Daydreaming Again

In my mind there is a city. The density is about 15,000 families per square mile (That's about 3 million people for a city the square mileage of Manhattan Island, so dense, but not too dense), living in mid-rises and row houses.

When I was young, there was a community garden for every mile of land (meaning there still had to be a lot of food trucked in), but as I've gotten older--and technology has gotten cooler--that's now a 40-story vertical farm, employing a tenth of the people living in the one-mile "food circle" and providing no fewer than 1000 different crops. The growing highrise is adjacent to a processing facility that turns the farm's peanuts into peanut butter and its chilies into hot sauce. Employees of the vertical farm get paid and also get a free share of the crops.

There's still a park for every mile, too, in place of my original community garden plots, because people need to sit on the grass and that grass cools down the city wonderfully.

The population is diverse and well-integrated, without sacrificing the feeling of cultural community that, say, an Irish girl might want to have with other Irish people who live nearby and understand the necessity of having a butcher around who knows how to make a proper black pudding.

And you can have that black pudding, if you want. Outside of town, there's a ring of farms that are designed to raise cattle and sheep and chickens in such a way that their waste can be turned into biofuel (haven't ever figured out how to harness the methane in their wind, but it may come to me). They are pastured, of course, and the pastures are covered in local grasses, organically grown.

Back in the city, commercial and residential areas are mixed, so that there don't need to be any "big box" stores that take an hour to drive to, because you can find pretty much everything you need within a couple of miles' walk of your home: groceries, a shoemaker, a yarn boutique, a hair salon, an electronics store--all the important things. Industry nestles up against home where possible--polluting smokestacks are replaced with carbon filter caps and green energy buildings.

People know each other and the schools are safe and thorough in their educating and the kids come home to family members or neighbors who make sure they get a good afternoon snack, a bit of exercise, and a quiet place to do their homework. There are enough baseball, football, and soccer fields, along with hockey rinks, swimming pools, and basketball courts, to make sure there's something for almost everyone.

Every building has solar PV built right in, so there's no need for more than a couple of wind farms on the outskirts of town to supplement the grid and provide the power for battery-operated car docking stations. When there's no wind and little sun, car owners can make a little money dumping energy back into the grid.

For people who want to grow their own food, or just don't want to pay for the produce at the store on the ground floor of the vertical farm, there are garden plots on all the building roofs, making sure that people have a contact to nature and a cooler roof in summer and less run off all year long. Kids learn how the food chain works by growing things, picking them when they are ripe, and going downstairs to the apartment to cook them minutes later.

People have also rediscovered the use of water cisterns, which adorn all the buildings, providing as much of the water for each building as the climate will allow. There's central plumbing and water reclamation facilities and fresh tap water--don't worry. Nobody has to live on only what the rain provides, but at least the cisterns take a little bit of the burden off the water grid.

People don't worry so much about paper or plastic. Because it's never more than a few blocks to the local grocer (who is also the local farmer), people are content to bring their baskets--just like those quaint ones we all see in the "rural middle ages" movies.

Except that these baskets are filled with not just the foods that could be grown outside in the agricultural zone, but foods that are grown in the vertical farms. In the northern midwest, people can get melons and berries until November and again in April because the vertical farm acts like a season extender. It's all about resources, of course, so the place doesn't keep the temperatures tropical year-round. The heat and lighting are dictated by the region, to an extent, but the seasons of bounty are a little longer, produce from warmer climes can be grown during the warmer months, and the cold season still provides enough to live on.

This kind of city has always been a dream of mine--a place where people can get everything they need without going too far and wasting too much. And you want to know the funny thing? This isn't a new idea, or one that is unattainable.

The Amish do it--sure, they have more contact and trade with the "English" world now, but they still pretty much get what they need right near home. There are communities in many parts of the world that don't bother with the rest of us too terribly often. They do just fine.

The big problem is that most of us no longer know what "getting what we need" means. I'll admit it: getting what I need sometimes means buying the latest scifi film. It sometimes means Starbucks or a 3 Musketeers bar or that ever-needed lemon. I'm not shy about the fact that I like having things!

But maybe we should rethink how we get those things. Al Gore proposed a plan last year to replace US energy generation as we know it with 100% carbon-free sources in the next ten years. (Wow--and he thought running for president was hard!)

It's a fantastic idea that most of the establishment immediately marked as fundamentally unattainable. Let's stop and think a minute, though. What would his daydream world look like?

People who have spent their lives working in the steel, automobile, and coal industries have been losing their jobs by the thousands. In Al Gore's daydream, they'd be put back to work--first retrofitting the plants where they used to work and then building concentrating mirrors for solar arrays, or electric cars, or windmills. People could be put to work designing and building the new electrical infrastructure we need to make sure that the wind in Iowa can help power the buildings of Philly.

People who bought those new electric cars would be faced with expensive personal conveyances that could, in part, pay for themselves in a very real way. One of the problems we have to deal with while growing a new energy economy is the fact that, really, our batteries kind of suck. Once the sun goes down and the wind stops howling, we need to store that energy. By plugging in your electric car and charging it up, you'd be providing that battery. So why could we not, say, have all those garages in all those highrises in all those big cities install smart meters--meters that allow electricity to go both ways. During the day, the car could be charged by the grid. At night, if the car owner so desired, the battery in that car could help to light the highrise and lighten the driver's electricity bill.

(This is a particularly attractive choice for families like mine, who rarely use their car. In this future, our car could hold down the parking spot and the utility bill!)

His world would no doubt rethink agriculture as we know it. Less thinking about immediate yield and more about sustainable futures. It would have sustainably harvested forests. He probably even dreams of carbon-neutral air travel--though personally, I think we need to rethink the need for "live and in person" speaking engagements and make it fashionable to "satellite in" via audio-visual uplink.

The point here is, there are millions of us who have dreams about these things. And yes, I'm unlikely to ever be able to make my dream a full reality. But I can join the local garden club that plants and tends the greenery in those little havens of oxygen called city parks. I can plant some herbs in my kitchen (if I can find a way to keep the cat from eating them) and reduce at least some of my food miles. I can write my local electric company (again) and complain (again) about the fact that they (still) don't offer green energy (even though there are some hydroelectric and wind power plants in the midwest).

