One Size Fits All

Wow did I spend alot of money in June. Stress and disaster is expensive! I more or less depleted my emergency fund, but I suppose that’s what its there for right?

So I need to increase our savings and to do so I’ve joined Chile’s Quit Now Challenge where I promise to eat all but four meals at home. Everything else I do is now a habit so I don’t think we can save any more money there.

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Today I gave notice to our landlord that we’d be vacating in 2 months. So…for the first time in my life I am swimming blind and liking the excitement. My husband and I have three plans and they are:

1. One of us will have a job offer before the end of August in California (maybe L.A.). So we’ll just move and get an apartment and that’ll be that.

2. We’ll just move and then scrounge around for jobs living off our savings until we get jobs. I am not too crazy about this plan because I feel it may mean living in a crappy neighborhood (because that’s where the cheap apartments will be) again. And really, I almost want to live in an exclusive gated community at this point since I am so sick of living in crappy places. I had this grand idea that getting a degree would bring me all this wealth that would enable me to live in nice places. I obviously didn’t count on that pesky value called "ethics" which makes me quit all the lucrative jobs I’ve held to date.

3. Bike trip across the country. This is obviously the more insane idea. But its the one we’re both most excited about even though it goes against all my normal ideas of safety nets and whatnot. If we decide to do it, I’ll write a bit more about this plan.

Then of course is the question, why move at all? Well, I don’t think I’ve mentioned it but I’m ready for a change. Philly is a nice city and everything, but I’m really sick of it. My husband is sick of it. We’ve been here for a long while and both of us has been wanting to move for a while but one thing or the other kept coming up. Now that we don’t have anything holding us back (except my comfy job), its high time we move.  There are a million things I hate about this city (moving from neighborhood to neighborhood didn’t help) and I think its me more than the city. Additionally, there might be three of our friends moving to CA in the same time frame as us so that will be exciting.

I finished reading Hope, Human & Wild by Bill McKibben last week.The book is a collection of three stories that promote a message of hope against…a world where resource depletion is almost a contest. The stories are detailed from McKibben’s perspective which may be why I wasn’t too thrilled with the book. I’ve watched McKibben in many documentaries and he seems to have a rather negative world view. Its probably justified considering the number of years he’s been writing about the environment and global warming to seemingly no avail.

The first story is about McKibben’s own backyard: the Adirondack region where he lives. The story detailed is almost an echo of the story of Pennsylvania.

A few years back, I had read an article in the Philly Inqy that mentioned how green Pennsylvania currently was, how there was this canopy of green covering the state. The  reason this story was significant is the same reason McKibben chose to include the Adirondacks in his first story of hope - the North East portion of the U.S. was the first to get completed raped of its resources: trees, minerals, oil, etc, etc as it was one of the first areas to get settled by Europeans. So with the demand for mahogany desks and whatever else people wanted, millions of acres of forests disappeared. Then, just in the nick of time the Louisiana Purchase was sealed and new virgin territory expanded the U.S. borders which came under intense exploration. This gave the depleted North East portions of the U.S. some time to recover. Today new forest growth has changed the N.E. landscape and everything now is just dandy.

Except it isn’t.  Because of how the U.S. economy has changed its focus from one that agricultural and manufacturing based to one that is service based, many of the residents in McKibben’s community live at poverty level wages. And its sad. So the change that the residents make are often into sectors that isn’t feasible in the long term. Shasha Cedar discussed this recently.Not exactly hopeful…but the hope part of this story came from the fact that many of the original native wild animals are beginning to make their way back into the Adirondacks because of the new forest growth.

The second story of hope was my favorite.The subject was a city in Brasil named Curitiba. Its success as a model city that continues to grow with low resource consumption was primarily due to the efforts of its three-time mayor, Jaime Lerner, who implemented a wide variety of programs that had a wide reaching ecological impact. Many of Lerner’s ideas were similar to Jane Jacobs’ ideas and observations in Life and Death of Great American Cities. And the programs worked. For example, Curitiba’s bus system sounds amazing: bus only lanes with connecting routes with buses that run frequently. Old buses get transformed into classrooms that teach people practical skills for a low fee. Another example of Lerner’s ingenious thinking was how he dealt with the flooding problem. He designed and created artificial lakes with parks surrounding the lakes that get filled during the flood season. Lerner also took one of the suggestions from the authors of Rubbish by incentivizizing rubbish collection - so now the bums get a meal and the streets are clean.There was alot of hope here…if we can elect decent people who care enough.

