babystepstotheelevator

Green is as Green does...and... it isn't always easy being green

2010-08-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

Haven't written in awhile.
Could be because this is one of the only times that our little one has gone to sleep before us, on her own, and stayed asleep. It feels strange and liberating. As I sit here absorbing Harold Arlen tunes endlessly repeating on itunes, I am reflecting on how our way of life has changed since we left the road documentary that was YERT (www.YERT.com) and landed in KY, to start our own sustainable family.

We're good about some things: We're very active in the environmental movement here - well, Ben is - We don't use paper towels! Ben tries never to leave leftovers on his plate to avoid generating garbage. We compost. We recycle. We don't buy new plastic toys for Bailey - or much of anything new for any of us, really. Ben takes the bus pretty regularly now, and rides his bike to work when he can. We constantly turn off lights after everyone in our house and fight over the thermostat to use less energy. We even took our first Cob-building workshop this year!
We eat local often, and organic mostly. We have a garden and are learning to grow things, but to be honest we have definitely not grown enough to sustain ourselves past a nice salad of tomatoes and green beans.

We try to be as active as we can in our city and have found many wonderful people on board doing whatever they can to help make Louisville a more sustainable place to live, but we do find the current climate of climate skepticism stupefying and sometimes difficult to combat with optimism and hope.
As we no longer live in a town with great public transportation or with many walkable neighborhoods, we drive a car that unfortunately gets sub-optimal (Ben's euphemism - I prefer "crappy") gas mileage, and is overdue for both an oil change and a tuneup, with a tire that seems to be constantly losing air. These are things that should be tended to but Ben spends all his time editing the YERT film and I spend all my time being Mommy, and some important things just don't ever seem to get done.

The YERT garbage experiment has not really been tried at home, since the early days of sleepless parenting. The stress of having a newborn almost made me lose it. We gave that up. We make garbage. Sometimes I've let Bailey have a straw just to make her happy. We buy frozen food that has traveled miles and miles. We try not to buy things that come packaged in plastic but we sometimes do. And although we use cloth diapers mostly, there are times that we slap a 7th Generation disposable dipe on our little one for convenience. And she knows the difference - the "posable dipe" is the "comftable dipe."

I usually remember to bring reusable grocery bags, but when i don't, i rationalize that paper bags are great for compost and to hold the recyclable paper. I THINK about bringing tupperware/utensils with me in case we ever stop somewhere for food but these things have never actually made their way into the diaperbag. And our daughter is now 2, singing, speaking in full sentences and using the potty. When do I think i'm going to start making the simple changes that we made for the YERT trip? Tomorrow? Wake up; it IS tomorrow. Convenience and comfort are not character-building, I tell myself, in her or in us.

What this boils down to is that our little family cares deeply about the environment and living sustainably on this planet, but we can do more. I really like the idea that writing this encourage me to leave even lighter footprints - get out the bus schedules, the tupperware, the hankies, the chicobags, the LED headlamps for nighttime light. Some of these intentions may not be fully realized while we are living under my dear mother's roof (she tends to bang into things at night with no lights) but I know we can renew our efforts to reduce our impact. I think I'll start with finding a place of honor in the diaperbag for the tupperware and the utensils. And the bus schedules. (And then actually take the bus.)

stuck between two blogs...

2009-02-26T06:31:00.000-08:00

i wonder how many other people have encountered this "problem": blogging about a specific issue and then needing more blogs to expand as new issues beg to be brought to light?

i started with this blog as a way to write about my growing environmental awareness and the steps i was taking to get to some undefined ultra-green place... and then, the YERT trip happened (www.YERT.com) and for nearly a year this blog became necessarily - or so i thought - less of me and more of a ship's log for the journey...leaving most of my personal reflections to be handwritten in a journal i brought along with me.

That worked for awhile but somewhere along the way - right around the time that I got unexpectedly pregnant - personal aggravations started to flare up on the trip and, with burning passion, I started a new private blog called "...Toast" with title entries like "Asshole" and "I am so over this." It was quite useful as a repository of rage and i felt safe knowing no one would be hurt by something they'd never see.

Then, once I left the trip in my 7th month to have the babe, I didn't know where to write anything. The trip was over for me but babysteps seemed like YERT's blog now and not mine. The Toast blog was really only for venting so i didn't need to write there anymore. My thoughts now included so much more than just environmental issues. I was about to become a mother! Did i need to start a whole new blog for an entirely x new chapter?

I realize this is not a real dilemma as few humans follow my blogging efforts, but i thought i would mention it here bc it has been on my mind. i have not been writing much, and i am to start up again. I may not always be writing about environmental concerns, the posts may be uber-personal or rant-y or random, but I will be still trying to make sense of a changing world that worries me and gives me cautious hope at the same time. It will be from the eyes of a woman - a mother - but still as a girl - wife, friend, sister, daughter, music and art lover and wild world enthusiast...

and, by the way, I am turning 40 in 2 weeks and am going to be singing to celebrate, so if you are in louisville on mar 20 come over and sit for awhile and i'll serenade you...

No we're not.

2008-12-14T19:00:00.000-08:00

babe is asleep in my arms, mouth wide open
blue socks barely hanging on to her feet
i didn't even know she was tired

but now i won't move cause she's OUT...
and i am in love with her.

Cloth Diapering to the Max. we're going to try them all!!!

2008-11-16T20:20:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note to say that, unbeknownst to my dear husband, we are going to try one of every kind of fitted cloth diaper i can find. We have bought gdiapers, used kissaluvs with covers and Fuzzi Bunz "All-in-ones," all fine, but now I am out to find the diapers that rock mine and baby's socks off, and are the easiest to use, clean, travel, etc...and stay out of the landfill! Stay tuned for complete review in about a month, when I have secured all our purchases and had a chance to try them out...Moms, feel free to weigh in here...

How Facebook is changing the World one filter at a time...

2008-11-15T17:43:00.002-08:00

I confess I don't really remember when i first joined facebook - was it 2005? - when my NYC agent first "friended" me and I "accepted." I don't really remember when i started signing on regularly and enjoying people's "status" lines changing. All I know is that this thing is a social network with wings and I am happy to climb on board. Today one of the virtual "groups" that i joined sent me an email that makes it so much more than a social network.

Yes, the YERT group on facebook proved mighty useful during our year on the road - Several times we landed a friendly place to stay just because somebody forwarded our message. My babysteps blog automatically posts, which is a lovely thing. It's super easy to post photos and videos and thus keep abreast of everyone's happinesses and growing families and accomplishments. Just recently, high school acquaintances have started popping up in my inbox, and I realize I have the opportunity to kindle relationships with people I had not really known in the hormone-laced haze of high school - who I may only now be able to fully appreciate and only now realize that i have important things in common with.

There are some annoying aspects of the network, like the endless applications that show up and seem to multiply within seconds. (I thought they were fun at first and allowed a "green" application called "Lil Green Patch," an application which asks you to "help take care of so-and-so's plot - there's a deer in their yard - you've saved 62 square feet of rainforest..." I presently have 237 "Lil Green Patch" requests and I am unconvinced that any rainforest anywhere is being protected from slashing and burning just bc i am watering my friend's virtual garden of strawberry shortcakes. Call me a cynic, but I have just stopped watering.)

I am, however, intrigued by the Causes application. Today I was particularly elated to find out that one of the virtual "groups" that i joined has actually made a very REAL difference. It may seem small but it is a brilliant example of how, together, making some noise, we really can initiate change. The group was called "Take Back The Filter: Help Convince Clorox to Recycle Brita Filters!" which takes you to this address where people could add their names to a petition asking the manufacturers of Brita filters to take back and recycle their product so that it won't become more needless landfill. And guess what? It worked!!!
How about that? And probably it wasn't just facebook - I am sure the website reached many more people in different ways - but that is how I found the petition and added my voice, and I am proud and thrilled to have played a little part. I enjoyed similar satisfaction during YERT when I wrote CamelBak a letter and returned our water bottles due to #7 plastic and BPA and, a few months later, learned that CamelBak was changing its bottles due to consumer requests! We were heard. And heeded.

Ah! My baby is waking up on my lap now so i'll close but i want to encourage everyone out there that your voice can and DOES make a difference - however you use it - be it a letter, a phone call, your name on an emailed petition, FACEBOOK, what you buy or don't buy...It's your VOTE, and it may seem small, but it's REAL and it's powerful. Use it!

Oh Yes We Did....now what do we do?

2008-11-10T19:32:00.000-08:00

It's hard to believe a whole week has passed since America enthusiastically said Yes we can! and elected Barack Obama the 44th President of the United States. This overwhelming vote for change, for Unity, and Peace thrilled most of America to pieces Tuesday night just as it now inspires us for the great hard work we have yet to do. America may be limping, but we just got a new PT and we can do this if we are all ready to walk a bit together. WE must support our new leader by getting off our duffs (apologies to those of us who already don't spend much time there) and BEING the change we wish to see...there's so much opportunity here, for our human habitat, for civil rights, for global relations...
So...what exactly do we do? Keep sending money to the Obama team as the new administration? I doubt many people can keep that up. Keep up to date on all the political goings on through our media of choice? Sorry: passive. Keep trying on a personal level to "go green" in our lives? Of course we should, but that won't be enough. It's time for each of us to make some beautiful noise, if we haven't already: contact our local representatives on a regular basis, go to town meetings, become involved in our communities, and support the new administration in its work by letting government AND corporations know that we want things to change, and how.
We now have THE opportunity to make real change happen. Let's ride the wave!! Don't let this opportunity pass us by. Let our policy makers know that we care, we are aware, and we EXPECT new and better laws and protections for ourselves, our children and our environment.
President-Elect Obama said we have a lot of work to do. He's right. But his election proved to a lot of us that things really CAN change so we can all, as a beautiful woman once said to me in the NYC subway, "Be encouraged." I, for one, feel recharged. Thank you, America. Let's pull up our boots together and see what we can do.

2008-10-24T23:19:00.000-07:00

We are learning, baby and me.
Every time i think we have some kind of routine down, things change.
She changes.
I wish we were asleep by midnight - we did that for a few weeks - but now Little Bee thinks that midnight is a good time for an hour nap, and that bedtime is better at 3am.
Unfortunately, this father's daughter's father is in the middle of tech week for the musical he's starring in so he cannot really help mama out much...which is why we are up watching Before & After on Discovery Health at 2:39 in the morning...and i am just hoping she will make it back down at 3.
Wish us luck...

thank you, edward abbey

2008-10-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

Anne from Not So Big Blog quotes from Edward Abbey, "cranky environmentalist/mystic of the desert southwest":

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here.

"So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space.

"Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards."

YERT Babymama checking in at 6 weeks postpartum...

2008-08-31T10:56:00.001-07:00

OK so YERT finished the traveling part of the project. I left 2 months before the very end to nest and Ben left a couple of weeks out to join me and get ready for a totally natural birth with our midwife and doula at a nearby hospital.

July 18th at 2am we started having serious contractions...and labored at home for 7 hours...

July 19, 11am - After 33 hours of hard labor, 4 bags of IV saline fluids, antibiotics, pitocin, stadol, and a C-section... there emerged 6 lbs, 13 oz of beautiful Bailey Bee out of my belly and into this wonderful Life. How surreal.

That was 6 weeks ago yesterday, and I am wondering, Where did the time go?

I am recovering well, I even like my smiley little C-section scar :) Bailey has gained 3 lbs and grown 3" on mama's milk! So, THAT is going very well. There were some other things I had planned for parenting, however, that have gone the way of the totally natural birth we hoped to have... Some of you may know that we eschewed all manner of plastic, packaging, consumerism, etc., at our baby shower in the spirit of YERT. We planned to use ONLY cloth diapers and wipes, BPA-free baby bottles if we needed to pump breastmilk, and to continue making no trash...I bought clothesline and put it up in Mom's backyard and I swore we would NOT have a television on near our baby... it all seemed so DO-able before the birth.

Now, 6 weeks out of the gate, the truth is...parenting a newborn is no walk in the park. Suffice it to say, our best laid plans were not able to soothe our fragile nerves when lack of sleep and colicky baby had us climbing the walls after the first week... And there are some pretty cool and convenient contraptions out there that really do help semi-conscious, frayed, in love parents - not the least of which is the brilliant PACIFIER. God Bless the individual who came up with the idea of popping a rubber nipple in crying baby's sweet little yap to calm them when nothing else can.

And so, there are pacifiers in the house, and disposable diapers and wipes for trips in the car. The hairdryer has been known to stay on for 20 minutes straight - not drying anyone's hair at all (the most amazing tool in the colic toolbox) and I do not turn away gifts of any kind from well-meaning friends, no matter how inefficiently I imagine they were made or whether or not they were imported from possible sweatshops in China. (However, we do have lead testing sticks and are not afraid to use them.) Diapers get washed in the hottest water possible to avoid passing thrush and then popped in the dryer bc, well, we can't keep up with how fast baby wets them if we try to dry them outside on the line. And at 3am when baby is not sleeping, we are reminded of what a comforting pal can be found in the old TV.

sigh. It's ok. At first, I beat myself up over how poorly I was managing being an eco-friendly mom but now I am relaxing and letting myself off the hook for not being perfect...I know that some things are going to get easier and we will be able to re-introduce them as Bailey gets a little bigger.

I can hardly believe we were ever without this little girl and, though YERT seems a lifetime away, I know that what we did this last year may have more impact on her life than we could ever have imagined going in. I can't wait to see how it plays out.

And then, there is the election.

in the family way, and counting the days....

2008-07-14T16:53:00.000-07:00

haha well...

just thought i would check in since we have bypassed both of the projected "due dates" and I am sure there are some people who are wondering if we just neglected to make any announcement.

We haven't forgotten. (How could we??) We've had "false labor" a couple of times now but are patiently waiting to see when little one wants to come out. I have stopped making predictions but I have heard that very many babes are born during the Full Moon, which would be Thursday/Friday of this week. Surely, she isn't waiting to be a LEO? I have had to put her Baby Book on hold...

We have been walking 40 minutes twice a day, and have tried quite a few natural labor "enhancements" but, so far, baby just seems pretty darned comfortable in there. And, frankly, I am pretty comfortable too! Fortunately, our midwife thinks our baby is not so big...so far...(though I keep thinking that the longer she is in there...the bigger she gets!)

We will keep posting. Bags have been packed for 2 weeks already, and everything seems to be ready at home...cloth diapers ready to go!!! OK baby, you are good enough to wait for. xox your mama

I Just Joined Peace One Day 2008

2008-06-29T21:07:00.000-07:00

This is a new post.

American farmers still burning crops. What will it take to get "old timers" on board with newer practices that will save $ and preserve the earth?

2008-06-20T10:08:00.000-07:00

This morning I received an email from Arkansas farmer Norwood Creech, whom YERT corresponded with while seeking out rural farmers in the South. She wrote with great concern about "old time" farmers burning off crop stubble (rather than turning it under as compost).

There no evidence that charring fields improves soil fertility - in fact, most research shows that soil degrades much faster with charring - not to mention that burning entire fields very obviously pollutes the air and adds to the CO2 load in the atmosphere. Below is Norwood's letter to me that I promised I would post for everyone to think about... along with her plea for ideas about how to sway people away who are clinging to this wasteful, damaging, antiquated practice. Please feel free to pass it on:

Julie,
The farmers are burning off their wheat, again. This process is not "more better" than rolling the stubble into the ground. Burning is the ways of the old timers. However, it also seems to be the ways of the misguided and uneducated. The first 2 photos are from our roof top here in Lepanto, AR. We are seeing 8 of these [burns] plus some, every evening now for the past 5 days. And that is just in the evening... about when the wind dies down and the smoke started from late fires settles. I am talking acres and acres of these wheat fires, burning rapidly and some even make their own clouds!

As for the picture of the burn with the flag.. The farm to the right of this one burned their wheat off last year and burned up a pick up truck in the process. Fortunately this year, it looks as though they have learned from their mistake. However, this farm to its left was intentionally burned. Fire department even had to called. It almost reached a trailer home. Farmers should not play with matches! I live in the country but it sells like a dirty city. Black ash clings to the edges of the house. None of this can be good for anyone. Not to mention global warming. In the fall, after the rice crop gets cut, some burn that too. Note that rice puts a silica in the air that can shred your lungs.... None of this burning makes sense to me, How can I get this addressed and perhaps stopped? Norwood

Here are some links for further reading:

Costs of Stubble Burning

Up in Smoke - Lost Opportunities when Stubble is Burned

Managing Natural Resources - Stubble Management

P.S. Ben is telling me that this is my hundredth blog for YERT. (He likes numbers.)

June in KY: ever more pregnant lady looking for the right caregivers...

2008-06-03T11:32:00.001-07:00

...and finding it! What a super pickle to be in - having to choose between several really positive options - especially when it comes to health care! My only lament is that we can't use all of the caregivers we found...

So...where were we...Since I was dropped off by the boys in Kentucky at the beginning of May, I have nesting and researching like mad for the best place to give birth - the best birthing options, the best prenatal care, and the best pediatrician for our new baby (who is coming in just a few weeks now)!

Some may recall, we originally planned to give birth at The Farm - a licensed midwifery Birthing Center in Summertown, TN, with midwives who basically wrote the books on midwifery in this country. However, at some point around my 6th month, I began having 2nd thoughts - partly financial, partly emotional - and Ben and I started talking about finding a midwife to have a homebirth in KY, as well as a doula (Greek - a labor coach).

From personal referrals and information on a local website called Birthcare Network, I found and interviewed several midwives and doulas, as well as people who had either homebirthed or given birth naturally in hospital (just keeping my options open). I continued reading as many books and birth stories as I could get my hands on, and watched an eye-opening documentary called The Business of Being Born (feature length - you can watch it free here) two days in a row, trying to get a handle on my own hopes and fears and expectations about birth while husband, Ben, was still off on his tour of environmental duty through YERT's last remaining states...