So dream, but work, too. Sure, there are the standard "use CFLs, plant a tree, turn off the TV, ride a bike" things that all of us know we should be doing, but what other things can you come up with that you yourself can do to make at least a little bit of your dream come true?

Think about it and get back to me, okay?

________

Want to find people living the dream? Global Ecovillage Network is just that--a network of ecovillages around the globe. Kinda cool.

Can not eating the last cookie change the world?

Sure.

Seriously, I truly believe that. Observe:

I was walking from my house to the train station on Tuesday. Now, a mile is not a long walk, but it feels long when the wind is whipping around and the temperature is less than 10F. I live in a city, so there's almost never a time in the day when I don't have to negotiate space with other people. Sometimes, this can make you damned cranky.

Cranky the way I was Tuesday morning. My thinking went this way--

What is wrong with this stupid city? These people couldn't plow their sidewalks? No, of course not, because pedestrians don't mean anything, do we? Nope. All about the damn cars. And look at that idiot, walking right in front of that guy who only wants to get out of the garage so he can get to work! Stupid pedestrian! You can't wait one stinking second?

And what, seriously, is with these sidewalks! Oh yes, by all means, make me walk on the mounds of ice and snow on the side. Why do I always have to be the one to get out of the way? You know what? I'm totally not getting out of the way next time.

Oh, come on! You couldn't get out of the way of that woman with the cane? I mean, come on--walk up on the ice and snow on the side, for God's sake!

I hate people! Hate them.

And yes, as I kept up the running commentary in my head, I was well aware of the contradictions I was spewing. I'm also well aware of the fact that, when there's a situation where one person needs to get out of another person's way, I am never the other person.

It's not that I like walking in the pollution-blackened ice and snow that mounds around the walking spaces left by people navigating unshoveled sidewalks, it's just that, much as I gripe in the privacy of my own head, I can get out of the way, so I might as well.

My mother would call that being a nice person.

My friends might call that being a pushover.

But I think my mom is on to something. If the standard policy is to be the one to get out of the way, the one to give up your day off for another employee, the one to not eat the last cookie, then it follows that living like this in all things is a good way to help the environment, the economy, and the society.

For instance: I arrive at work and the sidewalk isn't shoveled and I know my boss isn't going to be in for a while. I also know I have about half an hour before I really have to address anything pressing. So I choose to take the shovel and clear the sidewalk. Since I've got half an hour and I relish a little exercise, I come back out with the broom and sweep it all clean. No salt needed.

So, by being the nice person, I've saved my boss some work, I've saved the environment the fumes of a gas-powered snow blower and the pollution of some road salt, and I've potentially saved the neighbors from a nasty spill. All with half an hour of my time.

Did I mention I also got half an hour of cardio in?

Yes, yes--I'm well aware that this example has nothing to do with cookies (though I could probably justify eating an extra one since I expended so much energy), but it gets to the same point.

Not eating the last cookie means not using up ALL the resources. It means not choosing to whip out the credit card (whose balance you can't pay off) to buy the Wii Fit (that will only use more electricity anyway) when you could go for a free, lung-cleansing walk. It means not buying all the prepackaged foods and the junk food in styrofoam and the lemons from Brazil because you're using so many more resources than you and the planet have to spare.

We have one planet of resources. Not taking the last cookie means not using more than you (and the planet) can afford. If we could all do that, there might be enough cookies that no one could ever take the last one. Imagine--Earth, the never-ending cookie jar!

Wouldn't that be a great bumper sticker?

A Change of Perspective

It's got to be the cold, wintry weather around here making me yearn for growing season. Or maybe it's the fact that I'm actually doing okay with the spending situation just now so I'm less obsessed, but I'm much more focused on agriculture than financial responsibility at the moment.

I have made it a habit lately to look around the internet for non-US-related news. I admit that I am a pretty typical American (read: ethnocentric--specifically Amero-centric), but I'm trying to break myself of that because I think that part of the global problem these days is that we're all out for ourselves and aren't really paying attention to the other guy. Sure, we all get a little teary when we see those Sarah McLachlan commercials for the ASPCA, but how many of us actually donate?

Anyway, in my perusals of international news sites, I've been focusing on agriculture the past few days. Earlier this week, the UN held a Meeting on Food Security. While I applaud the idea of a globally donated fund to help the hungriest and neediest, I still am concerned that A) there is too much talk and not enough action in big UN-driven things like this, and B) there is too much emphasis on fertilizers and "modern" technology like GMOs (genetically modified organisms).

I don't know that I'm against the concept of GMOs per se--I mean, the idea is basically cross-breeding of plants on a grander scale. It's just that we're taking the tradition idea of grafting the grape vine that has the sweetest fruit onto the grape vine with the heartiest, most fungus-resistant stalks and turning it into the "21st century technology" idea of splicing a bacteria into a grape vine instead. It's... a little scary, given that we're not sure what effect those grape vines are going to have once they enter the wider world and possibly change the ecosystems around them.

There are other ways to increase crop yield and prevent devastation from pests and infections. Ze de Antonio is a farmer in Brazil who grows more than 25 crops on his 2 acres of land. The diversity of the plantings creates a local ecology which lessens the likelihood that an opportunistic parasite or infection vector could blow out a whole crop. It also builds balance and water-retention in the ground, making the soil itself more fertile.

Note that Diaconia, the NGO that taught de Antonio what he needed to know to thrive in his semi-arid home, spent only about $3000-4000 over eight years on his training. Universities now use him and others like him to train the next generation of farmers. It's not necessarily more expensive to learn to farm as he does. In fact, when you factor in just exactly how much fertilizers and "high-yield seed" cost, it might just be cheaper.

And it can be done community by community. The Mudgee Microscope Club in Australia is a group of farmers who are trying to see whether their attempts to farm sustainably are having any good effects on the soil around them. The fact that they get together as a local group, studying their own soil, makes a kind of sense that globally-donated emergency food funds--necessary though they may be--just don't.

