The EV compromise

With National Drive Electric week nearly upon us, and with three years of EV ownership under my belt, I'm still thinking about the impact of my choices and actions. There is a fair amount of anti-EV sentiment making headlines, some of it politically driven, some of it remarkably level-headed, and asking smart questions about whether EVs are the answer. I come back again to my conviction that it is not what you have or buy, but behavioral choices that make the difference.

But let's be clear: driving an electric car is a compromise: if I were "green" beyond reproach, I would be living in a high-density urban area in a net zero building, within walking distance of my workplace. Cycling (and cycling distance from the workplace) is a close second to this. Omitting anachronistic modes of transport such as horse and buggy, and things like skateboarding, means that public transit comes next, and then ride and car sharing. Driving in a personal car is really at the far end of the sustainability spectrum; but it's not the car that needs to change, it's the way we arrange our cities and lives.

The biggest change is where we choose to live: when someone tells me they couldn't make an EV work because they commute so far from work, I have to wonder why they live so far away. Yes, homes closer in to urban or suburban employment centers are more expensive, but the cost of commuting over the years is even more so. And that "hidden" cost keeps many artificially poor.

Even a rough back-of-the-envelope calculation, with readily available numbers (the IRS mileage rate, the value of your time at minimum wage) gives staggering results: those miles and days really add up, and compounded over the spam of years that most people work, it's clear that the expensive house close to work is actually much cheaper in the long run. A typical 30-mile round trip commute? It adds up to well over $450,000 (double that if both spouses are commuting) over 20 years, and that's not even considering the impact in terms of extracting and burning fuel (over 100,000 tons of CO2, in case you were wondering), and the social and environmental impact of traffic congestion and new road construction when everyone starts thinking that a 30-mile commute is normal.

Now those numbers are based on commuting with a gas car. If I run the same commute with my EV numbers, I'm a bit better off: $130,000 over that same 20-year span. (I can't compute the CO2 emissions for everyone--the guy with his own solar panels is doing much better than the guy plugging into 100% coal-generated electricity.). But the social cost of my time and the impact of roadways remains.

For the record, I work at home, and Darling Husband takes his bike or walks to his office under 2 miles away: the car is for ferrying kids and running errands. My husband's bike commute is a clear example of choices playing out: $700 for the bike (it's a nice one, bought used), and about $50 each year for a tune-up. Over 20 years, it's paid for the whole house two times over. Even if he had to replace the whole bike every year, we're still way ahead, and he doesn't need to take time out of his day (and away from family) to go to the gym. Because in the end, it's not what you have, but what you do.

Thoroughly Modern Millie

I went to the bank yesterday. In my line of business, contracts are irregular but not infrequent, which means that checks need to be run to the bank irregularly and fairly frequently. In the interest of saving time, I often let client checks pile up for a week or so before running deposits--the joke is that the way to make a pending check arrive is to deposit the others.

While I was handing checks to the teller for deposit, she asked if I was aware that they had added a shiny new feature to the mobile banking app--I could now deposit checks from my home office--she thought I might be really interested, since I seem to be in so often.

Sure enough, after that bank visit and picking up Little One from school, and getting some more ice cream (Jr. Firefighter is home from college for the summer, and this wreaks havoc on frozen inventory), I swing by the mailbox on the way up the drive, and there it is, another check.

Oddly enough, I find myself torn: Yes, it is a good idea to reduce trips, with all those pesky carbon emissions, traffic congestion, and such. Yes, it is an ease of burden for the busy to be able to take care of errands in a few seconds. Yes, reducing the amount of paper reduces cost, both environmental and administrative.

But. When I walked into the bank, the manager looked up from his desk, and greeted me by name. I still remember when he came to this branch as a teller, long before Little One was born. I think of the times a trip to the bank counted as human contact, during those years as the tired mother of two young boys. I think of the time that same bank manager flagged a transaction because he knew I wasn’t in Texas (having a spa day and buying a flat screen TV) because he had seen me just an hour ago (and he knew I wasn't a Red Door kind of girl). I think of the phone call from my mother's bank when something didn't seem quite right with her, and I wonder if my bank will still be around to provide that same human connection and safety net. Can the mobile app call my kids when I'm 84?

I could get on my high horse and justify a drive to the bank since the carbon emissions don't apply to me in my electric car (and it's true), and discount my contribution to congestion since I try to combine trips. But it's still a car on the road, and an electric car is at best a compromise (maybe I should get a bicycle). So I take the newly arrived check, endorse it "for mobile deposit," snap pictures of it, and send it off through cyberspace. And fight the urge to email the bank manager just to say hi.

Mailbox weeds

They are as unwelcome as dandelions and crabgrass, and fill my curbside toter as much as blackberries and buttercups. Years ago, I went on a systematic campaign to rid myself of these postal weeds, setting aside coupon mailers and other junk mail as they came in, and then working my way through the myriad of opt-out scenarios.

Most could be tidied up with a quick online form, with the requisite four weeks to process; some forced me to resort to phoning a call center wage-slave to have them remove me from their list (after a four week wait…). But one was a persistent as bindweed; the RedPlum flyer. You likely know what I’m talking about—it’s like the advertising section inserted into the Sunday paper, the first thing you pull out and recycle. But this one comes straight to the mailbox of every single address in the country.

This particular one stood out from all the others, because not only did it take up half my mailbox several times a week, no opt-out website or phone number could be found on the flyer itself. Sleuthing online I finally found a website that provided a physical mail address. Maybe most people won’t bother. But I’m not most people: I eradicated bindweed from my raspberry patch, and I send off an opt out notification in a letter in an envelope bearing a stamp. After a few weeks of wait and a note taped inside my mailbox alerting the habit-driven postal carrier that no RedPlum flyers should be delivered, I was able to downsize my recycle bin.

The relative calm has endured, punctuated by the occasional flare-up of a catalog in the wake of an online purchase. These blights are quickly dispatched, chucked into the bin after a quick visit to the website or a expeditious call to the 800 number on the back.

A few merchants have figured out that if I order online I might not want a paper catalog, and they make it possible to opt out at the time of purchase, though the default is still to pop a paper catalog in the shipping box. But there’s a huge difference between a mailing received because of an existing relationship and “Every Door Direct Mail (EEDM)” blanketing entire zip codes. These mass mailings are actively encouraged by the USPS, as they represent a steady revenue stream to the struggling behemoth.

To my great dismay, I opened up my mailbox this Tuesday, and pulled out a RedPlum flyer. I was thinking it must have been an unthinking substitute mail carrier, one who didn’t know my foibles. But no, there in the address field was our address, and the addressee was “Resident.” Sure enough, after five years, RedPlum opts you back in. At least this time, they have an online form for opting out. Though I note it now takes them six weeks to process the request.

Sweet 16

I turn 50 this week, and some people are asking what I want for this noteworthy birthday. I really do have all I could ever want—family, friends, beauty. Well, almost. When I cogitated about what I could do to bring meaning to this milestone, I realized that my age now gives me permission to speak my mind. What can I say? So, gloves off, here’s what I really want for my birthday, from you and every one of you:

Number 1. I want you to think about stuff. The raw materials and “cheap” labor that go into making our electronics, clothing, and stuff have a huge impact on the planet and its inhabitants. We are buying, hoarding and discarding at an alarming rate, all in the name of stimulating the economy. It is an unsustainable and harmful model, shifting wealth from the many to the few and destroying our planet in the process. In the end, the content of your character is not defined by what you own.

