What We Need Is Here

No Impact Man - and grand gestures in general

I got my copy of No Impact Man in the mail yesterday - a gift from my Anna who got it signed for me for my birthday.I have been following writer Colin Beavan since he started his blog - which led to the book and then to a movie - and have enjoyed it a lot. Beavan's quest, to have no negative environmental impact for a year, has faced a lot of criticism from mainstream and even not-so- mainstream media since he began it. Since his book came out - with quite a bit of fanfare - some of my most "environmental" friends have regarded it cynically.

First off, he is a writer by trade, looking for something to write about at a profit - not unlike Henry Thoreau tried at Walden as this article in the New Yorker points out. Second, though his blog-writing didn't seem strident to me (I'm just starting the book), he clearly believes and states strongly that our personal lifestyles choices make a difference. Besides the fact that systemic change has to happen along with the personal (although this piece in Orion implies that it should happen instead of), I think the part of what turns us off is guilt. We don't like that feeling, and folks like Beavan can create it by insisting that our grandchildren's lives depend on us changing our lifestyles. Third, he's an extremist, a "hot dog" as my father would say, pulling a "stunt," doing the impossible for a limited time and boasting about it. No one likes these types, although I suspect we may envy them a little.

But I can't help it; I like him. Yes, his experiment is full of inconsistencies: he eschews electricity, yet plugs in his laptop elsewhere; he turns off his heat, but doesn't go cold because his home is heated adequately by surrounding apartments, his wife apparently smuggled in ice cubes from the neighbor's... But in his effort to reach his no impact goal, he (and his family) ate only regional foods, climbed countless flights of stairs, navigated the big city without taxi, bus, or subway, used cloth diapers, didn't use disposable anything. They didn't use toilet paper for Pete's sake! Does this kind of extremism turn most people off - setting him aside as a lunatic or a saint? Or can it wake us up to possibilities in our own lives?

For me, it's the latter; and I hope it is for others too. I think there's a place for all kinds of environmental work. A good critique of Beavan's year was that he went it alone, didn't organize his fellow apartment dwellers to lower the excessive and wasteful over-heating of their building, or organize people to lobby their members of congress. Organizing is absolutely necessary to make any change at all in a status quo that benefits the rich and powerful, and I support those people doing it. But how to get more people - a critical mass - on board and organized when so many are too busy with their own personal status quos to care? I like to think people like Colin Beavan reach some of those people and, by their extreme stance, pull people a little more toward understanding the gravity of the situation and the possibilities.
 

Poetry, love, or God... substitute as seems fit

From Adrienne Rich's What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics:

Poetry will not fly across the sea, against the storms, to any "new world," any "promised land," and then fold its wings and sing. Poetry is not a resting on the given, but a questing toward what might otherwise be. It will always pick a quarrel with the found place, the refuge, the sanctuary, the revolution that is losing momentum. Even though the poet, human being with many anxious fears, might want just to rest, acclimate, adjust, bevome naturalized, learn to write in a new landscape, a new language. Poetry will go on harassing the poet until, and unless it is driven away.

AYear in Bread

One of our favorite Cafe recipes is featured on A Year in Bread today! It's a great site for both aspiring and experienced bakers - with detailed instructions, handy tips, and great recipes. Check it out!

I did make a little mistake in the bread recipe. Those of you who have made bread with us during the last few years know we now get bulk Red Star yeast at Wards instead of the little brown jars of quick-rise yeast. Works great!

Peanut Noodles - a great main dish for your local veggie sides

This recipe only has one local ingredient in it (the chives), and that one is optional. But it's such a great "main dish" to serve with whatever local vegetables you have on hand.  The other night when dinner guests kept multiplying it was a quick way to expand the menu, and I've used it for that purpose many times before. I usually have the ingredients on hand, and it only takes the time required to boil a pound of pasta. This may be our most requested recipe. It's good. Hot or cold.

Peanut Noodles
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup warm water
1/4 cup soy sauce or tamari
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons sugar or honey
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoons chili oil (if you don't have this, you can throw a few red pepper flakes in)
2 cloves minced garlic
2 teaspoons sesame oil (this is essential; and a tiny bottle will last a LONG time)
Some minced chives to sprinkle on top

16 oz. pasta

Whisk together or spin in a blender all of the ingredients while the pasta boils. Pour over the pasta. Sprinkle with chives (optional, but it really makes it look pretty). Voila!