I don't think we can change the face of agriculture completely with small-scale changes. There is no way to feed the projected 9 billion people who will inhabit this earth come 2050 by setting up small farms like Ze de Antonio's. Subsistence farming is farming to provide for you and yours and not much else. By definition, the only way that would work is if every single family in the world had 2 acres of arable land and actually spent their time growing on it.

I do think, however, that there are answers beyond the unsustainable monocultures and pesticide/fertilizer dependence of industrial agriculture. There have to be, because monoculture ensures that if a pest infests a field, there's a very real possibility that acre after acre could be wiped out for a season, leading to more hunger, not less. Monoculture farming and especially fertilizers and pesticides also deplete the soil of balance and nutrients, ensuring that each year's crops are a little weaker, a little less abundant.

Polyculture farms are the way to feed us all, I think. Yes, I still think we need vertical farming and an overall decrease in the use of raw materials for low-return foodstuffs (like fast food, for instance, which uses more resources for less nutritional result), but it seems to me that if we could make it affordable and attractive for farmers to grow ten different crops instead of one, we might be on to something.

Maybe instead of continuing to make it attractive to farm acres and acres of corn through subsidies for ethanol and corn syrup production, we should think about subsidizing the cost of a rotating farm. Not because the lobbies in Washington will get anything out of it, but because a farmer could rotate eleven different fields with ten different crops (leaving a different field fallow every year to renew) and rehabilitate his land while increasing both his yield and his ability to market himself--ten crops from one farmer!

Now, I know I said this whole blog thing was going to be mostly about what we can do ourselves to change the world, but this? It's something we need to think about. Because if we as a society, as individual people working together, start looking at the world differently, it all changes. Subtly, maybe. Slowly at first. But it changes.

After all, we started thinking "hey, why isn't there a car that could have a battery that would be charged by occasional use of the gasoline-powered motor, so that we could use less gas but still go as far as we wanted to go?" The hybrid cars of today may not be the electric cars of the future (or the past, but I won't rant about who killed the electric car right now), but they're better than the cars that get 20 miles to the gallon.

So what if we all started thinking "hey, maybe we should try some gasoline and oil replacement other than corn ethanol. That way we could maybe use the land for growing food instead of fuel. And what if we ate a little less processed food? That way, again, more of the land could go to growing actual foodstuffs instead of growing stuff that's turned into corn syrup and adds to our obesity problem."

It's a mindset change. It's a way to get us all to notice the world around us and see what we can think of that could make it all work a little better.

And I'm telling you, the first vertical farm that gets built in my area? I'm totally quitting my job and working there full time!

Be (at least some) of the change you wish to see

I'm not an ecozealot. Regardless of what some in my house say, I'm not.

If I really were an ecozealot, We'd never have moved into a building that states in its bylaws that you cannot have worm bin composters. I'd've made sure we bought a place with a balcony, where the worms could live their wormy lives and munch up all my discarded organic matter.

But I'm not an ecozealot, so as soon as I can, I'll buy an electric composter, which uses electricity, and I'll hide it away in the utility closet where children and cats won't play with it and the smells (hopefully) won't bother anyone. There aren't supposed to be smells, by the way. The brochure says so.

I'm a fast showerer more because I find it a waste of time, not just of resources. Our water is part of our assessments, so I have no idea how much we really use, but we run the washing machine and dishwasher and they may be low-water models, but I bet we use our share.

We don't drive much. The car we own gets an average of 45 mpg during the summer, 30-40 during the winter (we've been subzero a bit more than usual this winter, so I've been getting crappier gas mileage than usual), but it's kind of a moot point because we've had it almost four years, and we haven't hit the 15,000 mile mark yet. It's a beautiful car, though--and very good at holding down our parking space.

We use a good amount of electricity--okay, I use a good amount of electricity. I have gadgets, we have two computers, a DVR, a number of televisions, and we're in the north, so it gets dark early and stays dark late into the getting-to-work hours of the morning. During the summer, because we don't use AC, we are well below the national average, but in the winter when we use our electric heat, we're above average for the country--and that's with switching to mostly compact fluorescent bulbs.

When we're being virtuous, we cook at home and bring our lunches. It's a heck of a lot cheaper, and using reusable lunch boxes like my nifty Mr. Bento means that we don't create a lot of Ziploc waste. I like to cook with fresh ingredients, and I prefer organics, so our footprint is smaller than it could be--when we're being virtuous.

When we're not being virtuous, you'd be amazed at the number of food miles, the pounds of trash, and the amount of waste a small family can create. I've seen us fill a kitchen trashbag to the brim with styrofoam and nonrecyclable plastic waste in just one meal when we've got a couple of friends over.

Why the big confessional? Because it's amazing what knowing your footprint and knowing your limits can do for you when you say you want to change the world.

Riot 4 Austerity is a group dedicated to the idea proposed by George Monbiot that if everyone in the first world decreased their resource usage by 94%, we might be able to save the environment as we know it. R4A aims for only 90% (that should be easy, right? Ha! Try it!), but it's a great place to learn a few techniques. They also have a great calculator on the site (this is relatively new, and is much easier than the slaving over a pen and paper I did when I first hit the R4A site a few years ago) that will help you see where you are in terms of the American national average. The group is full of people from all over the world, though, and also people in various stages of light living.

The group has an email forum which is well worth subscribing to if this sort of thing interests you, but it also leads me to drop my jaw more than a few times a month. There are people who are off the electrical grid, off the water grid, off the food grid. There are people who live on farms and get their electricity from cow dung and eat only what they grow in their fields. There are some seriously zealoty people over there. And while I love the group, I am not one of the zealots.

No Impact Man, who I've mentioned before, is also a true ecozealot. He set out on a one-year crusade to be carbon and impact neutral. No electricity (he did use a solar pack to power his computer and charge his phone), no packaged food, no trash, no eating out, nothing. And he gave back to the environment as well, to make up for the fact that he still had to flush the toilet occasionally. That his wife was less than thrilled with the idea is putting it mildly.