• Ask yourself if you really need it. Wait a bit; you may find you don’t really need it, it was just a fleeting desire, inspired by clever marketing, or you were Jonesing. I’m pretty sure there’s a commandment about that.
• If you decide you really need it, do you need it all the time? Maybe borrowing or renting it could be the answer. Most people only use their power drills 16 minutes a year. Libraries have books and videos. Consider granges or sharing schemes, which range for everything from cars to tools to kids toys. Seriously, one lawn mower would do for five or six houses. We likely don’t need 3,000 square foot houses, three-car garages and storage lockers either, once we cut back on the stuff.
• If you really do need it, do you need it new? Chances are what you seek can be found on eBay, Craigslist, or in a thrift store or garage sale.
• Read/watch anything by Anne Leonard. (storyofstuff.org)

Number 2. I want you to think about your food. Factory animals, intensive chemical farming, GMOs, and trucking and flying food all over the world are bad for us and the planet and don’t make sense on any level. Did you know that tankers full of grapefruit rinds are shipped overseas to feed French pigs, while local food scraps head for landfill? The single act of changing how we eat may have the biggest impact on carbon footprint—and climate change—than anything else we do. Because it is so close to our selves and so immediate (we do eat frequently), this is not easy, but try these in small bites and grow it into a habit.

• Grow it. Organically. Rip out a bit lawn and put in a raised bed, then grow the one vegetable that you eat a lot of, one that you eat some of, one you’d like to try, and some flowers. We need beauty in our lives, and a small bouquet of flowers from your yard will put a smile on your face.
• Get to know a farmer. Go to farmer’s markets. Hire a farmer: CSAs are all over the place, and provide a direct connection between you and your food. You know those stands by the side of the road? Stop at them!
• Eat real food. Forget about things that come in boxes, cellophane or Mylar wrappers with bar codes. Eat in season. Put things by for winter—freeze it, dry it, can it. Open a jar of sunshine in February (otherwise known as jam).
• Don’t buy GMOs. They require huge amounts of chemical fertilizers by design, and line the pockets of companies that have no interest in leaving the planet a better place. Keep putting pressure on politicians to label them. Vote.
• Plant a tree. Plant lots of trees. They suck up carbon. Hug trees, fight for their lives when you see them threatened.
• Read anything by Michael Pollan. 

Number 3. Think about your energy use. The petroleum industry is hugely powerful and subsidized by our money to the tune of billions of dollars. And it’s a great business model: they don’t have to pay anything to clean up the mess—think spills, fracking and the Arctic wilderness. They already have five times more oil reserves ready to tap than the planet can bear if we want to cap global warming to 2 degrees C—a level that already wipes some islands off the map. This is not theory, it is fact. At the rate we’re going, it’s only 16 years away. I will be 66, my kids will be in their 30s. This is important, and it’s something we all need to do together. Now.

• Don’t use it. Remember Jimmy Carter in his sweater? Turn down the thermostat. Sweat in summer, wear another layer in winter. Turn off lights. Insulate. Bake the whole meal in the oven or crockpot together. Go for efficient over flashy.
• Green it: If you have an expanse of roof, cover it with solar panels. They work even here, in the darkest corner of the country. If you live in the sunbelt, you have no excuse. If you have a lot of wind, put in a windmill. If you don’t have sun or wind, sign up for your utility’s green energy. Do it now, it’s easy, and will cost you less than the price of a latte every month.
• Think about your driving. Don’t do it: walk, bike, get on a bus. Work from home, move closer to work. Dump the low-mileage vehicle. You can always rent a pickup truck when you really need it, but look at your driving habits, and tailor the car you own to majority of your driving needs rather than 100%. I bet you’d be fine with an electric car or a hybrid (but ask yourself why you’re driving so much to begin with).
• Buy carbon offsets. They may seem like a scam, but they are the only mechanism we have to level the subsidized playing field. While you’re at it, write to your politician, and ask them to tax carbon emissions. And keep asking. Did I mention it’s important to vote?
• Read anything by Bill McKibben (350.org)

All of these things will save you money (some will take longer than others to do so), and all are good for you, but most of all, they are good for the planet—our planet. I want to have grandchildren someday, and I want to be able to spoil them with a beautiful, healthy planet. Call me selfish.
And there’s one more bit, and it’s hard: do these things as a gift to fellow inhabitants of the planet (not just humans). Lead by example, but don’t get too cocky—pride goes before the fall. The point is to make it look easy/fun/like it will save money so someone else might say to themselves, “hey, that’s a good idea, I’m going to try it.”

So there you have it, my birthday wish list. Feel free to share my wishes, pass them around, send me notes, but most of all act on them. Start with baby steps if you have to, but start. I don’t want to have to ask again when I’m 65.

Gyre

A friend recently snapped a picture in his local supermarket. Amazingly, this fresh perspective of such an everyday place sparked quite the discussion. Different people saw different things: one person wanted to know where the people are (sobbing on the floor?); one commenter from the UK thought it was local; to me, it made it pretty clear where the Pacific garbage patch was coming from.

And it got me thinking again about the whole contrived experience of the supermarket. Carefully orchestrated choreography, designed to make you slow at certain (high-priced) items, themed end-cap displays to add to your list of must-haves for the season (n.b. "season" here refers to created events, like the Super Bowl party or Halloween).

The perspective makes it all clear: little bump-outs try to make you think something is compellingly different. But from this view you'd be hard-pressed to discern what section of the supermarket this is: baking, snacks, pasta? It all looks the same from here, just an ocean of packages.

Now, think of what you see at a farmer's market. If it's anything like the ones around here it's mostly food rather than "bland sugar-coated nonsense," (to quote the photographer) and a bag or basket carried on your arm serves the same purpose as the mega-cart designed to look like a cartoon race car. All those tents and people make it look more like a party than a store. I can also compare it with my CSA, where it is painfully obvious whether we are purchasing vegetables or meat, for example. Both of which would make for a more attractive picture postcard than this shot.

Cold feet

We spent our lazy Sunday afternoon yesterday looking at real estate. It's a slow market still, so realtors are happy for anyone to show up, even middle-aged tree huggers who ask questions like  what the heating system is and whether there's capacity in the electrical panel to charge an electric car.

We're not looking to move anytime soon, but we do know the day is coming eventually, and we know what things we don't want to give up on when we downsize. We love our radiant floors, for example: salvaged hardwood floors with hydronic tubing underneath. Clean, comfortable heat. So anytime something comes on the market that says "eco" or "green built" we go have a look.

Last fall, we had a peek at zHome offerings nearby; This afternoon, we noted that a two-bedroom cottage in a pocket neighborhood close to us was on the market. We had read the book by Ross Chapin, and were very interested in the idea of architecture that fostered a sense of community and also used resources wisely. We expected green building techniques, smart energy usage, and a floor plan that made the most of the reduced square footage. We parked the LEAF next to the realtor's sign, and meandered into the central green. Delightful, quiet and comfortable. Indeed, Darling Husband fell into conversation with a neighbor as I went on. And a vaguely familiar face from the school who recognized our car caught up with me, and we chatted about living here.

