or less out of the question. But I do have a little space out there, and that's all I need. I got two five-gallon buckets from Home Depot, drilled drainage holes in the bottom and aeration holes in the sides along the top, and set 'em on some bricks (for aeration) under the deck. They're hardly noticeable (not even smellable, either) and it cost all of $10. As a result of composting, too, my garbage never smells -- I mostly only throw away the occasional sheet of plastic packaging. I feel pretty smug when I think about them composters.

Not only did I have to make them, I had to learn how to compost. Because having a composter and learning how to compost are actually two different things. There are rules to things going in the composter. Like, more "dries" than "wets," more "browns" than "greens," no dairy and no meat, only raw things. Oh, and ya gotta stir it up every day, for those little containers.

Now, do I stir it every day? No. Maybe like every week. I'm not a compost saint, unfortunately. But whatever. Basically, it goes like this: put wet stuff in the repurposed yogurt container 'till it's full, then take that out to the compost bucket. Stir it up when I get around to it. Dump dry leaves in there every once in awhile.

Oh, the dry leaves are what makes it great, though. I was thinking about how autumn is going to help me out with my dry leaf stash. You can evidently use straw, or even newspaper, for "dry" things, to keep the moisture level. (I've heard it's supposed to be "like a damp sponge.") But I just use dry leaves that I keep in some garbage bags in the garage. And man, those leaves smell really great. I'm not kidding. It's like potpurri. So I'm excited about having more dry leaves to keep in my garage.

Anyway, I was in there composting today, and I noticed something. The stupid Sun Chips bag STILL has not composted.
I think I put it in there before Shane left in July. If you've bought Sun Chips in the last year, you know what I mean. They did something to make their bags SUPER CRINKLY LOUD. BUT, they say, IT'S BECAUSE THEY ARE COMPOSTABLE!!

Apparently the statement only applies under very specific conditions. I want you to know that my composting repertoire is expansive... an entire spaghetti squash, pumpkin skin, cobs from corn, eggshells... so baby, it's you, not me. Darn you, Sun Chips. Darn you and your stupid loud bags that don't even compost under conditions you can recreate on planet Earth.

Well, anyway. That was corporate lie #1.

Corporate lie #2 isn't so much a lie as... the Money Mailer people trying to be misleading. I've entered another phase of trying to minimize my junk mail, and I've done pretty good. I called the number you can call to have credit card companies quit sending you stuff (1-888-567-8688, read about that here if you didn't know), and I even got those junk newspapers to quit arriving at my door (the solution was a 2'x3' sign taped to my garage door: DO NOT DELIVER NEWSPAPERS HERE).

Then I got the Money Mailer. Oh, man. It irks me because it's all just designed to entice you into spending money, not really saving you anything. I'm a freakishly conservative spender, so I hate the Money Mailer as a matter of that principle as well as the environmental front.

It says (in size 4 font on the very bottom) that you can go to their website to remove your address from the mailing list. Yay, says I! I'll go do that! So I go do it. And right on the site is this little plea from the poor, poor corporation that says: "Before submitting your information, please take a moment to review the impact of direct mail and myths and realities about advertising mail and the environment."

I think of myself as open-minded, so I decided to try to read what they had to say as objectively as I could. And it was really hard and I didn't actually read it with any objectivity 'till about the third time around. But I think I did it. I decided, just for fun, to see what exactly they were saying.

Here is one of their claims:

"Discarded direct mail represents just 2.4% of municipal solid waste, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the recycling recovery rate has grown nearly 700% since 1990."

1) The EPA reported in 2008 that Americans generated about 250 million tons of trash (municipal solid waste). 54% of that (135 million tons) actually went to the landfill; the rest of it was recycled and composted. I'm not sure as to whether they meant MSW that went to the landfill, or total MSW. But let's be generous and assume it was MSW that made it to the landfill (because we're nice people, really). 2.4% of 135 million is 3.24 million. (Did I do that math right?) So, 3 and a quarter million tons of trash is like, no big deal, apparently.
[If you're wondering -- using the other figure, it's 6 million tons.]

2) Any avid environmentalist will tell you that the saying is "Reduce, reuse, recycle," in that order, because the terms decrease in effectiveness in that order. The best thing you can do is reduce your waste. The second-best is to reuse. The third-best thing is recycling, and some people (me included) will gently remind you that recycling is really not doing as much as you believe it's doing.

Even though I was completely convinced by this fabulously clever information that I should definitely continue to receive the Money Mailers that I never even open, I decided to take myself off the list anyway.

Promises, promises.

2010-09-03T21:30:00.003-04:00

So, that whole "hey I'll update this once a week" thing. Yeah. I know.

Whatever.

Anyway, the pumpkins are all dead. My bust. It's been an insane week. It was the last week of my job, plus I housesat/dogsat/catsat/normalsat for the entire week. It really made me rethink the whole "ever having a pet" thing. Don't get me wrong. I love dogs. Cats are okay, but dogs. Yes.

However, dogs require work. Cats require work (but less than dogs). Fish require work. And even stupid baby pumpkin seedlings require work. Time, energy, money. And right now, I'm just this insane woman. Energy I've got, but expendable income, not so much, and time, well, time's a funny thing. Time is one of my most precious and most squandered resources, by far.

It sort of depresses me that I can't do everything I want, but it's the truth. I have to make lists of everything I want to do and prioritize the top three. I eliminate about ten things every time I do this.

My basic realization, at this point, is that I was so busy that I couldn't even spare five minutes to come to my own house once or twice during the week to water my baby pumpkin seedlings. I really cared about them, but I failed to prioritize. Either that, or I did prioritize in a sort of crude fashion.

It's sometimes difficult to remember that caring for Earth belongs on the priority list, and is worthy of my time. Worthy of the extra minutes spent going to the farmer's market instead of the grocery store. Worthy of making the effort to learn a new recipe that includes local produce.

It's quite hard, though. Life bears down on you sometimes.

At this point, I'm rambling... smell ya later.

Not that I'll get any pumpkins, but hey

2010-08-22T14:24:00.005-04:00

I had these apple seedlings. I loved them. I really did. I tried to nourish them as best I could, but I was a novice and they were high-maintenance and, well, none of them is still with me today. I had one seedling that was a few months old, and I felt pretty good in spite of the other fifty that I lost. Unfortunately, it decided that it was going to ditch all its leaves for no reason. I was wondering if maybe the poor thing thought that it was fall or something. In any case, it never came back.

The whole affair left me sort of disheartened. I have some mint, which is near impossible to destroy; I have some coneflower and black-eyed susans in the front garden, which are native to this area; I have some lavender that didn't bloom, a parsley plant, and a random strawberry plant.

But I've still never started anything from seed, which is what I want to do. Next year, I hope to actually have a garden with real vegetables in it. Or maybe do some container gardening. Anyway, you get the picture: I'm a little self-conscious about my inability to raise anything from seed.

So, I decided to try and sprout these pumpkin seeds. I know I'm late by at least a month. I know that in all likelihood, I won't get any pumpkins. But I took some heart from the fact that these might be easier to grow, being a native North American vegetable and all. I just want them to go as far as they can 'till the frost sets back in. I just want to be a good plant mommy.

I guess I need to plant them somewhere... soon...

Come on back now, ya'll, y'hear?

2010-08-14T15:44:00.003-04:00

I was visited by one Dan White the other ~~day~~ week who said to me, "hey, why haven't you updated your blog?"

I said, I don't know, I guess I wrote in it mostly so I wouldn't go completely insane at work.

He said, well, I was reading that. (Which strikes me a bit funny, 'cause seriously, who reads this thing?) So go update it.

Life is crazy-crazy for just about everyone I know, including me, so that's not really an excuse. I guess, if anything, here's my excuse:

I messed up.

I started not really caring, or backsliding, or rationalizing. And I think this happens every once in awhile to anyone who cares about planet Earth. "Well, it's all going to pot anyway, I'll just go out to Chinese and get the leftovers in that stupid little wax paper container that you can't recycle or reuse. There's no way I can change the millions of minds who are set on the inadvertent destruction of the planet -- plus, it's not like I'm polluting or something terrible like that."

But you know, God has a funny way of bringing me back. I was actually reading Romans the other day. 'Till now, I haven't done much Bible study on my own, 'cause the Bible I was using was like, I don't know, like two gears with mismatched teeth. But this one, I got at Camp Josiah last month, and it's much easier on my poor little brain.

Anyway, in there (around Romans 14) it says things like, "If you think some foods are unfit to eat, then for you they are not fit." and "Don't let your appetite destroy what God has done. All foods are fit to eat, but it is wrong to cause problems for others by what you eat."

Now, I know (think?) Paul is really just talking about unity between the different cultures who became followers of Jesus (i.e. "hey guys, quit picking on each other, Jesus said it's okay to eat whatever, but just because Sammy eats only kosher stuff doesn't mean that you get to pick on him"). But to me, it was a pretty stern reminder about how I really feel about the environment. It's pretty clear to me. Don't let your consumerism destroy creation. Don't choose products that dishonor or steal dignity from the lives of other people. Remember how you don't actually think it's okay to eat processed things? D'you know how much that's tearing you up inside under the thin sheet of numbness you've laid down in there? Gosh, Em, seriously.

So. I had to chuckle a bit to myself. Yep, I've gone astray a little here. Yep, I need to come back. Yep, I should take the extra half-hour and the ten extra bucks to shop at the co-op or the farmer's market instead of going to Safeway or Acme.

Still haven't done it yet, but at least I'm getting back to on track.

Anyway, my new goal is to update this puppy at least once a week... let's see how it turns out.

My battle with junk mail

2010-02-05T22:27:00.005-05:00

I've been fighting a battle ever since I moved to Newark.

It's against the junk mail. And the junk newspapers.

Due to the nature of my residence, the battle has been fought on multiple fronts. One: I now live relatively close to a real city, after growing up in rural PA. For some reason, being in a city means that it's permissible for local businesses to give massive amounts of brochures and coupon books to the "postmaster" (who I imagine must be a shadowy figure who lurches around darkened rooms in post offices across the nation) to distribute to everyone in the city. You can imagine that this doesn't sit well with me.

I can remember having this issue at college, too. When you have an on-campus mailbox, you get flyers from on-campus groups who are trying to drum up an interest in an event or in their own membership.

Point being, I don't care about your event and I don't want to buy wings from Pizza Place #71 on some special Superbowl deal. I consider myself a fairly conservative spender. Heck, I turned off my heat because of the last electric bill... ("hmm... do I really need heat?" ...more on that later). So I don't care about Clipper Magazine or Redplum, and I get sort of annoyed with them for sending me shredded trees in the mail.

I actually did get Redplum to stop via their website. Everything else, I'm sort of at a loss. There must be a way to simply notify this... "Postmaster" character... that I don't want this stuff. Or maybe there's not. Maybe you just have to unsubscribe from every single annoying thing, like with e-mail. UGH. The battle continues on this front.

Front number 2: I live in a place that has been inhabited by people other than me in the last few years. This situation applies to almost anyone who rents. You get junk mail from people who don't live there anymore. Pep Boys has been sending these great coupons for a man whose name I could barely pronounce.