The third story…well I’ve already written about my feelings but I should say a bit more. The story of Kerala and its low resource consumption in the face of other measures of success makes it an anomaly in India and even the rest of the world. But there is a similarity between Kerala and Curitiba - its leaders/elected officials. The leaders of both places cared enough about their people and their home to do something to make it better. They implemented programs with the blessings of the people and listened to their concerns to make life better…

Overall, the book wasn’t bad, but it didn’t actually fill me with hope. Maybe I was just in a lousy mood but I don’t like messages that put the locus of control on some external source like elected officials.  This is probably why I liked Blessed Unrest which I thought had more of a hopeful message than Hope, Human & Wild.In fact Blessed Unrest came highly recommended to me at a time when I was feeling very despondent about the world. Perhaps its because the message was a bit different from Hope, Human & Wild - that a top-down methodology of implementing ideas wasn’t necessary for success to occur. Many of the bloggers whose blogs I read believe in that notion…that we can all do something in addition to electing some visionary thinker or calling our elected reps. And I think that is more of a hopeful message.

 

RATING: 3 out 5 stars.

READERS: medium to dark green readers.

"I’m following the trend ‘cause I wanna
have some friends. I want to be somebody.
Don’t wanna be a ‘nobody’………..

- From the Dead Milkmen’s "Moron"

I’ve gone back to using toothpaste. I got nervous about having many dreams in which I look at my reflection in a mirror and see myself with a bloody mouth. The dreams could have been arising from my fear of not using toothpaste or it could mean that I’ve been watching episodes of Buffy and find vampires fascinating.

 

This week’s edition of One Local Summer includes stir fried noodles. Local ingredients include peas, carrots and brocolli. I’m going to make an allowance regarding local ingredients. That is, I will not purchase local noodles even though its available because of the cost. I am not willing (or ready) to part with money to buy local bread-y ingredients like pasta.

 

The string beans and mushroom dish here are leftovers from a week ago which is why they look a bit sad. However, they taste much better than they did when I first made them. I guess its like kim-chi…tastes better the longer it lies around. The recipe I used is from Vegan with a Vengence.
I’ve been trying to get my husband to quit buying tomato juice and it seems like the concoction I put together here worked well. I blended tomatoes, cilantro, raspberries together and added a bit of red chilli powder and lemon juice. The cilantro and lemon was not local. Husband liked it well enough to agree that he wouldn’t drink the store bought stuff anymore. So a win here.  

 

I drove alot in June. I’ll figure out the exact mileage and gas consumption when I put up my riot numbers, but I bet its more than the average U.S. consumer’s consumption. The big trip in June was to a funeral. Originally the plan was to fly to the funeral. But since the destination didn’t have a major airport, it would have meant a transfer and a lot of waiting around in airport terminals…and frankly, I can think of other ways of spending my time. Additionally, I didn’t feel like adding humiliation to the trip nor did I feel like purchasing many clear, resealable plastic baggies. So I looked into taking the train or the bus and found that the train or bus would have taken too long. So we settled on driving which wound up being the least expensive and quickest way of getting there.

I used flexcar for the trip. We saw many, many, many dead deer and other miscellaneous roadkill. It made me very sad.

During the few days we were at our destination we had about an hour of peace…and I took some pictures.

 

 

Thanks everyone for your kinds thoughts and sending good vibes. I was finally able to get some sleep instead of tossing and turning from the pain. Who knew nerves could hurt so much?

Anyway…the month is finally drawing to a close and since I got to eat home cooked meals for every single meal today, I’ll take it as a sign that the black clouds of doom have drifted off to some other place.

The main point of this post is to mention that I made a major purchase this month: a laptop computer. I bought a Thinkpad from Lenovo (IBM still holds a 6% stake in the company). From what I can tell with the UPS tracking number, the laptop got shipped from Hong Kong but I don’t think the machine was put together in Hong Kong. It was probably made in the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong province which is north of Hong Kong (via). It then wound up in Alaska and then got transported to Louisiana and finally made its way over to me.

A few months back when I decided to get a laptop I searched around to see if any laptops were manufactured in the U.S. I was hoping that in buying something that was made here I could pretend that the workers were paid something decent and worked in somewhat acceptable working conditions. I found that no laptops were manufactured in the U.S. The Panasonic Toughbook was the last laptop that had its manufacturing process shipped overseas and I couldn’t get a clear answer on where that was…China? Japan? Korea?

Then of course there is the issue of cost. Most of our computers over the years have  been put together from spare parts found either by picking through university students’ trash or buying it second hand. So I was a bit nervous of plunking down all this money for a laptop. The one I got was about $500 which is still alot of money for me.

The main reason to buy a laptop in addition to the low electric usage and limited space that a laptop takes was because my old desktop computer was dying. The motherboard finally died after moving all my data to my laptop earlier this month. As did my memory sticks, the hard drive…everything really. So its pretty good timing on my part considering when I bought the laptop.

