40 Days of Mindfullness

My life is a little crazy busy at the moment, but I watched our president on Tuesday night, and one of the things he said struck me as part of the problem, not part of the solution.

I agree that we need to concentrate far more on our children's educations and on healthcare for all of us. I agree that we need to help people climb out of the problems that they have--financially, socially, physically, educationally--and improve the life of each and every citizen of not just the country but the planet. I think he's got some great ideas that warm the cockles of my heart.

But then he said this: "...the flow of credit is the lifeblood of our economy."

Why? Why does it have to be that way?

I understand that 99% of us cannot afford to buy a house with the money we have on hand, and I agree that probably 50% of us can't buy a car outright either (at least not without jeopardizing other bills and life requirements). That's investment, as far as I'm concerned. Credit, to my mind, is something that you get because you can't afford what you want, not what you need. If I really want an iPod but don't have the money to buy it outright, putting it on a credit card is no investment of any kind, as it provides no usable equity (though it does make it easier to listen to the presidential address podcasts).

So credit is one thing and investment another. You should have what you can afford and save for what you can't.

It's unfair, however, to expect that to actually be the case. Our capitalist economy has been built on spending money whether you have it or not, and the industries we have are simply designed to work on money that is loaned: You loan the bank money by opening a savings account; the bank loans Bob money, and Bob pays Jimmy (who employs Ken and John) and buys materials (which employs some other people) and eventually gets paid off by Max (who borrowed his own money) and pays off the bank which then pays you off in the form of interest.

So, I guess credit is the lifeblood of our economy, but coming to that realization requires me to rethink my definition of "credit" to include investments like those described above. Is it possible to live without credit (using my original meaning) and still get what you need? Yes. It just requires that we all rethink what the definition of "need" is, as well.

A human being needs, minimally, food, water, shelter, and clothing. Which sounds pretty minimal indeed. But if I go to Spago and eat foie grae and oysters, wash it down with imported bottled water from Italy, go home to sleep at my penthouse apartment in Central Park West, and wear Armani while doing it, I've got the basics, haven't I?

There are people in the world who need those particular basics. If you're not one of them, you must just not be watching the right TV shows, because all the admen are telling us daily that that or something like it is what we need to have.

I'm not saying you have to give up your iPod (you'll pry mine from very angry hands), but I do think we should all spend a little time finding out what the definition of need is.

For Christians, the season of Lent has just started--40 days of reflection and penance. Instead of just celebrating this Lent as a Christian holy season, where the most many of us will do is eat fish on Fridays, I'm going to invite anyone and everyone of every faith and none to join me and give up thoughtless spending for the next 40 days (or thereabouts).

Here's how I, personally, am going to work it:

• I am going to try not to eat out for the entire 40 days. If I do eat out, I will consider the source of the food, the plates I eat with, and the social and emotional benefit I get.
• I will try to spend the least amount of money on my food and minimize the packaging with which I'm willing to deal (luckily, lots and lots of things come in bulk now).
• I will not buy anything on impulse--each magazine, candy bar, and online music purchase will be considered and acquired in a mindful way.
• I will keep track of each and every cent I spend, without guilt or remorse for the entire 40 days. Easter week, I can take a look and see if I can find places to cut more out of the needless acquiring.

So? Who's with me?

Cleanliness is next to--*hackhack* *coughcoughcough*

I like clean. Really I do. I like my house clean and my kitchen clean and my kid, my cat, my car... I just can't stand cleaners.

So I scrub the bathtub with baking soda and rinse it with hot, hot water and I use vinegar on stains and I basically try to get by without ever resorting to bleach or scrubbing bubbles (there's actually no bleach in my house and hasn't been for years).

"My God!" a good American parent would reply. "Don't you bleach your son's toys after he's had friends over? What if one of them had the sniffles? He could get a cold!?"

Um, yes. He could. And while I'm not advocating letting my child develop whooping cough or meningitis, a cold might be good for him.

There is a hypothesis called, aptly enough, "The Hygiene Hypothesis (HH)." (A good, though very medicalese, discussion of the theory is found in the first main section of this article) Basically, it posits that our immune systems create themselves bit by bit as we are exposed to and form antibodies to various bacteria, viruses--you know, "germs". Now, if your house is spit and polish, your baby's emerging immune system doesn't know quite what to make of it all. It knows it's supposed to create antibodies, but it's not sure to what it should create them because there's nothing like, say, rhinovirus around. You've done such a good job of protecting the child from "contagions" that his immune system says, in effect, "Well, I can't find any germs to make antibodies against. I know! How about this plant over here!?"

And thus, say the HH people, are created millions of children with asthma and allergies. Their immune systems are reacting to anything and everything because they have nothing concrete and dangerous to which to react.

Now, while I'm not entirely sure I quite buy all they have to say (a lot of the research done to prove the hypothesis is a little dicey and self-fulfilling for my taste), I do agree that children need to be exposed to a lot of things at a young age.

I believe in socializing a child and dealing with the blessed inevitability that he'll get rhinovirus or rotovirus or some other virus in his first couple of years. It will suck mightily to stay up with him while he labors through it, but it is a necessary thing.

I believe that children need dirt. No, I'm not saying you now have an excuse never to clean your house again, but I am saying that it's cool if, after a rainstorm, your son gets into a mud toss with his friends and ends up mucky from head to toe. Skin is there to keep the sodden gunk out of his peritoneal cavity. We're built to last, us humans.

Most of all, I believe that there is a much greater risk posed by many of our cleansers than by many of the germs for which we created them. Bleach is a poison. If you drink the cup of bleach you washed down the drain to "clean" it, you will die in all likelihood. If, however, you drink the pan of water you used to clean out the drain instead of the bleach, you're likely to be better hydrated and not much else (unless you didn't wait until the water cooled down before you drank it--shame on you).

I think it's not a bad idea to try to clean with only what you'd eat. Granted, I'm not interested in having a glass of vinegar with dinner, but I will use it on my salad, and therefore, I can use it on my floor.

A newborn really does need protection from pretty much everything, chemical or biological, but I'd rather not lock my three-year-old out of his room once a week because the rug cleaner I used in there was toxic. And really, unless he's dropping glasses of juice on that floor every five minutes, couldn't I shampoo the rug a little less often and vacuum it most of the time instead?

The old saying "God made dirt. Dirt don't hurt?" I'll buy that.

How Green Is Your President?

Barack Obama has been in office about a month now, so I thought it was time to see exactly how much damage he's done to the environment.

