Michael Pollan's Open Letter to the Next President of the US

From the NY Times

It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food.

I urge you to read it. Everyone should know about this.

Thank you Michael Pollan. It needed to be said!

Hard Economic Times a Good Thing?

With all the panic going on surrounding the current state of the world economy, I just have to throw this idea out there. Maybe the changes we'll be looking at will be good. It'll be good for Americans to re-examine our outrageously wasteful way of life and start living a bit more sustainably. Learning some restraint instead of just buying things on a whim will not only be character building, but also helpful to reduce the amount of waste we produce as a society.

Will it hurt? Yeah, probably some people will have a very rough time learning to live differently. Especially those of us who might eat out many times a week or who think being frugal means buying whatever you want as long as it's on sale. My hope is, however, that we'll come out of this experience stronger than we went in.

Weaning Off Paper Towels

About 6 months ago I began weaning our family off of paper towels. My problem was thus:

1. Paper towels are easy - I needed something easy
2. Paper towels don't get gross over time, because you throw them away immediately - I needed something I could cycle through quickly
3. Paper towels are not hard to acquire - I needed something easy to acquire

Soooooooo... instead of going the "normal" washcloth route, I instead chose to go with something that was free, easily available, in which I had no feeling of investment, and was small. I chose ... [insert drum roll here]... old t-shirts. Oh, wait, I said small, didn't I. Well, here's what I did. I took said old t-shirts and cut them up into 6 inch squares (give or take). I then stuck them in a basket on my counter where they'd be easily accessible and obvious. I use them as I would use paper towels - generally one or two wipes and then into the basket. The difference is that the basket that these go into is a laundry basket instead of a garbage. Then when I run out (or get close) I run the wash. No biggie since we've switched to cloth napkins and were frequently washing bibs and washcloths from the kids and dish towels anyway. There you have it. My perfect solution to the gross washcloth *ahem* paper towel problem.

An Open Letter To The US Congress and the Bush Administration

Dear Everyone,

I'm writing to you because I'm severely disappointed with the current plans to save the polar bears. It looks to me like an attempt to placate people by putting the polar bears on the endangered species list, however very little is actually being DONE to help them.

The problem, as I see it, is that the bears are being severely affected by melting of the sea ice, as brought on by global warming. Merely adding the bears to the endangered species list is not going to change much, if that is the case. In fact, it seems that they way to protect their habitat needs to STRONGLY focus on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

Perhaps enacting ways to tax people and businesses that have higher emissions would be a good way to encourage people to cut back. For instance, your average SUV emits far more greenhouse gases than a small car. Thus, perhaps SUV owners should be taxed on the extra emissions. For that matter, there are plenty of businesses that, I'm sure, could cut back emissions if properly encouraged. I've heard wal-mart has recently devised a way to DOUBLE the gas efficiency of their trucking fleet. Imagine if all trucking fleets were expected to do the same, and soon! Unfortunately, the rising gas prices do not seem to be enough, but the taxes on SUVs (or businesses or whatever) could then go to enhance our public transit within the country, which is abysmal at best for the vast majority of the US.

As I'm sure you know, things are going to have to change in our country if we have any hope of curbing a global crisis, of which the polar bears are only the "tip of the iceberg".

Sincerely,


Your Friends at Freaktopia

To Ecovillage or Not To Ecovillage...

There's a new ecovillage going in just outside of Ithaca, NY. My friend is moving there (her house just started going up not too long ago!). I am feeling like I really would like to do that too. It's funny, when she first told me about it, I got all excited, but then decided it wouldn't be for me. I didn't want the extra imposition of rules and working on projects that may or may not have anything to do with me, and the possible tedium of meetings.

Well, for some reason, my mind has completely changed in the last week. I'm feeling very drawn toward the community inherent in the ecovillage. Honestly, there's no way to get that without immense work, especially this day and age. Participating in an occasional meeting or helping out with the area doesn't seem so bad, anymore. Yes, there may be extra rules and time impositions, but I get a hand in making them. It's cooperative agreements, not imposed sentences. We all will get to reap the benefits.