I know the feeling--from both sides. While I'm used to taking flak for being weird about my green, I love a good steak. I enjoy going to the movies and having a gigantic vat of popcorn. I'm a consumer. So I consume--a lot. As a whole, we're pretty good at being good, but when we're bad, we're your typical western world family.

I know we're never going to move to the country and buy a farm and use an outhouse and raise our own chickens. I'm allergic to chicken feathers--it would never work. We're not even in a position to buy a single-family home and kit it out with the latest solar gadgetry like the Smart House at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. It's unbelievably cool, and I'd love to live in a place just like it, but it's not actually feasible.

So what do you do? Well, you do what you can--what you will to a certain extent. My partner was horrified by the idea of a composter inside our condo. But we don't have a deck, and we throw away 4 pounds of vegetal waste alone every week (more in the summer), so eventually, the conversation turned from "you are NOT putting that in MY house!" to "okay, but you have to clean out the utility room and call the electrician and take care of the thing." Because it's a little something we can do.

Organic food, and especially local food, was much easier. There's something wonderful about wandering through the farmer's market together, looking at all the lovely food and figuring out exactly how you're going to make use of it. That it doesn't really cost much more than the grocery store, and certainly costs a whole lot less than eating out, is just an added bonus.

I'm the electrical offender in the house, and I'm working on it. And I'm working on cutting down the times on certain other people's showers, too, but again, you make the changes you can. And you keep on trying, because one day my "but I have to have the computer on overnight and I can't go to sleep without the television on" may turn to "I can run that scan once a month, not every day, and a nightlight is fine, really."

No Impact Man talked recently about ostentatious individual action as activism. He makes the point that one person's actions can cause a cascade effect... sometimes.

So, try taking your lunch to work for a week and seeing if people notice. Don't say anything, don't be loud about it. Just bring leftover soup or a ham sandwich or something everyday instead of going out, and see if people notice. If they ask, tell them you love the fact that you're saving some money.

Or try walking into you favorite coffee joint for your morning jolt and using a reusable mug to get it. Almost all of them will fill your mug for the price of an equivalent cup of theirs, and some will even give you a discount. If you're lucky, you'll get a quiet "thanks for using a reusable" from your coffee guy.

Try turning off the lights when you leave a room (make sure no one's still in the room when you do). Try doing it when your kids are around, and when they ask you why you're always doing that, tell them simply "to save energy." If our children can grow up thinking that saving energy is the norm and not the exception, they'll hopefully do it themselves.

What each of us does has an effect on other people. Live a little more consciously, and maybe others will see the difference and want to be it, too.

Now if I could just dump the soda habit! That would make a BIG difference!

Mourning the Passing of the Berries

I've gone and done it.

Sunday night, I was packing my lunch for Monday, and I let out a long, sad groan--eliciting a "what?!" from the next room.

"I'm packing the last of the raspberries for my lunch tomorrow," I replied, sadly scooping the frozen fruit into their rightful place in my bento box. There were still black raspberries and golden raspberries, as well as the red raspberries you can find in any supermarket at any time of the year.

"I'm so sorry, honey," came the response--and it was actually quite heartfelt. I am the only berry junkie (the more fools them!) in the house, but I'm pretty loud about it, so the end of the summer berries is sort of a big deal.

The thing is, I didn't have to run out of berries this week. I mean, I could have bought more berries this summer. I complained about the price and the trouble of sorting, soaking, rinsing, drying, freezing, and storing them. I complained about the space they took up in my freezer (two huge plastic tubs of perfect, wonderful berries by the end of the summer growing season). I complained about the trouble of carrying tupperwares to work at least once a week to go to the market and get the berries.

And now, I'm going to complain about having to go to Trader Joe's (and only Trader Joe's--no one else carries them!) to pay about the same amount of money for frozen black raspberries that were grown somewhere in California or somewhere. They come in a non-reusable plastic bag and they're not as good as the ones grown in southern Michigan.

Don't get me wrong--they are very fine black raspberries, but they're just not as good. I don't think that's because black raspberries in California taste any worse or any different than those in Michigan, but there's something about the taste of raspberries that you had so much to do with before they ever got frozen. My farmer picks her berries in the morning, usually before dawn, and drives into the city with the berries in huge flats. She parcels out a pint or so for me and I dump it in my tupperware (she always reuses the paper pint she weighs them in). When I get home that day, I do all those things I complained about: sort, soak, rinse, dry, freeze, store...

And when I pull out a cup of them in the dark of winter, they're my berries.

There are people in the slow food movement who believe that, in part, the obesity epidemic comes from our lack of connection to our food. I'm not sure I believe that so much (I mean, I'd eat a couple of pounds of raspberries a day if I could, and that's hardly healthy for you!), but I do think that the food I cook that comes from food I know does indeed taste better. The lamb farmer who's 75 miles away and has a few acres of land where he rotates his lambs in and out of different organically-grown grass fields; the organic farmer whose heirloom tomatoes are so perfectly sweet that the salads I make with them need nothing more than a drizzle of vinegar; the apple farmer whose apples are so good that the first year I moved here and bought them, I gorged myself sick on them--twice...

The food they give me--the food I make with their help? It tastes better.

So this year, I guess I'm going to have stop whining about the cost of buying twice the berries I need, and instead buy three times the berries I need. I'll still complain about all the work I have to do, but at least the boxes of berries will last me until after the winter thaw--just in time for the cycle to start all over again.

_______

The Slow Food Movement is a fun thing to get into if you're a foodie. You may find yourself as obsessed with fresh cooking as I am (I just wish I were a better cook!), but it's got some very commonsense ideas about how to live simply and eat well.

• Slow Food USA is a good starting place. In you live in the States, there's a bulletin board with all kinds of Slow Food events around the country.
• Slow Food International is a global perspective and one of the resources that started it all.
• This TIME magazine article highlights the difference between what slow food is all about--good food--and what the movement has been accused of being--elist food snobs.

How Much Is Clean Worth?

So, I did say I was working on being financially responsible and such, right? Well, one good way to save money is to find out how to do more with less. Now, I am allergic to... well... most things. Okay, not really, but I'm extremely sensitive to any number of chemicals, so green cleaning is a big must for me, since I'm the one who does most of the cleaning in the house.