I called them up, and told them that they'd been sending coupons to my address for a man who didn't live there. They said, thanks for reporting it! It's no biggie. The coupons are still on his account, so he can access them in places other than the mail.

No, I said. I want you to stop sending them. Confusion ensued. I tried to explain that I was an "environmentally conscious" individual. Confusion ensued. Basically, they told me I'd have to get in touch with the post office. This is really bizarre to me, but evidently they can't change someone's account unless that someone calls and specifically changes the address. So, basically, if there's someone in the world you really don't like, go to Pep Boys, make up a fake name, register as a member and give them your adversary's address. And then do it a bunch of times in other Pep Boys.

I've also been trying to get Yes! and Crossroads, of The News Journal here in Delaware, to stop showing up at my house. I can tell you the exact dialogue I've had three times over the phone with these guys:

"Hello, this is the News Journal, can I please have your phone number to better assist you?"

"Yeah, you can have it, but I don't have an account with you guys."

"All right, how can I help you?"

"I'd like to stop receiving Yes! and Crossroads at my house. I've already called (X times), and I am continuing to receive them."

"Okay, let me get your address..."

So far, (X) = 3. I dearly hope it won't have to be 4.

There are some good resources online to help reduce your junk mail package, and the statistics they use are staggering. According to ecocycle.org (and some other sites), junk mail in 2005 used up about 100 million trees. That's too many. Even if they're using recycled paper, there are hazards in the ink. I doubt they're all using soy-based, and even if they are, it's an appalling use of something that is generally food.

(I honestly can't get behind too many processes that make food into non-food. Disposable containers made of potatoes are great, but I can't help but think of the hungry people in the world who would have loved to eat those potatoes. It's the kind of affluence that seems so inconsequential, but still sort of disturbs me.)

Anywho, there are some tips online that you can find with a minimal amount of searching, and you can even hire services to proactively reduce junk mail being sent to your house... but really, should we have to pay to defend the planet? I think that generally, when a thing defends our planet, it also tends to put my penny-pinching mind at ease. Most solutions for our environmental troubles do end up cutting us a deal in the long run -- and often, even in the short run!

I went to the grocery store... con fotos

2010-01-20T16:20:00.012-05:00

This might seem like it's going to be boring, and maybe it will be boring, but do you ever think about how you think?

Maybe that's a bit narcissistic.

Anyway, caring about the earth changes the way you think.

Let's use the example of some stuff I bought at the grocery store today.

Toothpaste. What I originally went to the store to buy. As in, if I didn't buy toothpaste this afternoon, I was gonna brush with water this evening.

Old mindset: this is not the cheapest. why am I even looking at this thing?

Current mindset: this is not the cheapest. but it's the only toothpaste I know of that comes in a recyclable aluminum tube. The rest of these toothpaste tubes are going to the landfill. If there's an option that doesn't go to the landfill, and doesn't break the bank, I'm voting for that one.

But next time, I'm makin' my own. More ingredients = more processed = more energy. Plus the energy used to ship it here.

Toilet Paper (sorry the pic is sideways... dumb blogger)

Old mindset: find the cheapest one and get outta here.

Current mindset: this is cheap enough, at $4 for 6 rolls. Better price than the 7th Generation stuff that costs $1.80 for one roll. It's made of recycled paper, which is good, 'cause I don't need to be wiping my butt with virgin rainforest trees, buuuuuuuuuuuut 7th Gen comes in a recyclable paper wrapper, and this is wrapped in plastic...

This went on for about three minutes as I paced around the aisle, looking like a maniac, until I finally went with the cheaper plastic-wrapped TP. Decisions, decisions. I long for the days where they used pages of the Sears magazine for this purpose... but they were probably made out of real paper, and not this weird magazine stuff.

Vitamins

Old mindset: WOOHOO BUY ONE GET ONE!

Current mindset: WOOHOO BUY ONE GET ONE! Even though theoretically, my diet should include all the vitamins and minerals I need. But it doesn't. I'm working on it. Am I? Well, I will work on it. Anyway, just buy the darn things already.

Throat Coat Tea

Old mindset: Old mindset unavailable because I didn't know what this was.

Current mindset: Eh, well, I mean, tea, I mean, it's probably individually wrapped, and that stinks, 'cause it's more trash for the landfill, but, I mean, it's organic, but, I mean, I've finally got myself down to no teabags at all, and... oh, come on. It's got echinacea and it'll make your throat feel better.

Sure enough, I got home and they're INDIVIDUALLY WRAPPED. CURSES. I have finally gotten away from teabags by brewing mint leaves in a mesh tea ball, and now I've blasphemed and bought these individually wrapped ones.

Oh well.

Baking Soda!!

Old mindset: don't need that.

Current mindset: I use this for everything. FOUR POUNDS for THREE DOLLARS??? fhdskafhlfg (yes there is a keyboard in my mind) Though I do have to remember that baking soda comes from mines, so it's not an awesome, sustainable thing... but it's great for cleaning and it's nontoxic. And the package is fully recyclable.

Check it out. "THE STANDARD OF PURITY"? Really? Like cleanliness is next to Arm & Hammer?...

Bananas

Old mindset: ew... gross... bananas.

Current mindset: POTASSIUM. FRUIT. Get in mah belleh. No, they are not organic. No, they are not local. Am I a bad hippie? Yes. Do I have bananas? Yes. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

So... am I a snooty, organic-buying, looking-down hippie? No. Maybe? No, not really. There are choices to everything. Generally, I'd go ahead and say if you want to live in a city at this particular moment in history, it's going to be darn-near impossible to be 100% sustainable in your lifestyle. I'm not judging anyone when I can't do it myself. I'd rather help you than judge you. Is that weird? Sorry.

I used to think 100% sustainable meant that you were dead. There is no way you can be alive and not take things from the planet. But really, "sustainable" means that when you take something from the planet, you give something back, so that the overall health of the planet is always at 100%. It means that the way you live today, you could live for a million years. We cannot, for example, live on oil for a million years. There is not a million years of oil in the earth for people who use it as much as we do.

Changing the way we think is the first step in learning how to give back. Asking ourselves how our money translates into the ecosystem's health (or lack thereof). Asking ourselves if it's morally OK to buy plastic packaging when it ends up in the bellies of baby seabirds, destroying whole generations.

When you buy a product, you vote for the means by which it was created, you approve the method of packaging, you applaud the purpose for which it exists. I'm not perfect at it. I'm not going to pretend I'm perfect at it. But think about it for me, wouldja?

My mom says I stink.

2010-01-17T18:33:00.006-05:00

Let's talk about smells. Personally, I think it's better to smell like a human being than a month-old bouquet that someone sprayed with starch, but this is A) my opinion and B) usually not socially acceptable. I will attempt to explain my preference. And you may be grossed out. There. You were warned.

I am a female person whose skin dries to bleeding in the winter, so B.O. is not something I've felt compelled to be extremely vigilant about. I take 1/2 a teaspoon of baking soda, wet it into a paste, and use that for deodorant. Every day. Unless I forget. I've even been showering every day for weeks now. It's weird, but I'm getting used to it.

My inspiration is my mother. Mom is very sensitive to smells. She has smelled me from the opposite side of the couch, whereas my sister could not smell me while standing beside me. The problem now is not me being clean; it's my clothes. I'm not convinced that an article of clothing is dirty just because I've worn it before. It saves water and it means I don't have to do as much laundry. Unfortunately, I think Mom can smell me even if I've worn a T-shirt for just a few hours. She's that good.

So now I have to be all vigilant about that. Because by now, my parents think I can't smell. I had these pumpkins outside my garage for all of November, and by the time my dad found them in mid-December, they were very soggy. He bagged them up and put them in the garage for me. Sweet man. But they left a bit of a stain behind. I was instructed to scrub the garage, because apparently, it smells. I definitely was aware of the smell, but it smelled nice to me. It smells like butter to me, which is actually what pumpkin tastes like to me (with the right amount of salt).

Anyway, now they think I can't smell. Dad finally found out that I'm composting (in small contained buckets) and he ordered me to go home and smell them to make sure they didn't stink. Compost, when it's done right, doesn't stink and doesn't attract critters. The instruction came out of exasperation, I'm pretty sure.

Compost is a good thing. Compost means that my garbage never stinks. Compost means that I don't send useful gardening material to the landfill. Compost is the Earth's natural reclamation of its waste. (Humans, take note. Cradle to Cradle, anyone?)

Heck, San Fransisco decided to take some initiative and start up a citywide composting program. That's just plain awesome. So I guess even if my little home composting program were nixed, there are ways to get creative with this... I could go on Craigslist or Freecycle and see if there are any like-minded folks with a yard who already compost who might take my organic waste. That's how I do the recycling right now; why not with compost?

And my stance on B.O.? Well, I just gotta say two words: breast cancer. According to cancer.gov, there is no "conclusive evidence linking the use of underarm antiperspirants or deodorants and the subsequent development of breast cancer." Let's cut to the chase here. This is legalese for "we can't say anything because the deodorant industry will sue our butts if we do."

Here, read this paragraph from that cancer.gov link:

Findings from a different study examining the frequency of underarm shaving and antiperspirant/deodorant use among 437 breast cancer survivors were released in 2003 (7). This study found that the age of breast cancer diagnosis was significantly earlier in women who used these products and shaved their underarms more frequently. Furthermore, women who began both of these underarm hygiene habits before 16 years of age were diagnosed with breast cancer at an earlier age than those who began these habits later. While these results suggest that underarm shaving with the use of antiperspirants/deodorants may be related to breast cancer, it does not demonstrate a conclusive link between these underarm hygiene habits and breast cancer.

Sure, there were some later studies that said, well, maybe not. But you know what? I don't think I want to mess around with breast cancer. I don't need conclusive evidence to tell me that messing around with random chemicals is bad for my body. I don't want to get cancer and think that there was something I could have done. To think that I did not do everything I could have done. To know that something inside me said "hey, quit putting random chemicals in/around your body," and I didn't listen.

For example... do we know what aluminum does?

Aluminum-based compounds are used as the active ingredient in antiperspirants. These compounds form a temporary plug within the sweat duct that stops the flow of sweat to the skin's surface. Some research suggests that aluminum-based compounds, which are applied frequently and left on the skin near the breast, may be absorbed by the skin and cause estrogen-like (hormonal) effects (3). Because estrogen has the ability to promote the growth of breast cancer cells, some scientists have suggested that the aluminum-based compounds in antiperspirants may contribute to the development of breast cancer (3).

Did you get that? It says that aluminum plugs your sweat ducts. WHY in the world do you want to plug your sweat ducts? God put them there for a reason. If we know that much, how much is left that we still don't know, that we might never know?

So, yes, I am going to embrace my B.O. a little, and excuse me for doing so.

But I still hope I don't stink too bad.

Sorry.

I'll try to do my laundry more often.

