Every little thing

Floating

I've been meaning to check in here for a while to let "you" know that I won't be checking in here for a while.  Isn't that ridiculous?  It is, but it has been weighing on my mind, so here I am - signing off officially.  Yes, again.

We are continuing to change our life, trying to live lighter and better.  We are enjoying shopping at our farmer's markets this summer and have subscribed to our first CSA program.  We are looking forward (well, you know what I mean) to summer of less electricity with better windows, solar film, radiant barrier, more insulation, cooler lighting...  I love the new habit of the clothesline. 

But as these changes sink in, I am feeling the need for anchoring.  To just stop, appreciate where life is now; to not analyze or strive for something more.  So continuing this blog right now seems false.  Also, this greening of my life has reached a point that separating it from my happythings blog seems also false - as if it is separate from my life.  And for that I'm really happy. 

Bye.  For now at least.

Deep Economy, Reprise

Argh.  South Congress Ave., Austin, TX.  March 2003.

I've just finished Deep Economy by Bill McKibben (although I probably shouldn't link to Amazon but encourage you to buy it at your locally owned, independent bookstore) and I'm spinning.

I was encouraged to read this book by Michael Pollan's dustcover review claiming this book "fills you with a hope and a sense of fresh possibility."  Maybe for him.  It filled me with dread and a sense of renewed guilt.  Global warming, peak oil, economic and political crises..., CHINA.  Still, it was a good book, though I think I can only recommend it to the strong of heart. 

I was most interested in his many descriptions of village, city, slum, and factory life in other countries -- India, Bangladesh, China...  I haven't learned much about this subject and now certainly want (is that the right word? shudder?) to learn more. 

In one touching story, he interviews an eighteen year old woman working and living at a Chinese shower-curtain factory.  He asks her about her life (sad -- ill parents) and why she is working in the factory ($ -- to send brother to college) and then asks if she has a stuffed animal on her bed in the dormitory like others he's seen.

"Her eyes filled ominously. She liked them very much, she said, but she had to save all her earnings for her future. ...

When I returned to the factory with the largest stuffed dog available in that corner of northern China, the girl was as pleased as I've ever seen a person.  Not only that, but the other kids living in the factory seemed enormously happy for her as well.  My daughter would have appreciated the same stuffed animal, but not with anything approaching the same intensity.  Her bedroom boasts a density of Beanie Babies (made, doubtless, in some other Asian factory) that mimics the manic biodiversity of the deep rainforest.  Another stuffed animal?  Really?"

Sigh.  I'm at least comforted by the fact that even Bill McKibben has a daughter with a stuffed animal fetish.  There is hope for me!

Of course, this story really isn't the point of the book -- or maybe it is?  More isn't better at least past a point.  Economic growth isn't the only way.  Global economies are damaging to the planet and to societies.  Local economies strengthen communities...

My challenge to myself after reading this book is to get connected with some good causes and good folks here in green, weird Austin -- seek out the local and unique, get more involved, find ways to help deepen our economy and our life.

Living the Good Life

Yes - I do remember that I have this other blog... And no, I'm not sure why I still do.  I am including more ELT content on Happythings these days --worlds colliding... really merging as things become second nature.  But Claudia sent me Living the Good Life last year and I was happy to finally get to reading it this spring.  So - a tiny review for those interested....

It is a journal of an Australian family that proposed to buy nothing for 6 months - including most foods.  They set out to grow and eat their own veggies along with raising a goat for milk and chickens in their backyard.  Now, I don't have any dreams of becoming self sufficient.  I am thrilled with the basil that I MUST have each summer and any other herb that survives.  This year I put in a couple of tomato plants.  That won't cut it.  I'm thrilled to have other folks grow my food for me -- hopefully folks that live nearby and like and are good at what they do.  But regardless, their story was very inspirational and definitely made me resolve to do many things better.
*Try to grow more of my own food.  We are planning to put in the borders and soil for a veggie patch and plant in the fall.  Site of new veggie patch pictured above.  Progress will begin after new fence is installed.  The old one was held up only by that ivy.  They tore it down today. 
*Use less electricity.  We have installed more compact fluorescent bulbs (after a very stubborn holding out period -- I HATE HATE HATE bad lighting.)  Some varieties actually have decent light color and quality so I am adjusting to new light in some settings.  And I'm trying to be hyper conscious about turning lights on - sometimes it is just habit and I really don't need the light.
*Drive less.  My car is pretty fuel efficient but I'm just forcing myself to adopt new habits to reduce my trips.  It's pretty amazing how putting off running errands for a few days can make them not so necessary anymore.