As I mentioned before, while it is not illegal in KY to give birth at home, it is illegal for a midwife to be hired to do so without a license (Licenses for midwives haven't been offered in KY since 1976.) ...And doctors are discouraged from supporting homebirths also for legal reasons. What it came down to is that birthing at home in KY means taking pretty serious risks that neither Ben nor I felt willing to take. Ben said to me, finally, "You're not going to get hero points for giving birth at home." And my deepest feeling is that if we ended up somehow being in the rare 1% of cases where something does go wrong, and anything bad happens to our baby because of it, I don't see how I could ever forgive myself. I needed the backup to feel safe.

So, there it was. As I discovered that my comfort level was not going to include homebirth, I at first felt rather disappointed in myself and what I considered to be my lack of courage and faith. But then friends and family kept rallying behind me and I started looking into Clark Memorial Hospital's Birthing Center. Just across the river from Louisville (in Jeffersonville, Indiana - a 15 minute drive), Clark seems to offer the natural birth we are looking for, with the medical back-up we want in case of emergency. Mom and I toured the facilities last week, and I must say that I was encouraged. Though the labor bed seemed a bit skinny to me, I was happy to learn that it's specially designed to break down so that laboring moms never have to be in a horizontal position (the worst position for giving birth as it defies the Law of Gravity - the most important law in facilitating birthing!!). I was mesmerized by the giant labor tub in the Natural Birthing Room...

The last thing I found - which maybe should have been the first - was a natural birthing class, to get us ready for the big push.... We fortunately found Bethany Collins, who was able to offer us private Bradley classes (I have been going by myself, Ben will join me next week) that we will kind of cram into 8 concentrated sessions instead of the usual 12. Bethany also happens to be a doula very familiar with the nurses and midwives at Clark, having assisted many births there and delivered there herself, so I am thrilled to have her with us, and feel like we are in really great hands.

We are now down to the last few weeks, and I am just making my decisions and phone calls, so that everything is as ready as it can be. Today I went to meet the doctor who is going to be our family doc as well as baby's pediatrician, and couldn't be more pleased. I didn't even know that family practice doctors - who literally take care of the whole family, from newborn to aged- still existed! I liked him immediately, and am really looking forward to feeling actually CARED FOR by a trusted physician. I'm sure I will write more about him as we get to know him better.

So, there it is!
I am about 35 weeks pregnant, seeing how long I can ride the crest of 190 pounds (zoiks???), walking a couple of miles every day (during which I experience Braxton Hicks contractions pretty much constantly), eating mostly healthy (though not always getting in my greens or my 85 recommended g of protein), enjoying baby squirming around in belly, still able to sleep for the most part (though that is getting interesting), and almost finished organizing the upstairs where Ben and i and baby will be making our home in Mom's house for the next year or so.

Where is YERT? I hear they are on their last day in Wyoming, headed tomorrow to Montana and Big Sky Country. I am wishing them well, and trying not to feel too sorry for myself for being without my babydaddy and for missing those gorgeous states I've never been to...
On the days where I feel like I am doing this all alone, I just have to think of my wonderful, supportive family and beautiful friends here who are absolutely terrific, and to remember that Ben is doing all he can to help preserve what's beautiful for our little one.

Yes, I feel a little lonely, waiting to share this amazing time with the man who made it happen...
but he will be home with us in a week, and it is all going to be so worth it!!! Wahoo!!!

Action ALert: NO-Impact Man needs our help! (particularly New Yorkers!)

2008-05-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are unfamiliar, "No-Impact Man" is Colin Beavan, a New Yorker who began an experiment over a year ago to make NO IMPACT on the environment. He and his little family have been living as sustainably as possible since, and he has been documenting the whole thing with daily blogs...this comes down to toilet paper, people. He is serious, and his experiment is fascinating!

Now, Colin is meeting with NY Congressman, Jerrold Nadler, intending to impress upon him the importance of timely change based on science instead of politics. This is the kind of thing we all need to be doing but don't have the time or the energy or the will or the focus, with so much going on in our daily lives, and Colin has made it his mission. Thank Goodness.

Support is fast and easy by email. Just go to the blog, read the prewritten letter of support and, if you are on board, PLEASE sign your name to the end and return to him via the email he provides. I urge you to join me in supporting what, I believe, is a very good cause.

Thank you for your efforts, beautiful people!

julie

thinking ahead to sustainability - growing food in your own backyard

2008-05-20T20:46:00.000-07:00

Mom has always had flowers, since I can remember, which she took very good care of: lilies, iris, tulips, pansies...

But Dad planted a garden, with radishes, carrots, beans, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, canteloupe, pumpkins, even corn! I remember the first time we all helped him seed...and the first time we pulled up the mutant carrots... But Dad cared about that garden as well as for it. He watered it, tended it, and then we would bring in the bounty. Only thing was, Dad didn't cook. And neither, really, did Mom. I am trying to remember eating this gorgeous bounty but, aside from swallowing soggy things boiled in bacon and salt water, which is how you "prepare" vegetables in the South, I do not recall ever eating any of these wonderful fruits of our labor at anything near their natural form...

Today, Mom and I had to go buy a tea kettle to replace hers that started spewing water all over the stove. On the way home, we had to wait for a train so we killed time at St Matthews Feed & Seed store. I thought to myself: It's now or never, and walked straight over to the tomato plants. Real food. Plants you can grow which make no garbage and keep giving you food. It's miraculous! I have grown plenty of plants in my house but, other than herbs, I have never bought and planted plants to grow food for my family. This is a first! We bought cherry tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, cilantro, lemon mint, and seeds to start green beans.

"You don't know if any of these seeds are GMO?" I asked the store lady. "Huh?" "Genetically modified - these are just seeds right, they haven't been messed with or anything?" She looked at me like I was asking her to bicycle to the moon so I took our little packet of seeds and thanked her, then we paid and skedaddled. The little plants are waiting hopefully outside in their pots for the day, coming soon, when I will put them in the real ground for them to take root and start really growing...like the baby in my belly...

We can grow things. That's amazing.

YERTmama check-in: garbage on the homefront

2008-05-18T19:20:00.000-07:00

YERT mama checking in... confessing to some trash-making on the home front in Louisville, whilst the remaining explorers make out across Minneapolis in search of green drinks, BagE-Wash and bees...

When I got dropped off of the road part of YERT, I knew that being trash-free would become a bigger challenge - mainly due to food preparation since, suddenly, all the packaging that the three of us had mostly managed to avoid (by not finishing people's cartons of milk or OJ, or boxes of cereal, etc) I would now be coming face to face with in my mom's own fridge. I mentioned a few days ago that I've been a little frustrated but, seriously, what do you do with a kitchen full of already packaged food? Not waste it, surely?

"Mom," I'd said, pointing to her little under-counter bin, "this garbage bag is going to last us until the baby is born. So don't throw anything in there that you don't want hanging around for the next 2 months." She'd just looked at me, big eyes. "OK." she'd said. I'd had a feeling it might take a few days to catch on. I did pull a couple of banana peels, a few pieces of junk mail and the occasional kleenex out of there but for the most part, and no thanks to my tirades and nagging, Mom started getting the hang of it. It has been 3 weeks.

I was hoping that we wouldn't have to take garbage out...I really was. But, I am not kidding, the trash had started to stink. I couldn't figure it out since all we'd been putting in there was plastic, plastic and plastic. And waxed food cartons that had been washed very well. This morning I found the culprit - a disposable diaper. Yum. We had a little visitor a few days ago who isn't quite potty trained yet and I hadn't told his sweet mama that we were trying to keep the same garbage until July.

It's not her fault. Anyway, I was fooling myself if I thought I could keep packing the refuse down to make that bag last another week, much less another month. So, regrettably, Mom and I took the garbage out, and took video to record the unhappy event. I have to say, though, I am so proud of mom for her efforts!! We have only one very small bag of garbage, compared to 3 BIG bags of recycling going out tomorrow, and that is a BIG change. I wonder if the garbage men notice? Almost makes me want to get up at 6:00 am just to watch them them scratch their heads in wonder at how we manage...but not quite...

AND, yesterday, Mom turned in her gas powered lawnmower for $50 at the recycling facility in Louisville and then we went to the hardware store to pick her up an electric, battery-operated lawn mower (for which she also got a $50 rebate. She's hoping it will pay for itself in saved gas costs, and she feels good about not polluting or using oil), and today we bought a few more CFL (Compact Flourescent) bulbs. Next on the agenda.... could it be that Mom is considering retiring her old van and buying a Prius???

Maybe Ben’s not showering in 12 dys makes up for the amount of garbage that is filling the trash here at home…

2008-05-13T19:56:00.000-07:00

YERT mama checking in on the site…and just noticing from the shower checker that YERT daddy has not taken a shower in 12 dys.

I can honestly say that I left the road part of the trip just in time.

I have been home for just about 10 dys now. Last weekend, I accompanied my brother Tony and his wife Heather here in Louisville as they picked up red wrigglers (worms!) from Breaking Grounds (related to Heine Bros Fair Trade Organic Coffee). Tony and Heather were the first people to buy worms from the newly established compost/wormery, along with another Louisville lady. I interviewed Brian B, the new worm wrangler, and got a first hand look at worm eggs which i had never studied so closely before. I hope to start volunteering on Sundays, bringing worms to the ignorant masses…

At home, we are finding the NO GARBAGE challenge to be nearly impossible. Firstly, we have a lot of food to use up in Mom’s fridge and cabinets that is highly packaged and, secondly, there are certain things that Mom cannot get on board with yet. I have to learn to be gentle or this will be fruitless. She did not sign on for the YERT experience. Hiding her papertowels and kleenexes and chiding her for flushing the toilet is, so far, not charming her. I have got to be more creative and maybe come up with a way of making NO TRASH more fun.

So far, I think it is mainly annoying. For both of us. I just didn’t realize how much easier it is to make no trash when you are all 3 dedicated and you are eating out half the time and not absorbing the waste that comes from restaurant food…or from the households that are so kindly offering us to partake in their juice, milk and cereal…

…To be continued…

Just another thing on the birthing worry plate...

2008-05-08T15:21:00.000-07:00

Boy, it just keeps getting trickier and trickier.

There are just all kinds of things that can go wrong - tho they usually don't - in homebirths AND hospital births. If you focused on any one of these, I can see how it would be difficult to give birth at all since you're supposed to relax in order for the body to do what its made to do. Today a friend of mine called and warned me about something called Group B Strep which can be carried and passed on from mother to baby and which can, on rare occasions, cause death. Noone has mentioned this to me yet - not the ob/gyn's or anyone else. The only remedy is to have IV antibiotics during labor. Which of course make the baby more susceptible to strains of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. Sheesh.

The only good thing I can see about this scenario is that if a mom is carrying GBS, then there really shouldn't be ANY kind of physical intervention with the actual delivery - no fetal monitor in baby's little head, no forceps, no vacuum, no c-section - bc it all increases the risk of baby's getting germs in its little system.

But it is just another thing to potentially worry about, along with the myriad of other things... like finding JUST ONE caregiver in Louisville who is not too worried about malpractice to back up homebirth if things get tricky. You'd think there would be one doctor who understands the benefits of homebirth who could at least offer support even if they can't necessarily condone it on paper. I am stunned daily.

In Europe, over 1/3 of all babies are still delivered at home, with a midwife. In the state of KY, midwifery is illegal unless the midwife is licensed...but alas no licenses have been given since 1976. But I am still going for it! And somebody else is having a home birth on my street next week!!! Wahoo, go ladies, go!!! Take back birth!

for my fellow girls who are going for natural childbirth!

2008-05-05T21:01:00.001-07:00

Before I go to bed, may I please just say that I cannot believe that midwifery is illegal in 14 states in this country!
If you have any interest, go to this site and see the documentary, The Business of Being Born in its entirety FOR FREE: http://quicksilverscreen.com/watch?video=45525
Though you might not be able to make it full screen, the film is well worth it.

Kentucky Derby 134: Another beauty bites the dust: Has it taken me almost 30 yrs to realize that maybe horseracing is a barbaric sport?

2008-05-03T16:36:00.000-07:00

So, I came off the road just in time for the 134th Run For the Roses. The Kentucky Derby is huge here in Louisville, bigger than Christmas. And what a Derby it was. The favorite, Big Brown, blew past all the other horses to win by several lengths while the only filly in a field of 19 colts, Eight Belles, the horse my mom and I sat squealing for from our armchairs, ran her little heart out behind him, coming in 2nd, only to break both her front ankles just past the finish line and knuckle down on the track where she lay and was euthanized within minutes of finishing the race.

And somehow, this was not really newsworthy. The announcers mentioned the "ill-fated filly" but continued with the celebratory coverage for Big Brown's owners, and we sat there stunned. It's funny what we humans consider a tragedy...bc you know if she'd come in 1st, and then come down, she would be given some kind of respect for having died racing so her owners could make a bunch of money off of her talents. Reporters would have been all over that. But, as it is, she came in second, so her unbelievable death - dying by racing her little heart out - was a side note to the big winner, who brought people the most money...cause you know it is all about money.

I haven't really watched horse racing since I left KY years ago to live in NYC, and I just find it ironic that the year that I leave NYC, to study how people are living sustainably (or not) in America, I come home to watch the Derby and the horse we are rooting for dies on the track...from, I presume, being bred for an unsustainable career running as fast as she can so that people could bet on the likelihood of her winning the race. We are a strange species and I feel very sorry.

Rest in Peace, Eight Belles, beautiful girl. You ran a magnificent race and now you are free. I hope your spirit is soaring.

Where oh where are my cajones?

2008-05-01T19:45:00.000-07:00

WHAT is this fear I have of disappointing people??? Have I always nursed this anxiety or has it been growing over the years? Is it just manifesting now bc I am making decisions whose ramifications matter much more to me than any so far in my life?

I have a prenatal appointment tomorrow and I am practically in sweats about it. Why? Bc I know something that they don't know - that I am going to try to give Bailey her birth at home, naturally, with help from people who help babies get born. Every appointment, i feel as if i am making small talk and smiling just to cover up the truth, and when i imagine what kind of reaction i would get if i told them that what my real plans are, I panic.

(A little backstory - No doctors will assist homebirths in KY, so it will be a midwife and/or doula coming to the house. Everyone I've talked to has said Don't tell the doctors you're giving birth at home! - all to do with litigation and liabilities...and so the doctors themselves don't want to know. Mine have seemed completely uninterested in natural childbirth in general. Not the most reassuring situation, let me just say, and i am sure that it adds to the stress of being about to give birth for the first time.)

I am all worried about how the doctors will feel if I tell them we're giving birth at home, how the rejected midwives will feel when I tell them I chose someone else to go with, how anxious Mom will be about something going wrong, how trapped I could feel if i get afraid, and then how responsible we will feel if something does goes awry...and I start to feel paralyzed.

Maybe this is Part 2 of my learning to trust the Universe and the Creator, and to believe in my own self-worth. People make decisions every day that are right for them and not right for somebody else. Right now I am trying to make a nice open space to provide the best birthday ever for this little girl, and to take the time to search and discover before making our decision...People can wait.

Is this the same kind of fear I have of being in crowds or of interviewing people on the street? Why do I not have this fear on stage? BC I can hide inside a character? BC i can hide inside of good work? I think there is something really important for me to learn here...like, where are julie's cajones in real life? I want to find them, quick!

Day 300: YERT Mama leaving to make her nest...

2008-04-28T17:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday while we were driving around in the car, Ben announced, "Day 300!"

Day 300. Man. When we started this trip, I wasn't even sure that I would make it past Day 30. The idea of driving non-stop around the country with 2 dudes for a year (one of them my husband), with no home and one pair of shoes apiece (ok i also had flip flops, but they take up almost no room), interviewing strangers to see how America fares in the new and improved effort to live sustainably in a basically disposable culture...well, it seemed a gargantuan task, to say the least. I really had no idea what to expect. One of my brothers believed I would NOT make it, and was surprised every time I called him from the road. Well-meaning friends assured me many times that they would not think less of me if I left the trip before its end. But I didn't. I couldn't. And the only reason I'm leaving now is because I have a new mission: motherhood.

It hasn't always been easy, with 3 of us tightly packed into our little Ford Escape Hybrid, juggling schedules, roadmaps, phone calls, emails, our psycho 10-CD factory-installed Navigational system, not to mention differing ideas about who & what should not be missed in any given state. We have different personalities, we three. Different preferences, patience levels, tolerances, judgments, thoughts about how things should be done, levels of perfectionism, ways of communicating...We haven't always seen eye to eye. But I will say that this has provided us a pretty cool opportunity to learn how to navigate our own personal roadmaps...

I think we've shared from the beginning a sort of blind trust that humanity is basically good and that, given the chance, (the knowledge, the awareness of HOW to change, and what is out there) people will begin to do the right thing, and our children and grandchildren will have the chance to know how connected we are to every living thing on this planet, and there will be something left of beauty to sustain them.

I am so inspired by Mark and Ben, still - to see them work so endlessly, and to still be so driven after 9 1/2 months of solid work. I am so inspired by the people we have met along the way and the hundreds of blogs and websites we have become acquainted with since Your Environmental Road Trip began. I can hardly keep up with it all, there is so much going on out right now in this push to be green and learn to live sustainably. What an amazing wave of waking up! I had no idea when we left how big a wave we would all be riding. In every single state without exception we have found people caring deeply, working hard, thinking creatively, and making changes that are being reflected in government and legislature and even big corporations. Greenwashing does happen, sure it does, but this trip is making me believe that it won't hold a candle to the real movement that is washing over us, which is Truth, and which will carry us into a brighter, cleaner, healthier future if we let it.

I am leaving the Road part of YERT for the boys to finish but I will continue the journey in Louisville, preparing for a completely different set of challenges. There are many things which have been made somewhat easy on the trip but which will be harder in "real life" (ie: garbage). I am very thankful to the boys for being gentlemen to me since I've been pregnant. I am honored to have been part of these last 10 months, and to have now the opportunity to raise a child who will hopefully benefit from everything we've learned.

