I forgot to send my grandmother her birthday card. I’ve become too busy to drop a card to my grandmother two days before her birthday. Most family members I send an e-card to them right around the day of their birthday is cheaper and more earth-friendly that way. However, it is also further proof to me that the art of letter writing is dying.
I have actually been thinking about this a lot lately. With my purchase of an iPhone, my parents learning how to text message, and emailing sometimes being a faster way to get a hold of some one than calling them we are more connected than ever these days. But the passion seems to have fallen out of those communications. It’s everyday and mundane, but we love it. Call me nostalgic, but I like going out to my mail box to find more than bills and junk.
When I was in high school I had a few pen pals. People I’d met at different functions and wrote back and forth with about monthly. This was in the late ‘90s when internet was starting to become a normal thing in the American household and I could have just as easily written emails back and forth but it wouldn’t have been the same. There’s something that goes in to sitting down and writing a letter to some one: picking out the stationary, what pen you’ll use, what you are and aren’t going to mention. There is so much more effort in that then writing 140 characters or less about your morning coffee. And really, if you think about it, not many people care about the mundane day to day things that we do in our life. In fact, there’s a line that we cross all too frequently in our over connectedness.
I’m not saying that I want to go back to a day when letter writing was the main form of communication, I would just like to revive the hand-written word. It shouldn’t be a dying art, but sadly it is.
Showing posts with label good choices for the Earth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label good choices for the Earth. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
5 Dirty Words
Caught your eye, didn’t it? I know it caught mine. And no, it’s not what you think.
Like most Portlanders I tend to have an eye toward conservation: I take public transportation to and from work, I combine trips when I’m out driving around, I recycle, I even compost.
In the first part of May, MINIGirl and her family took a trip down to Southern California so I had the opportunity to “sublet” her parking spot in the garage next to our office building for a week. In the two and a half years I have worked in that office I hadn’t once driven myself to work. In fact I frequently extolled upon the virtues of taking MAX to work daily, and for the most part those still hold true.
After the week was over I gave MINIGirl her parking pass back and went back to my daily commute on Max. I hated it. I’d had a taste of freedom and now I was locked back in to the schedule that the MAX set for me. So I began to think to myself: “What if I drove to work everyday?” But logic hits me upside the head noting all the money I save by taking the MAX, and how virtuous for the Earth it is. So I quietly take my seat on the MAX and contemplate what another few months of light rail commuting would mean.
In between podcasts I looked up at the posters that line the walls inside the car and I see one from TriMet: “5 Dirty Words: POLLUTION. Fact: 4.2 tons of smog-forming pollutants are avoided every day by leaving our cars at home and riding TriMet.”
GUILT. Pure and simple. How selfish of me to want to shave ten to fifteen minutes off of my commute home and contribute to global warming.
If you would like to read the rest of TriMets 5 Dirty Words look here.
Like most Portlanders I tend to have an eye toward conservation: I take public transportation to and from work, I combine trips when I’m out driving around, I recycle, I even compost.
In the first part of May, MINIGirl and her family took a trip down to Southern California so I had the opportunity to “sublet” her parking spot in the garage next to our office building for a week. In the two and a half years I have worked in that office I hadn’t once driven myself to work. In fact I frequently extolled upon the virtues of taking MAX to work daily, and for the most part those still hold true.
After the week was over I gave MINIGirl her parking pass back and went back to my daily commute on Max. I hated it. I’d had a taste of freedom and now I was locked back in to the schedule that the MAX set for me. So I began to think to myself: “What if I drove to work everyday?” But logic hits me upside the head noting all the money I save by taking the MAX, and how virtuous for the Earth it is. So I quietly take my seat on the MAX and contemplate what another few months of light rail commuting would mean.
In between podcasts I looked up at the posters that line the walls inside the car and I see one from TriMet: “5 Dirty Words: POLLUTION. Fact: 4.2 tons of smog-forming pollutants are avoided every day by leaving our cars at home and riding TriMet.”
GUILT. Pure and simple. How selfish of me to want to shave ten to fifteen minutes off of my commute home and contribute to global warming.
If you would like to read the rest of TriMets 5 Dirty Words look here.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Eat the View: Part 3, In “The Word Garden”
The time of year that I have been anxiously waiting for since our first cold day of fall has finally arrived. Spring! Sadly the turning of the season of new life doesn’t necessarily mean that I can start putting my veggies in the ground just yet. I have been reading gardening blogs of people who live in a warmer climate and drooling over my garden’s potential – dreaming of the day when I can actually transplant my tomato starts in to the raised planter bed that Hubby and I built with the help of CodeMonkey and his lovely wife LadyNurse. Alas, it is still too cold and if I prematurely put the plants out it could damage them. So, the tomato starts have taken up residence in my kitchen window along with the basil, sage, oregano and marjoram starts. The snow peas I planted outside in a 5 gallon pot over a month ago seem to be growing quite happily in this cold weather. I am regretting, though, not having staggered planting them because now we will have an abundance of the peas all at once. Looks like I will be learning how to freeze fresh produce.
This is my first edible garden, and I would like to think that I’m taking it slowly and not getting too excited but it is hard to judge my level of excitement until I get to the “uh oh, I may have done too much” point. By the way, I am nowhere near that point yet. Once we get fully in to the swing of growing season it is likely that that is when I will look at my over abundance of crops and wonder what the heck I was thinking. In the mean time, I’m enjoying watching little sprouts pop up in the starter pots in my kitchen window and imagining the fun meals I can produce with them when the time comes.