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There is so much inspiration and how-to guides out there for how to green your life.  I'm struggling with why I feel the need to add my voice to the mix.... It may not be for long.

I bought it

Yes, I decided to break down and buy the book about not buying it... Not Buying It: My Year without Shopping by Judith Levine.  Since discussions around the book were really the inspiration for starting Every Little Thing in the first place, I decided it was only fair to buy it and read it. 

This book is not the ultimate journal of not buying it, but I did find moments of inspiration throughout the book.  I enjoyed the contrast between her description of Christmas 2003 when, a harried, debt-ridden holiday shopper, she was inspired to start her project and Christmas 2004, when she experienced a peaceful holiday full of clarity.  I was intrigued by her criticisms of the Voluntary Simplicity movement.  And I agreed with her overall description of the feelings of isolation and self-doubt that must be overcome when you opt out of consumer culture.

But, disappointingly, there were just too many things distracting me from the main idea of the book.  For one, she's a New Yorker/Vermonter and I (not to mention 95% of the Americans that would benefit from NotBuyingIt) just can't fully relate to her life experiences and attitudes.  (I loved that she was shocked that aren't proper pedestrian walkways in all American exurbs.) For another, her self-imposed rules about what she could/couldn't buy were distracting and kind of arbitrary.  She prohibited herself from seeing movies/plays/dvds (which unlike for me, were a major part of her life) but proceeded to watch network TV and be bored and unhappy.  I can't imagine ever being bored - I have too many hobbies (+ a lovely daughter.)  But the main thing that distracted me from the book was that it seemed she took just about every opportunity to talk about something other than not buying it (criticism of the Bush administration, the politics of the 2004 election, the war in Iraq, and cell phone towers as they relate to semi-rural zoning laws.)  Now, I can sympathize with the difficulties of filling pages talking about not doing something...after all, I started this blog with the premise of talking about not buying things last August and quickly realized it was a hard thing to write about.  Either you did it or you didn't!  But...I still found her rants, while tangential, distracting from her main point -- NotBuyingIt is in YOUR OWN hands.

So - I'll pass this book on and hope that someone else will find inspiration in its pages and expect that the next book on the subject will help me define my own path a little better.

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I took the photo above on a visit to The Domain, a brand new, high-end shopping development in Austin.  (Oh my, it already has a wikipedia entry!) My pullback from consumer culture has made me an unhappy and skeptical citizen I'm afraid, and found there what I went expecting to find -- shiny uselessness.  I want to explore the emotions and thoughts inspired by this place and have started a photo study.

Now for the "opting in"

I'm excited by this new-to-me site so I thought I'd share.  Check out eatwild.com to find a local farm in your area.  I'm planning some field trips to go check out the ones near us... to meet the meat, as they say... and to find out if those farms are good matches for our needs.  Good luck!

Opting out

This phrase -- opting out -- keeps going through my head.  It seems, right now, to be central to my progress in living more mindfully, simply, locally.

I am choosing to OPT OUT of so many things.  I can't change the world and what's offered to me, but I can chose what to participate in.

I've come across the phrase in a lot of my reading lately...  In one example, Joel Salatin, a "revolutionary" farmer profiled in The Omnivore's Dilemma uses the phrase a lot to describe how he wants people to choose food -- to have the choice of opting out of the industrial food chain.

Yeah, I opted out of the fair (or unfair, depending on your perspective) food at the rodeo last week.  I mean - with a cartoon of a turkey on crutches, that decision isn't too hard.  But I am also beginning a process of opting out of industrial food in general that has me both excited and apprehensive.  All the things I am learning simply will not allow me to continue eating how I've been eating -- factory/industrial meat and eggs especially.  (And I've been buying organic/free-range blah blah blah -- but let me tell you...actually no - I'll let Michael Pollan tell you.)

Yeah - that Mr. Pollan is a gifted journalist and a powerful writer and is extremely persuasive.  I highly recommend his book especially (only?) if you are ready for some opting out.

Deep Economy

Bill McKibben has a new book called Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.  Now, I tried economics in college.  I dropped it after two classes because I felt the need to continually interrupt the lecture with questions and the professor and my fellow students seemed to be increasingly annoyed with me. I'm not exactly antiestablishment, but the assumptions that economics are based on have just never made a lot of sense to me.  Anyway, I am trepidatious about attempting this book, but this nice excerpt, which echoes the same things I'm currently reading about in The Omnivore's Dilemma, is intriguing.