She noted that the upper cluster--where this cottage was--was mostly retirees, with the families favoring the second phase down the hill. One glance down the lane revealed much larger houses stretched in a line, with no green and little relation to each other. A very different feel from the little cottages tightly grouped around the green.

Once inside the cottage, the space revealed itself to be a bit schizophrenic: built-in shelving maximized some space, but in the kitchen, a huge mega-fridge seemed completely out of scale. The bathroom had some nice green finishes, but its placement required a convoluted entryway that squandered any space gained by built-ins. Upstairs, skylights and real plaster walls were above our heads, but run-of-the mill carpeting (have I mentioned I hate carpet?) and electric baseboard heaters were at our feet. Space heaters dotted through the house told a story of cold residents.

Our second drive-by also yielded an open house for "Eco-built" townhomes, based on the very common row house and duplex ("semi-detached") model commonly dotted across Europe. Indeed, our house in Ireland was of the same pedigree. These Northwest cousins had solid mechanicals: radiant floor heating, fire suppression system, energy-efficient windows. Clear effort had been made to allow for enough natural light to penetrate to avoid dark hallways--very important for our dreary winters. But here again, were misses: wasted space from odd jogs in walls, carpet over radiant floor heat, and closets that weren't even deep enough to hang clothes. The agent was patient, the pricing is fire-sale low, but errors like orientation and unworkable spaces undermines otherwise good intentions.

As we walk back to the car, Darling Husband shakes his head, clearly disappointed. "It seems like it's a game here," he notes. "For Europeans, saving energy is real." Once again, he's hit the nail on the head. With our big houses and big cars and big oil and energy subsidies, using fewer resources is not part of our collective wisdom (and you have to be over 45 to remember the gas lines of the 70s). Only hardcore eco-nutcases drive diesel or electric vehicles, only liberal tree huggers would put up solar panels or windmills or a green roof.

The only solar panels at the big-box home store in the US are for gate openers--so you don't have to run electricity half a mile down your long, gated driveway; in the German equivalent, you can buy PV panels to generate electricity for your home. French municipalities recognize green roofs as an opportunity to mitigate storm water retention from increased density (which leverages investment in municipal infrastructure); here, you have to fight City Hall to do something that out of the ordinary.

In the end, my biggest fear is not that we won't be able to find the perfect empty nest for ourselves, but that these kinds of errors will overshadow all the good effort that has been made. We need these dwellings to succeed, so that people can realize that consuming less does not mean living less. We all need to discover the freedom and ensuing joy of spending our energy, both personal and metered by utility companies, on things that matter.

End of the road

In the fall of 1977, my parents decided to splurge: they bought a new car. Lest you think these Depression babies were throwing caution to the wind, note that their thrift showed through: they waited until the end of the model year to be able to negotiate on the price, and they eschewed nearly every option--including a radio. It was also only the second new car either of them had purchased.

It was bad enough from a teenager's viewpoint that the car was so incredibly sensible (shoulder belts before they were mandated), but the radio was insult to injury. Still, it meant my brother inherited the old one--a 1968 model, and I got to learn to drive in a new car.

It turned out to be one of those models that never had any major issues along the way, and when I returned to the US with a husband in tow in 1989, my parents gifted us the car to serve as our second wheels. All we needed was a house with a two-car garage. It was still shiny, with a just a few dings and rattles, but still, no major issues.

Our family grew, we purchased a wagon, and the old Volvo became Darling Husband's classic ride. The Mom-mobile changed a couple of times over the years, but the blue beast kept on going.

We bought touch-up paint in increasingly larger containers and gave up trying to wax it to shiny. In 2001, after a fellow blue wagon got totaled, it gifted its front seats and floor mats to the '77.

For its 30th birthday, we bought the car a tank of premium and new classic car plates, along with a lifetime exemption from renewal and tailpipe checks. It purred and kept going.

This year, with a teenager, we joked that if it was good enough for me to learn to drive in, it was good enough for him. And so Jr. Firefighter slipped behind the wheel and learned to drive.  He dutifully noted that the turn signal on one side wasn't always lighting, so we took it in for some work. We ended up rebuilding the taillight, since no new replacement part could be found.

And then, four days after Jr. Firefighter earned the magic piece of plastic, the car spiked a fever. No amount of coolant seemed to help, and the mechanic found the cancer had spread to several areas. Words like "machining" were uttered. Like the old Quaker carriage, all the parts seemed to be failing at once. I think, said the mechanic, it's time.

Right on schedule, the first of the seven stages of grief, denial, kicked in: we could just fix it, really, it just needed some quality time and some new parts. But when we started attaching numbers to the rather long list, it became clear that this car had come to the end of its run.

A charity that specializes in fixing up old reliable cars declined; even for a Volvo, they said, we don't think it's worth it. The guy in Ballard who does electric conversions said it was too young (!); he only takes pre-1975 Volvos. So today, we shall take a last family photo in front of it one last time, and sign papers to release our interest in it to a salvage yard. It has been a very good run.

But it has also been a model of bucking the trend, a manifestation of our values: maintaining a car is always less expensive and more environmentally friendly than buying new.

New, the car cost $7900, and we are actually getting a few dollars from the yard: $256. That averages to about $225 a year for car ownership. If we had followed the national average and replaced it with the equivalent new model every five years, we would have spent over $130,000; if we'd bucked the trend and waited 10 years between cars, we would still have spent close to $75,000.

Driving it until it can no longer be driven and sending it to a pull-a-part yard is "using it up, wearing it out." Its parts will help keep others in its model (made until 1993) alive, as we eke out as much use before it ends up in a crusher--to be melted into steel and recycled into a new car.

As we considered replacing it--because a three-driver family needs three cars, right?--we quickly realized that we will never be able to repeat this performance. Darling Husband will keep an eye on the classifieds, but for now, we shall remain a two-car, three-bus pass family with a healthy savings account and a clear conscience.

Over the fence

In the localization world where I cut my professional teeth, one of the worst things you could do was "throw something over the fence," a practice akin to painting someone into the corner and then walking away, leaving them with figuring out how to get out. Management learned early on that the right thing--and the most advantageous--is to think ahead, involving everybody down the line as early as possible, to make everyone's life easier, and the product better in the end.

But throwing things over the fence plays out in our personal lives, as manufacturer's bundle things together in odd multiples (three smoke detectors in a package, really?), package them against flooding and raining toads (why does a micro-SD card need a macro hard clamshell?), and plan for obsolescence (repeat the steps above when the first one fails or is replaced by something new or better). That we have to deal with the waste stream is not their problem anymore. They've thrown it over the fence, and we as individuals and a society will have to deal with it.

It is not coincidental that as I read Ray Anderson's Confessions of a Radical Industrialist, I am reminded that "over the fence" and "away," as in places we throw things, simply do not exist. Shedding our own responsibilities simply places them on someone else's shoulders. Unless we can close the loop.