I originally had this great idea that I'd make all my cleaners from scratch--laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, everything! I'd be this mighty, green machine of perfectly homemade perfection!

And then I had a family and a house and two very messy cats and a full time job and... it never really happened.

That said, I do buy nontoxic cleaners for any machine washing that happens around here (Seventh Generation makes some very nice, very effective laundry and dishwashing detergents), a nontoxic liquid soap for hand washing dishes, and I do use simple kitchen supplies to clean the rest of the house. No Windex, no scrubbing bubbles. Just vinegar and baking soda and my very tired arms (on the other hand, my arms are a good deal more toned than they used to be, so I see that muscle fatigue as a plus, not a minus).

So I was wondering this morning what exactly I was saving by using only a few basic ingredients to make my house clean and happy. Let's run the numbers, shall we. I love numbers!

• Store-Bought Cleaners
  Bathroom
  • Toilet cleaner: $2.80 (lasts a couple of months)
  • Soap scum remover: $3.50 (lasts a month, tops)
  • Window/mirror cleaner: $3.80 (lasts a couple of weeks)
  Kitchen
  • Countertop cleanser (Comet, Bon Ami, etc.): $2.00 (lasts a month or two)
  • Oven cleaner: $5.50 (lasts a month)
  • Glass cleaner: see bathroom supplies
  All over
  • Furniture polish: $5.00 (lasts a month or two)
  • Floor polish (wood): $5.00 (a month)
  • Carpet/upolstery cleaner: $5.50 (around here? A couple of weeks)

  TOTAL: approximately $35.00 a month

• Homemade (all last a month)
  Baking Soda: $3.30 (64 oz. box)
  • uses: toilet, shower, countertops, oven, tiles, sink, fridge/freezer
  Distilled White Vinegar: $3.30 (1 gallon)
  • uses: absolutely everything. Seriously.
  Borax: $1.00 (72 oz.--a box costs about $4.50, but it can last six months)
  • uses: stubborn stains in laundry and on tile, ceramic tubs, etc.
  Vegetable or olive oil (the cheap stuff): $6.00
  • uses: wood polishing
  Lemon juice (again, the cheap stuff): $3.00
  • uses: wood polish and stubborn clothing or furniture stains
  
  TOTAL: approximately $16.00 a month

So... yeah. That's quite a savings, I think.

Of course, it does require me to at least pretend to enjoy cleaning. It takes twice as long, but it's actually pretty nice, because I don't have to worry about making sure the room is ventilated and such. I don't have to worry about keeping animals and kids out of the bedroom after I shampoo the rug or the bathroom after I clean the shower and toilet.

There are a ton of other things you can use as household cleaners. Some mixes require more work than others--I'm lazy, and vinegar cleans as well as bleach and baking soda provides as much abrasive power as Comet, so I keep with those. There are other people, however, who love to come up with recipes:

• Clean and Green is a pretty in depth site and has answers to most household cleaning problems.
• Organized Home is a great site for oh, so many reasons, but they also have a nice selection of cleaning recipes.
• In hunting around for some nice recipes, I found this great site called Tree Hugging Family--it's got lots of info!

There you have it--save a little money, save your lungs and those of the people and animals around you, and save the planet!

______

Over to other things, now. The US is a little... self-centered just now. We have this new president, and this new congress, and... we're really preoccupied. So I thought I'd post some links to news items that aren't about the US:

• Industrial pollution chokes people, crops alike--A story from the Daily Star (Bangladesh) about the ramifications of a polluting urea plant on the local population.
• A Breakthrough against World Hunger--a piece in the Guardian (UK) advocating a centralized international aid foundation for helping boost agriculture in low-income countries. Note, interestingly enough, that the example he uses for helping these countries is fertilizer. Interesting.
• Study pinpoints main source of Asia's brown cloud--In a case of "what's good for you could be bad for you," the International Herald reports on a study out of Sweden that shows that much of the particulate pollution in Southeast Asia is caused by a "greener" solution to oil: biomass.

I'm off to go drive to a bunch of places. I very rarely take the car out at all, but today there are a ton of things that won't fit in my backpack. *sigh*

Food and Movies! Two of my favorite things!

Just a quick post today, since I'm always running late on Sundays. I figured I'd leave you with something interesting to read, so I'm linking you to other people. :)

I happen to love documentaries, so when I got the latest issue of Treehugger's newsletter in my email box, I thought "Hey! More documentaries for me to watch!" And they're about FOOD, so really, how can you go wrong?

Speaking of documentaries about stuff I care about:

• No Impact Man, the documentary based on the New York dad who calls himself No Impact Man, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival to great applause this month! I hope we'll all see it coming to a theater near us some time soon.
• An Inconvenient Truth is always a good addition to any environmental film festival.
• Who Killed the Electric Car actually made me furious. I own a Prius, but I'd rather own an electric car! Also, check out the blog Revenge of the Electric Car to keep up to date on electric technologies.

That's it, I'm out of here--have to go enjoy the wonderful freezing weather! Have a great day!

Local Food: "Yeah, I don't really have time to go to the farmer's market."

I've always found that when you feed people good food, the conversation becomes very productive.
--Alice Waters, head chef of Chez Panisse, Berkeley, CA
Find out more about her "Art. Food. Hope." dinner on inauguration eve.

I was down south visiting my sister last year. It was mid-spring and our farmer's markets here in the midwest hadn't quite gotten off the ground yet, owing to the amount of frost still on said ground.

We were driving to lunch one day (we drove to lunch every day--and to dinner) and I looked over the side of the interstate to see a lovely, sprawling, farmer's market occupying the majority of a mall parking lot. Now, this mall wasn't more than a mile or so from my sister's house, and craving some fresh food, given the long hard winter just behind us, I asked casually, "So, how is that farmer's market over there?"

"Yeah," she replied shortly. "I don't really have time to go to the farmer's market." Which pretty much ended the conversation.