Here we go. Babysteps to a better way of Life. Bon Voyage, boys, be safe! We will keep the green fires burning…and be sure that the waste smoke is being captured and used for something…

Day 291: NYC: mamablog: green baby shower!!!

2008-04-19T04:10:00.000-07:00

...ahhh...home. the smell of the subway, the roar of the...Nothing like setting foot on the train after being on the road smashed into a car with two boys for 9 months...actually, nothing like it at all. Amazing how fast things seem like you never left them.

Julie here, just checking in, relaying that the female(s) of Your Environmental Road Trip are still kicking and breathing. Singing, actually. Baby is getting her first glimpses of what Mama really does..and she seems to like it pretty well. Can't blame her as, in my opinion, the vibrations that rock the walls daily of NYU's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program on 2nd Avenue are nothing less than delicious, to even the most tested of ears, much less tiny, developing, new ones.

A little backstory: I negotiated with the boys for this week of work, singing in NYC, before we ever left Pittsburgh back in July, and have been looking forward to it fiercely ever since. (side note* this little baby was conceived on the only day on this trip that Ben and I actually sang together, performing a musical reading for a friend in LA back in October. I'm just saying.) Not surprising that everything feels just fine.

The boys have been working their patooties off getting the new website off the ground in flying colors, chasing interviews all over Manhattan, scrambling around the city shooting b-roll, while I sit on the edge of my chair in the rehearsal room with several other singer/actors, learning music and remembering what it feels like to soar. Happy. Free. And yesterday was simply gorgeous, 70's and breezy... I went window shopping near Union Square just to see what people are wearing these days and i had to laugh bc everything looks maternity! All girls are wearing frocks! hahaha i fit right in. Except for my shoes. :( I found a spot on a bench and watched the people for hours...

Today is going to be amazing. My dear friend, Erin Crosby, is throwing us a green baby shower! at her apartment in Brooklyn, and I am told she has gone to many lengths to make this as different as possible from the 9 months we have spent in the car with same clothes, same shoes, same equipment, same each other... We have asked that everyone bring something 2nd hand, rather than something new, NO PLASTIC, Pls! and that it be "wrapped" in something completely reusable, and she has done her best to be sure that people are thinking creatively. I can't wait to see what people have come up with, and I am so so grateful to her for pulling this off. Plus, I can't wait to feel like a pretty girl again. Ugggh. For literally the first time in months, I will be wearing something other than dirty sneakers.

In short, I am giddy with anticipation and thanking in advance Erin, all my friends who are meeting us today, NYU, and my YERT boys for letting me have this window where I get to remember the joy of being a girl...greenly...before I leave this tour to learn how to be a green mom. Stay tuned...we'll let you know how it goes.

Day 280: NY: spending hours in Ithaca...

2008-04-08T15:30:00.001-07:00

Gorgeous spring day in the Fingerlakes.
All 3 of us got outside for some good morning exercise in the fresh air before heading in to Ithaca to meet with Steve Burke, President of the Board of Ithaca Hours at his cool little shop, Small World Music. Talked about some of the challenges of using local currency as well as the benefits, and why Ithaca seems to be a hotbed for forward thinking. Steve told us that people in Ithaca, besides being well-educated, generally do NOT watch TV.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

We bought some local music from Steve and even used one of our Berkshares (gorgeous local currency from Great Barrington, MA) as part payment, and then Ben, Mark & I shared some killer vegan carrotcake at ABC cafe near Cornell University...bought partially with Ithaca hours...

(Berkshares are very different in their application than are Ithaca Hours. More information on local currencies can be found at the EF Schumacher website. Seems to be still a ways away from becoming mainstream but as the dollar continues to decline, local currencies are an interesting option for keeping communities thriving...) Thoughts?

Day 279: babymama in training, checking in from upstate NY...

2008-04-07T19:44:00.000-07:00

Girl is getting tired! Whoo doggy. Pregnancy brain has taken over and I don't concentrate on anything besides baby names, birthing options, and breastfeeding ... kind of funny bc I'm not really to a point to do any of those things yet ... and as I am daily getting bigger and bigger... watching my belly burgeoning and counting the days before I can get out of the car, i remember that i am supposed to be blogging about the trip and researching something other than how many kicks are supposed to be felt every hour...

I missed most of DC cause I was in Louisville drinking sweet goo for the prenatal check for getstational diabetes. Highlights were that American Airlines waylaid my luggage (it showed up the next day at Mom's) and that the nurses forgot me in the waiting area and I had to come back the next day and drink the sticky stuff a second time right before getting on the plane back to DC. Anyway, the only pics I have are of Ben and I on the National Mall on our last day before heading North.

So - today was a day of making phone calls and sending emails, for things in upstate NY and also NYC. No bites yet, but very excited to get an email back from Robin Nagle (an anthropology professor at NYU who has really done some interesting study of garbage in the Big Apple). Unfortunately, it looks like our paths will not cross this time through NYC...Perhaps we will find her again on this journey? Majora Carter also looks to be out of town for the week we are in NYC, and other people we've contacted have yet to respond, so we may have to reassess our options. We'll probably try to get to Ithaca tomorrow and see what we can see, regardless of who calls us back from there. Fingers crossed.

Right now Ben is still working on graphics, Mark has gone to bed and I am still feeling happy for the Kansas Jayhawks' NCAA victory over Memphis, and super grateful for this tiny kiddo brewing away in-belly...

Back to Days 197-199: Wild Wild Wind in Sweetwater, Texas...

2008-04-03T13:41:00.000-07:00

Hallo,
remember back in January when we were traipsing through the Southern states to avoid winter's sting? Well, some of those states got the shaft in the blogging department, and the biggest state in the Union was hit hardest. Here we'll catch up on what YERT found a little further West - in Roscoe/Sweetwater, Texas.

We spent some time with David Etheredge and his Dad, retired cotton farmer Cliff Etheredge, on Cliff's farm. Cliff saw wind turbines going up on the hills of Sweetwater and thought, why not on the flat farms of Roscoe? There's plenty of wind... He traveled to NYC and talked to some people until he got a bite with the people at Airtricity, who came, surveyed the land, and have since installed hundreds of turbines providing power to thousands of West Texas homes.

It may seem unlikely for a state that has historically been our nation's biggest oil producer to be courting wind, but this is real, and it is really exciting. What's blowing in West Texas is a healthy interest in wind energy that benefits both the farmer and the environment. The windcoalition website states that, now, "Texas leads the Western Hemisphere in wind energy production, generating enough to power nearly 600,000 homes. This summer, the state surpassed California to become the largest producer of wind energy in the nation."

We rolled into the Sweetwater, TX convention center late Tuesday to meet Mayor Greg Wortham at the local 4H show. Lambs, rabbits, and chickens were being judged - and kids of all sizes were muscling their critters into acceptable stances of presentation for show. Here we had the really cool opportunity to talk to several farmers whose lives have changed dramatically...thanks to the power of wind. Apparently, there is an epidemic of "dying" towns all over the Mid- and Southwest. Farming has not gotten any easier for those trying to make a living independent of large scale industry. Although wind is an intermittent source of energy, having the turbines gives farmers two things to depend on for cash instead of just their crop. With wind turbines on their farms, farmers have doubled their possible income, and found security they've never experienced before.

Wouldn't it be great to see this trend continue all over the country?

Days 267-270: Virginia! William McDonough Architects and Polyface and Blenheim Farms

2008-03-28T03:51:00.000-07:00

What a terrific couple of days in Virginia! Holy cows!
We stopped by William McDonough & Partners in downtown Charlottesville, where Kira Gould showed us the creative building rooms and concepts for commissions all over the world, and architect Kevin Burke, Director of Practice, described how architecture is changing to reflect sustainability and how McDonough's vision of imitating natural systems is put into practice by the partners in the firm. (For those unfamiliar, William McDonough co-authored an amazing book called Cradle to Cradle with German chemist, Michael Braungart, which rethinks design so that "waste" is understood for what it is - an inefficiency, a flaw in the system. This book joins about 20 others that we consider to be the most important environmental reads of our time, and which make up our traveling YERT library. It's exactly the kind of thing that innovative and industrial Americans can sink their teeth into, and it's FUN. I HIGHLY recommend it.

Another book the YERT team can't speak highly enough of is Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma...though here's where I admit to being the sole YERT traveler who has not yet put the e-book into my headphones thing... Still, that didn't take away from my enjoying our wonderful visit with farmer Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms. I loved it.

We left our little nest at the Comfort Inn in Charlottesville for Swoope, VA, early in the morning, hoping that the full grey skies would hold off letting loose for the afternoon. After driving an hour through beautiful rolling hills and countryside, we came to a great patch of green pasture with russet-colored chickens running all over it, and some little wagons. This had to be it.

Joel's wife, Theresa, came out to meet us, shook hands and told us that Joel was up with the pigs and would be down shortly, Why didn't we make ourselves familiar with the chickens in the yard while we waited? We dodged the electric fence and Ben and Mark filmed b-roll of the perky birds until Joel showed up to make proper introductions to "the ladies." He showed the boys how to catch a hen and hold her with just one hand, showed the nests and eggs in the "eggmobiles." I had fun filming Mark with the little camera chasing after chickens and getting smeared with chicken poop. Ben helped Joel empty buckets of grain into the little shelters, and we watched Joel pull one unlucky hen from a completely stuck position between the slats...and the rain held off...

There is plenty on the Polyface website to describe what Joel is doing but my take was this: Like Cradle to Cradle, Joel uses the animals and natural systems in the most common sense way possible - a closed loop of resource, rebirth and healing for the earth and her critters...

His cattle graze on pasture, mowing the grass (to a manageable length for poultry) while adding their own manure as compost. Then they are moved on to new grass and the eggmobiles are brought in so the chickens can "sanitize" the cowpies, eating the fly larvae and adding their own droppings to the fertility of the soil.

Then Joel showed us the pigerator. In the winter, a layer of corn is laid down in the dry barn where the cows are kept, and hay is constantly layered thick for bedding, keeping them dry and clean, until by Spring the floor under the cows' hooves is several feet high. When the cows are let out in warm weather to pasture, the pigs are brought in from the forest (where they have been foraging acorns, among many other delectable things). What results is Hog Heaven! The pigs spend a joyful month rooting around this seemingly endless pile of cow manure and rotting hay for the fermenting corn beneath, turning and aerating the layers into the best compost (really good dirt) you ever saw. And it didn't smell like pigs, or at least not the pungent stench I remember sharply accosting the nostrils from pig farms in KY and Indiana back when I was growing up. It mostly just smelled like dirt! (People who tune in to YERT will eventually see some pretty fine footage of Ben trying to help the pigs do their job and of Mark accidentally riding one.) Though Mark and Ben got right in there with Joel and the porkers, I still had trouble getting past the fact that they were wallowing in ****, so I pretty much kept my interaction on the level of...conversation, from outside the pen. The animals seemed to really like Joel, coming to him for scratches and pets, and running between his legs. I asked Joel if he ever felt bad/sad taking a pig to market, and he said, "No way. Each one's got a $500 price tag!" And that is how a farmer makes his living. I sort of rolled that around my brain as one of the bigger pigs came over for my side of the fence for a scratch with the stick I was holding...and then it started to rain...

We left Polyface Farm with a dozen gorgeous eggs, 3 wonderful books which Joel authored (Thank you, Joel!) (he has several), and many new thoughts about pigerators and eggmobiles to take with us on our travels, as well as Joel's suggestion to visit one of the restaurants which sells Polyface meat. Ben called Angelo Vangelopoulos, the owner of Ivy Inn in Charlottesville, who set up a tasting for us! All I can say is The food was AMAZING. All 3 of us agreed that it was one of our very best meals of the entire trip. Polyface wasn't the only local organic food on the menu; there were several farms' fares. But Joel's pigs were delectable. Mark swore he could taste the trees. And the creme brulee, made with Joel's ladies' eggs, was delicious. Mark said it rivaled what he's eaten in France, and Ben ate the 2nd half of mine. I thought it delicious and I don't even like creme brulee!

The next day we returned to record Angelo's thoughts about the challenges of running a small restaurant with organic local food within the guidelines of the FDA, while supporting small farmers. He let us know right away that it isn't easy but to him there is no other way. Our tummies were rewarded, as is Joel's livelihood. Before we left, we asked him where he goes when he is looking for something fast, good and not too expensive. He answered with our favorite fast food joint on YERT: Chipotle's. Already we had come to love and appreciate the hormone-and-antibiotic-free meat, but when we got to the counter of the Chipotle's just out of town, we couldn't believe our eyes - they were making burritos with meat from Polyface! Quite thrilling, not to mention outrageously good.

Our last scheduled interview was at Blenheim Farm, on our way to Washington DC. Family-owned and operated by Lawrence & Becky Latane (prounounced "latnee") and their three 20-something kids on a permanent conservation easement, Blenheim Organic Gardens is part of a larger 400 acre preserve. It began as an organic vegetable garden that expanded as needs and opportunities arose to a fully operating certified organic CSA, with presence at farmers markets.

We spilled out of the car and were greeted by the most gregarious of the family dogs, Gus (who stole much of the film footage, I warn you now, and you will see why at at later date.) I'm terribly sad that I haven't any photos to show of this lovely family and their fantastic little farm - I started getting a migraine right when I got there, so I couldn't really see for most of the time we were with them, and then I was off my game! UGH. I was whisked inside and given coffee while the youngest, daughter Sage, passed around homemade lemon squares and then made me eat raw potatoes (she heard they help headaches - Thank you, ladies).

Outside, the boys interviewed Lawrence, and let Becky, Sage, and son, Cameron, say what they love about organic farming. Becky Latane plucked me the sweetest spinach I have ever tasted. EVER. I have never thought of spinach as sweet. She thinks it's the dirt. Maybe it is. Or maybe its the love. Or maybe I am pregnant and gushy. I am thrilled every time we run into people who are making good things with the earth, every time we encounter respect and harmony.

From Joel's respect for the pigness of the pig, to Angelo's regard for real food's making people happy, to fast food chains willing to take a chance on healthy local meat, to the Latanes' love for the earth and producing with it, I felt renewed. I feel full of superlatives but that was Virginia for me, and they all made it - wonderful. And baby gets no pesticides!!!

Days 251-254: NC Pt II: the motherload that is Asheville

2008-03-21T20:36:00.000-07:00

Going in, we knew that Asheville, NC, would be a hotbed for environmentalism, and we were not disappointed. We were welcomed into the elegant mountaintop home of our new friends, Stephen and Suzie, and were immediately taken under the wings of two of the most sustainable people I have ever met, Bob and Isabel. Here is one of Bob's amazing sandals that he has been wearing and repairing for the last 5 yrs, made from spare tires and seat belts...

Isabel set up an evening party for YERT at Pearson Drive Garden, one of three community gardens featured in Asheville's Bountiful Cities Project. It was a really nice potluck, we got to meet a bunch of sweet folks, showed some videos, shared stories and heard what locals are doing. We even had a sign language interpreter there with some deaf people, who suggested that we consider finding a sponsor for 'CLOSED CAPTIONING for the hearing impaired' on our videos - something I personally had not thought of before and which we would love to offer.

Isabel drove us to Earthaven - self described as "an aspiring ecovillage in a mountain forest setting near Asheville...dedicated to caring for people and the Earth by learning, living, and demonstrating a holistic, sustainable culture." We were shown the ropes by Isabel's teacher and revered permaculturist, Patricia Allison. Both women pointed out that what may look like a garbage dump to the untrained eye, piles of paper and cardboard lying about the garden in seemingly haphazard fashion, is actually nourishing the ground, creating rich new soil. Compostable outdoor toilets have a separate section for PEE!, which is then collected, diluted and used to further fertilize the improving soil. Like The Farm in Summertown, TN, this intentional community is an example of attempting to live sustainably in community....

Another example is the Ash Village Institute, in Asheville city limits. (Isabel also brought us here!) We met Janell Kapoor, another student of Permaculture and tasted several of her many flavors of meade - a naturally fermented honey wine - (ok, I didn't) before hearing all about Kleiwerks, her natural building website, and getting a tour of their demonstration house, refinished completely naturally. We were inspired to hear how the neighborhoods are taking to their totally green neighbors!

The last things we were treated to by our amazing Bob and Isabel were 1. the totally cool grocery selling all surplus organic stuff at very affordable prices, 2. REAL dumpster diving!! which is mainly hitting grocery dumpsters for perfectly good food being tossed in the dumpster, while it is still clan and edible... and 3. the biggest Goodwill store I have ever seen...it has a huge back section where clothing is sold $1.10 per pound. That is where Ben stepped on the scale for fun and stepped right off again when he realized how much sympathy weight he has gained since my pregnancy...

We can also look forward to video with Professor Andrew Jones. I slept through the entire thing on his couch and cannot comment except that he is an exceptional host who knows how to treat a pregnant lady (feed her bread...Thank you, Andrew!) and that his son is very honest. When I told him I was growing a baby, he said, "Is that why you're so big?" Yes. Yes, it is. :)

Days 247-251: NC Part 1: Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill/Carrboro

2008-03-20T19:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick rundown of our early days in beautiful North Carolina.
First we stayed with a terrific little family in the charming town of Carrboro. We walked with the Teals from their house right to the Farmer's Market! Yeah, that's the way it should be! Loads of bike trails and walking trails through forests behind people's houses. 1st place where i actually said out loud, "I could live here." IF we could afford it. Ay, there's the rub. Still out of the range of the most modest incomes but nevertheless encouraging to see land being conserved, protected and shared as dear, instead of every house sitting on an acre or more of lawn, all to itself...

Professor Rob Jackson took us into a part of Duke Forest where scientists are pumping in extra CO2 to see if the forest will take in more carbon, grow faster, etc., as a possible solution to the problem of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The boys climbed a high tower above the canopy to see how the CO2 is dispersed, and I sat at the base, drawing leaves on my maternity jeans and making a really poor basket out of long leaf pine needles. Unfortunately, they're finding not much of a change, really, in carbon absorption or tree growth, unless fat doses of fertilizer are involved, which sort of defeats the purpose, so...back to the drawing board?

