talking toilets

Did I dare title this article - “let’s talk shit?”…no! Because we cannot talk about his sensitive topic in polite company…in fact, we cannot pretend that we even have such stuff in our lives, so we flush it away using gallons of ever-more-precious clean water…drinking quality water we have spent much time, energy and money getting to our front door, and yet more energy cleaning up over and over.

This has never made sense to me, esp. since the revelation I had one evening in 1969 - under the influence of an incredible brownie, I bored my friends for hours with my treatise on toilets and the curse of the flush toilet and how it has ruined civilization, blah, blah, blah…

Well, I was actually on to something - but it was 40 years too soon, as usual. Now, things have caught up with us and here in California as we watch the reservoirs dry up and counties begin to squabble over who owns the right to suck out which river…we are beginning to talk water conservation…not toilets – yet - but i predict it is only a matter of time…

I especially am bothered by the sound in women’s public bathrooms – of a toilet being flushed before and after use! Why not let it “mellow”? Of course, we are afraid of contamination and probably rightly so. I had a crazy idea last year of offering a “Flexi-flush” stall in some multi-stall public facility to see if women could be encouraged to flush only occasionally ( every third use?) rather than every time.

They could choose to use that stall, and would get a “GOLD STAR” for not flushing…also a pen/poster on the door could be used to note every time a flush was saved…we could monitor our progress in saving water. Crazy? Maybe not! Maybe we could slowly change some habits.

There are great options to flushing. The best one so far is the composting toilet. I have used a number of these inventions, and can tell you that almost every experience was a majorly smell-free and enjoyable moment, as these things go…of course. So, check out composting toilets as you build new houses or change out old bathrooms, I think we could change the shitty direction things are going! There - I said it.

GREENER THAN THOU? Let’s talk Stuff, Let’s talk Trash.

Yep - you read it right….I am asking - what is really and truly Green? Well, the answer as I see it - is - everything is relative…yep, ok , seems like an easy out to say this. But, after years of living Green, doing my own “Green thing” - and discovering my strong and weak points in the deal, it looks like we are each doing some things “Greener Than Thou” and other things are “Not so Green”…it is an individual style. We need each other to show the way.  Hey, this is not a contest, by the way - and “Greener Than Thou” is a sticky issue…who wants to be guilt tripped into doing stuff?  Into getting rid of stuff?  Into not buying stuff??  etc…anyway, I think it is fun to challenge myself about my sustainability options.  That works for me.

Anyway - back to the relative points of green, and how we are all made differently.   My recently ended relationship points this out immaculately. B____ has a terrible time recycling, he just can’t seem to get it - what is recyclable and what is not! I always became the “Recycling Police” and pulled weird stuff out of the Recycle bin, and also went through the trash finding lots of goodies that could be sent to the recycle center instead of landfill. I prided myself on a small bin of trash only every 3-6 months. Without me he is doomed… recently I looked into his garage to see a horrifying pile of “trash” that could mostly be separated and recycled or composted. I retreated before the urge to organize came over me.

But, at the same time - I was a shopper, I loved to get more STUFF!…could not dare go into Ross or Dollar Store or any other sale…would come out with some wonderful bargains of new cotton sheets or a beach towel, or even a pair of shoes that I ended up not wearing. (made in China?) Pathetic.

I stay out of stores, but that is not the point. We all are so used to having whatever we want, to buying things because we can afford them - we think that affordability and priviledge means it is “OURS” - like we own it, it is MINE - whatever we want as long as we pay for it. What I am trying to say is that the waters, the air quality, the resources that are being mined and extracted to give us these many “things” belong to everyone, belong - in fact - to the Earth herself, and just because I am wealthy and an American does not mean that i get to have it all…read George Carlin’s wonderful rant on STUFF.

The recent change in our mutual economic fortunes may give us all pause long enough to change some bad habits. Maybe we’ll slow down on our Stuff buying…Maybe becoming Green will be an economic necessity. In fact, really- people have not lined up for sustainable lifestyle in great hoards before now… we may be pushed to the new Green World kicking and screaming… our cold dead hands pried off the steering wheels of our SUV’s ( sales are way down for SUV’s - finally!!!)

Ok, this is a rant - I can tell by the punctuation.

If I were to write it in a succinct and intelligible manner, I would repeat the above, but - like this…

We cannot easily quantify the ecological impact of production, distribution, consumption & dump-tion of our consumer choices. How to make informed decisions? Green by Choice - not chance? This takes a team of researchers for every subject, every item. I believe that without merely “Green washing”, our Ecomania can be appeased by stopping and breathing deeply for a moment.

The dirty secret - is that NO purchase is better for the environment that anything you can buy - whether it is organic, or “reused” - esp if you tire of it and need to now pass it on or dispose of it. The dump-tion footprint is there eventually. But, you say - are we doomed to live in a cave eating with our fingers?