Now, I will admit that, growing up, we didn't know anything about farmer's markets. We did have friends who grew some food, and we did know some of those "hippie types" who got their food from somewhere, but for the vast majority of our meals, food was procured from the nearest Safeway.

My sister has a lot of children, so on the one hand, I can see that she finds it easier to keep an eye on them when they're all trapped inside a store. On the other hand, I think the idea of spending an hour or so letting the kids get a look at what grows near you--which, let's face it, doesn't include junk food like potato chips and Twinkies--is a good lesson in how the world works.

But that, I think, requires a mind that thinks the world should work that way, and a fair number of people are very happy with their world in which they can microwave a pizza instead of slaving over a stove for an hour after a hard day at work.

I know exactly what they mean. As I got older, I found that the city we lived in did indeed have a farmer's market. But I never went there. It was in the middle of town, and we lived on the outskirts, and then I'd have to cook, and I was already working a lot of hours, and wasn't farmer's food more expensive anyway, and it was just a pain to get to and... yeah, I didn't really have time for the farmer's market.

Nowadays, living in the middle of fertile land as I do, I love my farmer's markets. I love that I can start getting the freshest, juiciest strawberries and raspberries and blackberries early in the season and enjoy them all year long. I buy twice as much as I need for a week and then freeze half, and it's done a pretty good job of getting this berry junkie through the winter. Though I have to say that I ran out of blackberries in December and broke down and bought some at the store last week. Somewhere between Mexico and me, the taste fell out of the box.

Another great thing about the farmer's market is that, if it's close to your house and you plan everything right, it can be one of the least time-consuming parts of a shopping experience. Once the season starts, we plan all our meals for the week on Saturday and go to the grocery store for things we know we can't get at the farmer's market. Then, on Tuesday, we go to the market that's on the way to the train station (on my way to work), and pick up what we need for the week. Even if we wander the whole thing, it doesn't take more than half an hour. I keep our finds in the fridge at work for the day and schlep it home and voila!

For two people, we rarely need more than one bag, and it rarely costs any more than it would to buy the same stuff at the grocery store. I do find, however, that the connection to the food itself is greater because I picked it up from the farmer him- or herself, so I make sure to use up all the food I buy there, where food from the grocery store already doesn't taste fresh and often goes bad before I can cook it.

Also, the farmers we know don't give me a funny look for bringing a tupperware to protect my berries in transit. :)

That's another plus to a farmer's market: the farmers. I love that one of the women who grows some of the best berries will see me coming and start picking out a pint just for me. Our "apple people" let us pick through and find the ones we want instead of selling us one of the baskets they already have made up for the nonregulars. Our "organic lady," who sells unbelievable garlic and tomatoes and greens, always lets me know which of the tomato strains is the tastiest this week. And of course, she actually knows that, because she and her crew are the ones who picked them and boxed them last night and drove the 70 miles from the farm to sell them to me in a museum parking lot this morning.

There's something comforting in knowing that my food wasn't picked three weeks ago and 1500 miles away. During the tomato contamination scare last year, I didn't have to worry if my tomatoes were from the farms in California that might be in trouble. I knew they were from Wisconsin and hadn't been processed at all--just washed and put in a box.

If you really, really don't have time to go to the farmer's market, there's still a way to get local food--you generally have to pick it up, but it comes in a neat box and you don't have to wander the parking lot. CSAs--community sponsored agriculture groups--are pretty much what the name implies. Community members buy into the farm at the beginning of the season, and receive "shares" of all the produce throughout the season. Since you pay up front before planting is even started, it's a way for the farmer to know that she's going to be able to pay the bills, or if she isn't, exactly how big the shortfall will be.

A whole share will usually feed a family of four every week, and a half share is good for two or three--if you're a single, you can win friends at work by giving away fresh produce or go in on a share with another person. The CSA will likely have a number of places where you can pick up your shares every week--often at your local farmer's market, which is like killing two birds with one stone.

One of the drawbacks of this way of locavoring is that you get whatever they grow. If you don't like zucchini, and the CSA tells you they're growing it, then don't be mad when you've got the little squashes coming out your ears because they had a bumper crop. Likewise, if the season turns overly wet or dry or pestilential, you're likely to get very little return on your investment.

So it's a risk, but because CSAs tend to make their living on the fact that you can have all the vegetables and fruit a family could want, just by buying into one, they'll usually plan a pretty wide variety of plantings to make sure that they keep the land biologically stable and provide enough diversity to keep shareholders coming back. Often, they'll have co-op agreements with local meat, cheese, and egg providers, as well, so occasionally through the year, you'll get bonuses in your boxes.

Interested in loving your local food? If you live in the United States, go check out Local Harvest, which has a very comprehensive listing of farmer's markets and CSAs and grocer/co-ops and such. If you live in Canada, you could start with Chef2Chef, but there doesn't seem to be a listing like Local Harvest in your country. If you know of any other resources for other countries and areas, let me know and I'll post them here in a later post.

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Food for Thought--and Others

• Try buying a CSA share for your local food bank or soup kitchen. Obviously, you'll have to go to the farmer's market and pick it up and take it to the food bank, unless they have other patrons who donate this way, in which case they may go pick it up themselves. It's a great way to make sure that people who need it are getting fresh, healthy food, while saving the environment a little, too!

Change Sucks: but the results are fun (sometimes)

Living more frugally when in debt or overshoot is a sane and moral choice. The more of us who make this choice, the faster the collective transformation will go. We are at a crossroads. Disaster is not inevitable, but we need to change.
--Vicki Robin
Learn more about Your Money or Your Life and the Financial Integrity movement

I hate change.

Seriously. Change is exhausting and scary and difficult and I don't like it one bit.

The fact that change brought me the love of my life, a new place to call home, and maybe even some sense of peace (sometimes) is really quite beside the point. Change sucks.

But change is the only way to live--each of us is conceived, is born, lives, and dies eventually of something. It's all change.

