12/03/09 URGENT Update: HuffPost in conjunction with Hopenhagen.org is sending one person to Copenhagen for the UN Climate Change Conference to both represent concerns of people around the world and to report back daily as a HuffPost citizen journalist.
Please take a minute to vote on the Huffington Post web site to send Green Mom Diane MacEachern to Copenhagen for the Climate Talks. She would be an excellent ambassador to carry the messages we care about. To learn more about her, please check out the interview she did with Beth Terry of Fake Plastic Fish. I have the pleasure of blogging with Diane in the Green Mom's Carnival each month - she is an amazing advocate for the environment and for human health. VOTING ENDS DEC 4!!!
Thanks all!
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Black Friday, Bah! Or, Bringing Sharing, Laughter, Creativity & Personal Renewal back to your holiday season
While this may be odd coming from a shop owner, I fully support National Buy Nothing Day. More importantly though, I am excited about the “Simplify the Holidays” Guide put out by the Center for a New American Dream.
Here is how their guide begins:
If you were asked to describe the ideal holiday season, chances are you would include the company of loved ones, good food, fun and relaxation, and maybe an inch or two of snow. It seems so simple, but for many of us, this could not be farther from reality. Too often, the holidays seem to exhaust rather than uplift us. Do you sometimes feel trapped by the shopping, spending, and frenzied preparations? Do you want your holidays wrapped more in meaning and less in stuff? If so, you’re not alone.
According to a recent national survey, more than 3 in 4 Americans wish that holidays were less materialistic. Nearly 9 in 10 believe that holidays should be more about family and caring for others, not giving and receiving gifts. And in today’s economy, many Americans are feeling the need to cut back. Consumers spent less during the 2008 holiday season than in prior years. A national survey revealed that the majority of Americans are planning to spend even less in 2009. This year, you don’t have to rack up credit card debt or get swept up in the season’s commercialism. Instead, consider creating holidays that instill more meaning into the season and encourage more sharing, laughter, creativity, and personal renewal.
Let me just repeat those last few words: sharing, laughter, creativity, and personal renewal. How much more would we ALL enjoy our holiday season if we could concentrate on those?
Things covered in the 30-page guide are:
- Are You Dreaming of the Perfect Holiday?
- Retail Extravaganza
- Getting Started
- Time and Stress
- Gifts and Spending
- Budgeting
- Waste
- Talk to Your Family
- Simple Gift Ideas
- Homemade Gifts
- Gifts of Time
- Gifts of Experience
- Gifts to Charity
- What is an Alternative Gift Fair?
- Gifts for Children
- Gifts for Grandparents
- Low-Waste Wrapping
- Decorating Materials
- Change Gift-Giving Traditions
- Connect With Your Children
- Remember Your Elders
- Simpler Entertaining
- Holiday Advice from Fellow New Dreamers
Click here to go to the page to download the pdf. You do have to sign up (sorry!) but you can always unsubscribe, and the guide is totally worth it.
So tomorrow, so-called “Black Friday,” just relax. You do not have to (literally) buy in to the craziness. You can have one of the best holidays EVER and do it consciously, inexpensively, and with joy in your heart.
Good luck, and let me know how it goes!
Saturday, November 21, 2009
The Heck with Whiskers on Kittens - A Few of My Favorite Things...
After a very long, dark week, the sun came out today for the second day in a row. It never fails to impress me just how much we are all affected by sunlight. Yay! Hooray! We were all practically jumping up and down every time we went outside and were greeted by bright shining rays. Strains of "good day, sunshine," and John Fogerty's "well beat the drum and hold the phone, the sun came out today..." played through my brain, and I began to calculate the loads of laundry that needed to be washed and hung out in the sun to dry.
And because we had plentiful power from the previous day's sun, my day began with grinding coffee. Is there anything else in the world that smells as blatantly, obnoxiously delicious as fresh-ground coffee? I think not.
While sitting in the Mercantile waiting for the Mississippi Mud brownies to lure another customer in, I made a list of my favorite aromas:
1. Fresh-ground coffee beans
2. Watermelon - the quintessenntial smell of summer.
3. Cucumbers - so clean smelling
4. Freshly washed babies
Our friend Georgia Rose, photographed by her father, Penn.5. Sheets dried in the sunshine - I've been known to huff a sheet or two
6. Jeffrey Pines at about 7,000' in the Sierra Nevada Mountains - they smell divinely of butterscotch, and when one encounters a grove of them it is absolute heaven.
