Dear John

I hate to be the one to have to say it, but we were never meant to be. You came home with me on an impulse, because it was easier to say yes than no. My sensible side would never have aquiesed when I was younger, but you made me feel youthful again, full of potential. And we have had some great moments together, working on projects, camping near the river, times when you’ve more than pulled your own weight. And I cherish those times. But most of the time, you just sit there, expecting me to provide for you. And provide for you I do, nothing but the best.

But, let’s face it: we have a problem, and it’s not going to evaporate on its own. I’ve tried ignoring it, but now my husband knows, and he’s not going to put up with you any more. So I’m sending you away for a bit, to dry out, and then I’m posting to Craigslist to find you someone new. That’s right, Green Pickup, you’re going to find a new home where they make you earn your keep, and I’m going to tuck those crisp bills into my Prius fund. Trust me, it’s for the best.

Pimping the electric ride

Our outing yesterday, in spite of dire weather predictions, was to a little corner shop on the fringe of downtown Seattle, MC Electric Vehicles. My big brother, mild-mannered school bus driver by day, has at latest count four cars in his garage and driveway, three of which are collectible project vehicles. With a short two-mile commute, he’s concerned about the wear and tear on his non-collectible but aging Honda CRV. He had visited the sister MC showroom in Oregon, but discovered that the little electric car he likes, the Canadian Zenn, is limited to 25 mph on neighborhood streets—hence the moniker NEV, or Neighborhood Electric Vehicle. A little research on my part revealed that the cap is 35 mph for the same car purchased in Washington, and he was wondering what mechanism was used to make this enhancement. He wandered off with the jeans-clad salesman to take a test drive.

As for me, I’m still in the research phase for a car change. I like the idea of a plug-in hybrid, since my driving patterns tend to be mostly neighborhood jaunts for kids and household stuff (school, 5 miles; co-op, 6 miles; doctor, 6 miles; and so on), all typical “neighborhood” usage. But twice a week, I make longer drives, one to Renton for my violin lesson, and one to Magnolia and Shoreline on Number One Son’s cello run (lesson + orchestra). An all-electric car would be great for the short runs, but insufficient for the 35-mile freeway- based round trips that can include side runs that bring the daily total up to over 50 miles. A standard hybrid only runs full electric to about 10 mph before it fires up the internal combustion engine, while a plug-in has more juice—enough to run up to 35 mph for 30 or so miles. On my way to school last week, I noted only one moment when I got to 40 mph, while merging into traffic. The rest was under the 35 mph that would allow me to run full electric. I am not interested in paying the premium for the new car smell, so I’m looking at the used market, which means I need to learn more about things like battery lifespan and plug-in conversions before I take the plunge. A book on the subject is on hold at the library.

Big brother, however came back all smiles from his spin in the little blue Zenn. Seems the car can be purchased in his sales tax-free state, and then a separate invoice is written to upgrade the software to allow the higher speed. It looks like he will be buying an electric blue car on his return home.

Visions of cheese

I dreamt of cheese last night. I’m not sure why, but there you have it: slabs of cheddar in toasted cheese sandwiches. It comes at a good time: The tree is finally up, and there are even some presents under it, along with the cat, who thinks it a splendid place to sleep. Gramma arrived yesterday, and the boys are thrilled. Their uncle, my brother, arrives today, since he needed to do his shopping yesterday. That means X-Day is even closer.

With a solid English tradition behind us, there is a large roast beast (from Oregon Country Beef) waiting for the oven tomorrow. We’ll fill out with red potatoes chiogga beets, a Yorky pud, and some green beans. Our soggy autumn means some of the produce has come from farther south than I care to admit, but local pears will top a warm frangipane tart (we’ll melt some ice cream on top). But what about the Christmas Eve? If we were good Catholics (we’re not, but I promised the bishop I wouldn’t stand in my husband’s way when raising our children as such), we would fast until after evening mass. That’s already a lost ideal, since Gramma joined the boys in a bowl of manly oatmeal for breakfast.

So what to make? As if he can read my dreams of cheese like an open book, Darling Husband looks at me and says, “let’s make Käsespätzle!” It’s a meal the whole family makes together: Beat together 500 grams of flour and 6 eggs until bubbles form. Sounds easy enough, but we have to take turns beating the thick mixture, since our arms tire. Then one person takes up a position at the pot of boiling water and spoons the bubbly dough into the Spätzle press. Another gets the job of lifting the cooked noodles out of the pot with the strainer spoon when they rise to the surface, and layering them with grated Gruyère in a big warm bowl. Whoever isn’t cooking is setting the table and helping make salad. When the whole thing is done, a generous handful of crunchy onions goes on top and we all dig in.

