Thanks For Giving Thanks

Let me get this straight.

On the third Thursday of every November, we sit around a glorious feast and speak our thanks for the friends and family with whom we share it. We mention those no longer with us and discuss our gratitude for the armed services. We take some time to reflect on life and enjoy each others' company.

Or do we?

This year, we cut our meals short and scrambled out to snap up the Thursday door busters because Black Friday has spilled over into Black Thursday. But really Black Friday deals started online Wednesday. When the real Black Friday rolls around, at 2:00am, we dash out to beat the crowds but lines have already formed. Chaos ensues and at the end of the day we have a car full of great bargains and possibly some bruises.

Small Business Saturday is lost in the shuffle because Black Friday deals are still available (*while supplies last), and also Cyber Monday starts on Sunday. But it’s not Cyber Monday anymore, it's now Cyber Week.

On Cyber Monday, all the brick and mortar stores have re-branded their Black Friday deals to be Cyber Monday specials and nobody has any idea if they have indeed gotten the best deals or not.

Then, Giving Tuesday rolls around. A day meant to donate to organizations who are trying to do good in the world. But by now, we are exhausted from all the hunting for bargains, we question our sanity, and hate our society because this type of stampeding for extra deep discounts brings out the absolute worst in people, and we have no money left because we’ve spent it all on material possessions we probably didn’t need but couldn’t pass up.

So, were our words spoken on Thursday all for naught? Were they real?

How about if Giving Tuesday moves to Thanksgiving Thursday, spills into Friday, coincides with Small Business Saturday, and then takes over Cyber Week. That way, we’ll pre-spend our money on doing good in the world, have less to spend on stuff we don’t need, and don’t have to leave the dinner table.

Now, please pass the pie!

Green = Gratitude

As 2009 draws to a close and I look back at the most recent year that will too soon become a distant memory, a feeling of reflection is sweeping over me.

2009 was a year unlike any I can remember in my life. As an environmentalist, whatever that means, it's incredible how much negativity enters my life. Polar bears facing extinction. Pollution not being mitigated. Atrocities to the land and the living creatures across the globe are rampant. An unthinkable plastic vortex in the ocean. Houses constantly re-sided with vinyl, a known toxic material. Oceans rising. Poor people on distant islands suffering at the expense of wealthy nations that for all intents and purposes seem they could care less about. Barack Obama won the presidency in convincing fashion and brought with him a renewed sense of Hope. Then Sarah Palin released a book and was suddenly in the media spotlight again. (Editor's note: Recall that she is in favor of shooting wolves from helicopters and drilling for oil in one of the world's last pristine landscapes). How? No, seriously. I thought her 15 minutes were over.

This is a lot to swallow for an optimist. "Environmentalists" tend to be optimists. We have to be because, well, we care about something other than ourselves. And that "thing" we care about leads us on a Sisyphusian struggle. Actually, I seem to be using the nomenclature—Environmentalist—hesitantly here at the end of the year. I'm not sure why but by the end of this post hope to have clarity.

People care about all kinds of things. The history of humankind has been nothing if not unimagineable. I don't practice any form of standardized religion. I'm not an atheist though. I fear death and find beauty in every single detail of my daily life. That may seem unreasonable but as an aspiring photographer, noticing details is in the fabric of who I am. I believe there is some sort of explanation out there for why the hell we exist on this intricate planet and can't even comprehend how we humans have discovered as much as we have about the universe.

That said, we live on this planet. This is our home. This is our only home.

Try to imagine what your house would look like if you burned toxic chemicals in each of your rooms all day every day. What if when you went to work, your neighbor brought over a giant bottle of bleach and dumped it on your flower beds? Or if he drilled holes in your roof? What if you decided to plant a vegetable garden and down the street, a small factory constantly dumped toxic sludge into the ground, eventually contaminating your own dirt and ruining your vegetables?

Grim. Thought I said I was an optimist...?