We had quite a lovely and thoughtful visit with the elegant Dr. Ellen F. Davis - author, Old Testament scholar, and professor at Duke Divinity School - at her home near Duke University. Dr. Davis has rediscovered what she believes is an unmistakable message in the books of the prophets in particular: Our highest calling as humans is to take care of the natural world that God created. She has recently published a book called Scripture, Culture and Agriculture in which she examines Old Testament biblical text in relation to our relationship with the earth...

And Jeff Fisher has found a way to make Conservation profitable through a Conservation Real Estate Company called Unique Places, LLC. Will this be the beginning of different kind of relationship between land and developers?? Let's hope so...

We also got to spend an afternoon with some students at Duke's Nicholas School of Sustainability, thanks to Sonya Reinhardt.

Next time: Asheville: the motherload...

on turning 39, with a belly full of Bailey Elise....

2008-03-20T07:30:00.001-07:00

ooh so happy so happy! bailey is doing great, i think!
boys left me home alone today to celebrate my birthday however i want.
It is 2:37pm and I am still in a robe in bed!
Granted, I have been working on the computer and making contacts and etc, but still. THIS is the way to spend a birthday. I think I will take a walk in a few minutes cause Bailey definitely could use the stroll, and me too.

I made contact with 3 peeps in Delaware and left message with a 3rd. One interview is a go, just have to confirm time, and the other 3 have yet to get back to me. We shall see.
Boys are in their last official interview of the day in Annapolis, then I think they will do peeps on the street before they come home to me for birthday dinner...i think i get to choose where we eat as well! WOOHOO!

And FACEBOOK rocks bc they tell everyone when it is your bday right where they can see it, and so i have been getting birthday wishes all day long! :) I love it. I feel so remembered...

why West Virginia wore me out.

2008-03-18T19:28:00.001-07:00

I am going to bed early tonight in the hopes that I can recharge my own batteries that were fully drained by witnessing firsthand mountaintop removal in West Virginia. Susan Lapis, Southwings Conservation Aviation pilot, flew us over the area to see how coal companies are chopping off mountaintops for the horizontal seams of coal that run through them, and then shoveling the rock, the "overburden," as they call it, into valleys and streams, filling them completely. Words cannot do justice...so here's one photo for you to ponder while I am off to sleep...
oh, what are we doing?

Days 244-246: South Carolina: Noisette Navy Yard becoming something new...

2008-03-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

Back in November, YERT was contacted by Jim Augustin of Noisette Navy Yards in North Charleston, South Carolina. We kept in touch and were pretty happy that we were able to visit and get a good look at several of the facets of this unique place... Once a working Navy Yard, the waiting space was taken on by Bill Augustin and John Knot, to be developed as a sustainable multi-use community resource center called Noisette...

The first person we spoke with was Chris Fischer of Fischer Recy cling. I have never seen so much broken glass in one place; it was beautiful, all separated into neat colored piles. Fischer said he started out selling t-shirts at the mall but, seeing restaurant employees carting out bottles to be recycled every night, he was inspired to get in on the recycling gig. He bought a cheap truck, started hauling people's bottles for them, and a business just grew from there. He assured us that recycling IS lucrative, but he draws the line at plastics. He hates the stuff. I asked him if he had any idea why America doesn't reuse bottles anymore - his answer: Plastics. All the bottle bills die immediately because the Plastics lobbies are so strong. It hurts their business if bottles are returned and reused. I didn't even know there were bottle bills being drawn. Here is an interesting article on bottle bills...

We also talked with three lovely women from the Navy Yard's HUB Education Program.
The program's self-described mission is "To enhance opportunities for Historically Underutilized Businesses (HUB) to participate in construction projects throughout South Carolina by providing education and training essential for managing a competitive construction company..." We found this fascinating in that the program specifically offers women and minorities an opportunity to get ahead in the field. All 3 women felt incredibly empowered by working with the program. WOOHOO!

Finally, we talked with Jim Schultz. Metal sculptor, welder, salty dog, chain smoker, interesting critter, an artist and a gentleman to me, Jim has been burned a few times trying to make a living as an artist but he loves and trusts Jim Augustin and Noisette, and has been working with them now for some time. We found him in his studio with his son, Jeremy, unloading a giant piece of metal he was calling an anvil...and I was banished to the car for fear of old 1940's paint chips and etc flying around, my being pregnant and all. Jim took us over to the firehouse where we got to see one of his very large works - a welded metal palm tree over 9' tall - and we also saw two of his pieces over at the Noisette office. My favorite was the fish...

All in all, it looks like the city of North Charleston still has a way to go but Noisette has taken a giant step in starting the ball rolling that is making people proud to be a part of the neighborhood. And we had a great dinner party hosted by our honorary (for now) 4th member, Erika Bowman, and her mama, where we got to meet John Knott as well as some of the other movers and shakers at Noisette. We were honored, and wish them well.

YERT squert update! baby love...

2008-03-09T16:36:00.000-07:00

So, for those of you who may not have gleaned from previous blogs (or my facebook page), WE ARE GROWING A GIRL!!! I flew home to KY at 19 weeks to have some checkups, one with a midwife at the farm and one at the ob/gyn office. Here is our little one giving us her sweet profile at 2nd ultrasound...i think she is pretty already...(and I really hope I am seeing the Evans chin)...

Actually, we considered not having the 2nd ultrasound because, at my checkup at The Farm, our midwife suggested that we research "ultrasounds and autism" before we agreed to have another one done. So, of course, I panicked and googled and read and tried to absorb. Ben read, too, and we both felt worried enough to say Let's skip it. Even though the fact is that nobody knows WHAT is causing the increased incidence of autism in kids in this country. It's not that ultrasounds are indicated, exactly - it's more like they can't be been ruled out.

Day of my appointment in KY, I called the nurse to let her know our decision not to have the test but Nurse convinced me otherwise. She said this was THE ultrasound, the "anatomical" ultrasound, where they check to see if the baby has all its parts, both lobes of the brain, all 4 chambers of the heart, etc.... So i said ok. I have to say, I felt really sort of happy. I wanted to see our baby again, wanted to be reassured, as I hadn't started feeling any real movements yet at 19 weeks, and I worried that she was still alive in there. Plus I wanted to know if she was a boy or a girl, even though I was pretty sure she was a she. Which she is! And getting bigger every day. Of course, no I actually get to FEEL her moving around, which is the BEST.

Just wanted to let everyone know that I DID in fact build her a onesie out of Ben's underpants, but I was wrong: it took 2 pairs, not just one. And the eyelets were not a part of his underpants before I made the little outfit. Here it is, front & back. And yes, moms, that is a snap closure. Made in SC, with love, from Daddy's underpants. Baby girl's underpantsuit. Will she hate us for this? Not for awhile, anyway...

Days 240, 241: Atlanta Pt II: More Atlanta, Serenbe and YERT on the Weather Channel!

2008-03-04T14:11:00.001-08:00

Two people Mark connected with by phone before we got to Atlanta were Mandy Schmitt and Lynette Young, both wonderful resources and great speakers for the environment. We interviewed Mandy and joined her for dinner, and then saw her again the very next day during our moving interview with Lynette Young at Dynamic Dish (another all organic, mostly local, mostly vegan establishment), where owner/Chef David Sweeney gave us a moment. We were fortunate to get a few words from Rashid Nuri (Truly Living Well natural urban farms) who was dropping off collard greens to the kitchen. Rashid kindly accepted our offer of compost from the car (thank you, Rashid!) (The TLW website is so cool - Go see how they make little garden farms out of regular urban spaces, like people's backyards!) And we also met James Harris, who owns Harris & Clark - a high-end boutiqe grocery located in the incredibly beautiful sustainable community of Serenbe, just south of Atlanta.

There was still an hour or so left of daylight when we rolled onto the picturesque roads of the planned community of Serenbe. We met Garnie Nygren at the Blue-Eyed Daisy Cafe where we downed warm brownies and milk. Garnie explained to us how her parents bought the farm, not sure what they were going to do with it, but knowing that they wanted to preserve as much land as possible, and possibly build homes for people looking to live in harmony with the planet. They searched the USA for a model of sustainable development that married conservation and thriving community but didn't find one they liked so they went ahead and designed their own.

The Serenbe approach to land conservation and neighborhood development is different than most "sustainable" communities we have come across. Serenbe wants to build a network of real neighbors, not the usual isolationist suburbia. The biggest difference to me in the way land is used is that the houses are built right next to each other, no yards, and share an amazing unspoiled forest as their backyard. Each home has a lovely open front porch, inviting owners outside, everything is within walking distance, (parking behind the homes)... Here, everyone's back door opens into this wonderful woods, and further connections are made by walking paths and trails...I have to mention this again - The houses are built green and super close together and the preserved greenspace is SHARED by everyone. Garnie says that 70% of the land is being preserved as greenspace that way. It is beautiful and very exciting to see. There are even stables and a working CSA on site!

The other aspect that Serenbe has going for it, in my opinion, is that it has a relatively diverse bunch of folks starting to live there. Not that there is anything wrong with crunchy granola, tofu, Birkenstocks and braids, but not everyone feels comfortable in a totally hippie envir onment. Serenbe seems to have found residents who really care about the environment but who also might like to clean up and get into the city for a night at the opera... It appeals to the cosmopolitan part of me that loves all of the fine things in life...not just the natural world...

One neighborhood is completely finished and the next is being built right now. A third is in the design phase. Garnie told us that there will be more little neighborhoods within the Serenbe community but that there is no real rush - they will unfold as time goes by. She says she can't wait for us to return in a year and a half to see the 2nd neighborhood completed and thriving. Sounds like a lovely invitation that we can hardly pass up. *Note: While Serenbe may not be affordable to people like myself, I think that its concept is cool and important and well-worth being repeated. Just maybe for some slightly less-wealthy folks. In case this intrigues anyone, there is also a B&B at Serenbe for further investigation..

OH! HEY! before we left Atlanta, the Weather Channel found YERT! They interviewed us on the street about the journey, for tomorrow's episode of "Forecast Earth." We have no idea how much airtime we'll have but we are pretty excited for Your Environmental Road Trip's National TV debut! Tune in to the Weather Channel tomorrow at 7pm, or Sunday at 5 and 7pm.

Days 239-240: Atlanta! Praying for rain and finding a common ground...

2008-03-04T09:15:00.000-08:00

Back in November, as Ben, Mark and I stood rolling tape and taking photos of shrinking Lake Walker and Lake Meade near sad Hoover Dam, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue called for Georgians to come out and join him in a prayer for God to send rain. I guess I don't see anything wrong with that except that this is the same governor whose water conservation advice to citizens was to Avoid stepping out of the shower to make a phone call...

So, back to the issue at hand, Georgia: Water. It must have been September when we first started hearing about the drought in the Southeast, and specifically the decline of Lake Lanier in Georgia. Usually, during the winter, the lake rises by about 9 feet but, according to Shanna Udvardy, of Georgia Conservancy, this winter the lake has only been replenished by about a foot. And yet, the government has reinstated yard watering. Is this the right message? Udvardy wonders, especially when coming housing developments are expected to use up to 60% more water than today's average homes...Here is a nice example of a yard that went thirsty this year due to the drought, right next to one that didn't...hmmm...

On Monday, Chattanooga mayor Ron Littlefield declared Feb 26th "Give our Friends in Georgia a Drink Day," and sent an aide down to the City Hall in a coonskin cap with a truckload of Tennessee bottled water...Ben called our friend Richard, at the Chattanooga mayor's office to ask how it went over. (They weren't sure yet.) We made an exception to our rules and bought a bottle of water from a Tennessee bottling company to give to Rob Hunter, Water Commissioner for the city of Atlanta. He accepted our offer and asked us to relay a message: If the Mayor of Chattanooga wants to send over some FLEETS of trucks with bottled water, Atlanta would make sure that parking spaces were available. Seriously, though, Hunter feels that the most important understanding people of GA can have is that How we use and conserve water in our daily lives has to change...forever, from here on out.

Meanwhile, Clayton Co, GA has not been suffering the drought like other GA counties have. Mike Thomas, General Mgr for Clayton County Water Authority, said that their approach to water planning was born of necessity, back in the 70's. 4000 acres of mostly-forested land was purchased and, in the 80's, a reservoir and pump station built, with over 300 miles of pipeline and 20,000 sprinklers, to irrigate forests to catch water. After awhile, it was discovered that this practice was "not quite sustainable on Piedmont clay soil" so Clayton Co went back to the drawing board and came up with a new solution: wetlands. Thomas says the switch has worked wonders, and they have the added benefit of increasing bird population! Who says you can't have your water and feed birds too???

Back to prayer, as it were.
Along with the obvious 16 month+ drought that has been pinching Georgia this year, the other issue we have been following with interest, and were happy to focus on in the peachtree state, is the happy combination of treehugging and religion!

The role that faith-based organizations have begun to play in environmental sustainability is encouraging, to say the least. Looking forward to finding out more about this fairly new and important development, we drove to Little Five Points in Atlanta to talk to Katy Hinman. To Katy, a "bat biologist in a former life," the move from chiroptology to Seminary seemed, to her, a completely natural progression. Her position as Director of Georgia Interfaith Power and Light gives her the opportunity to help people make the natural connection between being good stewards and being faithful followers, a role which she relishes. "Creation care," as she calls it, is very much a part of most great religious philosophies, and some reference can be found in every text, without having to dig too deeply. Even the mountains are said to praise God in the Scriptures, she says. How can that be when we are blowing them up for money, polluting the water, the land and the air? (Ben remembered a comment from our Vineyard friend in Idaho who said that when the Christ comes he wants to be caught with his hands dirty, tending the Garden, not sitting there doing nothing to care for His Creation.)

When we asked Katy what she could personally do to be more "green," she said she could probably be a vegetarian but she thinks she needs her strength as she has taken up a new sport. Katy is now one of the Atlanta Rollergirls. Awesome. I can't wait till she gets her clergy robes and we can see her perform as the Pastor of Disaster.

*Ben and Mark also talked to Dr. Michael Battle of ITC (Interdenominational Theological Center) about TheoEcology, which i sadly missed due to pregnancy sleep-in. They said the interview was wonderful. The website looks totally cool.

Day 238: Athens: Eprida and The Farm...

2008-02-29T08:33:00.000-08:00

I've long been curious about the town of Athens, GA, mostly bc it's the birthplace of the B52's and REM, two of my favorite bands growing up. We did not see Michael Stipe. But we did stop long enough to see how a little company called Eprida is sequestering carbon by converting different kinds of biomass into charcoal, then using the charcoal as a soil supplement (it is extremely slow to break down but immediately improves the soil). Additionally, the process captures the resulting waste smoke and steam, turning it into syngas and hydrogen (for energy), among other things. I confess I do not completely understand what happens in this process, so I am including an interesting charcoal-to-syngas link in case it might provide some clarity for those who are interested in finding out more...

Rebecca Oglesby met us and showed us around, explaining that all is still in the research phase at their facility but, as they move forward, she hopes this will become a viable technology for small-scale farmers who are looking for better ways to improve soil and who are concerned about CO2 emissions and our changing climate. Rebecca also pointed us to the whole BIOCHAR community, called the International Biochar Initiative, that is always working to find more beneficial, sustainable uses for charcoal...

After a short demonstration of how "Bertha," the charcoal-making machine, does her thing, and some cool audio recording of Bertha's whistles, clanks, and hoots, Rebecca sent us off in the direction of downtown Athens and an eatery called Farm 255, which is local in every sense of the word, sourcing about 75% of its food from its own organic farm. We enjoyed a delicious dinner there and got to talk to one of the founding owners about some of the challenges of turning your love of organic farming into a thriving business. Yum.

next stop: Atlanta!

Days 236, 237: Savannah, and how not to ruin a perfectly good meal.

2008-02-28T19:47:00.000-08:00

Savannah: We didn't do much of any environmental note except for our regular daily homework, and a lunch stop at the infamous Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room, where the banquet is SO worth the standing line...and there is always a line. Also, unless you come in a big group, you will be sitting with folks you haven't met before, which makes for some interesting conversations. In our case, an nice friendly discussion about what's going on environmentally across the nation suddenly became one man's soapbox about those g**damn immigrants who need to be sent back to Mexico, and how are we talking about that issue. Which sent me into a red-faced emotional headplace producing only a shaky, "Well, that's not really the issue..." and "...aren't we a nation of immigrants?..." at which point the man across from me barked, "My people did it LEGALLY!!" And so, with Ben's hand squeezing my leg, I focused squarely on what was left of my meal, for the REST of the meal (which was impossible not to enjoy as it was the blueberry cobbler which is to die for, however distracted I may have become) while Ben and Mark swayed the conversation in more thoughtful ways...

Before we left Savannah, we took a nice walk through the historic old town, Ben several times gave his standard stamps of approval, "I really like this town," and, "I think I could live here." We stopped at an antiques store that had Ben waxing poetic about building furniture from uncut wood, and we hit my favorite store, the Goodwill! I got a pair of pyjama pants for $2.50. Because I and the child are not fitting into my pants very well anymore and I have to get used to sleeping with clothes on whenever all 3 of us share a room together. Compromise.

We drove though miles and miles of pine forests on our way through Georgia, along Interstate 15 to Athens, some forests still dense, some selectively cleared and some completely razed, with heaping dead piles of trees awaiting a burn, as they are now considered trash. I will never understand that complete waste of energy. We passed signs saying, "500 acres for sale, $4000 per acre," and I wondered how soon developers would turn all these woods into another sterile suburbia ...just what Georgia needs... but it's progress, they say...

Day 235, 236: FL: Jacksonville. Timucuan Preserve and St. John's Riverkeepers

2008-02-25T19:58:00.000-08:00

Florida is a bit different from most other states... a bit jungle: alligators, crocodiles, manatees and a bit bird paradise: great and snowy egrets, blue herons, kingfishers, anhingas and the crazy big pink birds...flamingoes and spoonbills... Ben is in love with Spanish moss and oranges. Mark and I love the sea air...