Let's leave the stimulus plan, which at 900 pages created a minimum of half a million pages of paper waste and attendant ink and electricity usage. That's not just his fault, it's the fault of the Congress, too. (Would they save money, do you think, if they worked electronically more often instead of printing out absolutely everything?) No, let's just look at the president's movements since he took office and do the math from there, yes?

Inauguration Day: Seriously, no way I can assess the environmental damage of the entire day. All I'm going to do here is calculate the miles he actually traveled. The answer there is: miles from White House to church to Capitol to White House and an average of miles to all of the parties. Times five, because that's the number of cars in his typical entourage on that day. This all works out to about 75 miles (remember, it's times five).

Week One: As I recall, he spent the first week pretty much in DC, so maybe we say another 35 for that, to cover going to and fro trying to get the stimulus and such off the ground.

Week Two: One trip to Williamsburg, VA via Air Force One. 500 airplane miles (AMs) round trip air, plus 100 car miles for the week.

Week Three: DC to Camp David to DC (200 miles via helicopter, roundtrip); DC to Elkhart, IN to DC (1000 AMs roundtrip); DC to Fort Myers, FL (900 AMs), to Springfield, IL (1050 AMs), to Peoria, IL (90 AMs), to Chicago, IL (135 AMs). Add at least 150 car miles for the whole week.

Week Four: Chicago, IL, to DC (590 AMs); DC to Denver, CO, to DC (3000 AMs roundtrip); DC to Ottawa, Canada, (projected back to DC) (1000 AMs roundtrip). Say 200 car miles for the week.

Miscellaneous: Because the president uses the White House Helicopter to go to and from the local airport and other places, I'm adding 100 helicopter miles to his entire time in office so far. Also, I'm assuming the gas mileage of an SUV for the car miles [~15 mpg]--which, granted, might be overstating the efficiency of his vehicles.

Let's do the math now (I love math!): (560 car miles [.5 tons CO2]) + (300 helicopter miles [.7 tons CO2]) + (8625 airplane miles [4.0 tons CO2]) = 5.2 tons of CO2 used.

By one person. In one month.

If we assume that this is an average month, by the time the president finishes his first (and hopefully not last) term, he will have burned 250 tons of CO2 on travel alone--I'd love to know the energy profile of the White House and its grounds, but I'm thinking that might be a state secret.

So? Ways he could reduce this impact? Some are simple yet complex (stop driving around DC with two cars ahead of you and two trailing behind--which would probably be perceived as too much of a security risk) and some are much more difficult (not meeting face to face with other world leaders is a problem as it paints you as elitist or worse). I do wish more worldwide discussions would be held via conference call. I wish there was some sort of international security flight service so that dignitaries from countries nearby each other could all be picked up in the same secure plane and flown to whatever conference they're heading for.

Heck, I'd like to wish our president flew a more fuel-efficient plane!

While none of that is ever likely to come to fruition, I do think it's interesting to think about the impact that the global village is having on... well, the globe. We want to see friends and family from across the world, we need to connect with our clients hundreds of miles away... It's all complicated.

So the next time you think about driving the five blocks to the sandwich store, remember that every mile you don't drive is one that a world leader can use to hobnob with other world leaders.

...

Doesn't sound like much of a trade-off, huh?

It Was Tuesday Yesterday--DO SOMETHING!

Sorry I didn't get a chance to post this yesterday--stuff going on here. In fact, I may be relatively erratic for the next few weeks, as changes at home are taking up an increasing amount of time.

Anyway, in following along with my Tuesday segment from last week and my rant on packaging from Monday, I give you three things you can do to reduce packaging.

• Write a letter to your favorite online or mail order company. Most of them have a support, complaint, or question address. Be very courteous, but let them know how you think they're doing on their use of packaging. I had a company send me something yesterday that was simply the piece of clothing I ordered--without a plastic bag or more than one small tag--stuffed in a mailing envelope. They're going to get the flipside of the "Why, Amazon!? Why!?" comment that will be sent out today as well.
• Let your broccoli roam free. Reusable grocery bags are all the rage, I know, and I'm sure many of you use them (if not, pick a few up, they're stronger than the paper or plastic disposable ones), but there's another use of plastic bags that a lot of people don't think about: most people bag their bulk vegetables in clear plastic bags in the produce section. If you're not comfortable with placing the vegetables and fruit in your cart without a bag because grocery carts are, you know, kind of gross, try putting them all in one of your handy-dandy reusable bags until you get to the checkout. You can wash them very, very well at home and still save an awful lot of plastic by not bagging them before you buy.
• Cook at home. Ah, the ultimate in package reduction. If you have time to cook one meal, you can probably cook two more at the same time by sharing heating time and veggie prep cutting time. Then you can dump them all in reusable containers, stick them in freezer and fridge, and eat away for a few days without making any more packaging waste. I once did an experiment and found that one meal at Subway for my family actually produced more non-recyclable waste than one home-cooked chicken and potatoes meal. Ouch.

So there you go, your DO SOMETHING for the week.

See you later!

Packaging and Logic: Irreconcilable Differences?

We're redesigning one of the spaces in our house to make some more room, and to save money, I'll admit we've been using other people's money (in the form of gift certificates) quite liberally. Which for us means web orders. Which means packaging and mailing and product miles galore.

And that gives me a very horrible feeling sometimes. I am convinced that there has to be a way to do this all with less packaging.

Case in point: We bought a net to protect some of our things from the predations of our precious (but nosy and destructive) cats. The box the net is sold in is about 3' x 1' x 2". The box Amazon shipped it in was 5' x 2' x 2'. Now luckily, it wasn't filled with packing peanuts, but still... it's an incredible waste of space, if nothing else.

What happened to the days when vendors simply wrapped things in brown paper and sent them off? Or better, why couldn't Amazon have sent us the net and the fourteen other things we bought that day all in the same box--there was definitely room in there!

Then there are the companies who individually wrap everything when they mail it. Yes, I realize that clothing companies and bedding companies and all are doing volume business and need to automate as much as possible, and that they need to protect their products from the elements and all. I get it. But here's an idea: Why not just line each shipping box with a plastic bag, dump the clothes or whatever into it, and seal that one plastic bag, seal the box, and send it all on its way.

I know the clothing isn't made in plastic bags. When boxes and boxes of it come into the clothing stores, the shirts and pants aren't individually wrapped (yes, I realize they are in certain stores, but not the ones of which I am speaking). So why waste such an incredible amount of plastic by individually wrapping every single freaking shirt in a twenty shirt order? It's madness!

I have a lot of beefs about the way things are packaged all over, in fact. Well, except at some stalls at the farmer's market. Some stalls do wrap things or give you plastic bags or whatever, but some offer you food and only food or crafts and only crafts. Bring your own bag and have at it.