Transition to nowhere

2009-08-29T10:44:00.002-04:00

My, but it's been awhile. It's hard to summarize the last two weeks, but I'll give you the quick and dirty:

6-month internship in DC ended mid-August
Flipped out over trying to decide what I'm doing next
Decided to move to Greensboro, NC
Bought train ticket to Greensboro, NC
Decided against moving to Greensboro, NC
Parents saw me flipflopping around like a fish out of water and offered the townhouse in DE for a bit
Decided to visit NC instead of moving there
A week after my internship ended, finally started relaxing
Somehow still have a boyfriend and a family

So, the beau and I in North Carolina, having a not-quite vacation. It's almost like a vacation except we're both unemployed and have no specific prospect of employment at the current time, plus we neither of us have outstanding amounts of savings. Anyway, life is more fun that way.

Thus, I have not written. But there have been many discussions about eco-living in this state of being between the beau and I. So hopefully, I'll write about that.

I can, at least, make a recommendation about something you can watch that might change your life. My friend Steve in Greensboro lent us this DVD, The Corporation, and now we can't stop thinking about it. We may watch it again. I'd say it's biased, except that they also interviewed folks who work for large corporations and they were quite proud of their statements regarding the exploitation of various resources, including the environment, sweatshop labor, and the American public. It was an in-depth and unique take on the impact of corporations, and it's honestly totally convinced me that one of the best things I can do for the environment is to avoid supporting large corporations at all costs.

If you're curious, the movie site is here and you can view the full documentary on Youtube in 23 chapters.

I hate cars, but they do stuff.

2009-08-07T15:03:00.017-04:00

My life has been foiled again by my lack of car ownership.

Actually, I lied. My life is great. I've been car-free for a few years now, after I ditched Grandma's old Buick Regal.

I'm willing to admit that my hatred of cars could stem from this particular car. It got me where I needed to go, and it held up fairly well for several eight-hour excursions between home and school. However, the thing was a boat. A tank. A beast. That, and it broke down a bunch. The alternator, for example, when I was driving home from work one night. Simultaneously, the coolant hoses sprung a leak, so my lights grew progressively dimmer as the fog rolling out from under the hood grew progressively thicker.

Then there was the time when the coolant hose came detached from the engine. I am in no way a knowledgable person when it comes to automobiles, but I understand that the engine is a very important, technical, and heavy part of the car. This particular problem meant that the engine had to be taken out temporarily in order to fix the hose. I got the thing towed to a very nice mechanic who gave me a massive discount -- he only charged me $400. Also, he gave me a free pen.

Despite the free pen, I became pretty much disenchanted with cars. I have a life, you know, Car. I'm not made of money, and I don't enjoy the mechanic's. That guy was very nice (free pen!), but he was out in some very sketchy part of town that I think only exists when you need it to exist. Like the room of necessity in Harry Potter. Only crappy.

Now... I know. I know what you're going to say. Oh, but, see, if you buy a nice car, and take care of it, and don't bother with your Grandma's hand-me-downs, and buy it only nice gas, and pet the dashboard and fold your hands toward the warmness of your heart and chant "Ohm" three times, you'd be fine.

Not to be flippant, but yeah flippin' right.

I refuse to be convinced that a car will not be expensive, or deadly, or require lots of maintenance (translation: time and even more money), or whatever. Try as you might, I won't budge on this. The way I see it, you can own a car, go wherever you like, and spend a lot of time and money on the thing. Or you can not own a car, go almost wherever you like, and spend not so much money. Either way, you will be inconvenienced, so you just choose a preferred method of inconvenience. I prefer to miss out on some things rather than own a big fossil-eating time-stealing polluting death machine.

But that's just me.

(I don't care if you own a car. I just care about me owning a car. You do what you gotta do. I ain't judgin'. Unless you drive a Hummer. In which case, I am.)

Anyway, back to my life. Turns out I have this opportunity to go to Harper's Ferry on Monday for work, just to ride around and... see an actual national park during my internship with the National Park Service. (Though the medians and random block-sized parks in DC technically belong to the Park Service, and therefore technically count as units of the National Park System.)

Basically, I can't go because I don't own a car. There's even a train station there, but there are no trains that run during times that allow any reasonable person to make a day trip from America's capitol. Despite the fact that there is a pretty sweet commuter train service apart from Amtrak that runs several times a day... they never run at the times one would need them to run. I could rent a car, but I'm not 25 yet, so they charge me extra for that. It's just enough to push the price beyond my cheapskate purchasing power.

Now, if I belonged to Zipcar, I could probably swing it. Zipcar is pretty cool. It's not car-rental, it's car-sharing. This means that you become a member, pay some up-front fees, and then you can rent for just a few bucks every hour. Apparently the gas is free, the insurance is already taken care of, you just call and tell them what you want, when you want it. Then you use a magical little Zipcard and the car opens for you, and only you. It's honestly a very snazzy thing, and I hope to Jeebus that it opens up in more cities. It's great for people who ~~feel like owning a car is a big scam~~ don't want the responsibilities that come with car ownership.

But guess what, I'm dumb and I'm not a member. Also, I move soon, so no Zipcar for me.

And no Harper's Ferry. I mean, there are ways I could make this work. If I really really really really really wanted to go, I could bite the bullet and pay $70 to go out there. It's not impossible, it just forces me to consider if I really really really really really want to do something. Which is probably not a terrible thing.

I graduated from college a year ago, and I've been hitching rides on the Student Conservation Association. I'm just about to complete my second internship with them. It's been a great way to see different parts of America, try different jobs in conservation, and meet different people. A little bonus, for me, is that the SCA provides housing and such wherever you go, and they let you know if you're about to apply to an internship that doesn't do well for carless folks.

As I said, I'm about to be turned loose on the world again (eep). By a mixture of fortitude, prayer, and helpful parents, I've managed to avoid car ownership. Part of me wonders how long it will last, and the other part is expounding constantly on the evils of automobiles. I'm led to believe that one of these personas may be perceived as more "mature" than the other. (Guess which one it is!)

The possibilities for my post-internship life are just about endless, and thinking about them all makes my head spin. Some of the possibilities involve me owning a car. I don't like these possibilities very much. I'm looking at it like I'm looking at a marriage proposal: should I really be making a commitment to something I hate so very very much? Or am I already considering divorce as an option for later on down the road? It could work out. It could. I could be a very nice person with a nice job and a nice place and not moving anywhere because of the job I need to pay for the car expenses.

But I'd hate it.

The dump in the Pacific

2009-08-05T10:45:00.006-04:00

CNN has an article today about the plastic problem in the Pacific. If you haven't heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, you might want to have a look-see.

Very basically, all the trash out in the Pacific gets swept out to this vortex where the currents collide. Turns out there's a lot of trash. Some scientists estimate that this patch is approximately the size of Texas. Probably, if I were Texas, I'd be getting garbage-patch envy from all this comparison.

But you're not going to go out there and find a huge raft of plastic bottles. You'll see ocean. You'll see the occasional piece of solid trash. The devil is in the details; when scientists scoop up the ocean water, they find tiny pieces of plastic. Everywhere.

Of course, there are other pieces of debris out there, like fishing nets, which tangle up wildlife and cause considerable damage. The plastic is a problem because of the tiny creatures at the bottom of the food chain. They don't exactly have the brainpower to decide that plastic is not good to eat. Even seabirds have been found dead with their bellies full of plastic. Unlike you and me, some species in the world just eat whatever looks good. They don't spend exorbitant amounts of time deciding what to eat that day, or scrutinizing the expiration date on the milk.

This will become a problem, obviously, because everything feeds everything else. Apart from the fact that we are overfishing like crazy, depleting the middle of the food chain, now we're hurting the bottom of the food chain. Um... I know we're proud of being at the top of the food chain and all, but one link maketh not a chain.

On the island in Alaska (oh no, here I go with 'on the island...'), we had a stretch of beach, which came in handy when we loaded and unloaded two months' worth of supplies. Every high tide would leave a different assortment of trash mixed in with the strands of bull kelp. Plastic lids. Soap bottles. Tupperware. It's a wildlife refuge, dangit, not a trash heap!

But I know, when one goes to the beach, or downtown, or to the highway, one just looks past all the trash. Trash is not going anywhere. Trash will live forever. Our trash will outlive us. I just don't think trash should be allowed to do that. I'm already shorter than my younger sister. I don't want to decompose before my trash does.

My approach to the situation is to try to avoid generating trash in the first place. I'm doing pretty well, if I may say so myself.

I avoid takeout and/or fast food (weird waxy cups, plastic lids, styrofoam/plastic containers, wrappers)
I avoid buying products packaged in non-recyclable containers (plastic, food wrappers)
I carry my water bottle everywhere (plastic one-use bottles)
I buy Tom's of Maine, which makes toothpaste in aluminum tubes (though I may try to create my own paste soon)
I only use bar soap (generally, packaging can be recycled, and sometimes you can even find locally-made soap. Failing that, Dr. Bronners FTW)
I don't wash my hair (... I haven't washed my hair in over a month, but I managed to keep it a secret 'till now. I rinse daily or every other day, and to be honest, my hair feels quite healthy.)
I don't shave (mostly on principle that I have better things to do with my time than be in the bathroom, partially because what the heck is in that shaving cream, anyway?)
I wear my glasses instead of my contacts (no more saline solution bottles, no more fretting about putting them in and taking them out)
I use re-usable feminine products
I buy from the farmer's market, bulk foods from the co-op, bring my own bags, and re-use plastic bags I already have (this saves a TON of trash)
I don't buy crap I don't really need, and repurpose as much trash as I can
Of course, I recycle, but this is not something I want to rely on. The true benefits of recycling are widely debated. Certainly, it's better than putting anything in a landfill, but even better than recycling is reducing one's overall waste output.

My current struggle is teeth. Toothpaste, I may begin to make on my own. I've begun flossing again, but I haven't decided what is the most eco-friendly way to go about it. Ideally, I want something that will decompose in a composter, but I also want something that doesn't need a huge amount of energy to produce. If anyone's got any thoughts on this, please hit me up. Also, toothbrushes. They're meant to be disposed of, unfortunately. I've seen toothbrushes with replacement heads, but will they clean my teeth?

I didn't start all of these things at once. I did them one at a time. This is really more of a process than a total lifestyle makeover. Start small. Pick something easy. Later on, pick something else. That's all there is to it. I know that I have gone into areas that other folks frown at (the hair thing, the shaving thing, I know, I know), but the important bit is to decide what is right for you, personally, in your own life. That's all.

Apple photos

2009-07-25T10:54:00.007-04:00

A picture's worth a thousand words. Here's some photos to show you some of the stuff I went over in yesterday's post.

Here we have a batch of seeds that are sprouting. You see the white tails poking out of some seeds. They'll keep going as long as they stay moist. I like to wait until they have some growth on 'em before transferring them to soil

How the seedlings spend most of their time. The bag keeps moisture in. Seedlings like moisture. They seem to get enough light through the baggie.

Inside the cup. These were from pink lady apple seeds.

And these are from fuji apple seeds. In the middle, you see a baby seedling. That's what they look like when they first come out of the ground, though they'll probably still have an apple seed shell on top of them.

This guy has root rot. The bottom of the root has become all shriveled and brown. There's still a bit of healthy root, but better to get rid of it so it doesn't infect anyone else.