We’ll fête the evening with eggnog and oodles of homemade cookies and a reading of The Night Before Christmas, and take a plate to the neighbors. The boys will artfully arrange a selection for the old guy in the red suit, along with the finest local carrots for the reindeer, of course (We figure the cat will be really surprised by his appearance in the fireplace). The Spätzle will warm our bellies and stick to our ribs, and the cookies will fill the corners, insuring that when we settle down for our long winter’s nap, we’ll be surrounded by visions of sugarplums—or Brie, as the case may be.

Empties

When I was in high school, the hot civics theme was the trade imbalance. It was clear in the late 70s that it was an untenable practice to continue to import more than we exported. This was pure economic theory, based on common sense: if you kept buying more stuff, and selling less, then you would eventually run out of money, since buying is less profitable than selling. But then the Reagan years ensued, and we were treated to talking heads who told us that it was OK to buy into excess, since the poor would benefit via “trickle down.” Since we were young and still pretty stupid, and it was what many of us wanted to hear anyway, we bought into it—literally. Of course, the results were as dire as predicted, even before we figured in the environmental costs, which we hadn’t at the time.

***

It’s Christmas season, and while I literally don’t buy into copious consumerism, I do purchase presents, and thus more stuff altogether in this season. The week I spent in bed laid up with the flu let me get my shopping done online and early. For two weeks, it seemed like the mail carrier and UPS guy were taking turns stopping at our house. No surprise then, that there is a growing stack of boxes in the garage.

There are a couple of padded envelopes from Powell’s and FSP (purveyors of fire buff paraphernalia), and a cardboard envelope from the Postal Service (I bought stamps before I decided to send our Christmas card electronically). They went into an office cupboard with like friends (they’ll be reused to send books to other book moochers). But then there are boxes from Hanna Andersson’s (striped organic cotton jammies for the whole family), the LED light store (we replaced some halogen bulbs), and B&H photo (an indulgence—a tripod). Add to that list some oversized cartons from finishing up the long-term bath remodel this week (a high cabinet, the cabinet door, a faucet assembly, shower doors, a hand-held shower), and another large box from the replacement office chair I’m sitting on now, and it’s easy to see why the recycling bin will be full. And that doesn’t count the plastic pouch from Victoria’s Secret (shh! Don’t tell Darling Husband!) that has to go in the garbage.

In the interest of rebalancing our export deficit, I worked on getting some stuff out of here: Two bags of toys went to charity, Freecycle yielded three people interested in a 15-year old office chair, and a visit to Craigslist transformed a bulky, dusty telescope into a Christmas present for a starry-eyed girl in Lynnwood, and an empty shelf for us.

***

As we drove from my violin lesson to Number One’s cello lesson this week, we decided to take the more scenic route, going up the back way via Highway 99 instead of I-5. It’s fun, because it takes you through the industrial area: big warehouses, waterfront cranes and railroad yards. One of the more striking features are the mountains of containers. Literal mountains, hundreds of containers stacked ten or twelve high. They’re mostly orange, some blue, with names like Cosco, Matson and the like. But one mountain caught my eye as we stopped for a red light: A huge banner hung from the side of a cliff screaming, “CONTAINERS FOR SALE.” I thought of the relatively small mound of empty boxes in my garage, and realized what they were. The stuff that we buy comes from overseas, leaving us with not only a trade deficit, but a container surplus. No one is going to pay to ship empty containers back across the Pacific. But since people have a need to store their excess stuff somewhere (their houses are full), a container in the backyard may be just the thing.

***

Of course, there will be presents under our tree this year, but many will be edible, handmade or re-purposed (yes, I shopped for presents at Value Village). Our presents will be swaddled in holiday fabric, re-used every year in increasingly creative ways, so there will be no wrapping paper waste. And there will be no need for a container or storage locker to store anything, since we just happen to have some empty shelf space.

A low-wattage Christmas

Number One Son had a fit today. The British neighbors were out, unfurling their strings of Christmas lights, and we needed to get to the store so we could do ours too. Right now! The fact that I had just mixed up some mortar to finish the downstairs bathroom shower didn’t seem to faze him.