In the morning Ben and I got up leisurely from our bed in Orlando, ate breakfast, and took a walk...Where else would we get to watch a snowy egret stalk the neighborhood, eat a lizard out of someone's bushes, and then take off flying through the trees and over the houses...this gigantic, perfect, snow white bird so at home in a regular neighborhood? So very cool. But the mosquitos are as big as the ones in Alaska -one is still stuck to the inside of my car window, by my crusty blood.

Our next stop: Jacksonville. We took off a little later than we had planned, which was the cause of some minor consternation in the car but, whatever, Ben got his bird shots in at Cape Canaveral and Mark got his phone calls in to some Atlanta contacts, and we got to our hosts pretty close to the time we hoped to arrive, and all in one piece. Almost immediately we set out for Ruby Tuesday's, which has become our default eatery in the South, as they have organic greens in their pretty decent salad bar...

From Jax we day-tripped out to the Timucuan Ecological Preserve - actually quite large, it is the only National Park which includes federal, state and privately owned land, and which has disconnected pieces all around the area. We arrived at the Kingsley Plantation, and were met in the parking lot by Ranger Dan Tardona, who explained that Barbara, our pointperson, had come down with the flu and so he'd be taking her place. We followed him to the edge of the waterway... looked down on a whole shore of oysters (which can't be eaten bc of the pollution in the river)...and filmed as he relayed the importance of helping people feel connected to natural places so that they feel a sense of stewardship with them and so that they care to conserve.

The whole time were all attacked by swarms of no-see-ums. Throughout the interview Dan was a pro, only twice calmly brushing one of the little stinging creeps from the corner of his eye or out of his ear. The boys, however, were dancing around like clowns and i was squinting and brushing my face pretty much the whole time. Thank goodness the 3 of us weren't really on camera. We were invited to stick around for the dancing but, frankly, the bugs had worn out our welcome. And it's WINTER. "You should be here in the summer with the yellow flies," Dan said. Now I remember why my mother was sort of ready to leave Florida.

Our amazing hosts took over our laundry while we were gone, fed us supper when we returned, and even treated us to a movie after!! Oh what a rare treat! (Thank you, Bonnie & Gleycia!!) We watched the film, "Michael Clayton," with George Clooney, with no preconceived notions, and really liked it. Nice to relax and watch someone else's work for a change. Even if it did have an environmental bent.

Next day our hosts made us breakfast again!! and we set off warm and fuzzy for Georgia, but stopping first to speak with the director for St. John's Riverkeepers, Jimmy Orth. The boys interviewed Jimmy about how the water shortages have affected the river as well as the continued impending development requiring every more water to be drained. Jimmy said that an important aspect of St, John's is how slowly it flows, making it much more difficult to clean up when pollutants run into it. Development all over Florida is booming and developers don't seem to care much about what happens when they pull several hundred million gallons extra out of a river that is already having a hard time keeping up with demand.

I stayed apart and visited with Jimmy's lovely wife, Genora, and delicious new baby, Eli! Hooray! She filled me in on which cloth diapers actually don't leak and gave me links to a few green baby websites that I can't wait to check out...

And we finally got to meet our good friend Joanelle Mulrain, who singlehandedly hooked us up with at least half of our interviews for Florida, by email alone. Joanelle is one of the whirlwinds who makes our job humanly possible. Thank you, Joanelle.

So. Water wars? As Jimmy Orth's Riverkeeper shirt says, "Whiskey's for Drinking. Water's for fighting over." --Mark Twain.
We'll be keeping an eye out to see what happens with water in the Southern states, and we'll be sure to ask Georgians what they think about who should be watering their lawns...

Days 232-234: FL Everglades, Lake Apopka, and Cape Canaveral

2008-02-22T16:13:00.000-08:00

I think i may have mentioned I used to live in Florida, but we must have stayed home alot when I was growing up bc I don't remember seeing the kinds of wildlife we have been seeing in the preserves the last few days. For instance, I had no idea there was such a bird as an Anhinga, or that their entire body drops below the surface of the water when they swim so that only their long skinny neck sticks out, like a little wet feathered Lochness...(This one is stretching her wings...)

We spoke with former schoolteacher, Connie Washburn of Friends of the Everglades, who gave us some history of the wetlands, as well as of the attempts at restoration and preservation. She explained that this ecosystem is like no other on Earth, partially due to its being a peninsula. Very many migrating birds also use it as a stopping place on their long routes. The Everglades Restoration is the very biggest of its kind and the eyes of the world are watching - all the more reason, she says, to really do it right. Connie believes in the importance of teaching children to respect the environment when they are young (see: Young Friends of the Everglades) and of getting citizens involved and caring about their communities in order to protect them. She gave us her blessing, sent us off with directions to the Everglades and some oranges from her backyard trees, and even let us donate our week's worth of COMPOST into her backyard compost. (Thanks, Connie!!!)

Since we were worried about not being able to film in Everglades National Park without a permit, we entered the Everglades through Big Loop Road. We rolled past some old people fishing a slimy looking dark pond inhabited by 3 young alligators. One lady flung her little redbelly fish up onto the bank and the young gator who had been following her progress came right up onshore to steal it from her! YIKES. Those old folks just poked that gator with their fishing rods till it hissed and eventually went back in the pond. I was somewhat relieved to move on.

One magical bridge held many birds on either side and many birdwatchers, who respectfully quiet and spoke only in whispers so as not to disturb the animals in their protected habitat. What a privilege. One birder, an environmental geologist, was interested in what we were doing there, so the boys picked his brain while I learned from his wife the names of some of the birds we were seeing - that's where I learned about the Anhenga - wonderful! Alas, feeling the road calling, we reluctantly got back in the car and set off for Orlando, where we were greeted warmly by our next hosts, Terry and Albert. I settled in for bed while Ben and Mark hashed out text for the Oregon video, which Ben finally was able to finish, God love him, and Mark was able to deploy. Woohoo!

The next morning we woke to rain, which seemed crap luck since both our scheduled interviews that day were outside but, as we drove to meet Jim Thomas at his office, the sky cleared, and we headed to Lake Apopka's Oakland Nature Preserve, 128 of acres of reclaimed farmland restored to forested wetlands. As you can see from the picture, it is greener than green and incredibly LUSH. They have a few problems with invasives (like Taro from Hawaii) which appeared when hurricanes knocked down the old canopy of maples, but the Park has had terrific success transforming basically sterile farmland, and the community shows its appreciation by sponsoring continued progress. Jim says that there is no end to the work, and we believe him. Just when you think you can rest, there is the next battle. But, what are you going to do? Not fight it? Not Jim...

And not Jim Peterson either, who took us around to the North side of Lake Apopka to show us the intake pumps which suck water from the Lake to be filtered trough a mechanical system and returned. He compared a sample of water from near the intake pipes with water coming out of the filtration system. Both were greenish but only the unfiltered water was foggy. This fat gator makes his home near where the clear water pours out from huge pipes.

We were rushing late for our next interviewee - environmental author and documentarian, Bill Be lleview - but he is also a filmmaker and was understanding. (Thank you, Bill!) He showed us land which is being preserved - sinkholes with dogfennel, which he and Ben ate, and a great trail going back into a pine forest. He told us about the black bears who live there and pointed out an eagle's nest. We shared thoughts and worries about overdevelopment, water running out, whether or not humanity is acting fast enough to halt or reverse the loss of land, of ecosystems, of our atmosphere, our water, our food...On our way back to the car, it started sprinkling. We said our goodbyes, Jim handed us a huge sack of oranges from his backyard (sensing a trend here?) and the moment we were all safe within Rachel Carson's doors, the sky opened up with a downpour. (Thank you, Rain, for waiting.)

We finish this leg with a trek out onto Cape Canaveral where Ben got a fabulous shot of a Great Blue Heron swallowing a snake...and I got a nice shot of a fisherman in his waders...

Day 230: Earthman goes to Hollywood...Florida

2008-02-19T08:41:00.000-08:00

One connection we had in Florida was this dude who is the voice of Captain Planet, an animated series starring this eco superhero who is constantly saving the Earth. Environmentally, that is. Apparently the actor has moved to France. But that's ok because yesterday we met up with a buddy of his who transforms into a real live superhero, Earthman, donning a giant globe and visiting communities all over Florida spreading environmental awareness through word, song and design. (He has a great website which features him rapping all about what's happening and what we need to do...) We followed Earthman to the beachfront in Hollywood, FL, where he shared some of his thoughts with us and interacted with several passersby.

We got words from a very sage Mitch, and from a wonderfully happy Chinese woman named Emma who told us that, at age 82, she no longer needs to shake hands, only hug. She also hugs trees regularly and recommended that we all do the same, making sure to ask beforehand to borrow some of the tree's energy, in case the tree is sleeping. I totally went and hugged Emma's favorite tree and, I must say, I felt completely hugged back. I never felt better about hugging a tree. Palms are so nice.

Emma also told me that she met Cary Grant in the 60's when she was hugely pregnant and that, when she protested that she was too fat to take a picture with him, he said, "Women are most beautiful when they're pregnant." She said that, looking back on the picture of her huge pregnant self next to such a strapping handsome man, she inwardly thanked him for being such a beautiful liar.

Alright so the beaches down here are gorgeous, and the weather tremendous. It's no wonder that my Dad always complained about moving away and no wonder that so many people are still moving here, despite its being over-developed in very many places. The population is exploding in Florida, and Florida is starting to see the effects. In the next few days, we are going to be talking to Friends of the Everglades and to the St John's Riverkeepers about how population, among other things, is affecting what's left of Florida's undeveloped land and waterways, and wildlife sanctuaries.

In the meantime, and speaking of population increase, baby girl is finally making herself felt in the belly and I smile every time. little squirrel. :) even if I am a little fat. Here's my pregnant lady shadow at the beach...

Day 229: Miami Beach...Boat show weekend and President's Day

2008-02-17T06:55:00.000-08:00

So, yesterday, we left our little Motel 6 and ate fat American food at Denny's. We made a miniscule sensation with the wait staff who came over to hear about our no-garbage experiment. We didn't collect much (one toothpick) but we certainly didn't collect any organic or local food points either. None, in fact. (sorry, baby. and planet.)

Ben had heard that the canals near Ft Myers were interesting and was determined to talk to someone about them so we drove around and found a public park with people out enjoying the sun. An older couple taking pictures (well, it IS Florida) invited us to come to their house on the canals, where they've lived for 20-some years, so we filmed them in their backyard, and I got a nice picture of her sheets hanging on the clothesline. They also let us pick tangerines off of their their tree! The boys filmed another neighbor but it was kind of a bust as the other neighbor apparently wasn't concerned about anything environmental, especially in Florida. I guess some people move South to be oblivious.

Back in the car and on to Miami, traffic was HELL, and we moved like carbon-emitting tortoises on the highway. I was still waiting to hear back from any of the numerous emails and phone calls I made to U Miami oceanographers or Friends of the Everglades...then we learned that it is "Boat Show Weekend" in Miami and President's Day holiday on Monday. To be honest, we didn't pay much attention to holidays when planning this trip. Plus, I have never thought of President's Day as a holiday. Is it a holiday?

We made it to our homestay on Miami Beach, finally, chatted with our new friend, and slept well. I slept well. The boys were up working into the wee hours, like they do, and babygirl and i said Good night. Now, today, Ben will continue editing Oregon, Mark will continue with the Website and I will continue checking my inbox for anyone interested in talking to us on camera. Our host told me not to be offended, that Miamians are not super fast at getting back to people...kind of like we are on Island time. I can be patient...

Day 227: at a Motel 6 in Ft. Myers

2008-02-15T19:43:00.000-08:00

Ben is...guess what...editing again, this time it is the Oregon videopod.
Mark is...i think...outside making a phone call.
I am sitting on the bed nearest the bathroom as I am the one who always needs it most and in the middle of the night.

We are on our way to Miami, hopefully to talk to some oceanographers about Florida's particular environmental challenges. We have several calls and emails out and now we wait to hear back. Maybe if we don't hear anything by tomorrow I will go to the beach, lol.

We just spent the last 2 dys in Tampa with the nicest folks! - It took us all a bit of time to figure out how we even got connected, as people we know generously send out emails when we are looking for a place to stay, and I had assumed these guys were friends of my friend...but they actually were another friend removed, even. Regardless, it was uncanny how lined up we all were in our thinking - even down to having read the exact same books and feeling very similarly about the presidential candidates. It was refreshing and wonderful and we were so glad that we got to meet and hang out with them.

They had lived in Oregon for 28 yrs so they definitely had something to compare Florida to, environmentally, but they also said that there has been much change in Florida in the last 7 yrs, enough to make them feel hopeful that Floridians are getting on the green bandwagon, too.

We spoke to Christine, of K eep H illsborough County Beautiful, who said that there is a little less garbage on the beach clean up days than the previous year. After we left her, we stopped at a tiny beach along the Causeway to watch the sun set for Valentines, but Ben and I did not walk 10 ft and we were picking up trash. We only walked i think 50 paces and then returned to Mark with our arms FULL of garbage and debris, from water bottles to McDonalds cups to plastic bags to pieces of rope to a huge piece of styrofoam as big as a car bumper. And there was so much more but we had to go back bc our arms were full.

Aaack! Happy Valentines Day!

Day 220; Mississippi with no time to spare- julie off for prenatal care

2008-02-08T16:28:00.000-08:00

no pictures this blog.
no pictures of mississippi actually (sorry, MS.) because all i really saw was the 4 walls of the Biloxi Best Western or the backs of my eyelids while coughing up lungs for 4 dys, worrying about whether babies can be coughed right out of the womb.
Mark convalesced for at least 2 dys. Ben knocked out the Mardi Gras video, to be timely, and blogged, to vent his frustration about our not really being able to DO anything environmental in Mississippi. It's true, Mississippi got the shaft. We were on the Gulf and we really did not cover anything on the Gulf, excepting a little b-roll...Adding to our dearth of ideas, none of us had any real contacts there...
Hoping the boys are able to get more done while I am away getting ultrasounded...

The baby has its own shoebox...

2008-02-04T17:28:00.000-08:00

K so we are coming to a sort of compromise...

For those of you familiar with our journey, you may find this repetitive, so pardon.
But, for anyone who happens to be reading this for the first time, here's the nutshell: we are 3 people on a yearlong roadtrip to every state in the union, documenting environmental sustainability as we find it... I became pregnant somewhere in about the 3rd month of the trip and things started getting more challenging...

We have a shoebox that rides around in the car with us, collecting every single piece of garbage we create...Every month it gets emptied and counted, then stays with us in the car, usually put into a cereal box, also garbage. (Incidently, I am suddenly reminded that today is the 1st day of the 8th month of our journey and we can now put last month's shoebox into...some other container...to be carried around with us till the end...) *We do consider recyclables as waste in this experiment, since there is waste in their downcycling and much energy and water used in the recycling process, but at the end of the trip once they are counted they will be recycled. Or even better, reused!

Anyway, there have been a few times here and there that I have played the pregnant card on this journey and, shoebox be damned, I bought some freaking yogurt or milk when i craved dairy or drank a bottle of water when i felt unsure about drinking water from the motel bathroom sink. At first, this was rather upsetting to the team but eventually Mark decided that the baby, being an unplanned part of this trip w/different needs than we had anticipated for ourselves, should get her own shoebox, thereby freeing the rest of us from the guilt of breaking from our 'no-waste' commitment. (*note: we still aren't 100 % positive that 'she' is a girl but that is what my gut is telling me. Apologies in advance if you are a boy, my darling. You must be in touch with your feminine side.)

That said, we are still trying very hard to remain true to our commitment of making as little waste as we possibly can on this journey. I am going right now to start reading No Impact Man's blogs from the very beginning and see how far I can get. I encourage any of you who are interested to do the same, as he's a wonderful read, with some great ideas.

And for now, i will go back to obsessing about baby names and being mildly frustrated that I still have a week before the next ultrasound so that i can hopefully narrow down the search to one sex...Here a picture of my belly so that you can predict - What are we having? Is our little YERTian jackaroo or jillaroo...??? What will it be? Mystery solved in 7 dys!

Days 209-21: New Orleans: Not totally being rebuilt green but getting there...

2008-02-04T09:53:00.000-08:00

Well, I have fallen in love with New Orleans. Granted, it's wintertime and cool; sweat wasn't running down every crease of my pregnant body (maybe I would feel different in the dog days of August) and I never saw the city before Katrina hit, or experienced the crime after, but I have to say that, having lived in NYC for 9 yrs, the Big Easy seems to slide the Big Apple a creaky wooden chair saying, Man, sit down for awhile and listen to this jazz...And i didn't even get to see the nightlife! ANd we were told to be careful where we walked at nighttime...

We got to New Orleans hoping to see how the rebuilding is going down there in the aftermath of the Hurricane - is it 'green?' Are people interested? Is there funding? It seems that there is indeed 'green' rebuilding happening but it is not the norm - Katrina devastated so much of the population and the infrastructure of the city that New Orleans had its hands full just trying to get people evacuated to safety and attempt reconnection and massive cleanup, much less sit down and rethink how to contruct over half an entire city in a thoughtful and sustainable way.

And yet, even now, some 2 1/2 years later, there are people living in tents under the freeways and many more homeless people than before the storm. Will homes be built for them? - and if they are not built sustainably, then what? What if the same lack of foresight in initial design/ engineering that caused the levees to fail during Katrina likewise prevails in the rebuilding of New Orleans infrastructure? This great opportunity to start from scratch - put some real thought into what is truly sustainable - could be lost and we could see a slipshod and hurried rebuilding of New Orleans that will leave the city and its people vulnerable still...i really hope that is not what happens...