7. Bookstores and libraries - yum, yum, yum!
8. Biodiesel made from used fryer oil - cars using this fuel drive away engulfed in the fragrance of French fries
9. Kurt - right there in his neck, where my nose ends up during a good embrace.
10. Puppy breath
11. My own sweaty self after a really good hike.
12. My own squeaky clean self after a shower after #11.
13. Bread baking in the oven.
That's it for now. It's time to head on over to Ironweed Kitchen for a farewell party for Travis. More soon!
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Saving money by being Green
This is my entry for November's Green Mom's Carnival, hosted by Condo Blues. Check it out!
When people meet me and find out that I: a) live in an ecovillage, b) live in a straw bale house and that, c) our house is entirely off the grid, they seem to be flooded with a variety of emotions. Watching their faces as they internally work through it all and try to remain gracious at the same time is often hilarious. I’ve seen shock (“how do I characterize this person?”), a slight sneer (are they thinking “Grateful Dead-listening, Birkenstock-wearing hippy”?), guilt (“uh-oh, don’t tell her I drove here by myself in my SUV”), disbelief (“strawbales? You mean like the three little pigs?”), admiration (“cool, I saw something on HGTV like this”) and just plain total incomprehension.
But finally, when we get that all sorted out (it usually takes less than 30 seconds) we both recognize that we have much more in common than we have differences.
Far from being more expensive than the average life, I find that my green, sustainable lifestyle has been a great way to save not only money but time, which in the end is much more valuable, at least to me. How can this be possible?
I have crafted my life so that it costs less than my ‘old’ life in California. I work 100 yards from my home, so I do not need to commute long distance in a car to work each day. I eat most of my meals at home, or at the homes of friends, which I not only love socially but really appreciate because I get to hang out with my husband, which is kind of the point of getting married in the first place. Our home is located in the rural Midwest, so I can grow a lot of my own food. I live in an intentional community with a growing number of like-minded folks who share many of my values.
I am not trying to keep up with the Green Joneses. I do not have an expensive hybrid vehicle. In fact, I no longer own a car of my own. Instead I share two cars, a truck and a tractor (this is rural Missouri, after all) with 40 other adults in my community. This is often greeted with incredulity and then a look of sadness for poor, poor Alline, who cannot even have her own vehicle. Hold the phone! This little blip saves me thousands of dollars a year. I think back to my days in Berkeley when I had a very dependable Honda Accord. As a native Californian I loved my car, and valued it as a part of my independence. It is only since being here at Dancing Rabbit that I realize that perhaps the car owned me more than I owned it. Each month there were car payments ($200/month), insurance payments ($150/month), gas bills ($50/month), and the occasional maintenance expense. Anytime I went outside of my neighborhood I had to pay for parking; in San Francisco, this was phenomenally expensive. Now I pay .60 per mile. This makes an individual trip sound expensive, but this fee covers car payment, insurance, maintenance and fuel. When we need to drive a long distance (when the train just won’t work out), we rent a car. My average monthly vehicle coop bill is $50. That’s $600 compared to almost $5,000 annually.
My husband and I built our house ourselves. Well, to be brutally honest, Kurt built the house, and I was opinionated about what it all looked like. When we left our “real” jobs in Berkeley in 1999, I cashed out my 401K, and we used this money to buy our power system. For $12,000 we purchased solar panels, a small wind turbine, batteries in which to store the power and the electrical voodoo to make it all run. While it was pricey up front, we now have dependable power for as long as we have our home. There are a lot of arguments about the sustainability about solar power systems, many of which I agree with (the technology is polluting, the batteries are huge and only last ten years, etc.). However, we balance this will knowing that our power does not come from a nuclear power plant, nor is it the result of mountaintops being removed for the coal. We feel very grateful for the power that we receive from the sun and wind, and because it is plentiful but often variable in quantity, we don’t waste it.
We built our home out of reclaimed and locally harvested lumber, strawbales, and lime plaster. The bales, which are 18” thick are a waste product from the local wheat harvest. They are also incredible insulation. The windows were either purchased used or came from the Marvin Windows “bone yard,” where all the rejected special order windows go. For $1,000 we purchased an entire truck load of windows and doors. Most of these are double-paned and absolutely beautiful. The flooring in our upstairs bedroom and studio came from an old house. We pulled all of the nails out of it, and after it was in place sanded and varnished it. It was not expensive. It is not cool bamboo, or cork, or any of the other expensive-but-green building materials we read about in magazines (which just exist to sell you products, btw*).