Which, I suppose, is just another reason to buy and eat locally. The only problem with that is that we just can't afford the furniture that is handmade in my area. And there aren't enough local clothiers making what my family currently needs to help us out.

I think I'm going to go buy some shares in wind energy. Or something. Sometimes daily life and the fight to live it responsibly exhausts and saddens me.

Sorry all, hard weekend. I'll be cheerier tomorrow.

Because Really, What's Better than a Fuzzy Animal?

So, tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and no doubt there will be a million stuffed animals given out in an attempt to make girlfriends and wives and even boyfriends and husbands feel loved and special. The cute factor can't be beat.

And, you know, yay for that. I'm all for cute! But there are real animals out there, too. So, in honor of our fuzzy friends (and enemies--and those who aren't fuzzy at all, in fact), I give you 5 things you can do to help an animal...

1. Adopt an animal from your local zoo.
No, I don't mean take one home, I mean donate money to help defray the costs of feeding and caring for the animal (mine this year is a meerkat!). This usually doesn't cost a huge amount, and you sometimes get a stuffed animal or something to remind you of your gift. Two things, though, from someone who, admittedly, has really mixed feelings about zoos:

• make sure the price of the adoption is considerably more than the probable price of the swag they send you, because there's nothing more annoying than realizing that, of the $100 you just donated, $50 of it went to the adorable stuffed animal and tote and framed portrait and everything else they sent you.
• check out the zoo and its history of animal care, animal death, and animal management. Animal management includes partnerships with other zoos for the purpose of preservation, building and enclosure design that helps improve the social and mental well-being of the animals, and psychological work that is done to make sure the animals don't develop zoocosis (think the penguin in Happy Feet).

2. Deliver some food to your local shelter.
One of my cats was extremely ill a couple of years ago, and was put on prescription food. When her health started to improve, she stopped eating the wet prescription food altogether, leaving me with half a case of the stuff. So I dropped by our local no-kill shelter and gave it to them. They couldn't have been more appreciative! Now, with my vet's blessing, I buy a case of that when I bring one of the cats in for medical work and drop the food by the shelter on my way home.

Animal shelters often work on shoestring budgets--and the burden on them is getting worse in this economy, since many people are losing their homes and are being forced to abandon their animals to find places that will rent to them. And animals come in with all kinds of medical conditions that the shelters treat the best way they know how. So maybe think about making it easier for them, if you can, by donating something concrete. Yes, they need money--God knows!--but sometimes what they need, right that moment, is a case of kidney food.

3. Give money to an animal rights group you believe in.
Okay. I admit it--this is a wildly controversial subject for a whole lot of people. Greenpeace, PETA, Sea Shepherd... there are a lot of groups out there who have their supporters and their detractors and I can't tell you who to donate to. I can tell you that places like World Wildlife Fund and the others mentioned are out there for the business of saving habitats and animals. And that's a very good thing. Just remember, the money isn't worth it if you don't agree with the group's philosophy.

4. Give time to your local animal groups.
This is a very inexpensive way of giving back. Often it's what I used to call muck work (yes, I occasionally mucked stalls at a stables). If you're not into cleaning out litter boxes and shoveling dog runs, find out if there's something else you can volunteer to do. Many places are happy to have people who have experience with smaller infants or have had kittens or puppies before--it takes very little to train these people up to take care of the newborn animals they sometimes acquire.

5. Go walk a dog!
If you happen to have a neighbor who's maybe not around as much as he could be or who has trouble getting around at all, offer to walk his dog once in a while. If you have a neighbor with mobility or agility problems who happens to have a cat, ask if he'd like some help with the more bendy-stretchy things involved in pet care. If you've got a car and your neighbor doesn't, think about offering to drive him and his pet to the vet for physicals. Having an animal has been shown to be very beneficial to the human spirit (and blood pressure), but it's sometimes hard on the knees. Granted, for us introverts, this might be asking too much, but if you're outgoing enough and willing, you might find a very good friend--and the owner might learn to like you, too!

So, that's all! Have a great weekend--a great three-day-weekend if you're one of those lucky buggers who has Monday off!

Not so crazy after all

When I was a young adult and CD burners were first becoming a fad (yes, I'm old), I was out with my father for dinner one night and I told him I'd had this great idea: What if there were "jukeboxes" in music stores. Each could have a computer screen where you could pick a bunch of songs--any song, any artist--and have the computer cut the disc for you right there? You'd buy a token at the checkout and would walk out with your very own mixdisc!

That will never happen, said my father. First off, how popular would that really be? Yes, kids like making mixtapes, but it'd take a whole lot of them to make that a going proposition. Then there's the problem of royalties. The music companies would demand enough royalties to pay their expenses, and that on top of the CD Jukebox company's expenses would make the final product too expensive for anyone to want to buy.

So I gave up the dream, but a few years later, the iTunes store made history doing just what I had planned.

Why tell you of my missed shot at billions? Because Kali pointed me to this post of hers about an idea for greener and more accessible healthcare--a post whose last paragraph started with "This idea may be implausible but that is not my point."

It's actually not implausible at all. Go read the post--the idea is completely solid and has a lot of the same talking points that Al Gore makes: don't put people out of business by making the world greener, put people to business at the job of making the world greener.

In the Philippines, mass transit consists, in part, of "Jeepneys"--hop-on-hop-off diesel-fueled, brightly colored buses. Jeepneys create an unbelievable amount of heavy-particle pollution. So someone thought that it would be cool if there was a jeepney that was electric--no smog! Better yet, the thought continued, what if the electricity used to power this E-Jeepney was generated by creating biofuel from organic waste?

That'll never happen, I'm sure some people said, and yet... the E-Jeepneys were made. But no one will ever use them, others probably said, and yet it took very little time for them to be approved and used.

The US Veteran's Affairs Administration has come to the startlingly logical conclusion that it's often difficult for rural veterans to travel the hundreds of miles it might take to get to the doctor. So why not bring the doctor to them. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council advocates mobile clinics to reach urbanites who wouldn't normally see doctors. Would an electric mobile medical van (let's call it an EMMV for now) in every county be something these groups might think of getting behind?

And wouldn't making these EMMVs be killing an awful lot of very troublesome birds with one very efficient stone? There are jobs to be had--retrofitting the factories that once made RVs or whatnot, hiring back the people who used to work there to build these new vehicles, providing training for community clinic workers in healthcare, and hiring those clinic workers to provide care. There are environmental benefits--even if the vehicles aren't alternatively powered, they will still cut down on the number of miles traveled. Assume ten people needing healthcare in a ten-mile radius. If they each have to drive a hundred miles to get it, then by driving one van a hundred miles into their area, you've shaved 900 miles off the trip. And of course, people who can get regular healthcare are diagnosed and treated faster, which costs less, which brings it all back to the economic side of things.