Now, you can try to make change less painful in an awful lot of ways. You can work as hard as you can, sacrificing everything in the pursuit of something to make the change "worth it"--accrue tons of money so that you can always "have enough" and never have to worry. You can concentrate on saving the world--spend all your time sacrificing for the greater good; stop eating meat, fruit, whatever is the environmental baddie of the day; stop using plastic, aluminum, steel, wood, air; stop using the internet, the television, the car, the bike, your shoes--making sure that future generations can enjoy the earth (because you didn't).

In other words, you can try to take control of a fundamentally uncontrollable situation, hoping to make yourself feel safer.

But the truth is, you'll never feel safe, and I'd posit that life isn't about feeling safe anyway--at least not in that way. Life is about living, which is one of those hopelessly hokey things people put on bumper stickers, but it's true.

The problem with life being about living is that everyone has a different idea of what "living" entails. Is living having a fancy car and a fancy house and eating at five star restaurants every night? Is it acquiring as much "stuff" as you can get, so that you can say "I have enough to live on if everything collapses"? Is either of these ways of life fundamentally wrong--or right--for anyone and everyone?

The world itself will eventually make this determination for all of us. Currently, we as a species are living like we've got four or five spare planets tucked away, just waiting for us to pull them out of mothballs once we've used up the resources on this one. I found it interesting that the hundreds of thousands who jammed the Washington Mall to watch Barack Obama advocate change and a turning away from childish things managed to leave 120 tons of trash in their wake. This is not change I can believe in.

Eventually, the world will stop us itself. Crops fail every year, for a variety of reasons, and we look to technology to stop these disasters. We engineer crops that withstand a certain plant virus--then grow hectare after hectare of them, making them vulnerable to some other plague. We create new pesticides to stop this plague, killing off beneficial bacteria whose job it is to keep plague #3 in check. We "reintroduce" said bacteria to the soil, further disturbing the balance... It goes on and on and eventually, the earth is going to win and we're not going to be able to grow anything on that land, because it just plain needs time to heal.

We do much the same with every resource we have, but here's a thought: What if we, for starters, used less resources? This is not to say that we don't actually need to feed the billions of people on this planet, but what if we decided that we didn't need lemons from Florida in the dead of winter in the northern midwest (and yes, I'm talking about myself here)? That would mean less gas used to get the lemons from there to here, less monoculture in the agriculture landscape there, and more support of the farmers here in the midwest, who grow a mean winter cabbage and a variety of other winter greens that will satisfy my vitamin C requirements admirably.

What if, instead of using acres and acres of farmland for endless crops of corn to be used for ethanol, we instead stopped driving quite so much? Less driving, less ethanol, more room for food crop. And what if we as consumers were a bit more diverse and discriminating in our choice of foodstuffs? The farmer who once grew only one type of corn on his 150-acre farm could now grow five or ten different crops, rotating his crops in and out of each field and increasing the growing power and stability of the ecology of his own local soil. At the same time, he'd increase the nutritional content of the local diet and make sure that people could satisfy themselves with local food, using fewer food miles and coming back full circle to driving less, using less ethanol/gasoline/electricity, and improving the local agriculture.

No Impact Man posted a blog entry recently in which he commented that "we [environmentalists] should joke around more." I love both the cartoon and the sentiment. Because the flip side of the ethical and environmental snarl I've just written about is the joy of living well.

Now, living well can definitely mean spending $300 on one meal for two (say, your Valentine's Day blowout). I'm not into spending that much for a meal, myself--but don't ask me how much I spend on the mortgage to my beautiful condo on the beach. I spend my money on housing, because I "need" to see the water. Which is also living.

Living well can also mean spending a rainy day inside on the couch with a cup of tea and a good book. Heck, you don't even need to have bought that book--that's what libraries are for! Now, you can think about where that tea came from, where the cup came from, where the library got the book and how much, ecologically-speaking, it cost to make it, or you can just let go of your eco-guilt for a minute and enjoy the fact that you have a roof over your head and a good book in your lap.

And the next day, maybe you can remember how nice that day was--a day when the most consuming thing you did was, maybe, turned on the stove to heat some water and the light to see the print when it got dark, and think "maybe that's a good way to live more often than not."

Maybe buying your child fewer toys and offering him more attention is a good way to live. Maybe making a homemade meal with local foods you never even knew your area had is a good way to live. Maybe walking to the store that's only a mile away and not buying more than you can carry home is a good way to live. More often than not.

And if that change in thought--and change is hard--saves some money, or some resources, or some stress... Then maybe change doesn't need to suck quite so much all the time.

______

Today, you get an ecological link, just because it's Friday!

• A Skyscraper Grows in New York City: The Vertical Farm Project is researching the sustainability and feasibility of building high rise gardens in metropolitan areas. The result could be a decrease in average food miles, a greater connection between the city dwellers and their food, and even the possibility of farms that not only supply their own power and water, but give some back to the community, as well! This project is, in my mind, the next building I want shooting up in my backyard!

What exactly is the cost of living?

If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.
--Anita Koddick
(Donate a mosquito net at Nothing But Nets and help prevent deaths by malaria)

People talk about the cost of living. They talk a lot about how people the world over are farther in debt than they've ever been, how people are living far beyond their means, how if we all just bought only what we could afford, we would all be stronger and more financially secure.

So let's look at that. For example, here's a typical day's food for me when I eat at home (we aren't factoring in the days I visit Starbuck's in the morning and a local Italian joint for dinner):

• breakfast
  1 cup Special K cereal (approximately 50 cents per serving)
  1/2 cup skim milk (~ 50 cents)
• Snack
  1 apple (organic, so $1)
• Lunch
  Usually a stew of some sort, with meat ($4.50-$8.00, depending on the meat and the vegetables chosen)
  1 cup berries and plain yogurt ($1.50--not a pre-made fruit yogurt, but fresh fruit and nonfat yogurt)
• Snack
  1 oz. chips (50 cents if you buy a bulk bag of chips)
• Dinner
  4 oz. meat ($1, less if it's on sale)
  1 cup green beans ($1 [organic again--pricey])
  1 cup roasted potatoes ($1.50 at least)
• Bed time snack
  1/2 cp. ice cream (50 cents)

Added up, that day's food cost me about $14. Now, I do spend the extra money to buy organic food and I do buy brand names and as you'll notice, I do eat meat (working on that). I suppose if you didn't you could probably buy all of that for about $9. Maybe. If you had the time and place to cook. That also (because I do count calories and buy lowfat foods) all came to 1450 calories, which is a little less than a normal-sized woman my age and height should eat to get her entire day's worth of vitamin and mineral requirements.