We visited with Ken Ford, a longtime resident of the Chalmette neighborhood, who explained how Exxon's ever-expanding petroleum plant poisons the air and water where he lives. One swipe of his fingertips across the backyard patio table demonstrated how much soot accumulates within a few hours - airborne pollutants that are accumulating in the air on a constant basis, changing the composition of what residents are breathing. Ken should know; he is living on half a lung and has been keeping track of air quality in Chalmette for quite some time...

Next to his house, an abandoned playground sits empty, with broken swings and not much hope of coming back to life as the area is not considered safe for children to be running around. It stands next to a tall air monitoring tower...A man in his truck wants to know if we are there to help fix the swingset cause he will do whatever we need to help us if we are...he just wants a place for his little daughter to play...When I ask him if he thinks that breathing air from the refinery might make it hard for his little daughter to breathe, he says he imagines it does but he's lived there all his life and what are you going to do?

Anne Rolfes, Program Director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, (you can find info on Bucket Brigades in other communities at www.bucketbrigade.net) explained how giant corporations like Exxon will name the plants after the communities they are in close proximity to (ie: "Chalmette refinery") in order to stir a sense of local community pride and avoid being targeted or sued as a polluter. She showed us how special buckets with vacuum bags are used to take air samples that can be checked for pollutants and then acted upon if the results are nasty (which they usually are). Anne admits that community organizing around this issue is much harder now, after Katrina, but she remains undeterred and steadfast in her determination to help clean up the air for the people of New Orleans and Louisiana. They are lucky to have her.

On the green building front, we talked with a young New Orleans native named John Moore who studied green building in Atlanta and returned home after Katrina to help Global Green with reconstruction in the 9th Ward. He was very happy to show us the first nearly completed building - a passive solar, very energy efficient abode that will serve as a sort of demo to the community as other houses are being built. (And yes, as some of you may have heard, Brad Pitt did help make a lot of this reconstruction happen. John vouched for Brad's being an upstanding guy who happens to be an architectural buff and, fortunately for New Orleans, a philanthropist with some considerable green.)

Tomorrow's blog: how the Bayou is faring in the wake of Katrina and from the glut of oil refineries on Louisiana's fragile coast. Also, how the BAGmonster went over at Mardi Gras...

My Old Kentucky Home...what we did in KY in December...

2008-01-31T20:38:00.000-08:00

MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME.

Coming home for Christmas - to Kentucky and my mother's house - was something that my wonderful husband built into our YERT itinerary just because. And I bless him for it - It was almost as if Fate knew we would be finishing up the 1st trimester of pregnancy and needing some prenatal care, and some rest...

I admit that being home with Mom for the holidays was sooooo nice! Opening boxes of maternity clothes sent from dear friends and family and seeing what might actually fit, poring over pregnancy books... Hearing the baby's heartbeat for the very first time and seeing the little jelly beano jumping around, little tiny hands and feet going... - all this made focusing on YERT and work very, very difficult!!

Nevertheless, we made fun contacts in Louisville, once Mark got back from his visit with family. We interviewed Mayor Jerry Abramson who is particularly excited about his bicycle initiative and some of his environmental staff, and visited with Gary Heine of Heine Bros Coffee, a local cafe that serves only organic fair trade coffee and composts its grounds into Vermiculture - worms to make compost! - they make some of the very best dirt around, out of your organic food scraps. We tried to get Mom on board with composting. She claimed fear of rats so we recommended that she get one of these worm bins.

Ben and I are looking very forward to joining up with Gary when we get back to Louisville to help with an initiative to bring organic gardening back to the inner city. We have a lot to look forward to, staying with Mama once the little one is born...and probably a lot to learn about how to be sustainable in REAL LIFE, with baby and pets and all...

Woohoo super long post - had no idea i had so much to write about Kansas...

2008-01-31T19:27:00.000-08:00

The past 2 months have found me not enjoying writing - my own fault bc I defaulted to simply cataloguing our travels and interviews without commenting on what we are finding and how we feel about it. How I feel about it. So - here's what was exciting about Kansas! - curl up with coffee and enjoy...it's a long one...

GREENSBURG, KS.
Bob Berkobile, architect extraordinaire at BNIM Architects, helped bring about awareness that led to LEED certification for buildings in America. Bob was happy to talk to us about the amount of green building that is happening in Kansas City but what he was MORE interested in was sending us to Greensburg, KS, a community laid flat by an F5 Tornado, May 4, 2007, that is asking to be rebuilt apropos to its name - green - or at least greener than it was. (Here is a link to NPR's All Things Considered special called "Kansas Town's Green Dreams Could Dave Its Future.") As far as we know this is the 1st time a team of architects and city planners have been handed the opportunity to literally redesign a town from scratch (excepting New Orleans/Hurricane Katrina, where the damage was so extensive and the need for assistance so immediate that time for building green was not available and is only now being seriously considered). The majority of the townspeople are still waiting in FEMA trailers on the outskirts of the old neighborhoods for the rebirth of Greensburg as an example of truly sustainable development.

We drove down to this tiny little town, and were met by a charming young woman named Alanna, whose home and consignment shop were flattened by the twister. Alanna toured us around a devastated landscape of trees cut off at the knees and some crumbled foundations, open basements and rubble where the neighborhood once was. She told us that not everybody there is interested in going green, bc not everybody understands what "green" really means, and some are not certain it will take...

The hope is that rebuilding Greensburg sustainably might actually infuse some life back into the town. Like many older towns in the southern midwest, Greensburg was considered to be a "dying" town - its young people leaving as soon as possible with no intention of returning. Residents hope that the new Greensburg might bring new businesses and create a viable economy, attracting new citizens to town as well as bringing back some of its young people. (Discovery channel is also stationed there to document the greening of Greensburg, as long as that may take.) We are happy to report that Alanna is encouraged and staying put!

LAWRENCE, KS:
The Local Scene - Our wonderful host, Tom Fox, hooked us up with a young man named James Roberts. James, an Environmental History student at KU, brought us to breakfast at a local cafe near the University, where we joined a tableful of passionate, interested, and concerned students - business majors, architects, engineers, and ecologists who were happy to be put on film. Next, James took us to a little shop that sells bags in association with the KU Reusable Bag Program, and then on to one of the culinary highlights of our trip so far - and I expect I may get flack for this one - Local Burger.

What is Local Burger, you might ask, and why would someone who is trying to be environmentally conscious be supporting an establishment where the main product is meat? Well, it was delicious. Are you not moved? I had no intention of eating any meat there when I met adorable owner Hilary Brown, no matter how fresh her alternative to fast food. But what intrigued me about Local Burger is that the food is entirely organic and all of the meat locally sourced, grass-fed and grass-finished on farms that Hilary visits on a regular basis (no feedlots, antibiotics or hormones here).

Once we pled vegetarianism, Hilary kindly brought us out some quinoa burger bites with her special sauce. They were gone within moments. She brought us more. We finished those too. Then Hilary discovered I was pregnant and she insisted that this meat was especially good protein for the baby, being so fresh and free of hormones, antibiotics and stress (as the animals are offed by a sharpshooter and die without even knowing what hit them). So, what do you think happened? I ate an elk burger. Immediately, with cheese and extra pickles, and it may have been the most delectable thing I have eaten so far on this trip. Thank you, Elk, for becoming part of me and my little one. You had a happy life free to roam all around eating grass, like you were meant to do, and I am so thankful for your life.

I should mention that Ben, although mostly committed to being a vegetarian for this trip, made a major exception to support this establishment. OK not just to support the establishment - he was salivating over my elk cheeseburger and my unexpectedly delirious reaction to it. I did't blame him. It was better than any burger i have ever had. Absolutely everything that we ate at Local Burger was beyond delicious. Hilary is an amazing chef who really cares that the food is real good, and real good for you. We were pleased to support this wonderful totally local alternative to fast food but I realize there is an important question here: Can the supply of locally-sourced, organically-raised meat keep up with increasing demand as the population grows or is the only answer for a rising population to let go of raising animals on land that can be used to grow food directly for people? Something to think about...

***OH - One particularly important thing happened in Kansas this year - For the first time, a community effectively stopped a coal-fired power plant from going forward! Our new friend, James, was part of a large group of students and townspeople who joined together to oppose new coal power plants from being built in Kansas, by voicing their concerns at a public commentary. Public hearings had to be held another day to accommodate them. Public opinion was so strong against the plants that they were denied permits. We think this is the 1st time a coal plant has been denied a permit based on CO2's being judged a pollutant!!! Go, Kansas!

THE LAND INSTITUTE , Salina, KS:
We finally got to Salina and Wes Jackson (brilliant botanical geneticist and all around regular good guy). This was our 1st originally scheduled KS interview that got hammered by ice and snow...SO Exciting!!! Wes talks about changing the way we grow food in order to be a truly sustainable society. He has been working for 30 yrs on creating food crops which are perennials instead of annuals, designed to be hardy year after year without having to be resewn, refertilized, renurtured with the great lot of inputs that are believed to be required now. John Schmidt showed us all around the greenhouse and here Ben and John are making angels in the snow...

Jackson also believes in polycrops, to be sewn in one field and harvested altogether. He is confident this can be done, and has a perennial grain that is almost farmer-ready...but thinks it won't be ready to sew commercially for possibly 20 yrs. Oh! Do we have the time? Uncertainly isn't keeping Wes Jackson from doing his work. It's so cool! Thank you, Wes...

Day 209: From oily Texas to recovering New Orleans

2008-01-28T12:30:00.000-08:00

YERT is now at the edge of the French Quarter at Banana Inn.
We only got in last night after midnight, and are spending today contacting people for interviews and things to film.
We will manage to miss Mardi Gras I believe, which has been my great hope, but we still should get to experience some festivities and some University environmental action...and we will be also heading into some parts of the city which have not really recovered yet from Katrina...

Day 204: still pregnant, in Texas...

2008-01-23T20:48:00.000-08:00

k i am pretty sure we are a-ok but how do you know when you don't own your own Doppler to hear your baby's heartbeat and s/he is still too small to feel kick you in the ribs as reassurance??? How do mothers get through the panic and the worry to actually have a baby?

I have spent the day today feeling a bit off. I ascribe it to hormones but i confess to being affected by the weather. It's been cold and rainy here in Austin and, though it IS winter, i was hoping for some warm weather to boost my spirits.

Austin is a really cool town. It's easy to see that there's much going on here environmentally and no way that we will possibly be able to cover but a little corner of it in the short time that we're here. We are getting used to that feeling but, anticipating a "dry spell" in the remainder of the South, i've been looking up natural food options in Mississippi and Alabama. In case they don't have any. Cause i can't just be eating fried pickles.

Ben is still editing the Washington pod, has been for days now. We had so many hours of footage. Looks like this will be his all-nighter tonight... I hope that he is able to pull it off by morning. It's a tough job, it really is, I couldn't do it. I will have to sleep just to support him. And thank our little jelly beano traveler for letting me know when it is time to rest.

I heard some very sad news today about someone we just met and I have to acknowledge it. A great great loss. My heart is heavy and flying out to them all at the same time. I am so thankful for my family, for this trip, for the amount of time I have gotten to spend with the people in my family...Everytime somebody dies I am reminded to make better use of the time i have with the people i am with.
This is no exception. I am so grateful.

Backing up to Days 161-163: icy Kansas City downtime...

2008-01-20T15:50:00.000-08:00

My last backtracking journal entry ended with a nighttime icestorm on our drive from Oklahoma to Kansas City and the home of some friends of Mark's parents. We had no sooner rolled out of the car (in which we had been roasting with the defrost on full-blast to melt the freezing wildshield) and onto the newly iced driveway, when I felt my back go OUT with me. This, I thought, will be perfect for the next few days of driving and interviews...

I shuffled into the foyer of our homestay and left my wet shoes by the door as we met our host, inwardly bemoaning my state of brokenness, and outwardly excusing myself right to bed to fall asleep in my clothes (as has become quite common for me since we conceived). I awoke before the sun and stumbled fast to the nearest bathroom, (also quite common) and saw through the window... ice covering everything... every blade of grass and every twig and leaf glazed in ice, anything that had held still long enough to get covered... including, I saw, our Hairy-Eared Dwarf Lemur mascot, frozen to the hood of our car. (Harry normally rides on the dash of Rachel Carson but Ben had decided Hairy needed to build character and so Harry got left out on the hood overnight.) Then, in the middle of my quiet reverie in the loo, I sneezed, and it was like somebody stuck a knife in my spine. The second sneeze nearly put my lights out. I think it is safe to say that i experienced some light road trip panic in those moments- a bit of How crazy is this road trip and What am i even doing?

When i joined everyone for breakfast, I sheepishly announced my disappointing back problem and then went ahead and spilled the beans about the pregnancy, too, since Tom, our host, started offering Tylenol and things that developing babies can't take. He was thrilled about the good news and graciously offered to show me some meditation and breathing exercises for my back and to help to de-stress. I must say, they were very helpful (Thank you, Tom).

It was, I think, equally helpful that our interviews for the next couple days were hosed due to the icestorm. That, coupled with no internet for the first couple of days, forced us to just sit and BE, and for me to breathe, relax and HEAL. We were really bummed about possibly missing our on the Land Institute in Salina but we got some beautiful b-roll of still icy Kansas and during these couple of days we really got to spend time with our newfound KC family and share ideas about how to be new revolutionaries!

Tom had voluntarily worked in Vietnam in the late 60's in refugee camps, and he told us amazing stories. We watched a documentary film called Hearts and Minds about the Vietnam War on which Tom took the film crew to the Vietnamese people and served as translator - we could hear him in the background of the film translating questions into Vietnamese. He wanted to know if we thought that Americans had learned from Vietnam. We found ourselves wondering the same thing. Food for thought.

I'll go into more detail later re: what we saw in Kansas but I will say here that I never could remember whether we were KC Kansas or KC Missouri, so everything in Kansas City is all a giant KC in my mind (apologies to the purists). That said, we went to a village sustainability meeting with Tom where villagers expressed frustration with the town's seeming inability to agree on adding a recycling drop-off spot.

Ben reconnected with his Kansas City childhood when we found Marty Flowers. Marty has a yard that is probably best described as a wild place, in the best possible way. There is an entrance at the corner of Marty's yard - a threshold which announces it as an "Urban Wilderness." Marty told us how he can't count the number of times he's been sued for having an "unkept yard."
After we chatted with him about the whys of letting a yard grow its own way, Marty took us to a Kansas City sustainability meeting - which was anything BUT frustrated, and which led us to one of our most interesting interviewees to date - an incredible architect and gentleman named Bob Berkowitz, who we'll get to next time, i promise... The enthusiasm and, more importantly, the confidence and even expectation that change is on its way was quite compelling.

I'll stop for now but just have to say that one of the very best things about this trip is the people who have invited us to come into their homes and share their space and their food and their thoughts and their habits with us and, also, their encouragement. Thank you, people, any and all of you who have kept us so far. Thank you very very much.

to be continued...

Backtracking to Days 155-158: Oklahoma. where the wind comes right behind the rain...

2008-01-14T18:40:00.000-08:00

OK this momma is ready to go back and fill in the blanks from out first bite of cold weather in Oklahoma! here goes:

While on the road, we had been emailing back and forth with our friend, Hunter, in NYC, who was from Oklahoma. Upon landing in OKC (still freaking cold) we quickly became aware that all our friends from Oklahoma knew each other, as did nearly everyone we interviewed! Very small world, and very very friendly, with lovely girls who look like they might all have a eye toward the Miss America pageant. (There is a reason for this, we were told- OK is very proud of the number of Miss OK's who have made it to Miss America.)

We stayed at the abode of the fantastic and fierce Lance McDaniel for a few days, who showed us around OKCU's campus (where his Dad happens to be President). We interviewed some budding film students at lunch where the cafeteria stopped using trays in an effort to cut down on waste. We were also treated to OKCU's Xmas Dance Concert (thank you McDanielses!!) which was a very nice diversion from all things green...

One really exciting thing that we happened upon was a Habitat for Humanity build site where every house going up was being equipped with geothermal heating/cooling systems donated by ClimateMaster- very cool, as these homes are built for those of us unable to afford a regularly priced home, much less one with a geothermal system. We filmed the whole neighborhood pitching in for a wall-raising and Ben got them singing a rousing chorus of "Oklahoma!" I took a break from some of the freezing weather to finish knitting the scarf I had started when i realized we were in for some pretty chilly weather for the next month or so...

Speaking from the pregnant back seat, (Did I mention that i am no longer riding in front due to the danger of airbags on pregnant bellies?) I have to mention this wonderful cafe we found for lunch - fresh organic food and fair trade coffee, wonderful atmosphere with internet and nice humans - It was called The Red Cup and it was heavenly. We ate there like 3 dys in a row. I highly recommend it!

We visited with Rep Randy McDaniel (R) and Rep. Andrew Rice (D) to get two differing takes on how global warming is viewed by legislators in Oklahoma. We were not able to get to Senator Inhoff but that is probably just as well as I don't think we would have had quite the diplomatic and open conversation that we had with Randy McDaniels. I believe I speak for all of us when I say that we really enjoyed talking with both representatives very much. And, if you live in OK, please do check out Andrew Rice's website. He is very much in tune with environmental concerns and is willing to go to bat for them in DC.

We stopped by Boldt Building Corp and got a neat tour of their green facility...and were warned that we might consider leaving Oklahoma a day earlier than planned as there was an ice storm headed our way and Oklahoma drivers are not known for their ice-driving skills...

So we took their advice and drove away a day early with thick red Oklahoma mud on our shoes (and therefore on Rachel Carson's carpet under our feet) several hours into the night through an ice storm that ended with one knit hat and my back going out, unfortunately not for the last time on this trip...

backtrack to Day 194: Arkansas, where friendliness is contagious

2008-01-13T20:48:00.000-08:00

Arkansas. Friendly friendly people!!!
I come from Kentucky so I can say that both our states have a undeserved reputation for marrying cousins and low IQ's. And, while we did see quite a dazzling array of trailer park "neighborhoods" with an amazing lot of CRAP in the yards, what really stood out in Arkansas was the friendliness of the people, the natural beauty of some as-yet unspoiled land, and a very real human interest in health and happiness that could easily be translated into a kind of environmental awareness...