The simple ideas people have can span every facet of life and reach into every corner of the world. The Solar Electric Light Fund in California thought it would be great if African farms out in far rural areas had solar electricity to pump water to irrigate their crops. Now, they just thought it would make pumping the water easier, because diesel gennies are expensive and dirty and so is the fuel they use. But that one small idea is making the air healthier (no more diesel generators running the water pumps), the economy healthier (no more paying for that diesel), and the people healthier (no more smog and more food). One little idea is currently packing one heck of a punch and benefiting every aspect of life in that little corner of rural Africa.

So never say "it'll never happen," "it's not plausible," "it's not feasible..." Instead, research the possibilities and if you can, give a little monetary push to those who do things you think can make a difference (even if you don't believe they'll really sell). If you have a great idea, tell the president. Write a letter to a hospital in your area, suggesting that mobile, affordable, green, socially-conscious healthcare is a good, politically expedient idea. Go to your local homeless clinic and figure out what you can do to help. Figure out if your idea indeed is plausible. People everyday are designing and building their own ideas of the future--how do you think I got the Mac I'm typing on right now?

The more people with real, green, responsible, plausible ideas that are actually implemented, the more this world of ours changes for the better. So don't keep a "crazy idea" to yourself. You may not lose out on millions, like I did with my CD Jukebox, but you might not get your one chance to save the world, either.

Solar Power, Part I: "I'll call you from the sun"

Ah, solar power! Now, here in the northern climes of the midwest, we don't have a lot of sunny days this time of year. But we've had a few recently, and it has me thinking about the amount of power that is being wasted every time I plug into a wall instead of into the sun. But it doesn't have to continue that way.

While it's an initially pricey investment, buying a personal solar charger is a great way to lighten the load on your local electrical grid. You can charge your smart phone via the sun and save a bundle over the life of the charger. If you have a smart phone, this particular grid-evasion is fantastic, since you can check your email and the web without ever plugging in your computer. I find it a little cumbersome to do email on my phone, but after having to do it for much of last week, I'm actually used to it and have started leaving my computer off in the mornings and just checking my email this way. Another tip on smart phones? Set your preferences to check mail manually instead of every ten minutes or half an hour. This stops you from using too much of the battery checking for email too often.

Then there's your iPod. Oh, I loves my iPod! I use it to make the commute just a little less boring, and using a solar charger to juice it up, instead of plugging it in overnight or charging it through your computer, is a great way to feel green and sustainable while jamming to your tunes!

Now, I have to admit that, owing to a number of issues, I haven't actually purchased a solar charger yet. Yes, I know, BAD GREENIE! Seriously, though, there are a number of factors to think about before you buy one:

• Where do you live?
  If you live in, say, Wisconsin, where there are a lot of days in the winter that don't get sun, you may want to rethink this idea--or be prepared for the fact that you will probably not get to go solar for more than a few days from October to March. If, on the other hand, you live in areas of the southwest, where they get 300-320 days of sun a year, you may be able to go grid-free on your handheld devices year-round.
• How patient are you?
  Many of the lovely small, stick it in your backpack charging units suffer from the lack of available charging surface and can take up to a day of full on sun to charge. Say, for instance, you're hiking in wooded mountains. Don't expect to hook the deployed solar charger to your pack, climb through the forest, and emerge at the top of the mountain with a full battery. If, however, you're setting up a base camp in a nice sunny area and have the time to leave it out and turn it toward the sun occasionally, you could be charged for the week in an afternoon.
• How much do you use your electronics?
  I personally have to recharge my cellphone once every three or four days and my iPod once a week. With that load, a small charger should be sufficient if you get the good sun. If, however, you spend most of your time texting and bopping to Shiny Toy Guns, you're likely to run out of sun juice before you want to.
• How much are you willing to pay?
  Big, serious question. There are tiny little recharging units out there like the simple Solio charger that retail for about $100 dollars, all the way up to the Brunton Solaris 52, which offers 12 watt power capable of running laptops off the sun in realtime, but weighs in at an impressive $1250! In the solar climate here, I'll be going for a lower-cost alternative.

There are a lot of companies out there selling portable solar panels, and I urge you really read up on them if you're going to buy one. I personally think they're a seriously smart idea, given that, as power loads increase and power generation remains the same in the municipal grids, summer is generally a time of brown outs--at least in parts of the United States--so starting your research now will save you time in the long run. And then there's the whole issue of knowing you've got the power to play your tunes when you're out hiking or biking or just playing on the beach with your children!

It's Tuesday! DO SOMETHING!

Yes, I'm actually starting a feature! A "segment," if you will. Every Tuesday (hopefully), I'll be posting a few ideas of things you can do to help the world. Some will be letter-writing campaigns or donation opportunities and some will be little things that you can do at home to try to step a bit more lightly.

Here's the list for this week:

• Call on the International Community to Help Protect the People of the Democratic Republic of Congo
  The situation in Congo is dire--send a message to the international community that the time to act is now. You need to sign up as a member of Amnesty International to send the letter, but AI is a wonderful source of information globally and well worth joining. The call to action has recipients named from the previous administration here in the US, but it will actually get to the proper people. (And don't worry, AI won't send you a million emails--or indeed, any at all if that's your wish.)
• Do Something Useful with Those Empty Bottles
  If you do have empty water bottles around (try not to, but if you do), there's a great way to reuse them that doesn't involve washing them and drinking out of them again (which may or may not cause more chemicals to leak out of them). Fill them with cold water and stick them in the back of your fridge. Air in a fridge rushes out when you open the door, and the warm air that replaces it has to be chilled all over again, using energy. Cold things, on the other hand, stay cold when you open the door (if you don't leave the door open all day). The more stuff in your fridge, the less air in your fridge, the less your fridge has to work.
• Help Improve Education through Small-Scale Donation
  Because of the lack of public school funding in the US, teachers often end up spending a distressing percentage of their incomes buying simple yet needed supplies for their classrooms. Donors Choose is a website designed to provide targeted funds to targeted classrooms. Teachers write up grant proposals and donors choose which program to give their money to. It's a fantastic way to give a gift to a friend, by the way. My best friend got a donation made in her name to a school in her area, which made it both very personal and very conscious. No gift wrapping, no fuss, no overhead. Just a teacher who now has the books she needed to help further her students' educations.

That's all for today! Have a good one--and do something!