I calmly informed him that Darling Husband and I had talked about it and decided to put the brakes on buying more of the ubiquitous strings of lights from China. I noted that if they wrote ‘disposable’ on the package, it might make people stop and think (then again, it might not). His eyes grew wide with disbelief, “Aren’t you embarrassed to not have lights up?”

This from the child who wept at the trailer for An Inconvenient Truth, who gently moves ladybugs to where the aphids are, and who merrily spent the afternoon replacing incandescent light bulbs with LED and CF bulbs last week.

I know he is at an awkward stage, the inner child wanting everything magical and simple, but the emerging adult understands that everything has a cost. I will search to see if I can find some simple, durable star lanterns—with replaceable bulbs) or instructions to make them). For this is a season of traditions, and I choose a tradition that does not involve standing in front of a mountain of imported strings, wondering if I spend a dollar more if they will last one more year.

I am reminded of the acquaintance who tried to sell us on attending the Christmas pageant at his mega-church. I can’t think of anything less Christmassy than microphoned choirs and baby Jesus production numbers with a cast of thousands. No, I prefer the low-key exterior and a warm inner light.

Shopping lotto

Mt family plays a game we call library lotto. It goes something like this: You run across a reference or a review of a book or movie, or someone recommends it to you, so you log on to the library website and place a hold on it. If it’s an older or obscure title, it may come up quickly; but if it’s popular, it can take months, sometimes close to a year before it arrives on the hold shelf with your name on it. It’s sort of a poor man’s Netflix, except the order is seemingly random.

Or is it? It’s clear that books relate to each other differently depending on the order I read them in, and that order is rife with coincidence. This week, after watching An Inconvenient Truth, I delved into Deep Economy, which treats some of the same issues of import from a socio-economic standpoint. I passed through the chapter on eating locally for a year (Barbara Kingsolver’s opus on that subject is still in a library holding pattern), and dove into his discussion of shopping.

Now, this is a subject near and dear to my heart, but not because I love shopping. Actually, I rather dislike it—in spite of gender stereotypes. The funny thing is, there was a time in my life, or rather a place, when I didn’t mind ‘doing the marketing’ one bit.

Mr. McKibben cites a quote that implies that this country’s entire economy is built on the suburbs: building them, moving in and out of them, and filling them with stuff. He gallantly resists naming by name the institutions built to deal with the stuff that won’t fit in them anymore, from storage lockers to virtual places like eBay.

But then he starts writing about the experience of shopping at a farmer’s market. It seems, surprisingly, that when people shop there, they have—gasp!—conversations, at least ten on average, with the people selling their wares. I immediately thought of the markets I used to shop when I lived in Germany. In our university town, my shopping trips were frequent, as our kitchen was too small to store much of anything. I would grab my wicker basket (sturdy to protect bottles and eggs, and it stood upright when I set down my heavy load) and walk a few blocks to the tram. A tram ran every six minutes, and took me straight downtown. A few blocks from there, surrounding the late gothic cathedral that dominated the city, was the daily market (every day except Sunday). To the south of the church were the dry goods, fresh food was on the north side, with the folks serving prepared foods grouped around the western door.

I wasn’t buying anything unusual, just things like bread, meat, veggies, and eggs. But for each item, I had a choice of several different providers. Trial and error, and learning tricks like joining the longest line taught me where to get the best quality. A conversation was required to explain what I wanted, and what I wanted it for, for they weren’t selling standardized commodities, but natural products with all the variety nature provides in her infinite wisdom. I learned about the different varieties of potatoes and tomatoes from the people who grew them. I learned that even though the fruits and vegetables are spread out in front of me, I should ask before I may pick any out, for they often pick it out for me. I learned that if I saved up my egg cartons and brought back a couple of dozen, it was good for a free carton of eggs from one farmer. I learned that asparagus had a season, as did strawberries and currants and different kinds of lettuce. It was a terrific way to learn and improve my German—interaction was necessary to survive, for indeed, I could not have food if I could not speak with merchants.

Compare this to a run to a supermarket in today’s American suburb. Human interaction is often limited to avoiding other customers driving their carts one-handed while they chat on their cell phones, absently tossing pre-packaged items into their carts. The cookie-cutter supermarket is the ultimate in self-serve: boxes and trays of food commodities wait on shelves for you to help yourself. The button that summons a butcher is a thing of the past (along with the butcher himself), and self checkout means that I can literally get in and out of the store without uttering a single word (and the only word uttered to me is a recording). Pity the exchange student in this country: they’ll have to go elsewhere to hone their language skills. But, oh, what they’re learning about our culture.