Baby apple trees

2009-07-24T09:13:00.003-04:00

Over the last few months, I've been working very diligently on my experiments in growing plants. Working so diligently, in fact, that I managed to destroy most of them!

The main thing I've learned about plants is that you do more by doing less. In the beginning, I just wanted to be a good plant mommy, and water my plants all the time, and spoon-feed them little drops of sunshine, etcetera. Since then, I've learned that plants are not like babies. Plants are more like teenagers. They just want to do their own thing. If you dote on them, they wither.

(I base this statement on my own experience with being a teenager, which wasn't too long ago; I was a bitch, Mom would agree.)

Mostly, I overwatered. Overwatering killed maybe ten or twenty apple seedlings, my one chamomile shoot, my random garlic cloves, and my one orange seedling. Rest in peace, guys.

Since then, I've decided to stick with sprouting apple seeds, since I've always got a supply of them. The mint is also around, but it's infested with aphids and some other bug that makes a really sticky substance. It's irritating.

I've learned so much. At the beginning, this was my mindset:

Plants need soil, water, and sunshine.
If a plant gets all three of those things, it should grow.

Now I know:

Each plant is a little different.
Plants generally need soil that drains well, a little water, a lot of sun or fluorescent light, adequate air flow, and an appropriate temperature range.
Apple seedlings like soil that drains well, very little water, tons and tons of light, cool temperatures, and high humidity for their little leaves.

Now I have something like ten apple seedlings, and only a few of them succumbed to root rot. So I can pat myself on the back a bit.

Here's the method that's finally yielded results, if you're curious:

Sprout the seeds. Check the seeds in the apple. If they're already sprouting, put them in a moist paper towel, and put that inside a plastic baggie. (Or, for a non-disposable option, use a washcloth or rag and put it in a tupperware or other sealed container.) Wait one week. If they're not sprouting, dry them for 1 week. Put them in the moist paper towel + baggie apparatus, and put that in the fridge for 3-4 weeks (checking every week). Take it out, and wait one week.
You should have at least some seeds with a white tail sticking out. These are your future apple trees. Throw away the seeds that didn't sprout.
Prepare a home for your seedlings. I like to convert plastic containers into pots -- plastic cups, yogurt cups, water bottles chopped in half. Punch three or four holes in the bottom, and fill it with potting soil. For best results, you'll want one for each sprouted seed, but I tend to stick them two or three to a pot. Another small tip: I found it's easier to use clear plastic containers and fill them half full of soil, and you'll see why in a second. Water the soil until water flows from the bottom, and let it drain until there's no more water coming out.
Plant your seeds. Make a little dent with your finger, put your seed in there with the root pointing down. Cover the root gently with soil. I find I get the best results if I let the seed rest on the top of the soil, or very near the top.
Create good growing conditions. This means light, and lots of it, temperatures from 60-75ish, good humidity with adequate air flow, and moist soil. Basically, here's how I do it: cover the top with a plastic baggie, and punch some holes in it. (That's why it's handy to use half-full clear plastic containers; they admit light, and your seedlings won't be crushed by the baggie.) Since it's summer and it's too hot out for these guys, I keep them inside on my shelf all day, and I use a CFL bulb to give them light from about 7 AM - 10 PM. I've got a few at work, and they only get light from 8 AM -5 PM, but they seem to do all right.
Let 'em be. They'll shoot right up in a matter of days. I water mine maybe once every week or two. And I water from the bottom, not the top. Just put some water in a shallow dish and set the pot in the water; the soil soaks it right up through the drainage holes. You can still overwater this way, so be conservative. Apple seedlings like it a little on the dry side; a little on the wet side will kill them, easily. Just note that you should really try to alternate watering from the top and the bottom, so that the salt doesn't build up too much in the soil. The only time I intervene is to pull off the woody seed case. Generally they should be able to cast 'em off on their own, but sometimes they do need help.
Pull the ones that don't do well. If one gets root rot, you'll know it because it won't grow as fast as the others. When you pull it up, it'll have brown roots that are sort of soggy. This sort of thing is communicable, so you want to get rid of it. If they start to wilt, or if you see any brown around the roots, you want to get rid of it. They progress as such: first, they should pop up off the soil, with the seed shell still on. They cast this off, and the false leaves spread and start photosynthesizing. There'll be a little shoot between the false leaves; these are true leaves, and it's so cool to look at them every day and see how fast they grow. If the leaves look really, really super-green, you want to pull back on the watering. Light green is a good color for the leaves.

The thing you want to remember is that these guys may not bear fruit, necessarily, when they get older. And they also may not bear fruit that resembles the apple they came from. Apples these days are grafted, which I'm not really sure what that means, but you basically do something to the roots so that they grow up really small, and they produce the apple you want them to.

Johnny Appleseed, who I read about on Wikipedia, evidently did not believe in grafting due to religious beliefs. I'm with him on this one, more for ecological reasons than anything else. We really should have trees that grow tasty apples naturally. Actually, we should really have more fruiting trees in the wild, period. Because they're cool. Yeah, I won't see an apple from these guys 'till I'm 30. So? I still think it's cool.

Saving the earth by... throwing money at it?

2009-07-23T16:15:00.005-04:00

I was walking out of the Takoma metro station around 7:30 PM a few nights ago. I'd quit aikido early, because I didn't have the energy or the focus to swing a big wooden sword with 30 other people in the same room. I patted myself on the back for having discretion, trying not to feel too lame for needing additional energy and focus at 23 years old, and headed for home.

In a city where it's polite not to meet anyone in the eyes, I still can't break my habit of watching faces. (Not that I want to.) In North Carolina, it was fairly common to greet a stranger in passing, and I miss it. Not in DC. So I should have known better when I looked around for friendly faces, and I found one -- the face of a young woman, maybe my age. I was happy until I noticed that the face was attached to a body that was attached to a clipboard.

Oh, s***. She's canvassing.

I wavered in my path, maybe trying to decide if I should swerve, but the damage was done because we'd made eye contact. "Ma'am, do you feel strongly about environmental laws?"

Oh, well. Environment. And also, she called me "ma'am," which won my favor immediately. Last week, the security guard at work, after studying my ID badge, said "thank you, sir." I went up to my desk, fuming that I hadn't thought to stare him dead in the face and say, "uh, do you even LOOK at this thing?! How many GUYS named EMILY do you know?!"

I try not to get upset, because it happens more than I like, but come on. Just because my boobs aren't popping out of my shirt doesn't mean I'm a man.

Oh, anyway. This canvasser chick. We chatted for awhile, she said she was from the League of Conservation Voters, and did I know that blah blah blah was doing blah blah blah bad thing in congress and blah blah we need some money to fight the bad guys.

I made a good effort to listen, but all I could think of was how broken our government is. I'd read an Ansel Adams quote that day, something to the effect of "it's horrifying that we have to fight our government to save the environment." It's true, because our representatives (and I use that term loosely) are too busy pushing legislature for their big corporate friends to really represent us -- even if they wanted to.

Pushing that thought aside for another day, I stared down at the clipboard she'd pushed into my arms while she was doing her spiel. I was hoping to find written-down information of some sort, because my brain was already tired and it likes when things are visual. No such luck. There was some sort of laminated, generic fact-sheet, behind which were papers with peoples' credit card numbers.

Keep in mind that I had already made up my mind not to give her anything -- I donated to some charities for the homeless earlier this month, so I was off the hook for a little while, at least to myself. She tried her first appeal for money, which is the "monthly contributor" plea. I said, sorry, I can't do that, don't make a whole lot of money right now. (Which I don't. I get a cost-of-living stipend and a commuting stipend, and that's it. I've got savings, but that's for... saving.)

She tried her second appeal: that's okay, you can do a one-time donation. I said, sorry, not today. I need to go read some stuff on your website, do some research first. Her first response was, oh, I know everything that you'll find on the website. The second response was, you can't become a monthly contributor on the website.

What a drag.

I told her I was tired and I couldn't possibly focus enough to concentrate on what she was saying, but that I would read the website. I wished her good luck.

And it felt really weird to walk away from someone working on environmental issues. But that's what I did. Honestly, I'm glad that I did, for a few reasons.

There's no guarantee that she won't do something dishonest with my credit card number, or steal my money.
There's no guarantee that my donation will support what she says it's supporting.
I'm not donating if I don't know the organization well, and I don't know the League well, apart from the name. I need to know what they do; they might do stuff I'm not cool with. For example, I think it's great that Greenpeace works so hard to get out the environmental message, but I don't think I want to support them breaking into Mount Rushmore.
Generally, canvassers are very passionate about the issues they work for, but the other part of the incentive is the commission they get for each donation. I can't trust someone who's got a personal financial stake in my donation. Maybe you can.
I'm not sure how much I believe we can solve our environmental problems by becoming embroiled in political battles. If I give money, I want it going to tree planting or educating the public.
I don't think canvassers are educating the public. People know the environment is going down the tank, and they know that life is brutal on capitol hill. Educating the public, to me, would be more like engaging people in conversations about what they can do in their own lives, and why they should do it. What a canvasser does is begging for money, not public education.

I'm really glad that people feel so moved that they will canvass. It's a really hard job with a high turnover rate. I guess I'd just feel differently if I thought they were actually doing anything for the environment. Obviously, I understand that the political side is important, and there are folks who will donate to those causes -- I'm just not one of them.

Swine flu follow-up: no more antibiotics down on the farm

2009-07-15T11:49:00.006-04:00

According to the NY Times (and CNN as well, but I couldn't find the article this morning), the government may be wising up a bit to the CAFO scheme. Representative Louise M. Slaughter introduced a measure that proposes the following:

Ban the use of seven antibiotics, used to treat humans, from use on animals;
Restrict the use of other antibiotics to mostly therapeutic uses (with some preventative use)

The medical community is all for it, obviously; this would safeguard the effectiveness of antibiotics. However, the folks who mass-produce meat are not gonna stand for it, and the measure is not expected to pass. It's thought that the measure will be added onto the health care reform bill.

Also, we have someone up top lambasting such misuse of antibiotics: the principal deputy commissioner of food and drugs, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, basically told the House Rules Committee that the casual feeding of antibiotics to livestock should be stopped, and antibiotic use should require a vet's supervision.

It might strike you as odd that anyone would be allowed to use antibiotics for anything without first consulting someone of a medical profession, but there you have it. That's how they do business, these CAFO people.

Meat is not going to become any less healthy. If anything, the price might rise a bit to cover the extra costs of raising animals in such a despicably unhealthy fashion. (By which I mean, to put it bluntly, that it's likely that more animals will die. Which might be a mercy, when you look at how they have to live.)

This is the part where I tell you, again, that limiting your meat consumption will help. Meat production has become so bloated and unsustainable because people demand meat several times a week, or daily, or multiple times a day. You don't have to cut it out, just cut back. If demand lowers, fewer animals will be raised this way. Or, you can eat smaller. Limit the amounts you eat, or limit yourself to poultry (takes considerably less energy to produce). Better yet, buy from your local farmer's market.