Long-time readers may recall the situation where French pigs were contaminated by tainted grapefruit rinds shipped from Brazil. That no one thought that sending kitchen scraps (albeit industrial) halfway across the globe while waste from French cuisines was likely landing in landfills points to someone not thinking. (I should point out though, that the Germans get the packaging challenge right: you can leave packaging with merchants, which means they put a lot of pressure on their suppliers to create less of it in the first place.)

And so, when we noticed that our neighbors had acquired a pair of chickens, we saw an opportunity: instead of putting those kitchen scraps into the municipal compost stream, we asked them if they thought their ladies might enjoy the carrot tops and apple cores. Indeed, they would, and could they give us a few eggs in return?

And so we have the happy solution of throwing a bowl of scraps from fixing supper over the fence--literally. And the hens don't think it's a problem at all. Quite the contrary, if their happy clucks are any indication.

Not for sale

In 2006, I made over a hundred jars of jam. In case you're wondering, I don't have a particularly good memory, it's just that there are still a good lot of them left, as we plug away at the larder shelves. It was a year that the plums and apples were good, and so were the raspberries, and blackberries, and Mirabelles, and blueberries and currants, not to mention apricots and peaches. It was also the year that I learned how to make chocolate jam, and, perhaps out of boredom, started getting fancier, adding herbs and wine to various fruit combinations.

It was also the year that three of the family tested sensitive to wheat and gluten, meaning vehicles for said jam like bread and croissants were off the menu. So just as jam production increased, jam consumption plummeted. In economic terms, we had a surplus. I set about seeing how I might make lemonade out of the situation.

My first thought was to sell the extra jam ,which would fetch a fair price if the signs at the farmer's market were any indication. A quick look at the relevant regulations revealed that because my kitchen at home is a residential kitchen, as opposed to a commercial kitchen, it was illegal to sell my jam. The same applied to donating it to food banks. Nope, it was our jam, and we were stuck (sorry!) with it. Luckily, jam keeps.

A few jars went to friends, a basket of the more fancy combinations fetched a fair price at the school auction. Jars got tucked into teacher appreciation bags and brought as hostess gifts. We learned that jam was good in oatmeal; indeed, we started referring to jam as the duct tape of failed meals. But still, there was too much jam. And did I mention I kept making more jam each year? We have an over-achieving plum tree, and well, blackberries are free! And I do find it hard to pass up delicious, overripe fruit.

And then came the year in Ireland, where every farmer's market and farm stand had a few of these "extra" jars, with hand-made labels. We had seen the same thing on jaunts to Britain. I taught our farmer how to make jam, bringing home just one jar of amazing raspberry jam and leaving the other 50 with her to sell at her farm stand. But the idea of cottage industry had been drummed out of us in the States, replaced instead by the misconception that only commercial operations can produce safe foods.

So imagine my delight last night when Junior Firefighter showed me a column filler that mentioned that our Governor had just signed a "Cottage Food Operations" law, that expressly allows for selling homemade food products, including baked goods, jams and jellies, preserves and fruit butters, defining them as "nonpotentially hazardous." Maybe my home kitchen isn't so dangerous after all.

So I look into the rule, and here's where it falls apart. It does not mean that on July 22 (the date the law takes effect), that I can put a quaint handmade sign at the curb offering up some of my surplus for pin money. Nope, I'd need about a hundred dollars out of pocket for a yearly permit, plus I'd have to invest in jars and labels, so I'd have to be pretty serious about selling more than the odd jar to cover my outlay. Add to that inspection requirements and limitations on outlets (no internet or mail order) and earnings limits (less than $12,000/yr.), and it's clear that this law is intended for a very small group of people indeed.

So, even as the fresh fruit verily beckons to me in the farmer's market, there will be no sign in my front yard for the foreseeable future. Sorry, folks.

The Piper

Little One has had a sheltered childhood: he has been spared images of falling towers, flooded New Orleans and tsunami-ravaged India. But he is slowly awakening from his reverie, as images of jackknifed trains and obliterated towns and exploding reactors flood our lives this week. It seems fitting that his class is studying Norse Mythology; they have reveled in the great trickster Loki and the power of being godlike, and have just arrived at the fall of the gods.

Dinner table conversation was interesting last night: the sausage was tasty (a local, smoke bratwurst), so much so that both boys asked why I couldn't make twice as much so they could have two each. I was just launching into my "do you know how many resources go into meat production" tirade when Darling Hubs jumped in, reminding them that we just ordered an electric car, and asking if we are carbon neutral yet? I pointed out that even though we purchase green energy and offsets, we're not, since we continue to heat with natural gas. But we do much better than average.

Once the conversation bounced to the nuclear plant situation in Japan, Little One, who had been watching intently with a furrowed brow, finally chimed in. He's trying to understand the big deal with nuclear energy. When we give him a simple explanation that it generates electricity using radioactive materials, his eyes widen at the word, and he says, "Radioactivity?! Don't they know that's dangerous? Why would they do that?"

I am a child of the nuclear age, ducking and covering under my desk during earthquake and nuclear drills: my father actually designed and supervised the building of part of a nuclear power plant, and both he and I voted to mothball it very few years later. Darling Husband can proudly say he marched against the nuclear plants placed along the Rhine. And we held on to each other through a frightening spring of misinformation when the cloud from Chernobyl was passing over our heads even as our governments said it wasn't.

But in the end, we must, as they say, pay the piper. There is a price for convenience--for flipping a switch and having it there, for leaving lights burning in an empty room, on an empty street, or an empty sports field. We are happy to abdicate the details to someone else, let "them" think about it. But "they" are us: we are complacent and complicit. Those who squeak warnings are squelched and silenced, and sidelined, but we would be wise to listen and wiser still to join in the chorus. Little One is being taught the lesson in school, but we adults fail to embody it. Those arrogant Norse gods thought themselves invincible, and fell. We would do well to remember.

Journey

On May 6, 2010, I traveled to Florida for a business meeting (yes, I offset the travel). The direct route from Seattle to Miami took me over the Gulf of Mexico. Just over two weeks before, on April 20, BP's Deepwater Horizon had exploded: to my horror, I could not only see the spill, but it was immense, mile after mile of brown sullying the otherwise blue waters. The oil would flow for two and a half more months before the wellhead was capped.

April 20, the day of the explosion, was also notable for another company. On that day, Nissan opened up their online system to take reservations for their first all electric car. I received an email inviting me to reserve.

Now, I'm not what marketers call an early adopter, nor am I a serial consumer. House, cars, cell phones, kitchen appliances, even clothing are bought used whenever practical. We don't even own a TV, so don't ask me what kind of DV-R we have or where we hang that huge flat panel. Only two things are always bought new: underwear and computers. The former for (hopefully) obvious reasons, and the latter pushed to the limits of their age before finding a second life with someone who can use them. But this email tempted me.

The week before I flew to Miami, I kept coming back to that email. Here I was buying offsets for my air travel, and we purchase green energy for our home. We line dry laundry and eat organic foods. This seemed entirely in keeping with our values, and there was no risk--we could always back out. I went online and placed my deposit, and put myself on the list.

Right before Christmas, I received the email: my number had come up, and I was free to order. The trickle of first deliveries started. I hesitated, not quite able to bring myself to buy new. I made spreadsheets, plugging in electric rates and usage patterns and battery life and years of ownership and tax incentives. I joined chat boards and followed tweets, listened in and asked questions. I looked at dimensions, and determined that the cello and my family would fit, but it was still cheaper, and arguably still environmentally sound, to keep my aging internal combustion car for another five years.