Cleaning house--or office

So, we're moving offices at work. The entire top floor of the building is being redone, so my entire department is moving down a floor. A floor already occupied. Which means lots and lots of throwing things away and making space for things.

We already called a company to haul away our old, broken computers. I wish I could donate them to someone who could rehabilitate them, but alas, they are far too far gone. Now I am redesigning the basement to fit the other department here on the top floor, and that involves cleaning up the basement and reorganizing and generally tearing it apart to put it back together in a better way.

We're doing the same at home, where we're making more room for more furniture which is desperately needed for one more person. This, too, involves dumping things and donating things and cleaning and organizing.

I've so far filled six boxes with paper for recycling, and that's just in my office at work. I have no idea how much more I'll unearth as I clean out the rest of the department. At home, where we downsized radically before moving to our current home, there was less to get rid of, but there always is something.

I'd love to have a life where, once a day, I got rid of something. Not throwing garbage away, no, but one thing--a toy, a book, a small appliance I don't really use... I wonder how long it would take to get to the point where I had only what I needed.

I'm thinking, sadly, that that would be a very long time. But I guess that's what it takes to tear something apart to put it back together in a better way, huh?

The Culture of Planned Obsolescence

I really want a new computer.

I have it all picked out--a Mac laptop, which I will kit out with all the bells and whistles. It will be fantastic and I will probably name it Han Solo or something. There's only one problem.

I already have a computer.

It's a nice computer. It's about three or four years old--a PC, but we can't always have what we want--and blue. And it still works quite nicely. And every time I think, "I could give it away, though! Someone will want it--it works just fine!" I also think, "If it works just fine, why get rid of it at all?"

Which is, of course, the question. Yes, for the most part, computers are not designed to last very long. There's actually a logic that is applied to this by the computer makers: computer technology is growing at such a blinding rate that it doesn't make sense to build things that last ten years, because in ten years, that computer will be so outdated that the owner will have no use for it anyway.

Except that back in the day, I had an Apple IIe, and it lasted and lasted. Even after we got the enormity of GUI that was the Macintosh, I still used it and added on to it and used it some more. It was still functional the last time I tried it (which, granted, was about ten years ago).

Yes, my three to four year old computer is not as fast as the ones out now. Yes, there are definitely programs it won't run because it lacks the processor speed. But couldn't I just see if I could update the processor? Shouldn't I at least do that?

Or do I even need to? The great fallacy of marketing electronics these days is the assumption that we actually need all that they're selling us.

Take a 65" HDTV, for example. If you are putting such a television in a room where the couch will be less than seven feet away (an approximate optimum viewing distance), you're wasting money and likely buying a television that will hurt your eyes with every redraw.

Or a computer like mine. I do a small bit of video work--nothing earth-shattering or complex. I design, using Photoshop and InDesign; and obviously, I surf the internet and blog. I can do all of that with the machine I currently have. Will I be able to play Sims 3 on it? Possibly not. But that's not really a reason to dispose of the one I have for one I'll just--maybe--use more.

This planned obsolescence also extends to clothing. I remember wearing my brother's sweaters sometimes when I was a kid. He was four-and-a-half years older than me and my sister had worn these sweaters in between. They lasted an awfully long time. I also remember being able to wear a pair of socks that lasted at least a year before a child's natural energy and foot use wore them out.

Now it's rare for me to have a set of trouser socks that lasts more than a month before my toes are sticking out. I still wear the holey ones sometimes--but that's only because I'm really, really cheap when it comes to buying clothing. Seriously, I have t-shirts and sweaters that are more than a decade old and are still worn pretty frequently.

Why I don't just darn the damn socks and get the annoyance factor over with, I don't know. It's like a rip in a hem on your slacks--just sew the stupid thing back on, because it only takes a few minutes and then you haven't wasted $50 on a ruined pair of slacks.

But while slacks are expensive, socks are cheap. Really cheap. You can get a pair of trouser socks for $5. So why bother darning them when it's cheap and easy to get a new pair? Not to mention that you look and sound like a total freak for even suggesting that people get out their sewing kits (and how many of you really even have one?) and darn their socks. What, are you stuck in the depression?

So, rather than bother to spend the time darning, I buy a new pair of socks. And another. And another. And what happens to the old ones? Well you can't give them away to Goodwill, can you? I mean, they're torn!

And thus, planned obsolescence grinds on.

Or maybe it doesn't. Maybe I keep my computer until it doesn't work at all, and I darn those socks no matter how silly it makes me sound or look. And then I've saved all the money I would have spent on both computer and socks and that's suddenly looking like not such a bad idea in this economy.

And maybe next time I buy socks, I think about finding a better brand of sock in the first place, because darning these things every month is kind of a pain in the butt.

"I live on that high horse"

So, after I wrote my article on e-waste, I was helping one of my co-workers with a problem on her machine. Our computers here are pretty old, and I spend a great deal of my time trying to keep them all going. She and I were lamenting that computers today are just not designed to last. It's a functional attempt (conscious or not) to create a spend-and-toss culture. (More on that later.)

"Not to get on my high horse," she began, to which I immediately returned, "I live on that high horse."

And really, is that the problem? What I mean to say is that there are an awful lot of us "green types" out here saying things that, really, the people reading us have already heard. And already agree with--or they've already stopped reading our writing because they don't agree with us. So, am I just sitting up here on my high horse and not getting down on the ground and working through the mud? Is that useful?--to have a person standing up there and saying "this is what everyone should do"?

Colin Beavan decided to see what one man could do if he got off his high horse and put his money where his mouth was. He became No Impact Man. Two women started thinking about what it would take to meet Monbiot's requirement of 94% resource use reduction and tried to see if they could do it. They started a movement called Riot for Austerity.

I've mentioned them before. I've also mentioned that I'm very much not them.

Am I, however, a person who has the strength of my conviction to get off my high horse and do something? Increasingly, yes. And also really, really no. I don't throw away things I could recycle, mostly, and yet I am known by name and drink at the local Starbuck's. I use reusable containers to take food to work, even going so far as to bring cutlery, but I go out to eat more often than I should and while I cringe at the plastic wrap and plastic bag and styrofoam, I still eat the food. I send off e-letters to my government officials about various things, but you'd have to hold a gun to my head to get me to go to a school board meeting and open my mouth.

I wish my high horse was a little shorter. I wish I had the courage of conviction to walk all the way to work (it's only three miles, which, really, not as far as all us modern people seem to think it is) or to eat only local food or to never buy something new if I can find it used.

I know, however, that I am not that super. I'm not No Impact Man. I am, however, a lot more like the rest of the world than I am different.