I for one, will probably not be willing to go there, being over a certain age and no longer finding enjoyment in sleeping on rocks. I doubt most of my friends would either. So, we make our compromises, find our strengths, encourage each other in ways that matter to us, and take encouragement from others when the strong point is in their favor. Slowly we wean ourselves from excess - from big cars, from lights left on in empty rooms, from shopping without a list, from impulse purchasing, from junk foods and imported beer. These are the small changes that will give us opportunity to take on bigger challenges, and not a moment too soon!

Atmospheric carbon is at an all time high. Turn off that air conditioner, and lie on the ground under the shade of an oak tree. Give thanks that that tree is standing. Simple acts will save us from the crazy thoughts of what is “Greener than Thou”?

If you need a booster to start undoing your STUFF additction - see the movie - “Trashed”

“Trashed” is a provocative investigation of one of the fastest growing industries in North America. The garbage business. The film examines a fundamental element of modern American culture…the disposal of what our society defines as “waste.” It is an issue influenced by every American, most of whom never consider the consequences. Nor, it seems, the implications to our biosphere. At times humorous, but deeply poignant, “Trashed” examines the American waste stream fast approaching a half billion tons annually.    

What are the effects all this waste will have on already strained natural resources? Why is so much of it produced? While every American creates almost 5 pounds of it every day, who is affected most? And who wants America to make more?

The film analyzes the causes and effects of the seemingly innocuous act of “taking out the garbage” while showcasing the individuals, activists,corporate and advocacy groups working to affect change and reform the current model. “Trashed” is an informative and thought-provoking film everyone interested in the future of sustainability should see.

SMALL FARMS ARE MORE PRODUCTIVE AND PROFITABLE

Let’s take another look at small farms. The localization of our food supply will offer many positive opportunities to our youth, to our sense of place & community, and also to the quality of health and well being we each take from our daily meals.

American agriculture is mired in a mind-set that relies on capital, chemistry and machines. Food production is dependent on oil, in the form of fertilizers and pesticides, in the distances produce travels from farm to plate and in the energy it takes to process it.

For decades, environmentalists and small farmers have claimed that this is several kinds of madness. But industrial agriculture has simply responded that if we’re feeding more people more cheaply using less land, how terrible can our food system be?

Now that argument no longer holds true. With the price of oil at more than $120 a barrel (up from less than $30 for most of the last 50 years), small and midsize nonpolluting farms, the ones growing the healthiest and best-tasting food, are gaining a competitive advantage. They aren’t as reliant on oil, because they use fewer large machines and less pesticide and fertilizer.

• A 1,000 acre U.S. corporate farm growing genetically engineered crops nets an average of $39 an acre.
• In contrast, a four-acre family farm nets, on average, $1,400 per acre.
• Small organic farms are proving to be even more profitable. With oil prices on the rise, growing food without petroleum-based pesticides/fertilizers, and delivering that food to local markets will quickly prove to be the most affordable food available.

I love eating the fresh greens that come in my weekly CSA basket, everything was just picked, and is organic and as fresh as possible. Why not look online for your local Farmer’s Market or CSA ( Community Supported Agriculture) and start getting the best food for your family and for your money right now!

Source: Solving the Food, Health, & Energy Crisis: Local & Organic Production on Smaller Farms

* Change We Can Stomach
By DAN BARBER
The New York Times, May 11, 2008
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_12216.cfm

Local Food Rant

Eating avos in winter? Lettuce in the heat of summer? Here’s the hard truth! We have gotten so off track on local food in just the last 30 years we don’t even realize what that means to our footprint.

~ I love world market foods, give me a Thai Green curry any day… But, let’s take a look at this addiction to variety, to exotic tastes…

In my childhood, (1960’s) hardly one had ever eaten an avocado or artichoke in the Midwest, and international food was a dream that was only real when you ate pizza (either in a restaurant on special occasions - or from a box mix)

This boredom was also unrelieved by hot new restaurants. Mostly people ate at home, in fact - they hardly ever ate out, except for church socials or community potlucks…this all a world from the past, from our rural heritage, and certainly a world that did not know what they missed…

Fast forward to today - where Trader Joe’s brings us Israeli cheese, Italian olive oil, and such things are very available in any corner market in the USA. We have gotten everyday habits that are going to be hard to break. Do we have to break the imported food habit? Is the 1500 mile salad, the supermarket dinner sustainable? To complicate things - we have gotten used to spending only 11% of our income on food, unlike most of the world - and getting the huge choices, big super sizes of everything as well!!

Yikes - time to reassess. Can we find happiness chewing on locally grown potatoes, broccoli in season, waiting for the peaches to come ripe? This is what local food means - grown nearby and in season. Your CSA shows the way - they give you a basket of whatever is ripe and ready to harvest in the garden. Try the Farmers Market for a great selection of timely foods, picked recently and by people you get to talk to while you handle their life’s work! Either is a simple and fun way to begin eating local.