In addition to the basic laptop I did buy one thing extra, a recycling service. For about $30 I can send my old computer (keyboard, mouse, monitor, chassis with stuff weighing no more than 69 lbs) to a place in New York State. From the agreement’s FAQ:

What happens to my equipment after I send it in?

Your equipment will be evaluated with respect to its age and technology and either recycled or disposed in an environmentally sound manner. Lenovo does not make any representations with respect to the recyclable content of your equipment

So that’s that. How will they "dispose" it? Will they melt the metal down? Will they melt the plastic down for reuse? The case I have is very beautiful and very roomy but my husband thinks its cursed so he is not going to use it…so I know that is one item that will have use for someone else. But what about the other components?

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On another (geeky) note, the laptop came with Windows Vista. Buying the laptop with XP would have cost more so I got Vista. I look at Vista for a few minutes and noticed that the big change is that everything got moved around so now all those XP certificate holders would have to get a new certificate so they know the exact placement of menu options and how it differs from XP. Its a nice little racket. I then downloaded a debian windows installer and installed debian. Found that the kernel didn’t have support for my wireless card and couldn’t install new kernel because boot was too small then couldn’t expand boot because I kept getting a kernal panic even though everything was fine and finally gave up and got me some eye candy in the form of Linux Mint. I love Linux Mint. Its debian based so I am still in familiar territory but its perty!  The default install is beautiful and everything is detected and I have a nice bootsplash screen. What more could I ask for?

Its….shingles. Very exciting and excruciatingly painful. What is with all these painful ailments visiting me? I’ve got my kidney stone my UTI and now this. I really hate the fact that I have a high threshold for pain because I start having discussions like…what exactly is the criteria to be admitted into the ER? And where on the scale of pain does "I want to commit a killing spree"* fall? And lets not forget that shingles are ugly as hell. I had half a mind to walk around my neighborhood showing off my shingy zits to all the pervs saying something like "I have gonorrhea! Here’s proof. Please don’t bother me any more." But these men are pervs not masters of logic…so I let go of the idea. Also it hurt to walk. And sleep. But looky! Not hurtful enough to blog about it.

Apparently it got activated because of stress. And I’ve been undergoing some really f*cking severe stress. So now in addition to having clumps of hair fall out and my skin look like crap I have to deal with a crazy nerve.

I also was lucky enough to have a textbook case of shingles. So all the little med students came to have a look. I started announcing: "welcome to the shingles museum". But I didn’t even get a giggle. And that stressed me out. Which led to some more pain. Ecetera.

The doctor also told me that only dead people were allowed to be around me. Not quite. But I can’t be around babies and old people and sick people and people who haven’t had chicken pox and so on.

Perhaps I should also stop reading all the gloom-and doom peak oil stuff. I’m sure it didn’t help to adopt a very depressive worldview. 

One thing however…tea tree oil works wonderfully to numb the pain. That is…it numbs the pain after several 100 mgs of ibuprofen don’t do the trick. Tea tree oil is some sort of antiseptic plus has other wonderful properties. And it numbs pain. 

So while I am not quite dead. I am taking a break. Please send funny jokes. Thank you.

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*Big brother: this is a joke. As in "tee hee". Please do not throw me into the gulag.

After seeing a picture of Melinda’s pancakes yesterday I knew I had to make it for breakfast this morning.

I was too impatient to wait for bubbles, but the pancakes still turned out to have the melt-in-your-mouth deliciousness!  I used honey instead of sugar so the meal is 100% local.

The picture is from the cookbook: Vegetarian Cooking. The dish can be easily veganized by using margarine instead of butter and soy milk instead of cream.

I was catching up on all my blog reading this morning and noticed that very few of the meals featured in the One Local Summer challenge were vegan meals. There was one stir fry with seitan and I think one featuring lentil burgers. But the main focus of many of the meals was on meat. So I thought of cooking some something that is either vegan or could be easily veganized with the summer bounty. The result was the Beet, Wild Mushroom and Potato Casserole.

I don’t know how other people shop at the farmer’s market, but I’m like a shopaholic at the mall. Any new vegetable (either new in season or new to me) gets me very excited. I don’t think for one second about what I could do with the vegetable, instead, I immediately buy it. This year I’m a little bit better in that I remember the name of the item I am purchasing. Last year I would spend hours online trying to figure out what the heck I had wound up purchasing since I was too shy to just ask the farmer what I was getting.

So today’s mystery ingredient were beets. I grew up eating beets and the only reason I ate it is because I loved the color of beets. I don’t care for the taste too much. But since I bought it I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I thought of tossing it in a blender with tomatoes and cilantro and making some sort of health drink but decided against it. I didn’t want it in a salad. So I was happy when I found this dish in Vegetarian Cooking by Linda Fraser. The result was a bit blah. The taste isn’t bad, but it doesn’t feel filling since I thought that’s what casseroles were supposed to do. Still..if anyone really wants the recipe, leave a comment, and I’ll post it since I was not able to find it online.