But still tar balls continue to wash up on the shores of the Gulf, and oil that has settled on the sea floor is not degrading. Countries in Africa, exploited for their petroleum are reeling under instability. I am sure the requisite media blitz will accompany the anniversary of the oil spill. Someone might even make a connection between revolution and gas prices. And everyone will shrug and say, well, gee, what can we do? And that's when I realized that this was not about the money after all.

Cayenne red, optional floor mats. No emissions. Delivery in 3-4 months.

Impractical

Ok, I admit it, I bought an impractical, red, not-your-mother's bra. And the matching panties, if you must know. But this was a special event, one that called for special dress, and I had found said special dress, and it required the aforementioned impractical undergarments. And I have to say, they were well-appreciated.

In my own defense, I did try picking it up at the brick & mortar store nearby, but they didn't have my size in stock, as they cater to the teens who pour in every Wednesday afternoon, their early dismissal day. Online it was.

So I wasn't surprised when their catalogue arrived in the mailbox. I'm slightly irritated with the one they enclose with the order (didn't I just buy something?), but I sigh at the identical one that arrives a week later. Don't they remember they sent it with the order. Or recall it was an online purchase? Seems they track all my other buying habits. Why would I want paper? I call the 800-number on the back, dutifully recite my quick service number, and chuck it in the recycle bin, much to the chagrin of my future firefighter.

And then they start arriving. The other catalogues, from outfits I've never heard of. There have been two this week alone, and it's only Thursday. That's right, they sold the list during those two weeks I was on it, and the snowball effect has taken hold.

Dear merchant, enough is enough. It's in everyone's best interest to add a simple little checkbox: "no paper catalogue" to your website. Save the postage, save the trees, save my time and yours. Because even practical, considered people need impractical, pretty things in their lives.

Joy to the world

Much has been made this holiday season about how important it is for retailers to have a good year, to get back on track with our insatiable appetite for unsustainable growth. But if spending money we didn’t have (both us personally and the big guys) got us into trouble, I'm a bit fuzzy on how it's supposed to get us out of trouble.

With that in mind, my family pursued the time-honored tradition of doing as little as possible on the day after Thanksgiving. We have only a few rules:

1. No one is to get up before the alarm would usually ring
2. Pie for breakfast
3. No one is to get dressed before noon
4. Leftover turkey sandwiches (on white bread) for lunch
5. No spending money

This appears to be at odds with everything I read in the papers (after my pie, still in my jammies), about Black Friday. I do admit that we did actually go out, but only to the library, to stock up on magazines and more books to get us through the long lazy weekend.

One magazine I picked up loudly proclaimed on its cover, "42 ways to add joy to your day!" Not surprisingly, every single one of the 42 items was something you could buy. Another magazine notes also that this is the week that Oprah comes out with her list of Ultimate Favorite Things for 2010 (look, you can even print it out to make shopping easier!). My friend Corey, half of Celebrate Green, very helpfully has posted her greener version of the same list.

But I'm just not a big fan of shopping, both personally and big-picture wise. And so I offer you an absolutely non-exhaustive list of things you can do to put a bit of joy in your day or someone else's. Use these as a starting point to stop shopping and start thinking, and remember, these ideas are not limited to the holiday season!

• Read. Go to the library and check out a book. If it's a recent best-seller, you might have to wait, but when you get to the top of the list, what a great surprise for yourself! If you absolutely want the title on your shelf,  see if you can score a copy from swaptree or bookmooch; you can also treat yourself with a trip to the second-hand bookstore (which usually has the added benefit of being locally owned); if you're going there anyway, you might bring along some books that you're discarding and use the store credit they give you. 
• E-read. Our library also offers e-books, and the reader for my laptop and phone is free--when we travel, we check out an e-book or two, giving us something to read without weighing down the luggage or chopping down a tree. Walk right past the overpriced airport store! 
• Write. An old-fashioned letter will set you back $.42 in postage, but the return on investment is priceless. Garage sales are great for old postcards--a box of someone's travels will last you for years. An email is ok (and free), but a pretty card inevitably gets stuck to the wall behind my computer as a reminder that someone thought of me. 
• Watch a movie. Again, it's the library for us! We call it the poor man's Netflix, but we've come to love the surprise of which movie has moved to the top of the list. My husband and I both keep separate lists, and love to surprise each other with a movie date. If you really want first-run movies, consider sharing a streaming account with a someone: you can watch the same movie at the same time and chat about it during or later. 
• Bake something. Ok, this won't be free, but it will be tastier and more appreciated by the recipient, I promise. As I started looking at gifts to send to my best clients this year, I was dismayed to see how cheesy and small the affordable baskets were. This year, I'm baking up some lovely cookies, party mix and making truffles, and will hand-deliver the baskets to them. 
• Knit. Or just make something with your own two hands. Since I knit, I know it's easy to whip out a hat for a baby or a cancer patient, or thick wooly sox for kids, a little grey mouse for my Mom's cat, or a coffee cup sleeve for my caffeinated friends. Small projects use up my scrap yarn and only cost me time--time I usually spend waiting at music lessons, the dentist… 
• Curl up with a magazine. I'm thinking evening to myself, fuzzy slippers and a magazine or two. Again, I head for the library, where the selection is so broad I can pick up five magazines, from People to Atlantic Monthly to Gourmet. And the best part is that I can enjoy them and send them back, so I don't end up with towering piles of once-read periodicals. 
• Grow something. When I've spent the better part of a week bent over my desk, I need to clear my head. The garden wants tending, even in the dead of winter. Prune the fruit trees, train the beans up the trellis, and rake the leaves. 
• Preserve. When harvest season comes, make jam and dilly beans. If you're family is sick of jam and dilly beans, I bet the neighbors won't be. And you might get a jar on something you didn't have in return. 
• Do chores. You know that woodpile that needs restacking? The shower that needs cleaning? Spend a half-hour and enjoy the feeling of satisfaction. You can also surprise someone by doing their chore for them. 
• Share a picture. So, you finally got around to clearing off the memory card on your camera, and you found a great picture from that BBQ last summer? Send it on, especially if it's rainy and cold outside. Do this on a regular basis for grandparents, and watch your relationship improve. 
• Go for a walk. Enjoy the lingering light of cool evenings in summer, bundle up and enjoy the Christmas lights in winter. Steal garden and home improvement ideas from your neighbors, who, if you see them often enough, will actually talk to you, or buy cookies from your girl scout when she comes knocking. 
• Clean out a closet. Choose a small corner of your life that's looking cluttered, and straighten it up. Vacuum out the dust bunnies, put things away neatly and set aside items you don’t need or want anymore. If they're in good shape, consider passing them on to friends or a charity. You can also list them in online classifieds, or give them away on freecycle or swaptree. 
• Make music. What do you suppose people did before TV? Even the poorest families would have an instrument or two tucked away in the corner, and we are all endowed with a voice. Musical scores can be checked out from the library and found online. Or you can play by ear. 
• Play a game. Our thrift store has oodles of board games for under a dollar, which makes for a great family evening, or you can organize a game night with friends. A deck of cards is good for a game of solitaire (with a cup of cocoa, while you wait for your teen to come home late) or for a game of old maid with your kid in the airplane. Not to mention strip poker with your lover. 
• Draw. Sketch a love note and put it on your sweetie's pillow. Doodle a cartoon and stick it inside a kitchen cupboard where your teen will find it. 
• Dance. Put on the radio or a CD (library again!) and push back the furniture and dance. Collapse into a laughing, exhausted heap. Repeat. 
• Decorate. Draw a smiley face on your husband's office coffee cup. Stick eyes on your stapler. Write a pithy quote on the wall over the washing machine. 
• Embrace the geek. My father used to clip funny articles and cartoons from the newspaper and send them to me once a month when I was at college: you can do the electronic equivalent by using a site's "email this" feature. I also like to put a silly, free app on a friend's iPhone when they're not looking.