If you would like to read my previous posts on the subject see: Part One, and Part Two
This is my first edible garden, and I would like to think that I’m taking it slowly and not getting too excited but it is hard to judge my level of excitement until I get to the “uh oh, I may have done too much” point. By the way, I am nowhere near that point yet. Once we get fully in to the swing of growing season it is likely that that is when I will look at my over abundance of crops and wonder what the heck I was thinking. In the mean time, I’m enjoying watching little sprouts pop up in the starter pots in my kitchen window and imagining the fun meals I can produce with them when the time comes.
If you would like to read my previous posts on the subject see: Part One, and Part Two
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Eat the View: Part 2
Almost a month ago I posted a video called “This Lawn is Your Lawn”. The video is about the initiative to have the front lawn of the White House be partially converted to a vegetable garden to fill the first kitchen. The movement has been dubbed Victory Garden 2.0 after Eleanor Roosevelt’s WWII era Victory Garden at the White House. I think this is a magnificent idea, and one that Obama should take to heart when he has a moment. I really do believe that if he takes the lead it could have a profound impact on our country in ways we may not be able to calculate. We can’t exactly expect the leader of the free world to focus on something that we find important – then it comes back to us to stand up to do it ourselves.
Around the time that I posted that video Hubby and I had dinner with the Married Couple Collective (MCC) and found that many of us felt the same way about growing our own produce to the extent that we can. The other two wives and I chatted and found that they already had a plan laid out, if not planting beds already built, so they were already ready for planting when the time comes this year. Hubby and I on the other hand, don’t have much in the yard.
When we moved in to this house last year there wasn’t much in the yard but grass and a tree in the back. Last Spring/Summer my main goal was to beautify. We planted three rose bushes, cleaned out some weeds, purchased a lawn mower, and this fall I planted some bulbs. The plan for this season: build planter boxes and grow some veggies for ourselves. The great thing about this plan and the conversation with the MCC, is a built in growing community. We’ve worked out a seed-share program between the three couples to share the packets of seeds that we order.
Really it’s not much. It is just a little bit to provide for me and Hubby, perhaps even share any over abundance I have with others – but my reduced demand in the grocery store might just translate to something larger than I can conceive. I like that.
Around the time that I posted that video Hubby and I had dinner with the Married Couple Collective (MCC) and found that many of us felt the same way about growing our own produce to the extent that we can. The other two wives and I chatted and found that they already had a plan laid out, if not planting beds already built, so they were already ready for planting when the time comes this year. Hubby and I on the other hand, don’t have much in the yard.
When we moved in to this house last year there wasn’t much in the yard but grass and a tree in the back. Last Spring/Summer my main goal was to beautify. We planted three rose bushes, cleaned out some weeds, purchased a lawn mower, and this fall I planted some bulbs. The plan for this season: build planter boxes and grow some veggies for ourselves. The great thing about this plan and the conversation with the MCC, is a built in growing community. We’ve worked out a seed-share program between the three couples to share the packets of seeds that we order.
Really it’s not much. It is just a little bit to provide for me and Hubby, perhaps even share any over abundance I have with others – but my reduced demand in the grocery store might just translate to something larger than I can conceive. I like that.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Driving Me Crazy
Since starting my newest assignment a little over a month and a half ago in downtown Portland I have experienced a new joy: our light rail system, lovingly called MAX (Merto Area Transit).
At 7 in the morning I leave my house, still encased in the morning darkness of early fall, I have an easy drive with nice light traffic. The opposite is usually the case once I get on the train. The start of the week is normally fuller than the end, but by the time I get on there is little chance of me getting a seat let alone finding an open wall to lean against while I read. It pleases me from an ecological sense that so many people take advantage of this form of transportation rather than driving to downtown.
My choice to take the MAX every day instead of driving was both ecological as well as economical. I'll be honest, it's more so the latter if one takes the following into consideration. Gas is now at $2.95/gallon and the drive is 10 miles each way, parking downtown can be a little stressful to find first of all and can cost upwards of $10 a day, taking all of that into consideration driving myself downtown could get expensive really quickly and I would like to keep more of my paycheck. At $2.05 per ride (less if a monthly pass is purchased and you ride the MAX more than 37 times in a month), and for me a three mile drive to the station, the exchange is well worth it.
At 7 in the morning I leave my house, still encased in the morning darkness of early fall, I have an easy drive with nice light traffic. The opposite is usually the case once I get on the train. The start of the week is normally fuller than the end, but by the time I get on there is little chance of me getting a seat let alone finding an open wall to lean against while I read. It pleases me from an ecological sense that so many people take advantage of this form of transportation rather than driving to downtown.
My choice to take the MAX every day instead of driving was both ecological as well as economical. I'll be honest, it's more so the latter if one takes the following into consideration. Gas is now at $2.95/gallon and the drive is 10 miles each way, parking downtown can be a little stressful to find first of all and can cost upwards of $10 a day, taking all of that into consideration driving myself downtown could get expensive really quickly and I would like to keep more of my paycheck. At $2.05 per ride (less if a monthly pass is purchased and you ride the MAX more than 37 times in a month), and for me a three mile drive to the station, the exchange is well worth it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)