A few days before we arrived, a tornado ripped through a tiny town called Appleton, leaving one man dead and quite a few trailer homes demolished. We stopped and talked to one of the neighbors, who said that he didn't understand why there are now so many tornadoes in January, and that no one was prepared. It was pretty easy to see the path that the tornado took from the downed trees...we are of course wondering if this might be directly connected to global climate change...

We have found, in every state so far, pockets of healthy activism thriving within a sometimes slower general populace. In Arkansas, we supped with St. James Episcopal Church in Eureka Springs and entertained lively conversations about sustainability amidst terrific chow, the boys ate with the kids at the Arkansas Sustainability Network in Little Rock, and we made friends with some wonderful waiters at a Japanese restaurant (like burgeoning rock star, Jo hnny Rocket) as well as the fantastically forward-thinking couple, Orlo and Mary Stitt.

We entered Arkansas planning to cover farming/hunting but our last-minute connection couldn't afford our lack of time. We had also hoped to talk to the people at Wal-Mart Corporation's HQ in Fayetteville, as Mark had met some at the Al Gore Climate Training Program last spring, and they had seemed more than enthusiastic to share Wal-Mart's "greenness" with the public. But, even with a few weeks lead time, and several different contacts, no Wal-Mart representative ever agreed to talk with us. :(

We did, however, really enjoy our interview with Orlo Stitt of Stitt Energy. He toured us through his entire neighborhood, which he designed, with every house oriented true south and making use of both passive and active solar, and the most efficient design/ materials. He even shook us down a few persimmons from the trees...which were yummy...and I saved some seeds I would really love to plant someday...i hope they are in my coat pocket still?

Everyone in Arkansas told us we would be crazy to miss Eureka Springs so off we went. On the way to Eureka was a stunning little church set back in the woods on a hill called ThornCrown Chapel (designed by architect E. Fay Jones). Not normally open this time of year, the chapel was being visited by a young couple looking for a place to have their wedding, so we were fortunate to be allowed in to have a quick look around. It was pretty beautiful.

We spent enough time in Eureka to enjoy a nice dinner at St James and to listen to wonderfully wise Dale Caldwell. We also had several delicious meals at an eclectic and delicious little eatery called Local Flavor Cafe. Though we didn't note anything particularly environmental about Eureka itself, the people, like most of the people we encountered in Arkansas, were sweet as pie. And they care. Which is the best place to start. Next stop: better education.

Day 193: Eureka, Arkansas: Hormonal female checking in...

2008-01-12T18:43:00.000-08:00

Boys, you can skip this part if it bores you - Like yesterday's blog, this is much less of an update or travelog and much more like reading a pregnant lady's journal...

The big thing I am worrying about now on this trip (that i wasn't worrying about as much when it was just me I was feeding) is what i am putting into my system every day. I have made it a point to discover what is in foods but when you are eating a lot of your meals in restaurants, it is really hard to know...
I aim to avoid all things unnatural but, since we are not finding Farmer's Markets so far this winter, I don't really know how to do this without making/accepting garbage!!!
p.s. Scary FACTS:
Canned food has bisphenol-A.
Meat generally has antibiotics and hormones added.
"Fresh" veggies and fruits served at most restaurants have pesticides in them, and aren't as healthful since they have had all their fighters (antioxidants) bred out of them.
Tap water has chlorine and flouride, among other chemicals.

Seriously. I feel like i would have to live at home catching rainwater eating out of my own garden in order to be sure not to contaminate my unborn child any more than i already have by living the life i've lived so far on this planet...

The challenges we have made for ourselves on this roadtrip are wonderful and yet we haven't been able to accept the challenge of eating all local and organic...we are not made of money and we are traveling all over the country so we have to sometimes take what we can get...and it is not always so good for us. It sometimes means Ruby Tuesdays salad bar or Chipotle's bean burritos or some random truckstop's grilled cheese sandwich with cottage cheese on the side...It will never mean McDonalds but it is NOT how I would feed myself were I in my own home, buying organic food for us at our local health food store, recycling milk jugs and yogurt cups.

So. a bit frustrated, I am trying not to worry too too much about the effects that my imperfect diet is having on our little beano's nascent development, as I continue taking vitamins and finding sleep when I can. I know that global warming is a sign of change that we wish would slow way down but, to me, spring can never some fast enough..and this year is no different. All i can say is Thank God we are in the south, and hopefully we will start seeing some farmer's markets soon.

Next stop: Dallas. If anyone happens to know of any great organic eateries there, please give a holler...

Day 191: julie caves in a moment of weakness (cites pregnancy...again!)

2008-01-10T19:51:00.000-08:00

First let me say what a load is off my mind now that the 6 mo check-in video is out there on the web so i can actually talk about it...

Secondly, I have a confession to make. Tonight I drank bottled water, which is pretty bad because it wasn't a mistake. I caved. The boys were out doing interviews in Little Rock and I stayed home to work (read: rest). At some point I realized that I had drunk all the water we had in our steel bottles and was having a minor pregnancy panic attack bc I was super thirsty and was afraid to drink the tap out of the bathroom sink.

Normally I fill our bottles up with tap water but I always check with our host to be sure to get the thumbs up on the water/pipes quality, and I hadn't done that this time. I suddenly worried: What if there is something wrong with the pipes in this lovely B&B and that is why our hostess offered us free bottled water? I looked for her and couldn't find her. I ate an orange. That helped for about an hour. Ben called and I asked him to fill up our canteen and bring it home. He said he would but they were just sitting down to dinner and it would be awhile.

I recalled the phrase "If you wait till you're thirsty, then it's too late: you're already dehydrated," and began to feel like a withered dried sponge. Suddenly, convinced that our little one must be parched and gasping in the womb, I ran dramatically down to the visitor fridge, pulled out a plastic (NOOOOOOOO!) bottle of water and downed it in about 45 seconds on my way back up to our room. The guilt came immediately after when the YERT angel on my shoulder said, "Oh, come on, pregnant lady, did you really have to do that? Really?"

I have no doubt that when I ask our hostess tomorrow morning how is the quality of the tap, she will tell me it is fine. A moment of weakness and I caved utterly. This just means I have to be more diligent. Do not fail to ask about tap water wherever we are staying, and make sure that canteens get filled every time we are out at restaurants or whatever. This bottle is going to travel with us now as a reminder of how important it is to plan... That was crappy, on my part, and I am renewing my effort to NOT MAKE TRASH.

i had to fess up when the boys got home. sorry, fellas. this one was for the little guy. They looked at me kind of sideways and sighed.

p.s. i also bought a huge plastic container of organic yogurt earlier in the week to deal with that craving but I don't feel as bad bc Heather said they need those at the Zoo for something...so I am not considering that garbage. Am I wrong?

Day 184: Chattanooga

2008-01-03T19:35:00.000-08:00

Going to sleep but wanted to post a couple of pictures from today! xox julie

Day 181: Happy New Year from YERT!

2008-01-01T14:55:00.000-08:00

well we got through christmas. I have a pretty big family, with pretty many kids so I did watch wrapping paper get ripped off of presents and make its way to a plastic garbage bag...and winced but, well, it's christmas, we want to feel everybody smiling and not everyone is ready to go all garbage free at the same time...

I am sitting in the upstairs room at my mom's house in Louisville, KY., amongst a litter of clothes, books, papers, and things. As much as we seem to have pared down our lives and our belongings for this trip, and have indeed been living on not-a-whole-lot, there's no escaping the fact that we still own a whole lot of of crap. It's just not with us physically right now. It's waiting for us in places like mom's house, mark's sister's house, and our storage facility in Edison, New Jersey.

I have so much to talk about and so much to say but am biting my tongue until I have the go-ahead from the boys to write openly about what is happening on this trip right now.
For now i will say this: I will be getting in the car tomorrow, along with my clothes and things, and the boys, minus some trappings, and plus a whole bunch of junk mail collected by our families for us since we began the trip. I will be in the back seat as we drive to Tennessee where we will see what we can see. By then, we will hopefully have our latest video out - our 6-mo check-in, our reassessment at the halfway point of this yearlong trip, and then I can start to be honest again in a way that I haven't been able to be for a few months now. This isn't a bad thing.

It's complicated, but the last few weeks have found me losing enthusiasm for life on the road. My back has gone out twice in 3 weeks, to where I could hardly stand up or sit down for days and spent hours lying flat with ice, hoping for relief, making myself even more stressed out. (Thank God we happened to be staying in the homes of humans who were absolutely understanding souls. Thanks to Tom, Hoi and Mom! and thank goodness I bought a crazy back brace for Ben which I have been using pretty much constantly.) Long hours, lack of exercise, no down time and constant wading through often disturbing news to get to the encouraging stuff, has taken its toll on me after 5 months on the road. When icestorms in Kansas forced a slower pace, and then the holidays arrived at Mom's, I felt my brain wanting to SLOW DOWN to such an extent that it became difficult to write ANYTHING. I haven't written in 2 weeks, I think! See, all I have been wanting to write about is personal and not YERT-related...or, rather, it is YERT-related but it is not to be shared yet. You'll see.

I still think the trip is a good idea and that the work is still relevant and incredibly important and timely. It's just - I have some things on my mind...like family...and so my mind is split between the two, and I have needed to take some time to sit and DO NOTHING. So, here I am back at the computer, gearing up for the 2nd half of this trip. I can't believe we're leaving tomorrow. lol.

I will try to catch us up on our travelogs soon so that we have a good record of what we did in Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and KY but for right now I am only writing to say Happy New Year to those of you who happen to be checking in. I hope that this year brings us all much creativity and courage and renewed energy to accomplish whatever goals we deem important enough to endeavor. I am not sure but I think my New Year's Resolution is: To practice optimism. (How's that for vague?)

Also i want to add that, if you are looking for some inspiring writing online, I'd like to recommend Annie Leonard's website, the Story of Stuff and my very favorite environmental blog: No Impact Man by Colin Beavan in NYC. I think they are both simply brilliant.

Thanks to all of you who have been watching. Stay tuned as YERT keeps searching for great answers in 2008, and please keep the ideas coming!

Have a Happy and Blessed New Year,
julie

Day 154-55: Western OK with our own real rancher...

2007-12-16T19:29:00.000-08:00

The drive from NM to OK brought us our first real taste of cold weather so far on the trip and, since we didn't prepare well on this trip for cold weather, I spent the entire drive knitting a hat. (which is now on the head of a homeless person in Kansas City but that is another happy story.)
Weirdly, Ben and I happen to own a tiny piece of land in Oklahoma. It's maybe 1/3 acre in the middle of 4900 acres of cattle ranch near Woodward. Which is kind of in the middle of nowhere. Good for cows.
Dick Hamilton is a salty old cowboy who has been working the land for many decades. Owned some, and as people moved on or finally tired of land he was working for them and they were never going to use, Dick bought it, little by little, until he now has a beautiful ranch of almost 5000 acres. Ben's family are some of the last few holdouts. When Ben and I visited Dick just before we were married, he drove us around in his truck to show us the land and the cattle, encouraging us to shoot cowpies with his pistol -"Ben, don't let nobody tell you you can't shoot shit." - He showed us the pen where his knee got kicked in from a scared cow and ended his horseman career herding cattle. We still have one of his original lassos which he gave us when we left him last. Someday it'll hang from the wall of our own house, but for now..Every once in awhile I'll get a phone call from Dick "just wondering how you're doin..." so we couldn't hit Oklahoma without checking in on the Hamilton Ranch.

This time, when we arrived at Dick's cabin (his "bachelor pad," as he calls it, for after his current wife leaves him) after driving across the Texas panhandle, we heard his deep bass voice seasoned from years of cigarettes and whiskey boom from the porch, "Well, I just don't believe it." Though he was expecting us. After some hugs, we came inside and played the Good Guest Trump. (The Good Guest Rule, in case I haven't mentioned it before, is: We eat what we are served, out of respect, to honor our hosts. In this case, Dick was excited for our visit and excited to make for us the only thing he knows: Beef Stew. I'd like to say that we really suffered our way through but, carnivores at heart, we three did just fine. And Dick seemed very happy as well.

Our time with Dick and his son, Marty (raised as a rancher to take over when his dad leaves off), was rich with the complexities of traditional ranching culture...These are thoughtful people, who care about the land and their beasts, and take good care of them. They do not know from organic and they believe that things are the way they are (ie: pesticides on industrial farms) because that is how they have to be in order for us to feed the growing population that is America. They do not believe that there is any other way. They do the best they can. They do not see any danger in pesticides or herbicides but they also don't use them on the ranch if they can help it. They don't see any problem with feedlots where cows eat food that they were never designed to eat, and yet their cows are free to roam, happy eating only grass and hay on hundreds of acres until the day they are trucked off to the feedlot to get marbled... These are hardworking people, who want to do the right thing - which I suspect is like a whole lot of other Americans who aren't quite sure what environmentalism is really all about. One thing we all agreed on: Americans waste a whole heck of a lot of just about everything, and something oughtta be done about it. When we left, we assured Dick we'd be in touch...and hoped that we'd planted a tiny seed in his great big heart for the possibility that we could do even more to leave the place better for our grandchildren and everybody coming after us...

Day 152-154: NM Part II: Embracing Truth of Permanent Culture

2007-12-10T15:07:00.001-08:00

While we were dining in Santa Fe we discovered a little local paper and, in it, an article by a woman named Arina Pittman, touting sustainability and permaculture in NM. I found her published blog, lotsoflifeinoneplace, both timely and delicious, and right in line with what I was currently reading in Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. When we realized that her husband, Scott Pittman, co-founded the American branch of the Permaculture Institute with Australian founder, Bill Mollison, Ben called Arina right away to see if we could meet them.
Though Arina admitted later that she was mildly annoyed by the lateness of our call, she offered for us to join them for the final class of one of their Permaculture sessions in Albuquerque on Sunday. I was sort of skeptical about filming a class - due to inherent lack of dynamics - but all 3 of us agreed the work they are doing seems incredibly important so we determined to go regardless, and were not disappointed. We arrived early and met the Pittmans at the door of the Center for Action and Contemplation. Scott, who put me in mind of a wise and wry green Santa Claus from Texas, and Arina, his lovely dark Russian wife made introductions and set up camp lightly under a plastic Christmas tree. We had a terrific interview with Scott that I can't wait to see on film. Then we joined our hosts for lunch, amusing them with our efforts to make no garbage at the Flying Star. They made us take a picture of our minor failures (toothpick, napkin and tiny plastic cup).

After lunch, students started showing up and the final presentations began. The Permaculture Institute not only teaches the basic tenets of Permaculture but also requires of its students actual work in the field - planning, finding areas that are in need of permaculture and then MAKING things happen. Their projects don't end with just the presentation, they are ongoing and involved with the community. During filming, Scott called a Native American friend of his named Larry Littlebird who came over to talk to us. It was, to say the least, profound, listening to his stories and his message. We must live and we must love and we must laugh. Seems so simple. Surely not too simple for transplanted Westerners to understand? Larry Littlebird thanked us for what we are doing and went on his way. We continued filming the students, shared in their wonderful potluck and then got to see part of their talent show (also required part of the class). Long day, very long day. Exhausted, we packed into Rachel Carson and headed to Taos in the dark.

Taos has been a hotspot in Ben's little black environmental book for a number of years because of an odd type of house called an Earthship - built out of earth-rammed recycled truck tires, bottles, cans, and adobe, catching rain and recycling greywater to feed indoor planters - these homes are built to last and run completely off-grid. NO electricity bills! In fact, the earthship is one of the first ideas Ben introduced me to when we started getting romantical... so we couldn't pass through Taos without visiting them and getting some on film. They are really very sculptural and quite beautiful. We have each of us stayed in an "earthship" before, there are always one or two open and available for rent, but for this trip we got to finally stay at the Dobson House.

When we visited Joan and John Dobson last winter with Ted on our short test trip, we were amazed by the warmth their spacious off-grid earthbuilt home held even in the February mountain air, and hoped that we would get a chance to try out the guest room on the actual triop. Mark booked us there for two days. Joan made amazing breakfasts both days and gave us a nice interview. She also pointed us toward her friend, Robert Mirabal, a Native American recording artist - musician, dancer and maker of flutes - who lives outside of Taos Pueblo and who farms his land.

We found Robert at his home and were graciously invited into the backyard to get his take on the direction we are heading. He was pensive and thoughtful, and not at all shy about saying that it is a mistake to think that we are separate from the earth. When Mark noted how Atlanta legislators were summoning people to pray for rain, Robert laughed out loud. "That's great, man," he said. "Let the droughts come, man! Let them come. You know what my people did when the water ran out?" (We didn't.) "They MOVED!" and he broke into a great laugh. At the very end of the interview, as he bent over to sign the release forms, Robert explained, "The next time you visit an Indian man's or Indian woman's house, bring a gift." We felt very ashamed. "It's a sign of respect." He told us not to feel bad. We wondered what we should bring. "Seeds!" he said laughing. But he meant it. And as we were leaving, he stopped by a bin and scooped out some of his own family's corn kernels for us as our gift, and he filled one of my gloves.
So now we know. I was never feeling so humble...

Day 149-150: New Mexico, Part 1: Seeds of Change

2007-12-07T18:42:00.000-08:00

I laughed when we first saw the license plates: Land of Enchantment.
But I am not laughing now. I am enchanted! haha! It's true, I love New Mexico!

From what we had dug up on the internet and through friends, we really thought we would be focusing on art and the environment and maybe some metaphysical-type stuff in New Mexico (as well as Ben's and my favorite- alternative housing). But, New Mexico surprised us from several directions with Native American wisdom where we weren't even looking for it.