Colin had a post recently about prioritizing resource use to improve lives and it's not so much the article itself that interests me, as the comments. If you read through them all (and there are quite a few), you notice a conversation that goes on about the fact that we (the greenies) are not going to convince "other people--normal people" to give up their TVs and DVDs and iPods and Starbuck's and whatnot. In fact, we're just preaching to the choir and using only the choir to obtain data on what people really need to be happy.

It's a fair point. I have friends who live for their special television shows--hell, there are shows I absolutely will not miss myself; shows I must immediately jump on the internet to discuss the second the credits roll. I am not the only person I know who needs--needs--Starbuck's in the morning. Starbuck's. No substitutions.

The point of trying to change the world is that you need to change it in such a way that most of the people more or less don't hate it. For instance, television. It's never going away--at least not until we find an even cooler way of telling those stories. So instead of saying "oh my God, TV is wrong--it's a horrible resource-wasting beast!" (unless of course, you think that), maybe saying "okay, so, we have TV. Maybe we could find a better way of powering it? One that didn't send miles and miles coal trains to the power plant to make tons and tons of CO2."

I was going to follow that example with "Or fast food giants..." but I actually think fast food giants are slowly killing a great swath of the population and a good bit of the planet right along with them, so I don't really have much of an argument. Also, given that I'm one of the people being slowly killed (though much more slowly than I used to be), perhaps I'm not the best one to address that problem.

So instead I'm going to ask a similar question to Colin's: If there is something resource-using that you can't live without, how could it be made just a little bit less resource-using?

I'll go first. I really, really, really love watching television. However, perhaps I could put the television on its own separate plug so that I could keep the DVD and VCR and such unplugged and non-resource-using the vast majority of the time. And of course, I could unplug the TV before I go to bed at night and before I leave for work in the morning.

And maybe I could write that four hundredth letter to my local electric company to see if they can finally offer me a little bit of clean energy?

EXTRA EXTRA: Healthcare in the United States

I don't usually blog twice in one day, but Kali, over at Mother Earth Health, had an article that had math. You know me--I like math. Numbers are good.

Unless, of course, they're not. For instance, Kali came up with a figure from the Institute of Medicine saying that 60 people every day die in the US from lack of healthcare. That's a pretty horrifying number, in fact.

President Obama wants to give Americans universal healthcare by the end of his first (and hopefully not last) term. Which is a great idea, but how exactly would that happen? Well, Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital and a writer on healthcare issues, took a look at some other countries and how they got universal healthcare. According to his thought processes, two good ideas would be mandating private insurance for all, with heavy subsidies for the poor, or expanding the VA medical system to include non-veterans.

While they both sound like viable plans, there are problems with privatized healthcare and the VA Health Administration has had a heck of a lot of horror stories told about it, though it looks like things are looking up at the VA.

What can we do?

Learn as much as you can. I've given this link before, but I'll give it again: www.DividedWeFail.org. It's the AARP website for action on healthcare issues, and it's got a lot of great information. Also, Universal Health Care Action Network is a great resource and a fine place to start if you want to get involved.

And I really hope we all want to get involved.

Recycling made very difficult

Note: I started this blog entry yesterday at lunch time. Why was I blogging at work? Because I currently have no phone or internet at home. While this is very disconcerting to a person who spends most of the time online, it's actually been rather liberating. I haven't even turned on the powerstrip that powers my computer since Wednesday afternoon. Kinda nice, really. But I missed yesterday and I'm sorry about that. If I have time, I may blog up a couple of articles for over the weekend before I leave here today. If not, you'll know why the silence.

So, six or seven years ago, I started hearing about "E-waste." It was this great catch phrase that encompassed everything from the computer that became obsolete ten minutes after you bought it to the Atari that finally gave up the ghost after almost 20 years.

The thing is, those electronics are dangerous. We've been throwing out cathode ray televisions and satellite phones for half a century--who knew?

Well, apparently, we all should have. And in honor of the fact that my internet and phone are both out at home and I'm seriously questioning why exactly I need those things at all, I figured today was the day to talk e-waste, and how very annoying it can be to properly dispose of.

Say you're burning a back up of your personal information off onto DVD. You've been doing this every six months, just like the pundits say, but the problem is, once you've got this backup, the backup from six months ago isn't relevant any more.

Then there's that amazing Flock of Seagulls CD that you've had since there were CDs. Unfortunately, your three-year-old doesn't have the best taste in music and your dog--to whom he fed the CD--does. Plastic shards don't really play that well in today's new-fangled boomboxes.

There's the remote control that doesn't really control anything anymore; the personal digital assistant that doesn't assist; the television that almost but doesn't quite show you a readable picture. Now, most of us know somewhere where we can recycle cans and bottles, but do we know where to dump all the rest of this stuff?

The answer is not in the garbage, but in a complex dance to send it all away to be disposed of responsibly. Unfortunately, this can be a pain.

If you don't live in a big city (or a progressive town), chances are your local municipality isn't going to help you out here. Sure, L.A. county has its weekly recycling drop-offs, Chicago has household chemical and electronic recycling locations, and New York City has NYC WasteLe$$, but if you live in the middle of Iowa or South Dakota, you're likely to have a problem.

Luckily, for a fee, of course, you can have somebody take care of it. When we were planning to move inland from the East Coast, we found we had an enormous amount of e-waste. We'd never gotten rid of it because we were just too lazy to figure out how to do it, but I was damned if we were going to pay somebody to haul my nonfunctional ten year old Zaurus and the three dead laptops and every other dead plastic thing we had halfway across the country to our new home, where it would still sit in uselessness.

Thus did I find GreenDisk. GreenDisk is a company out of St. Louis that has made an art of making sure you don't throw your electronics away. If you have CRT monitors and tower computers and such, you will need to contact them to find out how much it will cost to get them to take your stuff, but if all you have are remote controls and videotapes and CDs and PDAs and even laptops, you can get them to send you one of their TechnoTrash cans. The small one holds 35 pounds of stuff and the large one holds 70, and you basically pack everything in there and send it back to them via FedEx. The price of the shipping is included in the price of the trash can.

And yes, it is a little expensive, but I've found that I actually find it very freeing to fill a can full of junk and know that that junk isn't ending up in a landfill. If I have to pay for the privilege, so be it.

Another thing I did was to get my boss to sign on to buy TechnoTrash cans for the office here. It's great! The can is in the office kitchen, next to the other recycling bins, and people can just dump their old CDs and such in there. Once it's full, it's my job to pack it up and send it back to GreenDisk.