The numbers are astounding: the average bite of American food has traveled more than 1,500 miles before it reaches your lips, changing hands an average of six times along the way. One study showed that in Iowa—center of the agricultural heartland, the place Americans think of when we think of farms—the average carrot had come 1,690 miles from California, the average potato 1,292 miles from Idaho, and the average chuck roast over 600 miles from Colorado...

...The international food trade just keeps increasing. In the last four decades, the tonnage of food shipped between countries has grown fourfold, while human population has barely doubled. Seventy-five percent of the apples for sale in New York City come from the West Coast or overseas, even though New York State produces ten times as man apples as the residents of the Big Apple consume.* In England, farmers ship roughly the same amount of milk, pork, and lamb abroad as British supermarkets import, in what agricultural economists call a food swap. As Herman Dal once wrote, “Americans import Danish sugar cookies, and Danes import American sugar cookies. Exchanging recipes would surely be more efficient.”

*Emphasis mine.

I felt this sentence brought into clear light some of my questions/doubts about local food in my last post.  Bill McKibben's writing just seems to have that effect on me.  Regardless of personal income level, if you are buying apples in the grocery store (and I am aware that not everyone does by apples or even has access to a grocery store!) why aren't they apples from the grower closest to you?  Why indeed.  See - I'm still full of questions. 

I'm going to write more about our personal attempts to localize our food supply in the coming posts and I'm going to save the economic answers for McKibben to tackle.   

Lucky

We went to the first farmstand since December this morning.  We got there early so I could snap a few photos.  While I did, a good deal of veg was gobbled up including all the beets and big cabbages shown here. 

I'm used to not getting best pick because I don't usually get to the stand early and because I don't really want to play those games.  (And besides, whatever is leftover is still better than what I've grown (nada) or what is at the grocery store.)  I've never tasted their raved about green beans and probably never will.  I'm still one of the lucky few that get something just about every week.

I'm acutely aware of how lucky I am --
--to live in a city that supports local organic farms
--to have the time to go to a veggie market on Wednesday mornings and have it so near my home
--to have the money to spend on "expensive" veggies

I'm thankful for all these things but on the flipside am very aware that these things are not possible for the majority of people in this country.  I get a little frustrated with the loud calls to "buy local/eat local."  It's a hard thing because while I wholeheartedly support it, and do buy local quite a lot, there is a disconnect. Local products like vegetables are valued because they are lovely, high quality things made by lovely high quality folks in a pretty sustainable way.  There is simply no way everyone in a city could satisfy their food needs locally -- at least not with the current resources and not any time soon. 

I'm sure many more eloquent writers have expounded on this subject and if you know of any, please let me know.  In the meantime, I'm going to eat the chard that I was lucky enough to snag this morning and think about how I can help make this experience available to someone else in my town that isn't so lucky. 

Half

I must admit, with a sigh, that I am probably naturally a glass-half-empty kind of person.  I have a tendency to also be an all-or-nothing type of person.  When I start something new if I don't do it everyday (like exercise) or well (like free-motion quilting) I tend to give up pretty quickly.  I figure I'm not sticking with it, never going to, not cut out for it...   

These features of my personality have hampered my attempts to reduce my impact on the earth.  But of late, I have tried to become more of a glass-half-full girl.  My new mantra is "Half is half." 

Examples:
--While I can't seem to give them up altogether, I've discovered that half a fabric softener dryer sheet works just as well as a full dryer sheet.  And that's half the impact of my compsumption of dryer sheets.  Small beans I know -- but half is half.
--I can't commit to buying only locally grown produce because I have a toddler that likes bananas and blueberries (and no mama tells a veggie-hating toddler "no" when they request out-of-season, out-of-state/country fruit) and I like celery in my soups (Why can't they grow celery in Texas?)...but I can commit to buying at least half of my produce locally -- and half is half.
--I don't use a gray water recyling system or solar water heater, but I can commit to reducing my showering time by half (or taking one half as often-is that gross?) -- and half is half.

This is hardly a revolutionary idea.  But I think that often in the quest for environmental protection and personal change I latch on to always and never and then feel bad when I can't keep up.  I'm trying to remember that half is half and that's something.

I'm working on it

"Oh dear.  It seems I've gotten off to a poor start."

Doc Hudson, CARS

I have some posts rattling around in there (points to brain.)  I'm learning.  I'm working on changing some habits.  I'll get back over here someday.

New age graffiti - March 2006 - Village @ Anderson.