The bottom line, for me, is that this is an exceedingly unsustainable process that hurts us where we live. (If you don't believe me, go try to live next to a CAFO.) Old habits die hard, and I'm far from 0% (I'm at ~1 meat serving a week), but if I can keep a couple more of my dollars from factory farms, I'm doing something.

The crash and emotional aftermath

2009-06-25T12:09:00.008-04:00

It’s been three days since the fatal metro crash in DC, and you can still feel the impact.

Ordinarily, I commute via metrobus – route 63, between Takoma and the Federal Triangle. It drops me off within a block of my work and it only takes ten to fifteen minutes longer than the metro does. (Not to mention, it costs half of what the metro does at rush hour… which is a substantial savings for a lowly intern.)

But Matt was in town, and for whatever reason, this means that I splurge. We were both in downtown DC on Monday around 4:30, and we decided to go home via metro to buy some time. Mondays are the days where I go down to the Savory Café to host an open mic, and it’s sometimes just nice to have those few extra minutes beforehand.

When we stopped shortly before Fort Totten, it wasn’t anything unusual. Trains stop all the time, usually if there’s a train ahead on the platform. After five or ten minutes, people began to open up to each other. It’s some kind of weird social phenomenon; if the train’s moving, it’s polite not to speak (at all, much less to fellow passengers). If the train has been stopped for more than five minutes, a sort of awkward air settles in, and it becomes acceptable to make some sort of sarcastic remark to your neighbor in order to clear the air. I experienced this when I got stuck in a train underground for twenty minutes, only that time was more fun. It was later at night, and the train was packed like a can of sardines. As soon as they announced the disabled train ahead, everyone began laughing and groaning all at once. One woman with two chocolate-syrup-whipped-cream beverages in clear plastic containers shielded them with her shoulder, smiling, as a passenger made a sarcastic joke about being hungry. Someone said we should sing a song; a man crowded up against a wall asked if it was anyone’s birthday.

The atmosphere was similar on this particular day, only the crowd was the older, rush-hour employees returning home, not the late night rabble-rousers. After awhile, the train conductor made an announcement: there was an electrical failure at Fort Totten. Great, we said. Metro trains jam-packed with people are stuck because of some stupid electrical failure. It’s the middle of the day, what could have possibly caused an electrical failure? Speculation peppered the conversation, until the news spread like fire, radiating outward from cell phones; two trains crashed; something derailed; we’re on breaking news right now; someone died.

It hit Matt right away. It didn’t hit me for another half an hour.

Someone died, he said.

Yeah, I said. I sat there uncomfortably, knowing I should feel something, but… what? People die. A few weeks ago, two people separately committed suicide using the metrorail system in DC. It was sad, sure, and probably terrible for the people on the train, and the train conductor, but… too distant. Too far away. Not important.

After a little while, the conductor came picking his way through the crowd. The train reversed and went to Rhode Island Avenue station, where everyone was dumped. Everyone. Hundreds and thousands of people, as the trains came rolling in, poured through that station. People were crammed up against the exit booths. And these were no tourists, no confused travelers who couldn’t figure out which way the little card goes in. These were rush-hour veterans with Smartrip cards. “Let us out for free,” shouted a man behind us. “Let us out for free!”

A short while later, the gates opened, probably not to honor one man’s request, but because of the density of scared and confused people. Details of the incident were scarce. The announcements at the metro station cited a “police incident.” We had no idea whether the collision was northbound, southbound, head-on… many people believed that they were right behind the train that was hit (which was later proven wrong; the collision was on the southbound track, and everyone getting off at that station was going north).

That was when the chaos began. Why are mobs so dangerous? It’s like everyone gets stupid all at once. Busses and police began rolling onto the scene. Crowds began to pour off the sidewalk in a flood; metro workers in neon vests tried to herd people. “Back up on the curb! Back up on the curb! The busses can’t get through!” Balding men in suits could be seen barking at the metro workers.

The police drove through, blasting instruction through their megaphones, and that was authority enough for most people. They crammed back up on the sidewalk, except for one man (again, balding with a suit) who approached the driver’s side window aggressively. That’s all I saw; the masses concealed the rest. There were people everywhere. Just everywhere. I saw a young woman being loaded onto a stretcher, though the reason was not immediately discernable. Metrobus drivers jumping into busses, still in their street clothes. There were quite a few people around signing, too. One young woman waved goodbye to a woman she’d been signing with, then got on her phone and explained that she was safe, and that she had helped this deaf woman call her family to let them know that she was safe. The woman on the phone brought up a good point (though I was eavesdropping, in a sense): there was no way a deaf person would have known what was going on. All the announcements were auditory.

At 6:35 (about two hours after we got on the train), I got a call from my dad. And Matt got a call from his mom. He missed the call, and when he tried to return the call, he got a message saying that the network was busy. (No, really?) I’d never really considered needing good coverage for a situation like that, where a network might be really overloaded all at once.

That’s when I realized how big this was. Entire cell phone networks were hung up. People around Philadelphia were hearing about it. This was breaking news. This was bad. Real bad.

That’s when it really, finally, hit me. People were dead and it could have been us. I arrived at that point when the panic in the body finally catches up with your brain, and you start imagining all the ways that everything could have gone wrong, far, far more personally.

After mentally shaking off enough of these thoughts to function, we began to wonder: how do we get home from here? The answers varied for a long time (see the part where I talk about the mass confusion). Eventually, the metro folk decided that the shuttle busses would stop at Fort Totten and Takoma, and that the people needing to go to Silver Spring could transfer at Takoma. I don’t think this was a crowd-pleaser; I’d guess, just based on personal observation, that most people going up the red line on a weekday are trying to go to Silver Spring. It was, however, a solution, and so for maybe 45 minutes, we tried to catch a bus.

Docility was not our friend. We waited patiently on the curb for a long time, just like the nice policemen told us to, as bus after bus loaded. We found that we had not advanced, and that the sea of faces had shifted – without us. Eventually, we saw a shuttle approaching, and I took Matt’s hand with resolution. We’re getting on this bus. I don’t remember if I said it out loud. If so, I hope I said it quietly.

It was a little like body surfing, and a little like a mosh pit. At first, we were more or less swept out to the shuttle, as the crowd bulged out to meet it. Then there was a pause. And everyone began shouting, where is this bus going? Where is this bus going? Where is this bus going? And they kept it up with such fervor that no one could hear the response from the driver. Eventually, I caught wind of something like “Fort Totten and Takoma.” Out of sheer irritation toward the mob, and maybe too much experience being an obnoxious orientation leader, I leaned my body backwards, pointed my face to the sky, and yelled “FORT TOTTEN AND TAKOMA!!!”

People around me still had to ask me what I said. I think Matt addressed them, more politely than I did.

Anyway, shortly after my bellowing session, people began to feel like it was acceptable to get on the bus. That’s when the mosh pit part kicked in. I was being pushed from behind, pretty much exactly in a fashion you’d expect from a mosh pit. Luckily, I’ve been in mosh pits before, so I knew the rules. If you’re pushed, you push back, but you try to keep everyone standing straight up. I had to push back on the crowd to avoid crushing the wheelie suitcase in front of me. (Worst place ever to have a wheelie suitcase. I know it’s heavy, maybe, but this is kind of an emergency and we’re kind of in a mosh pit.)

Matt and I barely got on the bus, and everything went smoothly after that. We arrived home at 8 – a full hour after the open mic at Savory was supposed to start, and 3.5 hours after we began trying to get home. Theoretically, we could have still gone for about 45 minutes of the open mic, but… food.

When I got to the office on Tuesday, I found that I was obsessed by the crash. I couldn’t stop checking CNN and WMATA’s website. It was a compulsion. How many people died? How many injured? And most of all, what the crap actually happened?

So far: a southbound train was making a stop at Fort Totten. The second train, also southbound, should have stopped automatically, but didn’t. The second train vaulted up over the stopped train. Nine people died on the striking train, including the driver, and over 70 people were injured. So far, all they know is that the emergency brake was probably deployed, and an anomaly was found in one of the circuits that tells the train what to do when it’s in automatic mode. The striking train was also an older model, for which the National Transportation Safety Board recommended replacement in 2006. Cost was an object for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, so it didn’t happen. Now they’re asking the government for some money. Those trains cost about $3 milion a pop, and they have to replace over 300 of them.

Basically, all these details coming out make it seem very much like this accident could have happened anywhere, at any time. It seems like the whole system is full of glitches and outdated equipment. Whether or not this is true is irrelevant to the thousands of metro patrons (or former patrons). On the bus this morning, I overheard a casual conversation to this effect: “So, you gotten on the metro yet?” The responder laughed. “Nah. Maybe next week.”

I feel the same. I found myself riding last night, by accident. I wanted to go to aikido, sure, but I forgot that it means riding the metro home. So I went down to the station, only to find I couldn’t get in. SEE METRO STATION MANAGER, said the entry gates as I swiped my Smartrip card. He was standing right there, so I saw him. He checked it on the computer, swiped it in the exit lane, and then handed it back to me. Then I realized what had happened: the card knows when it gets on the metro and when it gets off. I didn’t swipe out at Rhode Island on Monday. Even such a slight nudge sent me spinning off into perturbed memories.

I usually get on the last car in the train, because it’s quicker when you get off at Takoma. Once I found myself faced with that last car’s door, looming wide, I found that I really didn’t want to get on. I ran up the train and got in the next car. (Aside from that, service hadn't yet resumed at Takoma -- they finally opened it up today, three days after the crash.)

Honestly, I just sat there, trying not to cry. I was on the verge of tears the whole way home, which was a little strange because I hadn’t thought the events had affected me so badly. But I couldn’t ride without jumping at every little sound, without wondering if the train would derail on a heightened track, without wondering if there would be a sudden, sickening jolt. Without wondering if I would be called upon to save someone’s life, or if I would call out for someone to save me.

I know these are outrageous thoughts, and that the system has been very safe for decades (the last fatal crash was in the early 80’s). I want to be a good environmentalist and say that my faith is in the public transportation system, which is still safer than going by car, but I can’t help it. People died on Monday, practically right in my backyard, because of the public transportation system. I’m not going to get over it for awhile.

Vinegar to the rescue!

2009-06-16T22:23:00.004-04:00

Vinegar has come in handy the last couple days. Vinegar, of all things. I'm starting to become quite fond of it.

This entry, coincidentally, is also brought to you by the letter "A."

Thing Number 1: Ants.

We have a minor ant problem in the house. I hypothesize that it's because they're thirsty; they're not coming in huge droves, just a few at a time. I soaked part of a paper towel in vinegar and rubbed it along some likely cracks, and they stayed away for a good couple of days.

Just this morning, I had a few ants sitting on my windowsill, so I decided to test it out again. I took a folded over piece of toilet paper, got it good and vinegary, and rubbed it in a line in front of the ants. They approached the line, stopped, and then turned around and started going the other way.

Probably a more effective way of doing this would be to fill a small spray bottle with some combination of water and vinegar (you can find various combinations on the web). Try it out. Let me know what goes down.

Thing Number 2: Acne.

Acne? Acne. I'm not kidding. I take a folded up piece of TP, dab some vinegar on it, and rub it on my face. It's great for existing acne or blemishes; it burns a little, but a really bad blemish that I've already gone and picked at will clear up in a couple of days. My skin always feels really nice after I use it, too.