Unfortunately, GreenDisk doesn't take batteries--I mean, they will if it's the battery that came with the computer or whatnot, but not, like a whole box full of AAA standards. Batteries are really quite dangerous if left in landfills to degrade. They poison groundwater and scavenging animals and... yeah. They're bad.

Luckily, while researching for this article, I found a place like GreenDisk, but one that will take those batteries off your hands! Battery Solutions offers a residential solution called iRecycle (someday I'm going to write a blog entry about the disturbing trend of putting "i" in front of everything). iRecycle is a box that Battery Solutions sends you. Fill it up with AAAs, AAs, cellphone batteries, cellphones themselves... There's a nice list on their site. Then just slap the label they gave you on the box, call FedEx or drop the box off at a FedEx location, and you're golden. Or green.

Now, some people may be thinking about the environmental sustainability of having this stuff shipped all across the country. I actually asked the guys at GreenDisk about that once, and the company has done research into how many miles their e-waste travels. Yes, sometimes it's a considerable number, but the thing I found out was that they use FedEx and not the US Mail because FedEx actually sets up their deliveries to use the smallest number of travel miles per package. So, maybe not as green as not buying and disposing of electronic stuff at all, but greener than the mail. And definitely greener than throwing it all in the garbage.

I'd urge everyone to Google around their local area and find out where you can dispose of things. Many groceries, like Whole Foods and even some Safeways and Krogers, will take a lot of recycling, and a few might have battery boxes or at least battery drop-off days. Some science museums and nature museums have now started programs for recycling toxics, simply as another service and educational opportunity.

Look around you. Local is always better if you know it's getting disposed of properly. If your local municipality doesn't recycle, ask them why not? If they have curbside recycling projects for home disposal, make sure they're actually doing what they say they are. Chicago's BlueBag program served as a major embarrassment to the city before being shut down.

It's a pain, yes. I know--I have a drawer full of batteries and a box full of old videotapes that are somehow, someday, actually going to make it into a recycling stream when I find the time--but it's not as much of a pain as garbage taking over the planet. I'm exaggerating, of course, but seriously, a lot of this stuff can be recycled, and by using these recycling companies, you're putting money into the green side of the economy. The more money we have in the green economy, the more people will want to invest there, and the stronger and cheaper and more prevalent it will become.

See what I'm saying?

Now I have to go pack up the latest box for GreenDisk. And maybe get off my butt and go to the local battery recycling drop off this weekend. A greenie's work is never done...

Recycling made easier?

This story on recycling #5 plastic crossed my digital desk today, and it got me thinking about the fact that I hate eating yogurt out of plastic.

Really. I get tubs of organic yogurt and I eat them and then I have this stupid plastic "can" to throw away or hoard until I can get up the gumption to go to the recycling center. It's annoying.

This weekend, we have another farmer's market, and there's a wonderful dairy in Wisconsin that attends. I bought some yogurt from them at the last farmer's market, and it was wonderful. It was also in a glass bottle. For which I paid a deposit which I will get back when I go there this weekend.

OR... I could instead buy a jug of skim milk (they make their yogurt with full fat milk which is very rich for me) and make my own yogurt. I have a lovely stainless steel thermos just begging for a chance to culture some milk.

And then, instead of having a plastic jug of milk and a plastic can of yogurt, I can have one glass bottle and a stainless steel thermos. And the bottle can just go back to the dairy to be traded for another--this one full of milk!

Yes. That sounds like a plan to me! I'll let you know how the yogurt-making goes. I haven't done it in a very long time, so I'll probably flub it the first time!

Why is this Mr. Capitalist's job?

Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the federal reserve said he was shocked his ideas led to the current economic crisis and said "I still do not understand exactly how it happened."
     Well, let me see if I can give it a shot: Banks bundled mortgages that had been given to people that wouldn't even qualify for jury duty and then sold those, along with credit default swaps which are basically insurance the seller provides to the buyer in case the entity loses value. However, unlike regular insurance, these swaps weren't regulated so they failed to meet any standards of responsible business. Then, when everything collapsed, it spread like an infection, because when people are making money, they don't ask how, they just say "yay!"
     But again, you're the expert.
     --Seth Meyers, Saturday Night Live, Weekend Update, 10/25/2008

The global economy is in the tank. Many countries are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and economic depression. Banks are failing left and right. And it's up to us to save it all. That's right, not Americans, my friends, but every single capitalist on this planet.

At least that's what the politicians and many of the pundits seem to be telling us. And because we're trying not to spend, us frugal people are hurting the economy. On the other hand, experts in personal economic security are telling us to save, save, save!

What can you do? Are you hurting the environment by spending tons and tons on things that use up resources--things you don't need and really probably can't afford anyway? Are you hurting the economy by minimizing resource use and not spending what little money your hard work makes you? Why do you have to fix this, and is spending all your money really the way to do it?

Mr. Capitalist has a hard time not spending money. Back in the 80s, when he was young, he got into all kinds of problems with credit card debt and ended up having to go to a credit counselor to get back in the black. Granted, he had to work two jobs all through the 90s to pay off those credit cards, but then he had a nice clean balance sheet to buy a house with his new wife.

When they went to buy that house, of course, the bank preapproved them for a mortgage that was very, very expensive--almost all they could afford at the time. Then, they had a baby and Mrs. Capitalist's father wasn't doing so well and needed a lot of financial help and it all added up. Luckily, the house had an equity line of credit, so Mr. Capitalist didn't worry too much.

Because, you see, he'd been told that we're all supposed to get mortgages we can barely afford and spend more than we have because we're supposed to buy things--that's capitalism. We need to make sure the family has TONS of Christmas presents (whether we celebrate Christmas or not), and then there's always Valentine's Day and Mother's Day and Father's Day and Grandparents' Day--the buying never stops because it's good for the economy!

Except...

Except that now Mr. Capitalist has a car loan and a mortgage and a home equity line of credit and a dozen credit cards and the minimum payments all add up to $5000 a month, but he only makes $4000 a month after taxes, and he never had much of a nestegg to begin with because he was spending like he should be. So suddenly the car is being repossessed and the house is being foreclosed on and the credit cards are in default and three or more banks are carrying "bad debt" because Mr. Capitalist was doing what he was told to do. He was stimulating the economy.

Not to mention the fact that, with his credit ruined he can barely get approved for a rental. His job gets downsized because he works for a company that does business with one of the banks that's carrying Mr. Capitalist's bad debt--you see, the company can't get a loan to cover its expenses while waiting to be paid by clients who can't get loans to cover their expenses because the bank is trying to hold on to what it has while it drowns under bad debt. So Mr. Capitalist goes to the unemployment line and gets his unemployment check--a check that is essentially paying back the loan he and his employer made to the government by paying taxes.