I make considerably more than $14 a day. I can very comfortably afford to eat all of that and keep trim and keep money in my pocket. I can easily live within my means and still keep myself nutritionally stable.

The US Census defines a single individual (termed "unrelated individual") living below the poverty line as one who makes just over $10,500 a year. A family of four living below the poverty line makes only twice that, not four times that.

$10,500 a year works out to $28.76 a day over 365 days. So, my meals for an average day would take half of that person's salary if he or she lived here. If you financially slimmed down that menu to $9, it would still take about a third. So, little money left for housing, clothing, anything...

Yes, you can eat more cheaply in a metropolitan city such as this one. You can. The menu can be varied to some extent, but the basic truth is, living within your means when you have little in the way of means is extremely difficult. Let's not talk about the fact that, even if you are in dire financial straights, a single person who actually has a place to rent, will get no more than a maximum of $150 a month in food stamps--half what it would cost to buy all that food. And to get that maximum, you have to beg--because you don't feel like life is hard enough for you already!

Now, I get this information from the US Census and my state's department of human services. I cannot discuss living within your means in the vast areas of the world where people live on less than a dollar a day because I do not know how much things cost there. I couldn't even tell you what it costs to live in New York or LA or Denver. I only know here. And they say you should write what you know, so...

What I can say is that things like soup kitchens and food pantries and aid organizations do a lot more than just give a handout. If you work a minimum wage job (current federal minimum wage in the US is $6.55) for 40 hours a week, you make, after taxes, approximately $10,900.00. Imagine raising two kids and supporting a spouse (who has to be stay at home whether he or she wants to or not because you can't afford the $400.00 a month minimum daycare that one child costs, much less two) on a wage that means one day of 1450 calorie meals for one person eats up a third of your daily income. And remember that that doesn't include days you have to take off because you're sick (because you probably don't have paid days off) or days the company is closed (because you don't have paid holidays) or the days you're not slated to work because the company just can't employ you full time. And if you and your spouse can figure out a way for one of you to work nights and the other days so that the children are taken care of, does that really make things better? Yes, you'll get more food on the table and the chance to keep the table, but is that a marriage anymore if you never see each other?

Aid from social community-based nonprofits help preserve a little dignity and a lot of family--if the aid is available.

So here comes that part I was talking about in my last post where I say there are things you can do.

Educate yourself:

• Read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. It's an interesting experiment of a woman, who normally makes quite a lot, taking off a year to work for minimum wage. (At least she can go back to her paying job and the royalties she makes off her books.)
• Check out the US Census Household and Individual data by subject index--or your own country's census bureau website. It's full of very interesting and eye-opening information.
  

Use yourself:

• Call your local church or look in the phone book for a community food pantry. Ask if they have soup kitchen days you can volunteer at. Ask if they have enough people to help keep the pantry stocked and organized. Ask if you can donate just a couple of hours a week--even less in some places is a help. My local church does a sandwich Sunday the third Sunday of every month, when people can come in between services and make bag lunches and give them out to the homeless and needy people who live around the area. It's a great way to do something to help change things, and it requires about an hour a week of your time.

Use your means:If you have money you can donate, there are tons of people who will help you get it to the right people.

• Share Our Strength is a group devoted to helping feed underfed children in the United States. They even have some fun things like The Great American DineOut, which allows you to raise money for the charity simply by going out to a fine restaurant.
  
• Friends of Man is a charity that is completely volunteer. 100% of the money you donate goes to people who need it to pay their rent or their medicine or their food. Grants are small and specific, so if you are one of those who believe that giving money to charities is bad because the money never makes it to the people who need it, this may be a good place for you to look.
  
• There are tons of other groups who will take your money, of course, but I think a good way to spend that money is in your local community. Even the richest areas have homeless and poor people and people who are struggling to get by. Call your local social support groups, and I'm sure they'll help you figure out how you can help in your local area.

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Meanwhile, here's your human rights link for the day, brought to you by Amnesty International:

• Struggling for Women's Rights in Somalia: A Q&A with Zam Zam Adbullahi, a human rights activist in Somalia, the capacity building officer for Coalition for Grassroots Women Organizations (COGWO), and the Chairperson of the Somali branch of the African network for prevention and Protection of child abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN).

There is no plan to change the world

Sad, isn't it?

Because really, there should be.

There should be some sort of plan that involves creating more peace and less war; more jobs and less poverty; more opportunity and less despair; more health and less pain; more flowers and less smog. You know? A plan to change the world.

Well, since there's not, we'll all just have to wing it, huh? I figure I can try to do my part by cutting down on the things I do that hurt the economy, the environment, and the people around me. I can do my part by cutting down on the things I do that hurt me, too.

I can also talk about things that other people are doing--either to help or hurt. I can let my readers (if there ever are any *g*) know what they might be able to do to help.

Yes, yes, yesterday was the beginning of a new era. Barack Obama called us all to action and blah, blah, blah. Wonderful. Words have been said. And more will be said--including by me.

But maybe, just maybe, if we all do a few things, we can actually be that change we wish to see in the world, as Gandhi said. Maybe, even without a plan, we can change the world anyway--stumble into a better future by concentrating on what we can do to help ourselves and each other now.

My first goal this year has been fiscal responsibility. How much money do you really need to live comfortably? And what does living comfortably mean, anyway? This is what I will be talking about for a while. Until something shiny comes along, or I get tired of being virtuous, or I decide that I really can't live within my means. Don't laugh at that last comment. Lots of people in this world can't live within their means. They don't have the means.

More on that and a lot of other things later. For now, go read Barack Obama's Inaugural Address. It's full of rhetoric and powerful thoughts and hard truths. We're not the people we could be (and that goes for all people, not just Americans).

But we could be.