If you want to try this out, do a couple of things. First, probably dilute it (I may be crazy using full-strength vinegar on my face). Second, test a small area of your skin before you use it on your face. Some people are allergic to vinegar.

The great bit about these uses is the non-toxic nature of it: most ant "remedies" involve poison or toxins of some sort. Furthermore, what an outrageously simple way to deal with acne! No messing around, trying to figure out which ingredients in which products are criminal and which are beneficial. Some people even drink vinegar in water as part of an acne regimen. Can you say that about your current facial cleansers?

Listen up, ladies: waste-free cycles.

2009-06-13T19:21:00.002-04:00

Of course, when you say things like that, it makes people think, "eeeeeeeeww." Or something along those lines.

However, it's possible, and it has saved me a ton of hassle. I no longer worry about running out of supplies, or any funky smells, or feeling dirty once a month, or getting TSS, or anything like that. I always have what I need, and it makes me feel better about my cycle. Oh, and I save a crapton of money.

I began to use reusable products on the basis that I should reduce my monthly landfill package, but at this point, the benefits to my personal life have become so valuable that the zero-waste bit is kind of an added bonus.

A year or two ago, I was using tampons and pads. The standard. Then I began to wonder about reducing my overall waste, and I discovered the menstrual cup through some googling. At first, yes, the notion of a little cup sitting inside me all day was a little weird. Then I realized that I was currently shoving a wad of cotton up there all day. However, they can be reused for ten years (possibly longer, but that's the recommended length), which means a huge savings on the landfill and on my wallet. I bought my divacup at a local co-op for $30, and I was... sort of kind of hooked.

It wasn't easy at first! It takes some getting used to, but you'll find that's true of any change you make in your personal life. So, yes, I was frustrated at first, but it was still better than the alternative. For one, I could wear it overnight. And because it collects, and doesn't absorb, there was nothing to make me feel dirty or even conscious of my period; I couldn't even feel it after it was properly situated. Basically, unless I get cramps, a period day is just like any other day. I don't pack anything extra in my purse, I don't have secret caches of tampons. If I know when my period's coming, I may even deploy the cup in advance.

Furthermore... my cramps declined in intensity after I began using the divacup. This may be a coincidence, but I tend to believe otherwise.

I should mention, as an aside, that there are other types of menstrual cups, and the divacup is just one brand. However, I have a friend who tried the keeper for a little while; she reported that the rubber used was not as soft as the silicone of the diva, and she's had much better success after switching.

However, I wasn't done. I was still using pantiliners, because I'm the sort of woman who needs to wear one every day. Pads suck. Not only are they disposable, but they always manage to stick to things they're not supposed to stick to, like your skin.

I had toyed with the idea of cloth pads, but I wasn't entirely on the boat. How does one clean them? Don't they stain? Don't they smell? Is there some sophisticated laundering method involved?

I was booted into using them when I went out to an island in Alaska for two months. No way was I carting out two months' supply of disposable pads... and then carting them back out with me once I was done using them.

So... I bought some from the same co-op I'd bought my divacup at, but they were kind of big and bulky. These were designed for periods; I just wanted pantiliners, something simple. Luckily, my mother is a genius on the sewing machine. She whipped me up a batch of eight, made from scraps of flannel she had in her studio.

If you want to make your own, just follow these guidelines: use cotton or flannel; sewing machine is fine, hand-stitched is fine; shape is irrelevant; sightliness is irrelevant; you're pinning it to your underwear for God's sake. If you're worried that your significant other won't like it, I wouldn't worry. Just look at the photo! They are totally fun. They make adhesive pads look like a pile of poop. Mom made mine with snaps, but again, not important; safety pins work great! I have taken to pinning mine onto my underwear so that they don't slip during the day.

As for laundering, it turned out to be a non-issue. At this point, I just let them dry 'till laundry day, or I do a small load inbetween laundry days. It all comes out, and what doesn't come out, doesn't matter. Again, the whole pinning it to your underwear thing.

Another attractive bit is the savings. Not only have I completely halted the flow of feminine products from the shelf to the landfill, but I've saved a ton of money. A $30 cup and scraps of fabric... let's say they cost about $0.50 each, which means about $7 or $8 for the pantiliners. So $38. For ten years, at least. My estimates are a little rusty because I haven't bought any tampons in years, but I'm gonna estimate that a box of 20 will cost about $5. That'll get you through maybe two periods, depending. Plus about another $5 for some pads to wear overnight, that'll last you a few periods. (If you've made it this far, do a little experiment for me -- try to accurately estimate how much you spend per cycle.)

Let's say you go through 8 boxes of tampons a year, nevermind the pads. If they cost $5 each, the reusables still pay for themselves in less than a year. However, the diva can be used for up to ten years, and cloth pads can basically be used until you somehow destroy them. Even if you don't care about the landfill issue, that's got to get your attention.

Ice is not nice

2009-06-02T22:07:00.002-04:00

A small companion post to go with the soda entry.

When one thinks of simplifying, they really think about maybe shipping half their belongings off to Goodwill. Dig deeper! How else can you limit your energy consumption?

For some reason, I got to thinking about ice. Normally, ice is a hassle anyway, because they always give you a ton of it in restaurants. Once you have sipped your beverage to a certain point, you reach the zone of ice hazards. I mean that danger zone where if you tip the glass beyond a certain point of equilibrium, to get to that last little bit of beverage, you get ice crashing all over your face.

And no, the solution is NOT a straw. If you're paying attention, we're trying to limit energy consumption. Straws are ridiculous little pieces of plastic that go in the trash after one use. Not cool.

If you manage to savor your beverage instead of guzzling it, you run into another ice problem. Ice is pretty much a conditional state of being. The condition being that it needs cold around it to exist. Ergo, watery beverage, which is NOT what you ordered, thankyouverymuch.

If you like a chilled beverage, a better option is to refrigerate. Still using energy, but have you ever considered how much energy it takes to create conditions cold enough to freeze water? Don't answer that question if you live somewhere cold.

Personally, a room-temp beverage is fine with me, but to each his own.

The part that really bothers me, I guess, is when you go to an establishment where the ice is self-served. Invariably, if you visit these establishments at a high-traffic time, you will find a mountain of ice melting in the trays of the soda machines. It's sort of maddening when you begin to see ice as an investment of energy. Melting ice is wasted energy.

I'm aware that there are certainly bigger fish to fry as far as energy conservation, but every bit helps. Save five dollars every week, at the end of the month you'll have $20. In a year, you'll have $260. All you have to do is start doing it!

Let's think about soda.

2009-06-01T21:46:00.006-04:00

Soda is one of those junk foods that somehow misses the "junk" qualification because it's a liquid. I don't know why this mentality persists, but it does. We all know that cheese curls and ice cream are full of sugar and salt and high fructose corn syrup and fat; if not to be totally avoided, we know they should be on our "limit" list. When it comes to soda (or energy drinks or what have you), we’re not so sure. Either that, or we are sure, and we just look the other way.

I had begun to phase soda from my life years ago. I was still drinking soda, but I started to drink cranberry juice instead. Fruit juice is sweet and flavorful, possibly even more than soda, but it also counts as a fruit serving, which was part of the appeal.

I was also aware that fruit juices could potentially count as water, depending on who you asked; there was no way soda would ever qualify. When I was younger, I hated water. It tasted bad to me. So I can sympathize with the people who feel the need to buy brightly colored bottles of stuff touting itself as some variety of “water.”

Finally, I went cold turkey. There was no soda on East Amatuli, one of the seven Barren Islands in Alaska where I worked with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Two months on an island 60 miles out of port means that you pack in all your food, and pack out all your trash. Soda is not worth the hassle. It doesn’t hydrate or nourish you, and it’s heavy.

We had plenty of things to drink: milk (in boxes), juice from concentrate, Gatorade in powdered form. And of course, water.

Three things I’ve come to understand about soda.

It has no nutritional value. It cannot nourish. And anything one has to digest that doesn’t nourish is a strain on the digestive system. This doesn’t mean one shouldn’t drink it, necessarily, but it requires one to understand: soda is more like candy than anything else in the food kingdom. Would you eat a candy bar every day? (Yes, I include diet soda. Would you believe that a zero-calorie candy bar is any healthier for you than a normal one?)
It ruins the taste buds. The constant sweetness of soda on the tongue can potentially spoil the intricate flavors of other foods and beverages (in my humble opinion.) I’d be willing to guess that this is why I used to hate the taste of water: not because the water tasted bad, but perhaps because it could never compare to the taste of soda.
It’s full of strange ingredients. Who knows the effects of these things on the body? Have any conclusive studies been done? You can find a plethora of stories about how chronic illnesses mysteriously disappear or lessen when soda consumption is stopped…

I haven’t been entirely soda-abstinent. If a friend offers me a rum and coke, I’m going to drink it. To be honest, though, I’ve stopped craving it. Chocolate is another story, but soda no longer appeals. The thing that does appeal is water. And it tastes fine, now.

But why oh why am I blogging about soda in a blog devoted to ecological consciousness?

It’s pretty simple. Actually, it’s all about simplicity. Processed foods are always going to be more harmful to the environment. Always. And I can’t think of anything more processed than soda, except for perhaps some strains of cheese that are enveloped, individually sliced, in shrink-wrap packaging. It takes a good deal more energy to produce soda, and all the wonderful chemicals contained therein, than it does to make some fruit juice, or better yet, run some water from the faucet.

When you hear an environmentalist going on about “simplify, simplify, simplify,” this is what is meant. Simpler is always going to be better for the environment. Fewer processed foods. Local business. Less kitsch on your shelf. There’s no need to simplify to the point of nothing, but take a good look around. Life got pretty complicated for Americans in the last century or so. ‘Bout time to consider if they’re complications worth having.

Energy Tips & Tricks: Laundry

2009-05-17T08:58:00.007-04:00

We all have to clean our clothes eventually. If you do not agree, stop reading now.

I was on an island for two months last summer, in Alaska, collecting data on seabird reproduction for the Fish & Wildlife Service. And of course, there was no washing machine, dishwasher, tap water, jogging path, etc. And we STILL washed our clothes. Though I don't think I'll be hearing much agreement from my mom after I showed up at the Philadelphia airport, direct from Alaska, without a shower. (Which was not my fault. But I digress.)

(Look -- you can see the laundry hanging in our camp)

My views on low-energy laundry do not include getting rid of the washing machine. Having had the experience of washing my clothes in a bucket with stream water, I will say that a washing machine probably does a better job than you can do -- and it can do it using less water than you. But there is something sort of neat about doing laundry by hand. In fact, I think everyone should put themselves in a non-machine situation at some point in their lives, for at least a month. Otherwise, you may never understand how many luxuries you currently, unknowingly, enjoy.

So, the washing machine saves you energy, but you need to supply the rest.

First of all, be a little dirty. I subscribe to the belief that clothing is not dirty until it has either a stain or a scent. I obviously don't advocate re-wearing your underwear, and probably not too often with the socks, but other than that: it's not dirty just because you wore it once.

