Category: green

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new year’s rezzies

Here’s my list. What do they all mean? Ask me.

2009

  1. Meet with my good girlfriend MLS every Thursday, 9 a.m.
  2. 15 minute stretch/15 minute walk every day + longer jaunts/workouts 2-3 times a week
  3. Eat healthfully (mostly vegetarian, no fast food or sodas, local, sustainable food, 100 Mile Diet)
  4. Get new glasses – for all the reading I’m planning to do
  5. Get chickens
  6. Save money
  7. No spend/no new – really trying to beat last year’s record
  8. Balance checkbook every month
  9. Watch food budget – (bulk, co-op, homegrown/homemade, basics, not convenience foods)
  10. Bigger garden (take out front lawn, add to sides and back garden
  11. Travel: NY (February), Tahoe (August), Philadelphia/NJ/NY (October)
  12. Poetry book — Spring release
  13. Study and admiration of The Rebel Jesus
  14. Spiritual music and reading
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weekend rain, and sun

What I learned this weekend: that clothes on a clothesline do not dry in the rain. That clothes left overnight on the clothesline, dry or wet, end up as playthings for raccoons. That wet clothes that get wetter in the rain will break the clothesline.

Now I have just one clothesline. Quite annoying.

Because it rained on Saturday, I saved a lot of energy by not doing much laundry, and attempting to hang out what I did wash…when it wasn’t raining. That didn’t work so well. Hey, live and learn.We did not use the heater at all this weekend, though it was chilly and damp (relative to the rest of all y’all in colder places). Socks, sweaters and blankies…lots of snuggling with library books and recyled cats and cups of organic loose leaf tea. (Mr Husband’s version was hot tea and a cat and the ongoing football games. Go, Bears.)

I got our local CSA (local farmer produce) box on Friday — which I’m starting to order again now that our garden has finished, and by getting it Friday, we no longer have that weekend-with-no-food problem that quickly leads to telephone-for-takeout syndrome. So instead, we ate well this weekend, with fresh strawberries, black grapes, apples, bok choy, celery, and more vegies than I can remember. All of that was local and organic. Yum…

The teenagers were out riding their fixies (fixed gear bikes) in the rain, which must be fun, since they have no brakes and have to skid to stop. They came in, a horde of them at about 6:30 p.m. I happened to have a jar of pesto in the cupboard, so made a vat of green spaghetti, a big salad and pulled a Safari’d foccaccia out of the freezer. As soon as they were eating dinner, I whipped up a quick coffee cake for dessert, with cocoa and walnuts on top, since we had nothing else to offer. Coffee cakes bake quickly, like 35 minutes, so before long the kids were eating warm cake with melting chocolate and chopped nuts. Mr Husband and I had our pasta with the last of the homemade garden tomato sauce from earlier in the week = no waste!

We had to feed all these kids again in the morning, so out came the wafflemaker and I made a fruit salad with seasonal fruits — persimmons, black grapes, apples, oranges. Yum. Plus a boatload of eggs. One of the teens actually got up and made coffee so it was hot when I came down. A miracle!

I made another pass at my living room, eliminating all the rest of the crap piles — ALL of them, and had my LR in order for a writers’ meeting Sunday at noon.

We had another clean-out-the-fridge soup on Sunday with a couple of packets of udon (thick Japanese noodles), our fresh bok choy, some mushrooms and onion from the fridge, and leftover chicken breast. I left the chicken in a dish next to the pot so that the vegetarians among us could eat soup without meat, and the omnivores could have it or not. We finished the weekend by sorting a big pile of laundry and *Putting It Away* (in our room, another miracle!) and watching a movie from our DVD collection. Free fun!

So there you go. Happy Monday, all.

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Not too late to sign up!

In case you’re local and still interested, it is definitely not too late to sign up for my next two (non-writing) classes at the Alameda Adult School. I’m teaching on the following two Wednesday nights: 7 to 9 p.m. at the Central Avenue school site (Rm 330). You have to sign up to be in the class and I believe it is $15 per class. Must be 18 years old; sorry, no kids allowed (it’s the Adult School, silly.) Visit the link above to register online. See you then?

SUSTAINABLE LIVING 1
“GOING GREEN”
(1 CLASS MEETING) — Nov. 12
Everyone’s talking about “going green,” but what does it mean and how can you make some simple changes to your life to help the planet? A short workshop will help you get on track for lowering your carbon footprint and helping save the environment. Taught by Julia Park Tracey, the Alameda Sun’s “green queen.” Prepaid registration required in person or online.

SUSTAINABLE LIVING 2
“ECO-SMARTS”
(1 CLASS MEETING) — Nov. 19
Learn some more ways to change your life, from reusing, salvaging, rescuing and thrifting, to making your own. Save money and get back to the nitty-gritty with these tips that will help save the planet and make a difference in your own life. Taught by Julia Park Tracey, the Alameda Sun’s “green queen.” Prepaid registration required in person or online.