The trouble I am having here at the end of the year is not that President Obama hasn't fixed the economy or paid off the national debt or cured cancer or finished my upstairs bathroom. The problem I am having as an optimist is that the groundswell of support for the green movement seems to have plateaued.

My mother still has her reusable shopping bags from the 1970s. She and my dad once owned a Honda Civic that got 40+ miles to the gallon. In the 1980's.

Why do we go through these phases? Are we really so shallow that we care about the polar bears and our carbon footprints only when gas is over $3.00 per gallon? Why? Why does the price of the fuel our cars burn have ANYTHING to do with caring about living responsibly? See, this is where I have gotten lost this year. The green movement started as people really caring, I think, and then after the presidential inauguration, health care became the only thing we talked about. Michael Jackson, the king of pop, died. That's a big deal. Is it big enough for CNN to turn into E! and report on nothing other than 24/7 coverage of MJ? Until the balloon boy story captured our national attention for what seemed like an eternity. Seriously, is this what we care about?

I don't want to call myself an environmentalist anymore. We shouldn't have to. Caring about issues that matter should not require a movement. Or a label. I feel like the quality of life in our country is not getting better. Sure we txt, tweet and have Mafia Wars to get us through the day. But are we also spending time outside? Breathing fresh air?

According to the movie Food, Inc. (Editor's note: This movie should be required viewing for all Americans), 1 in 3 Americans born after the year 2000 will develop early onset diabetes. 1 in 2 for African American babies.

What are we doing? Changing our light bulbs and using fewer plastic bags is not enough. These are great things to do but in the grand scheme of things we as a people need to fundamentally change our definition of the American Dream. If we keep up with this pace of buying McMansions with toxic drywall from China and eating food that is making us sick, what are we really dreaming of?

I had the good fortune of meeting artist David Brown yesterday. He lives in a straw bale house with no electricity and no running water in Old Saybrook, CT. My wife recently helped him adopt a stray cat that needed a home. This was one of the most gentle and kind souls I had ever met. He is so grateful for the simplest things in life.

Hence, the title of this post. People call people who speak up about caring about natural things "Environmentalists" and we people supposedly are part of the Green Movement. But if you boil away capitalism and Americanism and corruption and everything else, all we people really want is for it to be mainstream to live natural lives and to be grateful and appreciative of what we were born into.

I don't mean we all should live like David. I don't think I could. As a society, there are some luxuries I don't think we could do away with and still have a functional society. But there are so many things we could live without and expectations of those things that could away, revealing a less stressful and more enjoyable way of life.

We as a country have completely lost our connection with the land on which we live. We don't farm. We don't need the sun to tell time. We heat and have air conditioning so the seasons don't really matter. Fruits and vegetables are made to look ripe through unnatural processes throughout the year.

Here at the end of the year, and decade, I want more than anything for us to stop and really think about what is real. And what we actually need in our lives in order to be happy.

The Greening of Southie

This looks like it will be great:


Trailer - The Greening of Southie from Wicked Delicate Films on Vimeo.

Quick Tip for a clogged drain

Instead of spending a small fortune on a bottle of harsh chemicals that translate into basically dumping your money in toxic form down the drain in the form of Liquid Drano (or even a less harsh organic equivalent that is probably even more costly), instead try a small plunger that you can probably buy at the dollar store. Just be sure to plug up the overflow holes in your sink or bathtub. I have found plunging a stubborn drain to be much more effective than the Drano method.

Conservation movements (tongue in cheek)

Blinker Conservation - Ever notice how people are using their turn signals less and less while driving? I'm calling this "Blinker Conservation." This must be a conscious effort to save both car battery life and blinks out of the blink lifespan of the turn signal bulbs. Well done, people. Every little bit counts... or something.

Recycle Bin Space Conservation - Who likes clutter? Not me. Not many people. And when you can save space in your recycle bin by throwing soda and beer cans all over my road, why wouldn't you?! Luckily, my hands have the physical ability to pick up these items and place them into my recycle bin. In fact sometimes I return them to the store and get your 5 cents, which helps pay for the corn starch dog poop bags I use to pick up Guinness's #2's. So, basically, thank you for helping pay for bags to pick up my dog's poop.