We own 280 acres with the other members of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in a legal structure called a Community Land Trust. We pay a lease fee of .01 per square foot per month for the lot that our home sits on and the surrounding garden area; this is about $50 per month. This has many benefits, among which are having access to almost 300 acres of native prairie and woodlands (with creeks, ponds and wildlife) without having to buy it all ourselves. We get the extra added benefit of sharing our lives with others who we enjoy.
We are part of a food buying club and are able to order through a large natural foods distributor for wholesale prices. We patronize the local dairies and butcher, and often swap vegetables with each other (“hey, I’ve got a lot of zucchini – who wants some?”). We preserve much of the summer’s bounty – I have a pantry full of tomato sauce, salsa, blackberry jam, zucchini relish, pickled beets, dilly beans, pears, hot peppers, corn, etc. It is a delight to pull these jars out in the middle of winter – we feel rich.
We don’t have an energy-star rated dishwasher – I do them by hand. Kurt dries, and it is a nice way to hang out at the end of a meal. We don’t have air conditioning (our house is designed to stay relatively cool in the summer) nor do we have central heat – we have a wood stove. Kurt and I own the community washing machine – we bought it ten years ago when there was a need, and put a coin op on it. Half of the quarters go to the community building to pay for water and power, the rest go to us. The entire community shares this washer, with few problems. We all hang out clothes out to dry. Yes, even in the winter.
Lest we sound like Little House on the Prairie, we have computers with high-speed internet, telephones, a fully equipped kitchen (everything from a Kitchen Aid mixer to a coffee grinder and microwave), a bathroom (shower, tub and sink with solar hot water, composting toilet), a television (which isn’t hooked up to anything, just used for Netflix movies) and all the comforts of home. We utilize the local library, Bookmooch.com and buy used books online.
I no longer own the coolest shoes or handbag (don’t even know what they are); I don’t have to have an uber-chic wardrobe for work each day because it really doesn’t matter. People come to see us because of who we are, not to check and see if we’re wearing eco-couture. Once I realized who it was I was really dressing up for (other women; the men really don’t care, which always makes me think of Van Morrison’s Wild Nights “..and the girls walk by dressed up for each other…” but I digress).
So think about it. Why are you buying what you are buying? Do you really need to spend money to be green?
Recommend reading:
Your Money or Your Life
A Reasonable Life by Ferenc Mate
The Lifelong Activist by Hillary Rettig.
* A note on magazines: You DO realize that magazines live (and die) by the quantity of advertising, don't you? It is in their best interest to write compelling articles about the items being advertised in their pages. While (of course) house insulation made of blue jeans or blown cellulose (which is simply recycled newspaper shredded into tiny bits) is MUCH more eco and sustainable than, say fiberglass, you simply DO NOT HAVE TO BUY STUFF to be green. I'll write (um, rant?) more on this topic in another post, but for now, urge you to read commercial publications with a jaundiced eye.
Additionally, magazines I trust: Good, Yes!, Mother Jones, Utne Reader...
When people meet me and find out that I: a) live in an ecovillage, b) live in a straw bale house and that, c) our house is entirely off the grid, they seem to be flooded with a variety of emotions. Watching their faces as they internally work through it all and try to remain gracious at the same time is often hilarious. I’ve seen shock (“how do I characterize this person?”), a slight sneer (are they thinking “Grateful Dead-listening, Birkenstock-wearing hippy”?), guilt (“uh-oh, don’t tell her I drove here by myself in my SUV”), disbelief (“strawbales? You mean like the three little pigs?”), admiration (“cool, I saw something on HGTV like this”) and just plain total incomprehension.
But finally, when we get that all sorted out (it usually takes less than 30 seconds) we both recognize that we have much more in common than we have differences.
Far from being more expensive than the average life, I find that my green, sustainable lifestyle has been a great way to save not only money but time, which in the end is much more valuable, at least to me. How can this be possible?
I have crafted my life so that it costs less than my ‘old’ life in California. I work 100 yards from my home, so I do not need to commute long distance in a car to work each day. I eat most of my meals at home, or at the homes of friends, which I not only love socially but really appreciate because I get to hang out with my husband, which is kind of the point of getting married in the first place. Our home is located in the rural Midwest, so I can grow a lot of my own food. I live in an intentional community with a growing number of like-minded folks who share many of my values.