Not only that, but since we were strongly considering moving to Ithaca (and possibly building an eco-friendly house), anyway, this way we'll have a built-in support community when we get there. There are other kids for my kids to play with, some will be home-schoolers which may be helpful for my children who are likely to be home-schooled. If my husband has to travel on business or while he's at work, I won't be alone, there will be other people around. Our neighbors may well share many of our values (obviously at *least* an interest in community and sustainable living), which isn't necessarily easy to find in this day and age.

The question now becomes is this as good as we think it is? And if it is, can we really afford to do it?

Gentle Discipline Thoughts...

This weekend I had an argument with my mom and her husband about spanking. Their point was that kids need to learn it's a tough world out there. I pointed out that they'll learn that on their own, and don't need me hitting them to learn that and that I'd prefer that home was at least a *bit* of an oaisis where they could escape from the "cruel world". The conversation really got me thinking.

I strongly believe that peace starts at home, and to raise peaceful people we need to treat them peacefully. Does that mean I let my kids do whatever they want? No, of course it doesn't. What it *does* mean is that I'm more likely to try multiple methods (sometimes many!) to change the specific behavior, but really is behavior what it's all about? The view that we're just here to modify our children's behaviors to get them to do what we want sounds manipulative and simplistic, but is prevalent in our society. If our entire relationship with our children is one of control and the occasional game/tickle/whatever then once we're supposed to be moving out of the control phase (i.e. teens and twenties) what kind of relationship are we left with? I've seen this with my parents and I've seen it with my husband's parents. With his parents, we barely talk anymore, with mine, we had to completely reinvent the relationship once I got over the bad relationship we had. I think it made the teen years more rocky than it needed to be.

Ideally, any relationship is built on respect, trust and mutual appreciation, right? I know that's what I expect out of my marriage, and of my friendships. I don't think it's so strange to expect the same mutual respect, trust and appreciation when dealing with our kids. Can our kids really trust us or appreciate us if the feeling is that we only want to control them and that we don't trust them to make decisions for themselves? I know I don't trust those that I feel are only trying to manipulate me, no matter how good their intentions.

My point here is MUTUAL respect, though. You can't get respect if you don't give it. Spanking is just not respectful, but neither is shaming or belittling or ignoring... all of which are extremely common parenting tactics. I know if someone ignores me, I do not feel respected, so I wouldn't ever do it to my child. I mean, really, there's a reason they're feeling the way they're feeling, they just show it in a different way. My job, then, as a parent is to learn the language of the tantrum and figure out how best to respect my child's needs while accomplishing the task at hand. In dangerous situations this could present as physically dragging my screaming child out of the road. In less dangerous situations it could include questioning the importance of the task at hand (do we really need to do this my way or can we do it slightly differently or later to accommodate my child) or even sympathizing with the child's feelings ("I know you don't want to do this, you don't like it, but it's something we have to do").

The problem with the "us" vs. "them" parenting view is that it doesn't foster respect, trust, or appreciation in our children (or ourselves!). Spanking may change behaviors, but the kind of "respect" I'm looking for isn't fear based. Fear based respect, will, in the long run, only teach people to avoid getting caught. This is useless when you're trying to teach a child how to exist in the world.

All this was to say (basically), that parenting is a relationship, and thus how we behave toward our children is *at least* as important as how they behave, but probably waaaaaay more important because they're also learning how to act based on our behaviors.

Love is not equal to $$ spent

Being that it's the Christmas/giving season, I've been doing a lot of thinking about our current way of gifting. Consumerism has taken over the season and left us with less joy and less in our wallets. Why is this? Since when has the amount we spend on someone equal the amount we love them? That's how the current state of gifting looks to me, anyway.

Businesses focus on this idea, too. If you notice the advertisements on tv this time of year, they all seem to point out that if you don't buy [insert name of obscenely expensive item] for the ones you love, you clearly don't love them enough. This is painfully obvious in jewelry commercials... you know "let her know you love her by buying her [thousands of dollars worth of jewelry]." Would I feel more loved if I received said item, or would I feel more loved if my husband gave me something a bit more personal - that is, something that required a bit more thought and quite likely less money? I believe I'd feel better with a spontaneous (or at least surprise) event than having another rock on my finger. If it truly is the thought that counts, what happened to gifts that require thought over money?

*sigh* This idea has really been haunting me the past few Christmases.