Adolescents

They just don't stay little for long... Our chickens are now both laying regularly - 10 to 12 eggs per week between the two of them. We just started buying some new feed so aren't sure yet exactly how much these eggs are costing us; we should be able to add it up soon. on. We have been purchasing large bags of traditional pellets and crumbles from our beloved Gainesville Feed and Seed.   But now Earth Pets is selling a locally-made organic mixture that we had to try. Earth Pets now has a second location within bike-riding distance from our house - an irresistible combination.

It's been a great experience raising these chicks from babies and we're really enjoying using their pretty eggs. Besides delicious quiche, we've been deviling them and adding them to pancakes and scones.

Now that they're laying, we're going to experiment with letting Henrietta and Charlotte roam around the backyard (hopefully only the backyard) soon. I love the deep yellow-yolked eggs free-roaming chickens lay thanks to all the extra back-yard greens (well, flowers and fern mostly) they eat.

Mending the world

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. - E.B. White

In Jewish tradition, these are the Days of Awe - the span of ten days between Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the creation of the world, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It's a time to examine one's life and ways before your fate is sealed.  Sharon Astyk writes just beautifully on this tradition in the context of our environmental crisis in a recent post where she describes how and where she finds hope.

Reading it, I was reminded of another Jewish woman who inspired me a couple years ago with her description of these high holy days. Sharon Brous, a rabbi, was interviewed by Krista Tippett on how she brings this ancient tradition to bear meaning to her young congregation:

This is a moment when we celebrate the possibility of transformation, the possibility that every single one of us can be re-created . . . [a time] in which we identify that we have a real purpose and meaning in the world and that we can redirect our lives so that we're actually responsively going after those priorities. . . We actually have the capacity to radically transform the way we understand our lives and the world. So really this is a moment of celebration.

She goes on to describe a way to celebrate, not in spite of life’s hard truths, but because of them:

Part of the challenge of high holy days is . . . to bring people to a momentary understanding of the fragility of life, to the recognition that they might not be here next year at this time, that the people they love most in the world might not be here. [The goal of our celebration] is to push people to confront that excruciating reality for just one moment, to recognize the tragedies that have struck us as individuals and as communities, as a nation, as a world, to be very present to the reality of loss and grief and death and then, holding that pain, to be able to dance - to be able to affirm the possibility of love, and renewed life, and renewed purpose. To really live with a sense of commitment and a sense of purpose. That's something to dance about, I think, to be able to fully live in both those places at once.

For those of us with "a tendency to G-d bother" as Astyk puts it, the ritual days of reflection and self-examination offered by most religious traditions lead us both more deeply into our own actions and motives while binding us to one another. What am I doing? Why do I do it? How am I contributing to the beauty and goodness of the world - and to its pain?  How can we go forward from here, both loving and mending this beautiful place where we have found ourselves together for a while?  Now is the time.

Use it up

One of my horror stories from childhood was having to wash my father's car every weekend - and cleaning the whitewall tires with a toothbrush. For no pay. That, and never being allowed to eat in the car and having to remove every last tiny bit of trash from it each time we got out, and heaven forbid we put something in the little ashtrays on the door handles. When we started driving, the lectures on removing all traces of sand from the bottom of our shoes, and never wiping the fog off the window or mirror with anything but Windex and a clean rag, and DO NOT LEAVE THE RADIO OR AIR CONDITIONER ON drove my teenager-self crazy. By the time I left home I was in full revolt - in my head at least - condemning my parents for being materialistic control freaks.

On my own, I drove cheap, ugly, trashy cars and happily added my own trash to them. I joked that my car was simply a closet on wheels and that I was not so shallow as to care what the thing looked like.

But time has taken its toll on my disdain, and as an adult - still driving old cars for the most part - I am getting why even a high-minded, self-righteous, non-materialist might deign to take care of one of them: They last longer.

My parents grew up during the depression and during a time when everyone didn't have a car. My grandmother grew up in a small town in North Florida and didn't get a license until she was in her mid-forties. Owning a car was a luxury and a huge expense, and their cars didn't get changed out each time a new model arrived on the showroom floor. They cared for their cars, and the money they saved by doing so provided food on the table and educations for their children. It also kept a lot of metal and vinyl out of landfills.  

Earlier this month, a friend of the house gave us his little truck - a 1991 beauty. We haven't had a truck for a while and have really needed one to haul garden equipment to our empty-lot garden, produce from the farmers market, and furniture for people moving out into their own homes, among other things.  We would have been appreciative of a "clunker" - anything that drove at all. But this little truck, it is clear, is not that. He's taken care of it for 18 years - kept it clean inside and out, made it last. It smells good. It runs smoothly. It's going to help us out so much. It could be in the junk heap with a lot of other eighteen year-old cars, but it's not used up yet.