Another no-brainer is cold-water wash. It takes energy to heat anything. Your cup of tea, the shower water, the seat warmers in your car. So if you use cold water, you save that energy, plus the color in your clothes will probably last longer.

A word on laundry detergent. There are some detergents that are specially formulated to work with cold-water washes; on the island, we used Woolite. My boss was quite explicit on this point, and when a man who regularly spends 1/6 of his year in the wilderness tells you how to do laundry (or how to do anything for that matter), you listen to him, unless you're touched in the head.

However, I'd advise seeking out environmentally friendly soaps. Your local co-op should have a selection to choose from; your local mega store probably doesn't give a crap. Biodegradable soaps are better for all your friendly woodland creatures, and what's good for them is good for you. Or you can make your own, like they did on Going Nuts. Obviously this will take some time and some initial investment in ingredients, but it ends up cheaper in the long run. I personally am going to invest the extra dollar or two in the convenience of having someone else make it for me.

If you're worried about which detergent will best lift those stains or oust that BO, I'd advise you to do a little bit of research -- there are a good number of reviews on the 'net. If it's just the smell thing, though, throw some baking soda in the wash. Baking soda is a great deodorizer. I sprinkled some on my bath towel when it started smelling grody, and now it smells like angels.

Well, no, I haven't ever smelled an angel, but... it smells better than before, okay??

To top it all off, hang dry. Everything. I understand if you're in a rush, or if you're doing your laundry at the laundromat, but lacking a clothesline and pins is no excuse. So far in life, I have had exactly one room at my disposal, and I have always found space to hang things or lay things out to dry overnight. (Like... HANGERS!) If you need something dry for the next day, swipe it with an iron before bed. It's pretty easy.

Just to review... re-wear, cold water wash, eco-friendly soap, and hang dry. The modifications are so slight, but you'll save energy. Another baby step toward saving the world.

Johnny Appleseed I am not.

2009-05-13T20:22:00.020-04:00

The good news is that the mint is kickin' butt and taking names.

The bad news is that I managed to obliterate my baby apple trees.

First of all, the mothership is doing great.

There's been a lot of little mint coming in down at the base, as you can see.

And here's two of the mint shoots I decided to try to "clone." You just cut off a sprig and stick it in some water for a few weeks. The first one is Joon and the other is Benny (just for the sake of differentiating between them...)

They're obviously in descending order by date. The amazing bit, to me, is that the first five photos of each set were taken daily, consecutively. The sets as a whole span from April 26-May 11. Just look at how fast those dang roots grew in! I think they were in the water for a week or two before the roots started.

These guys are actually gifts for my sister, Bets, and my beau, Matt. Now that they're established in some soil, I think they're ready to come up north with me on Memorial Day weekend. (The mint plants, that is.)

I also started a third shoot, which I've called Skippy, because he's a little bit behind.

It seems like the bigger the shoot is, the quicker the roots grow. And vice versa.

Ergo, Skippy. It's taken him about three or four weeks to get to this point.

I'm not really sure what's up with the brown roots. They grew in white, and then I changed the water and they turned brown. I don't think they've grown anymore, either. Anyway, more white roots started growing in, so it's all gravy.

So, my poor apples. I've got photos of them, too:

The first one is the very first shoot to come out of the ground. I think it took about a week, which is insane to me. That was April 29; the next one, going down, is from May 4. Four of them sprouted! The next one, May 8, you can see that the outer shell of the seeds fell off most of them, but by May 11, they were completely dead. Actually, I think one of them may live. I stuck 'em in some water; it worked for the mint, after all.

Anyway, apple shoots are evidently extremely susceptible to root rot, which comes of overwatering the poor dears. And I guarantee you I overwatered them. I was watering them every day. They don't need to be watered every day. In fact, when I get another chance, I'm only going to water them once a week. If that. The moisture really stays down in the soil, which I didn't realize; I thought the top of the soil had to be damp.

D'oh.

Anyway, so I was fairly depressed about that for a little while, but I'm going to keep trying. I'm trying different methods of sprouting them... here's the count:

21 in the fridge in a wet paper towel in a baggie, after drying a week
~15 in a yogurt container full of moist potting soil, after drying a week
6 in water, after drying a few days
16 currently drying
~20 in a wet paper towel in a baggie in my desk drawer at work, after no drying

Dang, that's actually a lot of seeds...

I guess I should mention that the seeds that sprouted came from the yogurt container. The ones in the fridge were started at the same time, from the same batch of dried seeds, but they haven't done very much yet. Everything else was started within the last week.

Anywho, I've learned a lot about growing things. Don't overwater, because the moisture's down in the soil. And patience is good to have, too... though that's not my strong suit when I get so excited about the things poppin' up out of the soil.

Energy Tips & Tricks: Alarm Clocks

2009-05-12T07:02:00.004-04:00

Even with all this talk about "green energy," there's not much being said about conserved energy. Problem is, it's not fashionable. It's not fashionable to conserve energy. The buzz is all about being "green." This warm buzz (like the one in the background, emanating from the TV you're not watching) soothes the listener into thinking that homo sapiens can live at a massive population level and continue to consume the same amount of energy, because, hey, it's green.

But it's not the end of the world, okay? (Though, trust me, it's easy to start thinking that way, and I'm guilty of that.) There's definitely a speed bump coming up, and we just need to slow down a few hundred miles per hour. Change is coming. It would be most helpful to preempt it by starting the change on our own.

And it doesn't have to be huge. Start by thinking about how much energy you consume, and figure out where you can cut a corner or two.

Here's my example. I was thinking about how much energy cell phones use. Cell phones are handy little buggers. I can call folks, text short messages, keep to-do lists, write down things on a calendar, and it works as an alarm clock. Most of my dorm-mates in college used their cell phones as alarm clocks.

But it seemed... wrong. Cell phones aren't that energy-efficient. (More on that later.) And leaving the durn thing on all night just so I could get up at 8 AM felt like I was cheating Ma Nature. ("Yo, Ma, I'm just gonna stay up all night so I can't wake up on my own, and I'm gonna use up your energy to get my butt outta bed in the morning. We cool?")

Even an electric clock wouldn't solve the dilemma; in fact, it would be even worse. They might be more efficient than phones, but then you depend upon TWO electrical devices, and the whole consumption bit, etcetera. Surely, I thought, there must be a better way.

It's called a keywound alarm clock. You've probably seen them in the form of clip-art or caricatures of outdated things: that round face clock with the bells on top. Yeah, they still make those things. Mine was given to me as a gift from Matt, because I was complaining to him about it, and I guess he wanted me to shut my darn pie-hole, so there. So, yeah, it's from China. If I get lead poisoning, we all know where to point our fingers.

You just wind up the thing every night before you go to sleep, and it runs for however long it's designed to run fully-wound; mine runs 36 hours. So if I forget to wind it (and I do), it runs until I get back from work. I feel pretty smug, being able to flip off the surge protector at night. I even turn the phone off so no one can disturb my beauty rest.

If you decide to get a keywound, see if you can get one with a loud/soft option. Mine doesn't have one, so it's pretty loud, but I guess I wanted something that would wake me up. Also, as far as setting the alarm -- it displays incriments of hours and half-hours, so setting for anything inbetween is sort of a guessing game, but honestly it's not a huge deal. Again, as long as it wakes me up, do I really care?

So, to summarize:

Keywound alarm clock

Cons:

Kind of loud (but there are clocks with a "soft" option)
Energy used shipping it halfway around the globe, lead poisoning (get yours from USA if possible... or better yet, a thrift store!)
Constant ticking may annoy some people/make them think you have a bomb in your suitcase

Pros:

No batteries, no plug, no electricity used to run it (post-production)
Assuming it's of good quality, it'll run for years. Maybe it can even be fixed on the cheap
Wakes me up!
Constant ticking may be soothing to some people (it's not that loud, really, honestly)
Lets me feel smug in the privacy of my own bedroom

In my opinion, totally worth it.

Cleaning on the cheap, without the poison or disposables

2009-05-07T19:48:00.003-04:00

I'm trying to keep disposable things out of my life. I guess you could technically recycle most plastic bottles these days, but it's ultimately better to avoid buying them in the first place. Recycling is more of a "downcycling" process, creating a material that isn't as strong as the original. (If you want to know the particulars, go pick up William McDonough's Cradle to Cradle.)

My inspiration, in case you were wondering, is Sustainable Dave, who made a new year's resolution in 2008 to reduce his material waste, and keep what he couldn't reduce. The average American is estimated to produce something like 4.5 pounds of trash a day. I don't even want to multiply that by 365. Anyway, he's one of my eco-heroes, and if he could do it, so can I.

I've fought this battle on a few different fronts so far, but lately I've been in a skirmish with household cleaners. First of all, if you want to clean anything these days, you need a special kind of cleaner for everything -- window cleaner, polish for the wood table, stain remover for the carpet and then for the clothes, different odor treatments for the bathroom, living room, and kitchen. You end up having something like 15 or 20 spray bottles under the kitchen sink, and most of what's inside them is toxic.

You got poison under your sink, and you already knew it, too! But the thing they don't want you to know is that there are non-toxic and insanely cheap ways of making your own household cleaners. I found out through rabid internet research, and an obsession with baking soda.

The interest in baking soda began with the notion that it can be used to prevent a certain kind of infection that I'm susceptible to (but more on that later).

Then I started washing my hair with it.

Then I used it on a drain clog.

I think I officially became an eco-freak once I started washing my hair with it. But I like it a lot better than the shampoo. The thing that weirds me out about shampoo is that it dries my hair out so much that I need a conditioner for it to look healthy. Now... if I buy something to clean my hair, which requires another product to fix the damage of the first product, that just makes me a little suspicious. Why can't the darn thing just clean my hair right the first time? Jeez.

With the baking soda, I just make a little paste and scrub it in, let it set while I wash the rest of me, and then rinse it out. At first I was worried that it was leaving grease behind, but I just upped the dose the next time and it works fine.

I've heard other shampoo substitutes, from corn flour (brushed into and out of dry hair) to brushing with a cheesecloth to... plain water. Yep, plain water! I think it takes some time for your hair to adjust, if you go that route. Oh, and let's not forget the vinegar conditioning rinse, which is evidently fabulous for your hair and scalp. (It reportedly stops smelling like vinegar once it dries... I may try that one myself and tell you what happens.)

The baking soda drain thing... sort of worked. We have a slow drain in the shower. I have read a whole medley of instructions on how to do this, but what I ended up doing was 2 tablespoons of baking soda, followed by 3/4 cup of white vinegar... the first time, I followed immediately with boiling water, the second time, I let it sit for 5-10 minutes before dousing with the boiling water. The drain moves slightly faster now... I'm thinking it's all in the proportions. The part that loosens the clog is the fizzy reaction between the acidic vinegar and the alkaline baking soda. I've read a few sets of instructions with equal parts baking soda and vinegar, so I'll try that, and maybe 30 minutes of sitting time.

Anyway, there are loads of other things you can do with baking soda and vinegar. Check out this list at tree hugging family. Or this list at ecocycle. And if you're really hardcore, and want to go beyond washing your hair... check out making your own toothpaste at eHow.com. Arm & Hammer also has some tips, including washing your skin with baking soda (the grainy texture makes it a natural exfoliant).