I am not trying to keep up with the Green Joneses. I do not have an expensive hybrid vehicle. In fact, I no longer own a car of my own. Instead I share two cars, a truck and a tractor (this is rural Missouri, after all) with 40 other adults in my community. This is often greeted with incredulity and then a look of sadness for poor, poor Alline, who cannot even have her own vehicle. Hold the phone! This little blip saves me thousands of dollars a year. I think back to my days in Berkeley when I had a very dependable Honda Accord. As a native Californian I loved my car, and valued it as a part of my independence. It is only since being here at Dancing Rabbit that I realize that perhaps the car owned me more than I owned it. Each month there were car payments ($200/month), insurance payments ($150/month), gas bills ($50/month), and the occasional maintenance expense. Anytime I went outside of my neighborhood I had to pay for parking; in San Francisco, this was phenomenally expensive. Now I pay .60 per mile. This makes an individual trip sound expensive, but this fee covers car payment, insurance, maintenance and fuel. When we need to drive a long distance (when the train just won’t work out), we rent a car. My average monthly vehicle coop bill is $50. That’s $600 compared to almost $5,000 annually.
My husband and I built our house ourselves. Well, to be brutally honest, Kurt built the house, and I was opinionated about what it all looked like. When we left our “real” jobs in Berkeley in 1999, I cashed out my 401K, and we used this money to buy our power system. For $12,000 we purchased solar panels, a small wind turbine, batteries in which to store the power and the electrical voodoo to make it all run. While it was pricey up front, we now have dependable power for as long as we have our home. There are a lot of arguments about the sustainability about solar power systems, many of which I agree with (the technology is polluting, the batteries are huge and only last ten years, etc.). However, we balance this will knowing that our power does not come from a nuclear power plant, nor is it the result of mountaintops being removed for the coal. We feel very grateful for the power that we receive from the sun and wind, and because it is plentiful but often variable in quantity, we don’t waste it.
We built our home out of reclaimed and locally harvested lumber, strawbales, and lime plaster. The bales, which are 18” thick are a waste product from the local wheat harvest. They are also incredible insulation. The windows were either purchased used or came from the Marvin Windows “bone yard,” where all the rejected special order windows go. For $1,000 we purchased an entire truck load of windows and doors. Most of these are double-paned and absolutely beautiful. The flooring in our upstairs bedroom and studio came from an old house. We pulled all of the nails out of it, and after it was in place sanded and varnished it. It was not expensive. It is not cool bamboo, or cork, or any of the other expensive-but-green building materials we read about in magazines (which just exist to sell you products, btw*).
We own 280 acres with the other members of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in a legal structure called a Community Land Trust. We pay a lease fee of .01 per square foot per month for the lot that our home sits on and the surrounding garden area; this is about $50 per month. This has many benefits, among which are having access to almost 300 acres of native prairie and woodlands (with creeks, ponds and wildlife) without having to buy it all ourselves. We get the extra added benefit of sharing our lives with others who we enjoy.
We are part of a food buying club and are able to order through a large natural foods distributor for wholesale prices. We patronize the local dairies and butcher, and often swap vegetables with each other (“hey, I’ve got a lot of zucchini – who wants some?”). We preserve much of the summer’s bounty – I have a pantry full of tomato sauce, salsa, blackberry jam, zucchini relish, pickled beets, dilly beans, pears, hot peppers, corn, etc. It is a delight to pull these jars out in the middle of winter – we feel rich.
We don’t have an energy-star rated dishwasher – I do them by hand. Kurt dries, and it is a nice way to hang out at the end of a meal. We don’t have air conditioning (our house is designed to stay relatively cool in the summer) nor do we have central heat – we have a wood stove. Kurt and I own the community washing machine – we bought it ten years ago when there was a need, and put a coin op on it. Half of the quarters go to the community building to pay for water and power, the rest go to us. The entire community shares this washer, with few problems. We all hang out clothes out to dry. Yes, even in the winter.
Lest we sound like Little House on the Prairie, we have computers with high-speed internet, telephones, a fully equipped kitchen (everything from a Kitchen Aid mixer to a coffee grinder and microwave), a bathroom (shower, tub and sink with solar hot water, composting toilet), a television (which isn’t hooked up to anything, just used for Netflix movies) and all the comforts of home. We utilize the local library, Bookmooch.com and buy used books online.
I no longer own the coolest shoes or handbag (don’t even know what they are); I don’t have to have an uber-chic wardrobe for work each day because it really doesn’t matter. People come to see us because of who we are, not to check and see if we’re wearing eco-couture. Once I realized who it was I was really dressing up for (other women; the men really don’t care, which always makes me think of Van Morrison’s Wild Nights “..and the girls walk by dressed up for each other…” but I digress).
So think about it. Why are you buying what you are buying? Do you really need to spend money to be green?
Recommend reading:
Your Money or Your Life
A Reasonable Life by Ferenc Mate
The Lifelong Activist by Hillary Rettig.