It’s not about money, it’s about community. If we are islands unto ourselves, we are unhappy. Like it or not, we need each other, and the whole model of suburbia and supermarkets does not feed our need to belong. Unfortunately, my German town and the rest of the world is moving toward the American way propogated by popular culture, with Wal-marts and their brethren popping up like proverbial mushrooms, along with planned communities.

With the seasonal closure of our local farmer’s market, I admit to feeling a bit cut off. The staff at the coop are good for a few conversations—and there is no self checkout there. Until spring, we shall eat dark leafy greens and gather with friends and family, make music, and build community as best we can.

Measuring our feet

We finally got around to seeing Al Gore’s opus, An Inconvenient Truth. The reason for the delay is simple: we use the library reserve system, which means we put our name on a waiting list for the next available copy. In this case, it took nearly a year to work our way to the top of the list. I wasn’t worried about the time lapse, and in truth, it made it all the more significant, since this two-year old information is even more valid today.

We figured there would be a fair amount of preaching to the choir, and we were right. We went through the exercise of visiting Al’s carbon calculator, and came up with a short list of things to do:

1. Finally swap out the remaining incandescent light bulbs with CF or LED bulbs (LED bulb arrays can replace those ubiquitous hot halogen energy hogs).
2. Re-evaluate our cars. This week, filling my car’s tank finally passed the $40 mark, and I’ve been living in a state of denial about driving so much in a big car when it’s more and more just me by myself. Hybrids have been around long enough that I can find a used one, and if I can find one that fits a cello in it’s cargo space, I’m good to go.
3. Purchase green energy. The PSE flyer has been on my desk for ages, and will only cost us about $10 a month. This seems a no-brainer, so it goes on my to-do list now.
4. Consider carbon offsets. I’ve never much liked the idea of purchasing the right to pollute, but my recent election to the ATA Board of Directors means that I am expected to attend four meetings a year, which will mean flying, often cross-country. The first meeting is booked, and an offset from Native Energy would be only $24. Since the money would go directly to funding alternative energy sources, I’m almost ready to take the plunge, but I hesitate.

As does my Darling Husband, who still scoffs at the whole offset business. Selling something that doesn’t exist really rubs him the wrong way, and I completely see his point. And then he goes on: this carbon calculator looks at big things like transportation and home energy use, but what about the small, frugal choices we make every day?

I had to search, but I did find another carbon footprint calculator, which answers some of my concerns: firstly, it’s international. Imagine thinking of global climate change as a problem not limited to the borders of the only country to not sign Kyoto. It’s very interesting to see how much your footprint shrinks just by moving your habits to Europe, for example. I also like the section that lets you see just how tiny the impact your miles have when taken in public transport, as opposed to a car.

But the part I like best is the tab labeled “Secondary.” It treats things like how you eat-vegetarians trod much more lightly on the Earth than folks who scarf a Big Mac daily. Buying local, organic produce in season—eating real food—makes a difference. But we also make a difference in our consumer habits. Do you always buy new clothing and furniture, do you always take up the latest fad or sport (and purchase all the accoutrements), do you recycle or just can’t be bothered to think about these things? The difference between the thinking and non-thoughtful choices here is the difference between 1 tonne and 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. The choice of what we put on the table and around us does make an impact.

Which takes me back to Darling Husband. Whenever there’s a new hire in the office, he has to “re-educate them”(his words, not mine): if you want a drink, you should not only choose water over canned soda, but you should put it in a cup or bottle that you have carried to the kitchen for that purpose. Same for a cup of coffee: bring your mug, use a spoon to stir it. A warning to anyone in his office: If you think you can get away with plucking a Styrofoam cup from the dispenser, filling it with coffee, popping the lid off a plastic non-dairy creamer and giving it a few stirs with a plastic stir stick (and then chucking it in the garbage), you will be hearing from Mr. In-Your-Face. He will press one of the spare used mugs from his office into your hand, and show you how to rinse off a spoon so you can re-use it. And you will use it.

Which takes me back to offsetting the carbon for my fight to Washington D.C. The calculator reckons it will release about .8 tonnes of carbon dioxide. It also tells me that eating less meat and eschewing overly packaged goods will more than offset that. I’m hoping those LED bulbs will help too.