Swine flu: don't panic yet

2009-04-27T22:02:00.000-04:00

Swine flu is all over the news today, so if you haven't heard of it, you probably have a life that doesn't involve informed citizenship, television, or the flu itself. (I personally found out through boredom, to be entirely honest.)

Who's being affected? According to CNN, 1 person in Spain, 2 people in Scotland, 6 Canadians, 26 Mexicans, and 40 Americans are infected. But wait, there's more! Turns out in Mexico, there have been 149 deaths -- not confirmed, but thought to be related to the flu -- and almost 2,000 people have been hospitalized. Alarmingly, it's taking the highest toll on folks in their 20's and 30's, the sort of young stock that you don't expect to be waylaid by disease. CNN's chief medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, says that it's the robust immune system of these youngsters that overreacts and does the damage.

Well, you think to yourself, this is a surprise. CNN, sweetheart, tell me when and where the heck this all started, and why is it happening?

CNN is eerily silent on the topic. It calls Mexico "the apparent epicenter of the swine flu outbreak" in its interview with Gupta, but that's as far as it goes. In another article, they claim that "researchers do not yet know" what's behind the virus, suffice to say that it came from pigs. But don't worry, says CNN. It's just "a new variation of an H1N1 virus," and "outbreaks [of normal H1N1] in pigs occur year-round."

CNN, why is all this flu business so troubling? The answer: "Scientists are concerned whenever a new virus is able to jump from an animal to a person -- and then spread from person to person. When the flu spreads person to person, it can continue to mutate, making it harder to treat or fight off."

Luckily, we don't really need waste time and money researching the cause; we know, we've known for years that this could happen. Genetic mutations sometimes happen naturally, sure, but think about it. Avian flu. SARS. Etcetera. All's I'm sayin' is that we brought it on ourselves in the form of a viral and bacterial breeding ground called, affectionately, a CAFO.

The acronym stands for "Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation," and if you've never heard of that, then you've lived a life absent of PETA and other knowledge about where food comes from. Don't worry, you're not in the minority. If people knew where their meat was coming from, the CAFO-mongers would feel the pinch, and I doubt they'd abide that -- not when they have the funds to keep you blissfully ignorant.

Not that I'm accusing anyone of anything. Totally hypothetical.

Anywho. So, if you've ever run into someone from PETA, they probably tried to cram a bunch of information about CAFOs into you as you politely nodded while thinking about how this was going to make you late to that 3 o'clock. And I can't really blame either of you. I have to agree that it's inhumane -- in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Steven Kingsolver says something like "imagine a thousand chickens in your bathroom." I would reply to Mr. Kingsolver, imagine the smell of a thousand chickens in your bathroom. Also, you're not doing the chickens any favors by imagining that it smells any better to them.

Life sucks for these animals, but because it sucks for them, it sucks for you, too. First of all, the meat is not as healthy for you. Animals like chickens and cows (and probably pigs, though I haven't done my research on them) are fed mostly corn, which they're not designed to eat in such huge quantities. It affects the flavor, but it also means that the meat has more fat in it. But, Mom, whines the voice of the CAFO-mongers, it makes them big and fat and it does it real fast!

So fast, in fact, that if you didn't take the cows to slaughter, they'd die of being too fat. But I digress.

Why am I alleging that the swine flu came from a CAFO? Because, my dear, don't you think that having thousands of animals crammed in together would cause some deficiencies in the animals' health? What do you think those CAFO people do about that? They just allow such-and-such percent of their investment to die off? Goodness gracious, no. Antibiotics, of course! Antibiotics in the food! It can't fail.

Only, it does. You know why they always tell you to take all your antibiotics when you're sick? If you didn't, you might allow bacteria to figure out how to get around the medicine. Now, imagine thousands of people, living in very tight quarters with very compromised immune systems, living in their own poop, giving lots and lots of bacteria lots and lots of chances to figure out ways around antibiotics. Whaddaya got? Crazy super-disease that don't take "no" for an answer.

As a point of clarification, viruses don't respond to antibiotics. So the antibiotic mutation explanation doesn't apply to them, but it's probably not good policy to create a festering cesspool for their breeding pleasure.

Okay. I'm done being scary, I promise. (At least for now.) Don't have a cow, though; turns out you can kill the swine flu at 160 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. It's really going to be okay, this time. If avian flu didn't do it, SARS didn't do it, West Nile didn't do it, I think we'll be okay as a species. But what about next time? What about the time when a mutant virus figures out a way around high temperatures? What then?

For starters, please, I am begging you, stop investing in strange meats. Even just limiting your meat consumption would help. If you want to go all the way, it doesn't mean you have to avoid eating anything that casts a shadow. Just buy from the farmer's market -- they do meat! It'll be more expensive, yeah, but that's what a good, healthy, eco-friendly side of meat is worth. It's worth knowing where your food comes from. And it's worth remembering that people are dying, right now, because of patronage to CAFOs -- even humble personal investments like yours.

Just ask yourself this: can you really live with the guilt of contributing to a global pandemic? 'Cause I can't.

For more information, please consider the following links:

Great article about CAFOs and swine flu by David Kirby at the Huffington Post.

A timeline of events from Biosurveillance:

Paula Crossfield at Civileats and KristenM at Foodrenegade talk about the link between the swine flu outbreak and Smithfield CAFO, something you won't find on CNN. At least not yet.

Mint Condition

2009-04-25T08:17:00.002-04:00

This being my first post to the blog, I suppose I should explain, with poise and extravagance, the purpose in my blogging. But... nah. You're smart. You'll figure it out.

I seem to have a vague memory of a vegetable garden in the backyard, but I'm going to go ahead and say I've never grown anything in my life. I mean, a plant. I've got hair and all that. But no plant. I'd been thinking about trying my luck with a mint plant, for a number of reasons:

I'm itchin' to raise a nice garden of my own, someday... not anytime soon, as I'm renting, and the house I'm currently living at has no yard. It occurs to me that if I want to have a garden, I need to have at least some knowledge and some experience with growing plants. (Either that, or significant amounts of dough. However, I'm convinced that the joy in growing your own food is directly proportional to how dirty you get.)
I'm a prolific mint tea drinker. There's one ingredient in mint tea. Guess what it is.
Mint is easy. And by "easy," I mean "nearly impossible to destroy." We had a good chunk of mint growing in the front yard of a rental house in Greensboro, which was mistakenly mown down by two homeless guys who were returning a favor. The stuff grew back in a matter of weeks, and I don't mean there were little shoots of it; I mean, it grew back to full height. So, a good choice for a novice plant-mommy.

As fate would have it, on the first Sunday of spring this year (March 22), Blue Ridge Botanicals came to the Takoma farmer's market with plenty of herbs in tow. I actually had to make a decision between a couple types of mint, which surprised me, to be honest. I went with the Kentucky Colonel Spearmint. Some research via google later revealed that there is a wide variety of mint plants and flavors, including chocolate and pineapple. If I ever figure out where to get some pineapple mint, you can bet I'll be growing it by the bucketfull.

That is, assuming that I'm more or less successful. It's been with me for about a month, and it's definitely grown. I should've been taking pictures of it all along; better late than never, right?

My mom told me that if you cut off the top leaves, the plant will sprout more "branches" (pretty sure they're not called branches, but I am a novice), giving it a bushier look. I've done this on about half the plant, but it looks as though the plant has decided to go bushy on its own.

So far, it has only registered dislike on one occasion. As I rushed to catch the bus to work back in March, I decided to set the plant outside for the day. It was only as I reached the bus stop that I realized how cold it was outside. Yeah, the poor thing was not very happy about that; it wilted, but I set it inside and it perked up overnight. Not kidding. I went to bed, and in the morning it was all, "bring on the dang sunshine!" I was floored.

The plant hasn't grown as much as I've thought it should. I'm trying to decide what that means: should I fertilize it, or water it less, or water it more, or try to fight the rampant aphid population, or combat those random flies that seem to congregate around it... or is it just the heightened expectations of an overachieving plant mommy? I haven't fertilized it yet, because I'm a cheapskate. There's no composter here, and I don't feel like investing in one. We don't have a yard, either, not to mention that composters seem to be fairly expensive (at least for a poor intern like me). I suppose the better option would be to go invest in some fertilizer. Le sigh. When I have my own place, you better believe I will compost everything.

Also, aphids. Good Lawd. There was a mint plant at my folks' place that succumbed to an aphid infestation. So I was prepared for those. But... the cheapskate thing. What to do?

To be honest, I just pick them off with my fingernails about once a week. Yeah, I kill them. I feel bad about it, well, I sort of do... I feel obliged to protect my little baby, I did buy it and give it a home and all. At this point, the plant is doing so well that the aphids don't seem to be doing much harm, so I may... MAY... be a bit lax about it.

But probably not.

It is sort of fun, anyway. I like the notion that I am spending time with my plant, and that we are breathing out good air for each other. And the picking. I am a notorious picker, so the aphid removal is therapeutic for me.

The current project is propogating the plant. I want to start another plant, and I want to give one to Matt. Using information I got from this PDF on g rowing mint, I decided to cut off a few shoots and see what happens. I stuck one in a jar of water, and I stuck one in a yogurt pot full of soil, watered it liberally, and sealed it all up in a plastic bag. This was on Wednesday evening.

24 hours later, the mint in the water was doing just fine, but the shoot in the pot looked miserable. Knowing that wilting doesn't necessarily mean death, I decided at first that the thing was suffocating. I took the bag off and let it sit overnight, but it looked the same when I woke up on Friday morning. Screw it, said I, and plopped the thing down in some water before I went to work. When I came home, it was acting as if nothing had happened.

Also, as of this morning (Saturday, only 2.5 days later), I have visual evidence of a root!

I suppose I should also mention that I have been trying to grow an apple tree. Matt and I collectively saved 44 apple seeds, and I let them dry for a week or so. Just as an experiment, I put 22 of them in a moist paper towel in a baggie in the fridge, and I put 22 of them a half-inch deep in the yogurt pot with the mint plant. (Dumb idea, but I am trying to economize.) I guess another dumb thing I did was I mixed in about 5 seeds from a granny smith apple; the rest are pink lady. Not that it really matters, except granny smiths apparently need a warmer climate. Oh well, I'll let natural selection do its thang.

I doubt very much that the seeds in the pot will sprout. Turns out apple seeds need to be cold before they sprout (i.e. winter). Well, we'll see. Timetables vary from source to source; Wikihow says they'll sprout after a week of refrigeration, but these guys say that it takes three months.

I guess I should also mention that "wild" apple trees, such as the ones I'm attempting to grow, don't neccessarily grow fruit, and even then, they don't necessarily grow tasty fruit. Also, they take five or ten years to even begin to grow fruit. Turns out, interestingly, that commercial apple trees have to have their roots grafted? Or something? In order to keep them stunted. And then, they're pollinated specially to produce any given apple, like the pink lady or fuji or what have you. I'm not really expecting anything. But there's no harm in it; who ever heard of a problem with too many trees?