* A note on magazines: You DO realize that magazines live (and die) by the quantity of advertising, don't you? It is in their best interest to write compelling articles about the items being advertised in their pages. While (of course) house insulation made of blue jeans or blown cellulose (which is simply recycled newspaper shredded into tiny bits) is MUCH more eco and sustainable than, say fiberglass, you simply DO NOT HAVE TO BUY STUFF to be green. I'll write (um, rant?) more on this topic in another post, but for now, urge you to read commercial publications with a jaundiced eye.
Additionally, magazines I trust: Good, Yes!, Mother Jones, Utne Reader...
Monday, November 2, 2009
Halloween Revels
The following originally appeared in the Memphis (Missouri) Democrat.
Revelers in the Milkweed Mercantile. Photo: Jennifer Martin
Revelers in the Milkweed Mercantile. Photo: Jennifer Martin
Hi all. This is Alline with the latest news from Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.
As this column appears in the local Northeastern newspapers and is sent to readers via email, we column writers do double-duty. The locals already know about the weather, but folks reading this in, say,
So with that caveat, we begin with the weather: The constant, driving, Noah-esque rain has finally abated and we’ve been receiving the wild winds for which the
Halloween (or, as we call it around here: “Holler-ween”) is a big annual event here at Dancing Rabbit, rich in traditions which are being added upon each year. Preparation for the big day began early in the week with not one but two pumpkin carving parties. In addition, Bear crafted a jack-o-lantern with a skid-steer loader for Zane, a fan of all heavy equipment.
Bear & Zane with the Skid Steer Jack-o-lantern.
Saturday itself was filled with lots of planning and plotting for costumes and our annual Progressive Fiasco. Much like a progressive dinner, we dress up and go from home to home, where we are fed and entertained. In preparation for the stop his family was hosting, Cob came into the Milkweed Mercantile in the afternoon and asked for “a quarter pound of maggots.” In the spirit of the holiday, I filled his order with some delicious, organic jelly beans. Viewed in the right light, I guess they do look a bit larval…
When the kids could stand it no longer, it was finally time for the festivities to begin. The full moon rose over a cloudless sky – for once it was NOT a “dark and stormy night,” and we all gathered in the
After this we rambled over to the Timberframe addition, where we collaborated and told the scariest ghost story ever told. Then it was off to the home of the Carletons (dressed as a church lady, a schoolgirl, two zombies and a robot, who’s head was not only wired for sound with an I-pod but also had a clock, a camera and a straw for easy imbibing) for more activities and snacks (including “dried blood” popcorn). Last stop of the evening was Maikwe’s (an elegant vampire) house, were revelers danced into the evening.
In other news, the building season is slowing wrapping up, one work site at a time. Rev and Kit, who have been working feverishly on Maikwe’s home, departed on Thursday.
Maikwe's house. What you can't see: the clerestory windows, the plaster, and the fabulous posts inside.
Jennifer held an end-of-season BBQ celebration for her crew (Bear, Horacio, Dave and Randy) on Saturday afternoon, although I still hear hammering from the site where they are installing the observation tower on the Timberframe addition.
Dave waving from the observation tower. For more photos of the Timberframe addition, see Jennifer's Flickr site.
Travis (a work exchanger) has been helping Ted and Sara on the Ironweed Kitchen, home of the eagerly awaited “chicken TV.”
Travis working on a cob bench. On the right: the battery box. Top right (the round window): future Chicken TV.
Strange phenomenon on the cob exterior of the Ironweed Kitchen. Carpenter bees?
Dan and Mary Beth continue to work on their building, and are now applying lime plaster to the straw bales.
Dan plastering the East side of the house.
View of the window-filled south side of Dan & Mary Beth's house. It faces the pond (shown in the photo below). To the left with the blue roof: Larkspur, home of Bear, Alyssa and Zane.
Dan & Mary Beth's chickens, in their chicken tractor.
Last but certainly not least, Jeff finally moved into his house.
Jeff's House.
A group of Rabbits (Matt, Liat, April, Tom, Tereza, Bob) arrived home after ten days of hard work doing deconstruction for a Quaker group. While the work was hard, they had a wonderful time – the organizers thoughtfully prepared ten days worth of vegan food, and labeled and froze them all so that the Rabbits could dine divinely.
To close out the week with a bang, we met and finally chose the dates for our 2010 Visitor Program. We hope to have details posted on the Dancing Rabbit website soon!
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Dancing Rabbit in the St. Louis Post Dispatch
Thomas and AliPhoto by Dawn Majors
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Yodeling Cats, and Wasting Time at the Ecovillage
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