Plastic bags suck

I received this as an email forward from my Aunt Lin and thought it was very appropriate to this blog...



And then there is this story which is somewhat unrelated, but hilarious. San Francisco seems like a pretty cool place.

Dehumidifier water

Like many people in New England, and I'm sure elsewhere that it is humid, we run a dehumidifier in our basement all summer. It collects a lot of water. Throughout my life I have seen this water dumped down the drain or in some cases the dehumidifier is connected to the main drainpipe for the house and goes out to the sewer or septic system.

We happen to have four cats, as I may have mentioned before, which means we have a lot of big buckets from buying litter. We have always saved the buckets (which come in handy for all sorts of things and have lids that fit pretty snug). So, we let the dehumidifier work its magic, then dump the water into these buckets, which conveniently hold exactly two batches of collected water, and then use that to water various plants around the yard. It's funny if you think about it, sucking water out of the air and then using it. It's kind of like a rainwater collection system except this water has never even rained down on us.

Anyway, just thought I'd share. If you are paying for the electricity to run your dehumidifier, you might as well get something free out of the deal other than just the less humid air.

edited

Here is some more information about dehumidifiers from Wikipedia

Potability
Water collected from any dehumidifier is technically distilled water in that it does contain few of the minerals and other particulates that are removed in a true distillation process. However, a true distillation process condenses the steam of boiled water, and the boiling process kills any microbes and fungi that may be present in the pre-distilled water. Dehumidifiers are also not kept to a state of cleanliness required for food-grade standards (drinking water usually has very high legal requirements). The collected water is therefore not considered safe to drink.[1] Also, as the water may sit for a while in the collection bucket, the water may be quite stale, in particular with fungus collected from aerial spores.

Reusable shopping bags

I don't have a whole lot to say about this one. I mean, they cost like a buck and are ridiculously useful. The ones we got from Whole Foods are huge and sturdy. The Stop and Shop ones are pretty small, and we have gotten a few at other places and they all seem to be made by the same company or the same template or something. I'm talking about the ones with a plastic insert that goes at the bottom of the bag and is kind of a pain. I much prefer the Whole Foods ones. I'm not going into grocery stores here, just saying that using these bags is a great thing, costs little... Some stores even give a small discount if you bring your own bags, which after 10 trips or so has paid for the bag. You just have to remember to carry them into the store with you. I have left mine on the back seat of my car way too many times, only to have to abandon my shopping cart, run out and get them and then proceed with the transaction.

Paperless billing

This is an absolute no-brainer and I am ashamed that it took this long for me to break out of my old-school ways. I just couldn’t come to grips with the idea that I could stop getting all this paper in the mail and still remember to pay my bills.

This coming from someone who checks his email about 1,200 times a day. In fact my student loan was already set up to send me electronic statements. They even asked me if I needed to keep receiving my paper statements and I said, *gasp*, YES. What is wrong with me?!

So here’s the deal. I finally wrapped my brain around a system that will work for me. I’ll get an email when a statement is issued. I will go to the website, log in, and download the pdf version. I will then log into my bank account online and pay my bill through the bank, online, like I have been doing for two years now.

With this system I will have an organized record–one folder for each company–just like in my file cabinet that is stuffed full of paper statements that I have no idea how long I am supposed to hang onto, except these will not be paper. They will not require an envelope with one of those stupid plastic windows in it, or a return envelope, or all the glossy bill inserts.

I seriously can’t believe it took me this long to come to grips with a new system. I am a really organized person when it comes to my bills, and usually pay them the day I receive them (online bill-pay is a god-send).

And the best part is, it only took about an hour to remember how to log into all my various accounts at various credit card, utility, etc companies and every single one of them had paperless billing as a simple-to-access section, and signup was a breeze on all of them. And as they said at one credit card company…

Congratulations!
You’re going paperless.
(The trees thank you.)