By a nose

The subject, as my scatological nine-year old would put it, is snot. Those of us with more diverse vocabularies turn to more civilized terms, such as sinuses and mucous. But it all boils down to the same thing, no matter what we call it. All these thoughts are the result of the last few weeks, which you may have noticed, have been a bit quiet. Unsurprisingly, things have not been quiet here in the real world of my life.

It all began rather innocuously with a scratchy throat during orchestra rehearsal. By the end of the evening, I knew I had submitted to a cold, the first of the season. I took to my bed, allowing myself to indulge in the first juicy oranges of the season and devour astounding amounts of pulp fiction (I love our library). The boys somehow survived, and after three days in my semi-comatose state, I returned to the kitchen to make up a huge pot of soup to use up the uneaten vegetables. My sinuses rejoiced at the steamy broth and released everything that had been cooking up there. Out came the boxes of tissues, and the wastepaper baskets filled to the brim far too quickly.

On the heels of the cold, Darling Husband and I flew to Denver for a conference (sans enfants!) and were struck by the lack of humidity and the attending drying of the sinus membranes. Granted, we come from the other extreme, but this was amazing. Our return home was a matter of rehydrating sinuses by drinking vast amounts of water.

Which made me realize that one of the downsides of this moist climate (there are many upsides that I may wax poetic about on another occasion), is that our sinuses are--how shall I put it--chronically hydrated. In practical terms, it means that a box of tissues is standard issue on the nightstand, and is one of the first things we tend to reach for in the morning.

Delving into a book that Hubs brought home from his latest foray into Library Land (No Impact Man), I realized that I had forgotten one of the lessons learned as a child: those expensive paper tissues were wonderful things when you were ill, but for the odd everyday blow, we had hankies.

And yes, I called them "expensive." You see, my father worked in a mill where they made the stuff. And precisely because he knew exactly what went into their manufacture (a lot of water, chemicals, virgin wood and electricity), they were not something to be used unthinkingly. He himself used bandannas for their original purpose (not a fashion accent).

I dug in my closet and found them, that stack of hankies from my youth: some dainty white things, some with colorful designs (including souvenirs of New York from the fifties), some basic, some a little more heavy-duty. I remember it was my girlhood job when Mom was hanging laundry to take the wet wads and flatten them on the bathroom mirror: when they dried, we didn't have to press them, since the flat surface did the work for us.

We will certainly use the boxes for future colds, but I am thankful for the reminder that we don't need to cut virgin forests just for our morning toilette. And as if to reinforce this lesson, our family curled up to watch a movie from 1980--not so very long ago. And here was this bad boy, dancing his escape from gangland, producing a hankie (albeit crumpled) for the weepy damsel in distress. How very civilized.

Resistance

Regular readers will know that I subscribe to the FDA Twitterfeed: with a seemingly endless supply of recalls, they never have to dig deep for content. There were a few drug-related, and "undeclared allergen" recalls this past week, and one voluntary recall each for salad with listeria and ground beef with E. coli. Nothing exceptional. I'm not sure there's much more to say about it, other than the regularity of so many alarms being raised is in itself dangerous, as we become inured and lax about it. After all, what can we do about it?

There is a Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin has the hiccups. He asks his tiger buddy to scare them away, so Hobbes mentions the hole in the ozone and nuclear waste piling up. It doesn’t cure the hiccups, but it does drive home just how frightening this is--and how cynical we have become.

I was reminded of this strip when I opened up my virtual papers this morning, and read the headlines from across the pond. The UK press has a frightening tale to tell, of published studies of common bacteria that "have developed near total resistance to all forms of antibiotics." The words "total" and "all" frighten me. A gene in some bacteria has been identified that confers antibiotic resistance to the bacteria. And if that's not scary enough, there are three more bits of information we all need to be aware of:

1. It has been found in two very common bacteria, E.coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae. Yup, the same E. coli you read about in all those FDA recalls.
2. It can spread to other bacteria.
3. It has been found in at least eight countries, including the UK, India and the United States. The study's conclusion? "The potential of NDM-1 to become endemic worldwide is "clear and frightening" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10925411).

I had the opportunity yesterday to listen to an interview with a friend's mother, who was witness to the murders at Kent State. It was both horrifying and inspiring. A war protester in the 60s, this grandmother is still struggling with understanding why we as a country have settled into complacency over so many things the corruption and lack of political will of both government and industry does. How can we incite to change?

There is no one solution to this, and it is unlikely that any individual will make enough difference on their own, but we simply cannot desist from trying. So the next time you are faced with a skinned knee, don't reach for the antibiotic cream. If you must use anything against germs, walk past the sanitzer dispenser and try soap and water. The next time you decide to buy meat, support a producer who avoids routine anitbiotics by practicing responsible animal husbandry. And, if you are so inclined, write that letter to your representative or the FDA and ask them to clamp down on antibiotic use.

Resist.

All you can do

My electronic information consumer habits have brought many messages my way these past few days. Most of it is the usual recalls, corporate America getting it wrong (think oil spill) and government not doing much better. The FDA has been pouring recall notices into my inbox, the usual e Coli-tainted beef (two companies this wee, 39,000 pounds so far) and spinach, as well as an interesting one where 61,000 pounds of Brazilian recalled beef contains the animal drug Ivermectin (an anti-parasitic, used for de-worming, in case you were wondering). The sheer volume and negativity is overwhelming; I find myself paralyzed in terms of what actions I can take to make a difference. One glimmer of hope comes all the way from Australia, where supermarkets are beginning to post the kilometers the food has travelled to give consumers a tad more information (however incomplete) to help them make better decisions.

But Australia is pretty far from here, and I don't see that I can make my personal choices make much more impact than they already do. To the blog I turn, wondering if there is anything I can say, any way to beat the drum that the message will reach one more soul.

And then word comes from a friend of a friend: fed up with the increasing amounts of steroids her doctor is prescribing for her daughter, and at her wits end from seeing her suffer from eczema, she announces that she is ready to plunge into the land of the elimination diet: no eggs, dairy, wheat and soy. Her resolve lasts until she tries to fix her first--vegetarian--meal. She's completely overwhelmed and paralyzed, unable to act. She doesn't know where to begin. I know how she feels.

But upbeat news bekons to me from my inbox: the chatty newsletter from the Redmond Saturday Market, which reads like the church bulletins of my youth, including cute plays on words ("Market Thymes") and pithy quotations. And there it is, at the bottom of the page, from none other than Henry David Thoreau: "One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something."