Even more directly connected is your own garden, imagine how much more local can you get – than a 20 foot away dinner rather than a 1500 mile dinner! Check out your own slow food connection as you eat tomatoes that you grew – right off the plant, now that is a 1” dinner….the most local of all…now if only I didn’t need my hands at all – how much closer can I get? Mmmmm, a no-hands lunch! Ok, I am over the top – but you get the point… if I eat that tomato, ripe from the sun , my mouth filled with its just picked sweetness, I have just lowered my carbon footprint by a a factor of a thousand. Yay team! Let’s eat the imports, with grace and appreciation for their amazing availability, occasionally – as befits such luxury.  Here’s to your health…please pass the spinach!

Check out this site for a localization conversation-locallectual

Also the movie - The Real Dirt on Farmer John!

 

QUALITY OF LIFE

Quality of Life and true happiness…Do we know what to ask for - do we know when we have it? Quality of Life can be found in the simplest of jobs, the most humble of homes. it is about happiness, satisfaction, a sense of inner peace, and perhaps a job well done. I am taking more time lately to check these values. I find that my “hurry-up” and “do-more” lifestyle has been unpleasing for awhile! I even think I am being held hostage by my job, my business - a thing that I started with all excitement and potential. So, every day we get to open our eyes to the world we created and the world we will create that day….here is a great story that illustrates the point…enjoy your work, your family, your lover, your friends!

A group of graduates, well established in their careers, were talking at a
reunion and decided to go visit their old university professor, now retired.
During their visit, the conversation turned to complaints about stress in
their work and lives. Offering his guests hot chocolate, the professor went
into the kitchen and returned with a large pot of hot chocolate and an
assortment of cups - porcelain, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some
expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to the hot
chocolate. When they all had a cup of hot chocolate in hand, the professor
said: ‘Notice that all the nice looking, expensive cups were taken, leaving
behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only
the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.
The cup that you’re drinking from adds nothing to the quality of the hot
chocolate. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even
hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was hot chocolate, not
the cup; but you consciously went for the best cups… And then you began
eyeing each other’s cups. Now consider this: Life is the hot chocolate; your
job, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to
hold and contain life. The cup you have does not define, nor change the
quality of life you have. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we
fail to enjoy the hot chocolate.

The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the
best of everything that they have.
Live simply.
Love generously.
Care deeply.
Speak kindly…

And enjoy your hot chocolate

Localization, Relocalization, Futurization

What is localization? Let’s look at the leading localization movement description - by the localization group of WELL in the small town of Willits, CA

 

The WELL Vision:  An enduring local economy that provides health and security for our community.

The Mission of WELL To foster the creation of a local, sustainable economy in the Willits area by partnering with other organizations to watch for opportunities and vulnerabilities, incubate and coordinate projects and facilitate dialogue, action and education within our community.

 

Why Are We Doing This? Willits is a great place to live for many reasons. We have a strong sense of community, creative and dedicated residents, and surrounding natural beauty.

Economic, demographic and environmental trends concern many in our community. Rising fuel costs, climate change, and the importation of most of our essential goods leaves our community vulnerable.

Localizing our economy means that we will produce more of our essentials here in Willits. This behavior models the great American values of self and community reliance. Creating local food and energy systems will tap the vast wealth of knowledge and ingenuity in our area. Benefits include:

Diverse local employment Clean, efficient and more responsible options for food, energy and transportation Securing the future for our families and children Having a stronger connection to each other and the natural beauty around us

Through economic localization we strive to protect and enhance existing qualities of our community and meet the challenges of the future.

 

At foremost issue is the coming decline of petroleum resources and the impact it will have on all of us. The goal is to find creative methods to sustain and empower the local community while moving away from global (imported) resources — in essence, to ‘localize’ our community. WELL is made up of a network of citizens and community organizations that meet regularly to create a common vision, foster education, plan work, and carry out projects.

The simple idea is to remember what we all used to do - before the boats, trains & trucks rolled into town bringing all the supplies of modern life to be purchased by the “consumer”.

What did we do? We used to MAKE things and had local food supply, grain and flour mills, manufacturers & suppliers of conveniences and dry goods…you remember olde time “Main Street” with its shops - each one a distinct and different entity - the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker…not just a children’s poem, but a real community. We even picked our own fruit

from trees that our grandparents planted! I love those stories of possible past and possible future. An emblem of hope in TURBULENT TIMES.

Other groups are helping pioneer the change to a “Post carbon” future with more local evolution of services and goods. The time too begin is now - with oil at over $120/barrel, we can re-apply efforts to discovering old ways, using new low-technologies for energy and transport, and mentoring local “green transition” skills.