But of course, that money the government got on that loan has already been spent a hundred thousand times over, so they take out another loan to pay Mr. Capitalist, who can't get enough to pay his bills and provide for himself and his family.

This is an exaggerated thumbnail, of course, and doesn't take into account the fact that, at least in the US, the economy has also been severely damaged by the lack of affordable health insurance, which bankrupts hundreds of thousands of people because they either can't get it or have inadequate amounts of it.

It also doesn't take into account the greedy and immoral practices of banks and mortgage companies and futures traders, a great number of whom made up numbers as they went along to try to make the bottom line look good. And then there's the fact that society keeps touting the image of the affluent American, and the government has, until recently, kept trying to convince us that everything will be just fine if we can spend our way out of this.

So, fine. It's not really Mr. Capitalist's fault that the economy is crashing. It's not just because he spent more than he had--and if the economy continues to languish, it's not because he's now saving most of what he makes. But what do we do now? What can each of us do to help get things back on track? I'm not an economist by any means, but for me personally, the following is a good start:

• Spending: still a good idea--but wisely. Don't go into debt to stimulate the economy. Go check out Suze Orman for good tips on staying on budget.
• Saving: still a good idea, too--and remember, as that Fox article I quoted earlier says, paying down debt is saving. (I'm so not advocating listening to Fox News as a general rule, but in this, they're right. Ask Suze Orman; she'll tell you the same thing.) CNN's Money (particularly Money 101) has some good info on smart debt reduction.
• Giving: absolutely crucial. It's crucial for the survival of the idea of society, if not exactly the bottom line. If this world economy comes out the other side of this a stronger one, but leaves five billion people in the dust and ruins? That's not strength. And it's certainly not right. I've listed sites for donations before, but think of calling your local shelter and seeing what they need. There are a frightening number of people in need right now and any little bit helps.
• Learning: takes some time, but is so worth it. Read the newspapers, subscribe to political and economic blogs, check out your government websites (US Executive Branch, US House, US Senate, US Supreme Court) and read up on the bills being debated and the rulings coming down from your courts.
• Doing: hard, but necessary. Write a letter to your congressperson asking him or her to support real solutions for healthcare, call your senator about the current state of scientific funding.
• Thinking: is an often daunting prospect for some reason. There's a big list of things here, and it's hard to figure out what to do when and how. Think about three things every time you make a decision about your money: Am I helping the planet? Am I helping other people? Am I helping my soul?

We can hope all we want, but we have to work to make things happen.

Too Tired Not To Waste

I'm home sick today. Some sort of stomach bug jumped up and bit me this weekend, and I'm feeling not so great. I've been sleeping most of the day, in between answering emails from work and flipping channels and eating canned meals.

I find that funny, really. Maybe not funny ha-ha, but at least funny strange. See, back in The Day (you remember The Day, don't you? That'd be that time before my grandparents, when people had no running water and walked to school in three feet of snow, uphill both ways, with boxes on their feet so they wouldn't ruin their only shoes?) people had family or neighbors to take care of them when they were sick. Or they didn't, and they had to take care of themselves or just hope they made it through to the better side of whatever virus they had.

I do have family living right here in my own house, but said family has to work, because there are bills to pay. Back in The Day, there were bills to pay, too--or rather, work that needed to be done if the family could ever hope to eat that day. So probably, I'm no better or worse off for having to be alone in the house by myself today.

I am, however, a heck of a lot more wasteful than they probably were. I laid down on the couch, turned on the TV, took a couple of Tylenol and a Benedryl and promptly fell asleep, meaning that the electricity being used by the TV was just being wasted on my cat, who doesn't like cooking shows anyway.

And of course, now I am awake, I've eaten leftover pizza (commercial-bought) and a can of lemonade ("lemon" ade), creating just a little more waste. Because, you see, I'm too tired not to waste resources.

But really, would I sleep less deeply if the TV were off? Would it have killed me to defrost one of the mini-shepherd's pies I have in ceramic dishes in the freezer? Couldn't I fall asleep reading a book and get the same restfullness that the Benedryl and Tylenol and Food Network got me?

I'm not advocating that we all lie about in agony when we're sick (I kind of hate agony, really), but it's times like this (and that may be the fever talking) when I wonder if maybe we should, as a world, be less apt to take the easy way out and say we're too tired to do something.

I think the whole problem is the word "convenience." I mean, how convenient is it really, if it just hastens the destruction of the current ecosystem? Makes that microwave dinner seem a whole lot more menacing, doesn't it?

Again, might be the fever--but I'm still going to think about it the next time I get sick. Right now, I'm going to turn off the TV and computer and read Slow Food until I fall asleep again.

Full Disclosure! Unless I think that's a bad idea.

Here's a little political/legal/human rights news to go with your fair trade Sunday morning coffee.

So, Prop 8, as you know, was a proposition brought before the Californian public in 2008 to add an amendment to the state constitution to read "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." No more gay marriage.

The public went to the polls, they voted as is both their right and their responsibility, and a slim majority of them chose to vote yes and restrict legal marriage in the state to that between a man and a woman. This sucks, is unfair to a minority in our country, and is, unfortunately, now law. California is not the first state to do this, and I am tragically sure it will not be the last.

However, California's significant and very vocal gay population and its supporters have chosen to exercise their constitutional right to take part in boycotts, pickets, and protests against companies and societies who donated to the Yes on Prop 8 campaigns. The information about who gave money to those campaigns (and to the No on 8 campaigns for that matter) are a matter of public record under the California state campaign-finance disclosure act.

Which, you can imagine, has made gay marriage opponents a little bit nervous.

So the Prop 8 guys called in their lawyers to protest the disclosure law, stating that if donors were to be publicly named, they would be subject to "harassment" from gay rights groups.

(In case you're wondering? Yes, you are legally allowed to picket, boycott, and peacefully assemble against any person or entity in the United States of America. And in California, too.)

This past week, I was pleased to hear that the district judge hearing the case in Sacramento dismissed it, commenting that donors' requests for anonymity should not trump California's authority to require "full and fair disclosure of everyone who's involved in these political campaigns." [HRC article and San Francisco Chronicle article]

I'm amused by this ruling because, as the HRC article states, it is kind of funny that the Prop 8 proponents (P8Ps?) are crying foul because they're being "harassed" by the very people whose rights they've just helped to take away.

And this, my friends, is why I both love and hate democracy. I love that we all have a chance to have our say (let's pretend that there really is fair access to voting in this country for a moment), but I hate that that sometimes means there will be more people who disagree with my vote than agree.

I now return you to your Super Bowl Sunday.