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elections and such

Glory be and praise Jah — the election is over and I can finally stop thinking about it. In the news biz, we don’t have the luxury of not caring — we have to follow this stuff and write stories about it (fair coverage for all candidates) and so on. I was counting the days til the election was over so I could sit quietly and think about nothing in particular. Glad to know I can finally do so. (. . . ) –>


I must say, I am tickled and delighted about our President-Elect Barack Obama — though he has inherited a boatload of difficult tasks (um, war? economy? deficit?) from the past administration and it won’t be easy to turn the world around. But I’m guessing he’s the guy to do it. We cried and toasted with Champagne and lit fireworks Tuesday night, thrilled that we can turn the page and try something new. The old wasn’t working, and it has pushed us into scary waters. I feel grateful that we live in a nation where we all get to vote and that every vote counts. God bless America! (–>

And the chickens! Don’t forget the chickens. Now veal and pigs and chicken will have more room to grow in their little cages. That is also good news — but we’ve cut way back on meat anyway and are leaning toward making meat a seasoning rather than a slab to be tossed onto every plate at every meal. I have been reading Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food and also just finished the somewhat radical journal called Plenty, in which two Canadians ate only local food for a year — and created the 100-mile diet.

Reading both of these books has energized me to become something of a food warrior. No more sodas in the house. No more chips, junk food and HFCS, no more hydrogenated anything. No more bananas. No more imported peaches in January. (Not that I was doing that anyway…)Today I ordered a small farm box for Friday pickup every week, virtually guaranteeing a 100-mile bunch of produce all winter, from a local purveyor. I won’t do it in summer because we have so many vegetables that it makes no sense to pay for them. And we have lots of produce frozen and canned from our garden which is, hello, like the 20-foot diet rather than 100 miles. I would love to go to the Alameda farmers’ market but it takes place on my busiest workday, Tuesday mornings. Grr.

I’m really excited about it and looking forward to starting a new year of Compacting (not buying new/little to no shopping) and conserving, using solar power for many things (preserving veggies and fruit, making tea, drying laundry), continuing to make our own (“fast food,” lunches and dinners, various breads, beverages, cookies, snack foods, etc.)

And…treading lightly on the earth. We have only one. Better treat it kindly. Payback is a mo-fu. And global warming backlash is just the beginning.

* * *

Last weekend I did not go to any events I had planned to attend: the Matt Nathanson concert with Moni at the Warfield, the last performance of Bat Boy: The Musical at the Altarena Playhouse, the Lincoln Brigade documentary premiere in SF. We had tickets ($$) and everything. But I stayed home, and Mr. Husband stayed with me. General exhaustion and constant drama have sapped my interest in going outside the homestead for much of anything. In my busy world, home keeps me happy and I just don’t have the juice to go out. Especially when you look at my evening schedule (after a full day of work at the newspaper 5 days a week):

Monday – women’s group, Albany or Pinole, 6:15-10:13 p.m.
Tuesday – every other week, school board – 6:30 p.m. til whenever it finishes. Or yoga, if I can make myself go.
Wednesday: Teaching writing or sustainability classes at the Alameda Adult School, 2-3 times a month, 7-9 p.m.
Thursday: Yoga, if I can make myself go; or therapy appointments if I can make myself go (by this day of the week I’m ready to drop).
Friday: evening softball continues, through end of November (since April); plus I have a weekly phone call at 6 p.m. with my leadership team (1 hour).

Add in the pick-ups and drop-offs for kids coming and going, meetings, events, appointments…and also home-cooked meals every night (see above: 100-mile diet and better living through eating actual food, not reheated chemical goo)…Can you see why I am not so keen to dash out to whatever it is on a weekend?

Can I please just stay home and play in the garden?

I like to stay home and do my laundry, and cook different soups on the stove, bake a loaf of bread or muffins for breakfast. I like to pull weeds in the garden and take walks or ride my bike. I like making desserts and casseroles and boiling up beans for the vegetarians to eat during the week. I make cat food in the Crock pot or a batch of tomato sauce from the last tomatoes. Sometimes I get to fix holes in knees or sew on buttons. I usually irons shirts on Sundays and listen to classical music, or Bob Marley and Jimmy Buffett, or nothing. Silence is golden.

If I can read a bit before bedtime, if I can scratch my cat’s belly in the sun, if I can sit in the hammock with one or two of the kids and laugh, if I can snap a green bean off the still-producing vines and eat it in the garden, hallelujah. That’s a moment to celebrate.

And if I get a minute to close my eyes and breathe deeply, that’s a moment to be grateful.

What are you doing to save the earth? What are you grateful for? Leave a comment or e-mail me. I’d like to know.

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me me me and tea

I have this thing about loose leaf tea lately. Like, it never occurred to me to drink it because it’s just a pain in the patoot to measure the leaves and they get all wet and stick to everything and then you have to scrape them out of the strainer and blah blah blah.

But, for some reason, lately I’ve been drinking loose leaf tea and using my tea strainer (I have a couple of cute ones — shaped like a house or a tea cup, but I like the round one best). And it feels rather nice to be enjoying a beverage that does not produce much waste and is good for you. Not even a tea bag. Loose tea comes in a tin, which is reusable or recyclable, and there’s no paper waste. I like that. So, although on occasion I will gladly use a tea bag if that’s what is available, these days I’m paring it down to essentials. Just the tea and the strainer, and a cup of hot water.

Cheers.