Join the pioneers of future and start a localization movement in your town - it can be as simple as plantiing a community garden, publically showing films like “Escape from Suburbia”, promoting energy farms.

Energy Farms are a response to the dominant agricultural model of the so-called “Green Revolution” that turns soil to dust, chemicals to food, and food to fuel.

Using science, proven tools, and evolving methodologies the Energy Farm Initiative seeks to demonstrate systems of agriculture that can sustain both farms and communities in the face of climate change and peak oil. This program weaves threads of the Relocalization vision into a fabric of local currency, local food and biofuel systems, revitalization of local industry, and community cooperation.

 

Ok, so - lots to do!!! In fact, I gotta run - plants to water, bee swarms to manage…see you later,

-anniegreenjeans

The Amazing & Vanishing Honeybee

Why do we sing their life song now? The ancients worshiped the bee, sang songs to them, made beautiful and complex gold jewelery in their image. Who are we to allow them to disappear without making songs to their magnificence?

Yes, friends - as many have now pointed out - not only honey lovers - but almond lovers, cheese lovers - your foods are at stake here, in fact - perhaps your own very life is too! The bees brings us agriculture as we know it. They also may bee a significator of the collapse of our ecosystem in these times - an early victim of the complex immune destroying lifestyle we have come to accept and yet (almost) be oblivious of.

What can we do to save the bees?

And why do we care? Just a few facts-

*Honeybees are the only insects that produce food for humans. What a gift! What have we done for them?

*Just a single hive contains approximately 40-45,000 bees! They live as if they are cells of one organism, very socially sophisticated…we humans could learn something from their high degree of cooperation, sharing and dancing communications!

*During honey production periods, a bee’s life span is about 6 weeks. In the winter, they live longer because they don’t get worn out by flying.

*Honeybees visit about 2 million flowers to make one pound of honey. They also bring in their weight in pollen if they find it!

*A bee travels an average of 1600 round trips in order to produce one ounce of honey; up to 6 miles per trip. To produce 2 pounds of honey, bees travel a distance equal to 4 times around the earth. Next time you wrap that spoonful of golden honey around to save everry drop, be reminded of how much loving work and air time created that honey!

*Bees fly an average of 13-15 mph. Maybe we can learn from them how to move at a rate of speed that brings rewards and health.

*Bees from the same hive visit about 225,000 flowers per day. One single bee usually visits between 50-1000 flowers a day, but can visit up to several thousand.

*Queens will lay almost 2000 eggs a day at a rate of 5 or 6 a minute. Between 175,000-200,000 eggs are laid per year.

*About 8 pounds of honey is eaten by bees to produce 1 pound of beeswax.

Beegin to keep a hive of bees. For one thing, it will slow you down to bee in their presence. They hum a mysterious and ancient song, and draw you into watching their daily activities at the hive entrance. Their flight arrivals and departures are way more interesting than anything at the airport! Besides, you may bee helping to save these precious and social creatures. My hives are deep in the rural mountains of Mendocino County. As far as I know, there is no commercial agricultural spraying done anywhere nearby ( They fly up to 5 miles to find nectar) and no weird cell phone towers, or other concentrated electromagnetic pollution to cause their immediate distress. I am hoping that a colony collapse and mite-resistant strain of bees can develop in our area. Check out your local beekeeping group!! I started one as it appeared that we needed to get together. Turns out that almost 40 people in our sparsely populated area keep bees or want to have bees!

There have been a few good movies lately - coming around to educate us and interest us in bees…including the newest - The Vanishing Bees. See a fabulous trailer at their website - http://www.vanishingbees.com/

You can even play games about bees… learn about how to keep bees, or enjoy using local honey in special ways. Bee kind to our pollinators, they are our benefactors in so many ways.

PAPER or PLASTIC? NEITHER!

Break the plastic bag habit by bringing a reusable bag on your next shopping trip! The bags you choose at the checkout counter are an important part of our habit-breaking new “Green Lifestyle”. Use your own tote to cart your groceries home are also important for your wellbeing and that of the planet. Carrying a sturdy yet style-wise bag that can be left in your car between uses, such as those available from Ancient Circles, will help you break the plastic bag habit.

I take mine back out to the car next day folded up - and leave it in the trunk. it takes a few times to remember to do this simple thing, but the personal reward of “goodness” is worth the effort!Across the globe, plastic bags such as those dispensed in stores are consumed at a rate of one million a minute, yet single-use carriers will hang around long afterwards, polluting soil and waterways. Further, there is 12 million barrels of oil used in this country every year to produce these bags. All of this contributes to climate change.

Paper is not any better, and in fact - some studies agree that paper is more energy intensive to produce, and creates Dioxins in the process.

And don’t forget to take reusable bags to your local farmers markets this summer. Make a difference when you can!

Visit the Conscious Consumer Marketplace for more information about plastic bags and reusable alternatives.