Ok, so I can't do everything. So, something it is. I grab my electronic pen and sketch out a week's worth of kid-enticing vegetarian meals for her, along with some hints on where to find key ingredients. You see, it's overwhelming to start, but I've had enough practice that it's second nature to me. And it turns out that helping one person past paralysis helps me, too.

Father's day

When I was a little girl, I was in love with my daddy. I would dance on his toes, tag along to the hardware store, and I loved watching him shave. He'd pull out his badger-tail shaving brush, make circles in the soap and paint his face with the lather (I got to help with this), and then he'd pull out the razor and start shaving. If the first pull cut skin, he would curse, pull off a bit of toilet paper and stick it to the wound, and then change the blade. He'd unscrew the metal handle, take the dull blade out and poke the dull one into a little slot in the back of the medicine cabinet (Sometimes he'd save them, tape one edge and use them to scrape paint off windows). Then he'd take a fresh blade from the little box that my mother would pick up at the drug store and screw the whole thing back together again and continue shaving.

Change the blade. Sounds quaint to us, who in our thoroughly modern way, don't need to change blades anymore. No, if a man is old-fashioned enough to actually use a razor (as opposed to an electric shaver), it is a disposable razor, and the whole plastic item is chucked into the bin when it gets too dull for a close shave (they can't be used to scrape paint, alas), with a replacement pulled out of a bag bought during a weekend run to the big box store, where he also likely picked up a two-pack of shaving cream.

We only need to walk down that aisle of that same big box to see how thoroughly "modern" we have become: disposable razors to be sure, but diapers and wipes and tissues and feminine products, and "adult diapers" also take a great deal of shelf space. When we clean our homes, we use disposable dust mops, paper towels and single-use disinfecting wipes. We have throw-away liners for our cutting boards, single-use washcloths, paper napkins, single-use cameras and even disposable cell phones. And yes, there are disposable socks and underwear for people who can't be bothered to do laundry.

My parent's generation was born in a severe economic depression and lived through a world war, where shortages meant learning to make due. But even though this depression has been deemed equally severe, we have seemingly no such constraints, and our government doesn't hang posters of Uncle Sam urging us to save bacon grease and forgo meat once a week, quite the contrary: they tell us we need to keep buying to keep America strong. And yet the garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific continues to grow, and the consequences of our throwaway society are refusing to be ignored anymore.

There's an interesting economic term: "durable goods." It refers to items that are manufactured that we can assume will be used for at least three years. These are generally big-ticket items, ones worth repairing--think cars and DVD players. But what is interesting to note is how many things that used to be considered durable goods have now moved to the "consumables" side of economic reports.

But if we are going to count beans, the numbers in support of re-use add up as well as for the impact on the planet: 100 razor blades can be had for around $15; that same $15 will get you only 32 plastic-handled razors. Granted, you will have to invest around $50 in a handle and lovely badger bristle brush, but amortized over fifty years worth of shaving, that's literally only two pennies a week--still cheaper by far than the disposable. 

The same calculation can be applied to diapers, mops, plates and napkins, to be sure, but also to feminine products and dishtowels and the like. If you had told my grandmother that in 50 years we would be able to get up in the morning, put on fresh disposable socks and underwear, shave and throw away the blade and handle, pour a cup of coffee made with a plastic throwaway pod into a paper cup with a plastic lid (cleaning up the inevitable spill with a paper towel), throw a prepackaged Styrofoam bowl of just-add-water noodles and a plastic bottle of water into a paper bag for our lunch--and that's just a few hours into the day--she would have said you were either living in a fantasy world or a very wasteful person.

They say that convenience is why we opt for throwaways: but how is it more convenient to always be putting buying replacements on our shopping lists (and paying for them) instead of refilling (discount for bringing your own cup) or washing something durable? Sorry, I just don't buy it.

Hail to the ch(i)ef

Newspapers the world over are hailing Michelle Obama for her frank talk on childhood obesity, its causes and what we need to do to tackle it.

"It's time we all had a wake-up call. Our kids didn't do this to themselves. Our kids don't decide what's served to them at school or whether there's time for gym class or recess. Our kids don't choose to make food products with tons of sugar and sodium in super-sized portions, and then have those products marketed to them everywhere they turn. And no matter how much they beg for pizza, fries and candy, ultimately, they are not, and should not, be the ones calling the shots at dinnertime. We're in charge. We make these decisions." (http://bit.ly/9u2K6j)

This kind of statement, at a prearranged press event, is inevitably followed by thunderous applause. But are we really in charge? Do we really make these decisions?

It seems incongruous to me that the wife of the president should be tackling the problem from the same side as the rest of us, when she presumably has access to the ears of one of the most powerful men in the western world. Think about it: if our kids aren't the ones deciding, then who is making these decisions? Are parents really the ones choosing "tons of sugar and sodium in super-sized portions?" Are parents the ones "calling the shots at dinnertime?" The answer is yes and no, for while we are the ones who have to say 'no' to pizza for dinner, we as a society have stripped parents of a great deal of authority over their childrens' diets. And we as parents must assume some responsibility for allowing it to happen.

But let me back track: the seeds of the decisions that are making our children obese are not being made at the dinner table. The decision isn't even been made when a parent goes shopping. The decisions aren't even being made by that supermarket manager placing the order to stock the shelves. The people were pushing the buttons and turning the nozzles and driving the forklifts in the food factories are also not the ones making the decision ( we could say they're just following orders). No, the decisions are being made for us all in board rooms across the country, by people who can afford to circumvent the system that they themselves have created.

A couple of months ago I ran across a photograph of a younger Barack Obama teaching a class. What struck me was not that he was free of gray hairs, but what he was writing on the blackboard in front of him. The title of his diagram was "Relationships Built on Self Interest." He already understood the powers driving much of our society. And during his campaign he was the one who dared admit to the revolving door between business and government regulatory bodies that was creating a web of conflicts of interest so tangled that he himself seems incapable of dismantling them. And he promised us that he would stop this revolving door, where former agri-business executives assumed roles of responsibility within government agencies charged with regulating the selfsame businesses, and where people leaving these agencies find themselves offered lucrative positions in the same businesses.

I took heart when he took office and his first appointees seemed to buck this trend, and was nothing short of thrilled when the wind seemed to be changing, bringing with it proactive recalls driven by the FDA, rather than the empty gestured voluntary recalls. But the fresh wind of change seems to have lost some momentum. Appointees from business made it onto his lists after all, and recall notices from the FDA are leaning more toward the characteristic language and patterns that we know all too well.

Michelle Obama is proposing saving our kids by re-empowering parents. Indeed, she seems to be thinking along the same lines I was 10 years ago, when I had a small child to feed, and was unsatisfied by the choices being presented to me. My decisions at the supermarket were already made for me, so I had to find some place else to assert my parental choice. For me, it was a step by step process: I started by shopping the outside perimeter of the supermarket, reading labels, and asking questions, and eventually moved outside of the big box altogether. The gradual evolution has taken me to the point where even the coop seems to be a bit of a compromise, as I find I much prefer to press coins in the earthy palms of farmers' hands than swipe my debit card through a PIN pad device.