In a world with dwindling resources, it is a virtue to take care of things, to be able to pass them down or pass them on. Care is at the core of frugality and responsibility, and Jon's passing down the truck he has cared for to us, makes me want to eke every bit of goodness out of it we can, use it well,  and remember to pass on the good things in our own possession when the time comes.

But thank goodness it doesn't have whitewalls.

Schooling

Driving Grace to school this morning (she's at a magnet school and the bus stop is as far away as the school), I was reminded of the years Joe was at the same school - how much he loved it, the friends he made there, the teachers who mentored him. I know our school system leaves so much to be desired, but I can't help but think how lucky we are to live in a town full of teachers, thanks to the University of Florida.

I am also grateful for the community that good schools provide. Over the years, some of my closest friends became so by virtue of their kids going to the same school as mine. My very best friend and I walked our older daughters to school through a neighborhood cut-through over 20 years ago. We bonded over mothering war stories and still do. When I go out with John to a local concert or play, I'm almost sure to run into one of those old fellow costume-sewers and classroom volunteers. I am overwhelmed with gratitude to the adults who were also teachers and introduced my children to instruments I couldn't play, art supplies I didn't have, and books I hadn't heard of. A school can be the heartbeat of a neighborhood - where gifted adults share time and skills with the up-and-coming. A school can be the village we believe can help raise a child.

Living in a university town, I have also encountered the "dress for success" parents who see early reading, gifted classes, and magnet schools as mere stepping stones to the Ivy League and future material success in a competitive world. Honestly, I have always shied away from them, afraid that their vision might be too narrow, hoping that rather than simply prepare my child for a job, school might open their minds and exercise their wings, give them insight into their particular gifts and the needs of the world, help them discover how those might match up. I had, and have, faith that a person, confident in their own skills and finding ways to use them up for the common good, will be on fire - and that they'll also be able to make a living.

I've always admired the writing of John Gatto, an award-winning educator who believes education is for "building character and community" - and that a lot of that happens outside of schools. Here, in an article published in Yes! magazine, he talks about the twelve things you might not have learned in the classroom, but really educated people know. I couldn't agree more.

Pry Me off Dead Center

Deliver me from assuming that mercy is gentle.
Pressure me that I may grow more human,
    not through the lessening of my struggles,
    but through an expansion of them
    that will undamn me
    and unbury my gifts.

Deepen my hurt
    until I learn to share it
    and myself
    openly,
    and my needs honestly.

Sharpen my fears
    until I name them
    and release the power I have locked in them
    and they in me.

Accentuate my confusion
    until I shed those grandiose expectations
    that divert me from the small, glad gifts
    of the now and the here and the me.

Expose my shame where it shivers,
    crouched behind the curtains of propriety,
    until I can laugh at last
    through my common frailties and failures,
    laugh my way toward becoming whole.

Deliver me
    from just going through the motions
    and wasting everything I have
    which is today,
        a chance,
            a choice,
                my creativity,
                    your call.

Let how much it all matters
pry me off dead center
so if I am moved inside
    to tears
        or signs
            or screams
                or smiles
                    or dreams,

they will be real
and I will be in touch with who I am
and who you are
and who my sisters and brothers are.

-Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle

Pints of Pickled Peppers

The heat has taken down just about everything in the garden - except a few Seminole pumpkins, the roselle (Jamaican sorrel), eggplant, and peppers. The peppers, in particular, are thriving. We have sweet bell peppers and cayenne, and we were also gifted by a quart of jalapenos from the farmers market.

So I got to pickle peppers. Now that I have gotten used to the sterilization process and done a little pressure canning, water-bath canning seems almost routine. It only took a little over an hour start to finish with the pickled jalapenos - making a brine while sterilizing the jars in the canner, packing the jars with the sliced peppers (wear gloves if you do this; trust me), pouring over the syrup, tightening the lids and processing for ten minutes. They're pretty on the shelf and will give a nice zip to chili and other bean soups and maybe even fall football game nachos.

I also made some more "pepper sauce" my grandmother's way, but with some jars that will be more useable for guests. With a mix of green, orange, and red peppers they look beautiful. And after a week in the fridge, they're already plenty hot for me. These are the traditional accompaniment to greens which we are sure to have a lot of once it cools down.