Now I have a heat rash. Or that’s what I think it is. I think my body (or rather my belly) is cooking itself. Maybe I can offer myself as part of a one local summer meal. I’m sure I’m tasty.

I am trying some natural remedies and am going to see how this works out. If not, I’m heading to a doctor next week. The remedies call for a ice pack to be placed on the rash plus wearing cotton and keeping the area dry. I have an ice pack, but the rash + boils hurt. I don’t have many cotton clothes because I like wearing clothes that don’t need to be ironed. So I should visit the thrift store soon. And I bought a dusting powder from Burt’s Bees that is talc free. I recently read that talc is a carcinogen(!!??). I think I will be shocked if I manage to live my life out without getting cancer.

I’ve also been hiding in air conditioned areas being much colder than I like to be because of this rash. 

Today’s breakfast: Homemade yogurt with strawberry syrup (strawberries and honey with a teaspoon of lime juice that is organic but not local) and local chicken and apple sausages with toast and butter. Bread is store bought with organic not local ingredients. I don’t have a toaster so I toast bread in the oven with the broil setting. I could make it with my cast iron pan…but didn’t.

 

From husband’s email:

Under Tiberius, the Roman Emperor, there was a financial panic.

This was caused first by Tiberius seizing property for "crimes against the state". Then he took the money from the treasury and used it on orgies.

Taxes were high. He spent little money on public works.

Interest rates on loans were limited to 1.5%. People ignored the rule. Tiberius ruled that they were to uphold the law and he gave people 1.5 years to get their books in order. The result? People called in their loans. Why loan out money for so low interest. Since all loans were called in at once, there was a panic. There were limited coins.

Land prices went almost to nothing.

Tiberius had to rescue the bank by loaning it 1 million coins at 0% interest to pay out to borrowers to exchange securities for land.

 
Edit: Here is some more info from what looks like an excerpt in The Influence of Wealth in Imperial Rome by William Stearns Davis.

Yesterday I had a thought. Just one. I think the city pays waaay more attention to bums and skateboarders than they do to other residents of the city.

Just because bums sleep on benches and skateboarders use benches to grind means that now the public benches are either uncomfortable or non-existant. 

How to talk to a climate skeptic.

I’ve been reading Hope, Human and Wild by Bill McKibben. Its not too bad. But I wanted to write about my thoughs on Kerala…often brought up by environmentalists (including McKibben) as the golden standard to aspire to.

I’ve been in a very pessimistic mood lately, so this post is going to reflect that pessimism. This post is also poorly written. So please put your grammer rules aside for now.

I am very familiar with Kerala - a state in India. For one, I was born there. I’ve also lived in a small town in Kerala for a while. But I hated the place. Yes the food was lovely, the resource consumption is as low as everyone says it is. The weather was tolerable despite the heat and humidity, mainly because of all the trees that make the place liveable. And the water is delicious! But the people…well its what makes a place. And for the most part its the people that made me despise the place.

While I realize that the norms and customs of a community is what makes up a community I dislike the notion that an outsider or someone who deviates from those norms and customs can be ostracized, burned at the stake, etc, etc. While I’ve only become mildly obnoxious in the last few years, in general I am not a rebel. I like to follow the rules and overall am an all round do-gooder.

One of the reasons I like the U.S. is because people in general tend to leave you alone. This is coming from my experience of living in a city, suburb and the country.They chalk up your eccentricities as eccentricities. But there isn’t an overall pervasive negative vibe following you everywhere you go if you’re slightly odd. If you speak English with a slightly different accent you aren’t mocked. You’re just asked to repeat yourself (and occasionally treated like a special exhibit at the zoo). You can wear almost type of clothing anything and not be bothered about it for the most part. Your neighbors won’t come over and call you a slut for wearing shorts in 100 degree weather (and you are wearing shorts in your own house…not walking around town with it). 

I am not quite sure how to put this. But, everytime a white person walks around in India they are treated as a god (one reason my husband is quite eager to visit India). White skin is prized. So I can’t imagine a white person having a terribly negative experience in a place like Kerala.  Maybe they might wind up as victims of theft or pickpocketeers…but their attitude and behaviour won’t be mocked. But if those same attitudes were somehow part of someone’s personality (say…me)…then life will be hell. Speaking the native language with a slightly different accent will get giggles and mockery every single time. Wearing jeans will be seen as a huge act of rebellion that will need to be curbed.

I can’t remember what else made my life a living hell seeing as I have a terrible memory. But I wonder if its worth it to live in a community with a very low rate of resource consumption and give up any semblance of a personality in order to fit in.