I and many like me are essentially doing an end run against the food industry (and they don't like it, judging from the rules they keep trying to get pushed through--think labeling). We're shopping at farmers' market, signing up for CSAs, and even planting vegetable gardens. I am very glad that Michelle Obama has started this conversation. And I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that she, like all the other strong, thinking mothers out there, is having this conversation with her husband. Because only if both parents are pulling in the same direction will the children be healthy.

Gobblers

With the book finally put to bed (shameless plug: available here), and the frost settling on the pumpkins, I once again turn my attention to matters of food and sustainability, with a little bit of poetic edginess and inclusiveness thrown in for good measure.

Turkeys are on my mind this cold, misty morning (it really is pretty the way the mist clings to the neighbor’s cedar trees). Yesterday’s morning was full of similar beauty, but like many others this week, I was focused on getting my Thanksgiving meal birds in a row. What a luxury to not only have to locate a turkey we could feel good about (I’m thinking of last year’s Irish turkey hunt), but to actually have a choice! For the co-op was offering four different organic birds, one of whom had had black feathers in its previous life (Before Roasting). Recalling the one heritage turkey we had been fortunate to partake of before, I thought that an easy choice, for we have much to be thankful for.

It was easy to accept the bagger’s offer of help out to the car, given the way the cart groaned going around corners. With the bird and seven bags of groceries ensconced in the back of the car, I set out for home. One of the fallouts of our year abroad is that the radio antenna got snapped off my car, victim to a well-intended car wash before our return. What this means in practical terms is that I can no longer listen to the classical music station, and am relegated to pop (though I have to say, there are some very impressive lyricists in the up-and-coming generation). This also means I’m getting ads for a different demographic: instead of mattresses and Bose headphones, I’m getting supermarket and TV program ads. Albertson’s informs me that they’re thinking of me during these trying times, and offering the centerpiece of my Thanksgiving table for a mere 27 cents a pound! QFC takes a different tack, stressing the quality of their birds, which can hardly compete at a whopping 29 cents a pound.

It’s hard not to compare the bird in my backseat (while I’ve been shouting back at the radio, it’s been demurely quiet all through these ads) with these poor creatures. The first thing I noticed about it was its color. It had some. It wasn’t a pallid yellow-y white, but a variation of colors. I salivated at the thought of the incredible dark meat this free-range fellow will bring to my plate. It’s also a different shape, not scrawny by far, but longer, and not dominated by those Dolly Parton breasts so common in the factory-bred white birds.

Needless to say, its price tag reflected all its potential tastiness: this tom was priced at $3.99 a pound, or more than the tenfold of its supermarket cousins. Unconscionable, they scream; taking advantage of the consumer! I must be crazy, you think. But if anything’s crazy, it’s a ten pound bird for less than the cost of a gallon of gas. It makes sense to me to reward the farmer who went to the trouble of sourcing a bird with a lineage, one who will do well in the climate where it will live, and then makes sure that its short life is spent pursuing its nature, scratching bugs and whatnot out of the earth, and gaggling about with others of its kind. I am reminded that the wild turkey is an intelligent and noble beast, and would be our national bird if Ben Franklin had had his way.

Some digging reveals that the 27-cent bird is an in-house brand, and that price only applies to smaller birds and folks with a customer loyalty card. Everyone else must pony up $1.29 a pound. But I still have trouble making sense of the math for the big box bird: how can they ship a bird halfway across the country—most of them come from a warm clime—and sell them for so little? Are they packed into such massive factories that the economy of scale is so great? And where, pray tell, is the farmer in all this? Is he making anything? It seems unlikely that there are any farmers for these factory birds, only button-pushing employees of a large multinational corporation, many of whom are likely not making a living wage.

If you haven’t lost your appetite yet, read on. For the real reason I want my colorful bird is because I want to share my meal. If I were a filmmaker, I would have a cute graphic of me and my family, and a few friends (maybe I could use cute avatars) all standing together with smiles on our faces. If we brought out the cheap turkey, two of us would walk away with frowns on our faces. You see, two of us are allergic to antibiotics; eating a factory-farmed animal can’t happen without making us ill. And when we read the label, one more would leave, as she can’t eat the corn-based food starch it’s injected with. The remaining five would still be hopeful, but one of them would have to place a call to the 800 number on the label to determine if the “modified food starch” or “natural flavorings” contains any gluten, which would exclude all but one. One lonely turkey diner, seven others with only Brussels sprouts (tasty, but a bit meager) on their plates.

Perhaps we are the canaries in the mine shaft, or perhaps just the unfortunate ones who have tied the symptoms to the cause. But either way, $2 a pound seems a small price to pay for the joy of the communal meal, one in which we can all partake, including the farmer, for whom we are very thankful.

Airing our laundry

Our little rented house in Ireland has all the modern conveniences save one: a dryer. Make no mistake, the winters (and autumns and springs) are wet, whence the green hills that justify the famous moniker. It has been a challenge to work with time, planning ahead, making sure clothes are washed in time to line dry before trips and scheduling in sheets and towels to not leave us without underwear and socks.

We have cheated a couple of times, borrowing a friend’s dryer for a down jacket and availing of my mother-in-laws capacious laundry room over Christmas, luxuriating in the easy life. But by and large, we are simply living with laundry constantly hanging in the living room, and crunchy towels. We even rearranged the sofa so we could get the rack closer to the radiator, which cuts drying time to only a day.

Our first power bill made me gasp: €780, and it wasn’t even winter yet. We understood why everyone else hung out laundry, even on cool, moist days. A dryer would simply be an unaffordable luxury, one that could easily double a power bill. And so, we see peach-colored sheets and long nightdresses along the N81 just past Silverhill on all but the soggiest days, and compare the virtues of various folding racks with our neighbors.

Our three-week visit to the US has coincided with an amazing stretch of fine weather, which I hope to not jinx by mentioning. As our folding line gets a workout, our Swedish dryer sits unused as of yet, and we depart for the old country again in a few days. A fellow mom at the school has just convinced her husband to put up a clothesline in their side yard, and has been asking advice about hanging laundry: How many clothespins do I need? (More than a single pack of 50 for a family of four!) What is the protocol for hanging underwear? (On the inside of the rack, where nosy neighbors won’t see your shy tween’s smalls or your unmentionables) When do you need to bring it in? (Only if it is pouring, since wind will evaporate light moisture quickly.) Another mom overhears us chatting, and says, “Oh, I miss how line-dried sheets smell. Maybe we should put up a line too!”

How funny that something as simple as hanging up laundry, a task that our grandmothers saw as a chore (this woman’s thoroughly modern suburban mom had a dryer), has become something we must learn. And how odd that these college-educated women—and men—have bought into laundry additives, and scented dryer sheets and asthmatic children to make their laundry smell good, when the sun is there for free. How ironic that we are having to relearn something as simple as how putting the clothespin on only one side of the sock makes it dry more quickly. But how delicious to rediscover the quiet meditative quality of hanging laundry on a cool morning, listening to exuberant birdsong while we plan our day in our minds. And how lovely it is to snuggle into sheets that smell like sunshine and takes us to pleasant dreamscapes. Like crafts of old, the wisdom of the generation was nearly lost. Nearly.