We landed at our wonderful host family's house in Albuquerque, and ventured forth from there. We revisited our good friend Ted Owens - a wonderful documentary filmmaker who built his own strawbale house off-grid in Coralles. His company, Synchronos Designs, has a great website called Building With Awareness with how-to DVD's and support for people who want to do the same. We collaborated with Ted for a brief test trip back in February, when we simultaneously finished editing the Bear Necessities video for Treehugger.com and discovered the kinds of preparations that would be necessary to keep from making garbage on this trip. We were more than happy to be reunited with Ted and are excited to watch his film's progress.

We drove up to Santa Fe as the sun's hours were dwindling fast and caught the light on this gorgeous cathedral. I hung around in a coffee shop and had food - I seem to be a slave to eating these days - while Ben and Mark had camera in hand to catch passersby. By the time they found me, they were gushing over the sheer wisdom that came out of the mouths of the two guys who stopped to offer their thoughts. I was sorry to have missed them but, like some other fantastic things that have happend on this trip, i will have to enjoy them when everyone else does - when the video comes out.

Clayton Brascoub is Native American himself and is Program Director for TNAFA (Traditional Native American Farmers Association), whose mission it is to “revitalize traditional agriculture for spiritual and human need.” Based on the belief that "a sound agriculture base is needed to build healthy communities, including both the physical and spiritual health of their people," TNAFA aims to develop educational programs to interest young Natives in being a part of the revitalization of their culture. We found Clayton at the Flying Star near the University, having some fish and pumpkin pie. (The Flying Star, incidentally, is the very coolest eatery in Albuquerque - locally owned, all fresh food, and DOGS ARE WELCOME, encouraged even! If you are ever passing through the area, we highly recommend it. I will come back when I have a dog.)

Thoughtful and softspoken, Clayton talked for some time about how agriculture really is connected to everything else, just as we are all related - not just to other people but to all of Creation. TNAFA sees a direct correlation between the decline of farmers and traditional cooks and the decline in physical and social health of Native American society. Clayton is one of many who believe that local Agriculture is a way to bring Community back. That same spirit of sharing is the heart of another group that Clayton is involved with, the non-profit Native Seed Search - a seed conservation organization whose motto, "ancient seeds for modern needs," speaks to the growing support for bringing back the diversity of crops that sustained us and sustained our soil, and local communities for thousands of years.

He brought out several beautiful ears of colorful corn that were grown from Native seed, as well as squash and beans, and he did not hesitate to warn against the dangers of genetically engineered crops. As he says, "Gene pollution cannot be cleaned up," and there is no way to keep GMO crops from pollenating other plants via bees, wind, etc. There has even been a lawsuit filed by Monsanto against a farmer whose crops were infected by Monsanto's next door frankenstein crop, for theft of their patented pollen! (see this article) Which he never wanted in the first place, as it polluted his field! (see also www.seedsofdeception.com and the Institute for Responsible Technology.)

Clayton explained that in the 1940's {before pesticides} about 7% of crops were lost to pests. "That's this much," he observed, pointing to just the last few kernels at the tip of a corncob. "Are we so greedy that we are not even willing to share just that little bit?" Now, with the full use of pesticides we lose about 14%. And every year we need stronger chemicals bc the creatures are evolving to withstand what we are spraying on them. We have somehow managed to double the damage pests can do in just 40 years of pesticide use. Nice. I am personally coming to believe that this is one of the most important things we can do as a people, as a nation, to remain free: Take Back our Seeds.

Easy Things That Make a Big Difference. For Moms Who Care.

2007-12-06T13:39:00.001-08:00

Recently, one of our hosts asked if we might leave a list of simple things to do in life that are beneficial to the environment - so I wrote this out, and Mark thought I should go ahead and put it here in case other moms might find it useful. I hope some may find it so.
(And, thank you, Donna, for the impetus!)

You will already be doing a lot of these, I am sure, but I will just list them anyway:

EASY THINGS THAT MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE:
CONSERVE:

WATER
1.turn off faucets while brushing teeth, washing dishes, etc.
2.Take fewer or shorter showers when you can.
3."Flush down only when brown," lol.
4.If you do water lawn, only do so after sunset.
5. Never run water over paved surfaces if you can help it.
6. Eat less meat. :)
7. If your toilet is old and you are going to replace is, buy dual flush toilet! they're cool!
8. replace regular showerheads with low-flow showerheads

ELECTRICITY
1.turn off lights when not in use.
2.Unplug appliances when not is use (anything that goes on with a remote will pull energy even in the off position)
3. replace incandescent bulbs with CFL's (compact flourescents) or, better yet, with LED's! (by the way, if you are interested, there are a couple of sites where you can buy LED Xmas lights for no more than the old, energy sucking kind...let me know)
4. girls: Air dry hair sometimes or always :)
5. Air-dry clothes whenever possible
6. Point-specific heating (space heater used only for the room you are in)
7. Consider reading a book instead of turning on the TV

ENERGY:
1. Drive less
2. Ride bikes more often, or walk. Public transportation is the next best.
3. Use things more than once - ie: jars, rubberbands, etc
4. Thrift stores!! and Repair/alter clothes
5. Consider paying a little extra to your electric company if they offer paying into renewable energy credits - we have been assured that this $ does indeed go into the production of new solar panels, windmills, etc.
6. Eat local and buy from your local small businesses. Avoid big chains whenever possible. Studies show that what you buy in the big box stores gets shipped all over the world, is not regulated in materials or labor, and causes $ to go out of the community never to return...
7. Buy fruits/veggies in season
8. Consider buying a hybrid or otherwise very fuel efficient vehicle
9. If you don't have the best insulation, use heavy draperies. You can open them during the day for some light and to let the sun in to warm the rooms, then close when the sun goes down to trap heat in and keep cold air out.

PAPER:
1. Go to Greendimes.com and let them help you cut your junk mail while planting trees at the same time...
2. Try online subscriptions to magazines (* i kind of avoid this option bc there are a few magazines that i really treasure arriving at my house and i read them cover to cover, like YES and the SUN)
3. Use chicobags! for your groceries, and for all shopping excursions...(www.chicobag.com)
4. Use cloth napkins, and handtowels at home.
5. Carry handkerchiefs and/or bandanas for away...

FOR YOUR HEALTH:
1. Avoid using plastic, particularly in conjunction with food, more particularly with liquids and most particularly when there is change in temp or flexing of materials. PYREX is best for storage. KLEAN KANTEEN for stainless steel water bottles.
2. Eat organic whenever possible, and/or local pesticide free (farmers will be honest with you if they use chemicals or not)
3. Avoid fish. Here are 2 weblinks: www.fishonline.org/information/MCSPocket_Good_Fish_Guide.pdf or www.nrdc.org/health/effects/mercury/walletcard.pdf
4. ORGANIC PRODUCE!!! http://www.grinningplanet.com/2006/update-2005-05-24/pesticides-in-food.htm
5. Buy milk that is produced without the use of bovine growth hormone (Organic is better, local dairy is best)
6. Buy eggs that are free range. (same with meat, if you have to eat meat)
7. Avoid parabens in any product that comes in contact with your skin - remember, your skin EATS, so don't put anything on there that you wouldn't put in your mouth!
8. Use cleaning supplies like your grandmother used ;) (ie: vinegar, Borax, Baking Soda)
9. Don't forget to stretch, take walks, get outside...

KEYS TO MAKING NO TRASH:
1. Carry cloth bandana
2. Carry nonbreakable glassware for storage (www.pyrexware.com)
3. chicobags!!! ( www.chicobag.com)
4. carry some kind of utensil (we like togoware)
5. pocket notebook
6. Don't be afraid to tell whoever you're about to order from that you are doing an experiment, and trying not to make any trash...
7. Buy fresh food instead of packaged whenever possible
8. Lush offers soaps that have no packaging, and you can find many others at local health food shops
9. Preserve is a company that will take back your toothbrush/razor, etc. and turn it into...something else...

DON'T BE SILENT
1. Write opinions to your newspaper
2. Write and call your legislators and let them know how you feel about how they're voting
3. Here are some websites to help re: how to easily write your reps and who's been voting on what: Union of Concerned Scientists, Environmental Working Group, World Wildlife Fund, Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, National Resources Defense Council, www.care2.org and www.saveourenvironment.org to name a few.
4. Talk to your extended family, too, and friends. There are cool things to do sometimes through the Sierra Club that might be fun at the same time.
5. Write to any companies that have things you don't like (ie: too much packaging, some nasty chemical you don't want to be exposed to, etc.)
6. write us a note and say hi whenever you want to... and ask us any questions you may have...we will answer them if we can

Well, that is maybe more than what you were hoping for?
and maybe not even a complete list...

GREAT BOOKS:
Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
The Secret Life of Stuff (by ?)

GREAT WEBSITES:
treehugger.com
greenmaven.com
grinningplanet.com

babysteps? how about backward steps???

2007-11-26T15:07:00.000-08:00

OK yeah yeah
cool and interesting things all over the country. Then again...
Here's some of the more unbelievably asinine things that we are hearing about and have to share with you:

1. to cool down those thirsty residents in the Arizona desert:
There are plans in motion for a giant waterpark in Mesa that will dwarf other waterparks. No citizens groups have protested.

2. for all those Texans yearning to climb ice caves and ski down slopes of snow that may all be gone in 30 yrs., there is also a "snowcave" planned for Texas...

These things are actually in the works. How this is possible, I cannot tell you, but I have to say I am reeling from the news.
Ooof.
Come on, America. Really?

Day 139, 147: Arizona Solar: Making the most of your Assets

2007-11-25T21:18:00.000-08:00

First i have to say a huge thank you to Ben's Dad for putting us up for a whopping 9 days in Arizona over Thanksgiving. We were so overdue for actual downtime that we sucked up the comforts of home like we were moving in. And secondly, I have to thank him for setting up our entire Arizona interview schedule. It was amazing, we were able to focus on all the other things...

We got to visit a really cool school called Starshine Academy which is going out of its way to be sustainable - they even have a garden and a compost out back! Mark gave his final two Inconvenient Truth presentations there and we had a lot of fun fielding questions after. One of the teachers, Lesley, has already informed us of the changes being made since YERT arrived, and several of the students have emailed us to say that they are accepting challenges: one is walking to school this week, one is changing the household's lightbulbs to CFLs. Go, Kids!

Next we visited Debra Bills and Jeff Humphrey at the Dept of Fish and Wildlife who told us a bit about some of Arizona's endangered species and how we are ALL fighting for the water...We learned that most California Condors are killed from eating carrion that has been shot with lead. I didn't even know that they still made lead bullets - but the fact is that they do, and they are cheap, and it seems hunters don't think much bout the face that they are filling their target full of lead (even though in some cases their kids will be eating it - Shot doesn't stay in one place). Copper bullets are a bit more expensive but really.

Then came APS Solar - That's Arizona Public Service to you and me, and they are doing all they can to capitalize on that great ball of fire in the sky that shines so frequently there. Dan Lonetti showed us around the man facility where all the different kinds of solar panels are being tried and tested, and Steven Gottfried took us down to the Saguaro Plant to see the Solar Troughs! (These are particularly cool as they do not need any of the expensive materials required for solar panels - they are designed with mirrors to focus the sun onto a clear tube filled with a gel that heats up mightily and, well, makes a lot of energy. Steven also introduced us to Flat Stanley (if you don't know who this is, find a gradeschooler...) and we took our opportunity to interview him as well...he seemed a little 2-dimensional...

I opted to stay home one day while the boys went and interviewed Anthony Floyd (Scottsdale Green building Program Manager). I can't tell you much about that interview so we'll all have to stay tuned for the video on that one. I did accompany the boys to AKA Green however, a local home improvement store run by Michael Dalrymple. michael told us that they even had a super-sensitive human come walk around to detect any possible chemical off-gassing that may be coming from the store. It's how they discovered that the "100% Natural Soy" Carpet Glue Remover contained some kind of chorylmethylflourocarbonsomething (please don't quote me on that). Talk about new green jobs.

Did I mention that Thanksgiving was wonderful? And that we got to go trail riding in the Arizona desert too? Bliss. My horse was named Stomp and he was a treat. I was sore for days afterward and I couldn't have cared less...and i slept right in the middle of the day sometimes after yet another delicious leftover turkey sandwich.

On our way out of AZ, we stopped at the super eco house of a guy named Jack Ehrhardt, a green builder and contractor who is doing his darndest to make sure that houses going up are going up smart. Jack also consults for the Hualapai tribe and drove us to the west side of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon to see some of the solar the Native Americans have powering the airport and tourist center up there. We liked what we saw, and what a great way to end our Arizona leg, gazing down into that amazing wonderfully GIANT crevasse and being reminded of just how small we are...and simultaneously stunned and dismayed by the idea that we have been able to make such an impact on our own living system in such a short time.

Arizona may have a whole lot of people using not alot of water but they got one thing right: using the endless desert sun as the valuable resource that it is. Now let's see if we can't get some more wind power in Kansas...

Day 133-137: Nevada: And the water goes to...DOH!

2007-11-23T14:45:00.000-08:00

Oh boy. More and more we are coming to understand that water is our most precious resource!
We have heard in several states now by several different people, this Mark Twain quote: "Whiskey's for drinking, water's for fightin over..." and we are seeing how this may be as true now as it ever was. Nebraskans have to limit their water intake for the residents of Kansas, Coloradans have been legally obligated to personally conserve water or some time now - in order that states downstream get their "fair share" of the Colorado, and Nevadans are being offered incentives to "tear up their turf," (basically, let their lawn be torn out and replanted with native Nevadan desert plants.) And the population is booming.

Think about it: the human body is basically 70% water. The earth is about 3/4 water - which might seem like plenty until you recognize that only about 2% of the water on the earth is fresh water (drinkable). Some human communities are more used to droughts than others, due to their usual arid climate, and we are seeing exploding populations in the 2 states that are basically situated in a desert. Nevada is the first one we visited, so water is what we focused on there.

We stopped first at Lake Tahoe near Reno, then on to visit the Mount Rose SnoTel site with water supply specialist, Dan Greenlee, who showed us the measuring facility and how it works under tens of feet of snowfall every winter. Ben wanted to hear that there is a demonstrable deficit in snowfall these days but Dan explained that there is still much change from year to year (ie: last year was one of the driest measured years in history but the year before was one of the wettest). So, no conclusions from the Snotel site, though Dan confessed that he believes that climate change is inevitable and he is worried.

Next we stopped at Walker Lake, which Dan had mentioned as one of only 5 terminus lakes in the world (meaning that it doesn't end in the ocean). It is one of the Nevada lakes that feed the desert population's thirst. You can see from our pictures that the water is low... According to the USGS report (US Geological Society), the lake is now only 83' deep at its maximum. Since the lake has reportedly declined 145' since 1882, this means that, according to my math, Walker Lake was 228' deep and has lost over 70% of its volume. And Nevada is the fastest growing state (re: population) in the nation. Look out, fishes. Not only is there less water but it is way more saline due to to concentrated mineral salts so fish are NOT thriving there at all.

And we were on our way to Las Vegas, city of lights, broken dreams, facades in all flavors with their own water features and a whole new level of mindless consumption. The really nice people we were going to house us came down with a meningitis-y type illness, so we opted for safety and stayed instead at a Budget Suitey-type thing off the Strip. I worried over the amount of pollution that we were inhaling on a daily basis being so close to the highway...

We were pleased to get to talk to Doug Bennett, Conservation Manager for the SNWA (Southern Nevada Water Authority). Doug told us that Nevada (which gets only 4" of rainfall per year) is special because, although water conservation laws are regionally decided, Nevada municipalities are working together so that everybody can be on the same page. He believes that the biggest challenge is keeping Nevada cool. This they want to do by planting foliage, but it has to be done sustainably. Nevadans are being offered incentives to tear up their turf (see this excellent article) and are being asked to replace traditional lawns with natural desert landscape (see photo) or, hilariously, astroturf. From what we understood, new developments are not allowed swimming pools or lawns. And people in Georgia are calling up Doug to find out Nevada's tricks to dealing with drought. Policy-makers are taking the water shortage very seriously. Fines are in place for people who water during the day, or allow water to flow over paved surfaces, and increase with every offense. After all, water is incredibly valuable and, as Bennett puts it, "Water running into the street has NO value...Nobody grew up with a waterfall in their front yard. We just have to remind them."

And then we hit the Strip. Man, I was not looking forward to it, feeling kind of crappy. We found parking fast, and i followed the boys around while they shot b-roll. We watched a crazy water show in the fountains in front of the Bellagio (I had never known that fountains could dance!) and I found myself wondering how much of that supposedly recycled water gets lost every day in evaporation, and how much energy it takes to make those fountains dance... By 10:30 I really was not doing well and sat down while the boys tried to find people on the streets to talk to. I couldn't tell you what was said, but they seemed satisfied when I finally said, That's it, I gotta go. (Thanks, Boys.)

Next day we got a fortunate call back from a friend of ours who is managing Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel, and who performs ceremonies as Elvis. We went the very next day and even got to witness the last drunken nuptial of the evening. Surreal. Then Brian put the YERT name up in lights outside the building and proceeded to give us his thoughts on the water situation in Las Vegas, as Elvis. He even improvised a little song for us. Sweet. (Thanks, Brian!)

I feel I ought to mention that several of the people we talked to were quite upset about the fact that Nevada has NO RECYCLING. Even the Whole Foods may not be recycling though it has recycling bins in the front of the store, we can't be sure. Nobody picks it up. We didn't have time to investigate but does anybody want to look into that? let us know...

On to Arizona, past Hoover Dam and Lake Meade, which is now at 49% volume. Uh-oh. Composting toilets, anyone?

FW to Happy Thanksgiving

2007-11-21T16:06:00.000-08:00

So, along with the many email Forwards I received in the last week, one seemed to need some actual response instead of the usual 'read and delete.' It was forwarded to my mailbox as Jay Leno's words, but in actuality they are the words of one Craig Smith, who turned a very short little quip delivered as part of Leno's monologue into an op-ed for World Net Daily (a totally conservative e-rag, by the way, that includes articles such as how eating soy at a young age turns people gay. go figure.)

I read the whole thing and felt my blood rising as I realized that Mr. Smith's "challenge" to Americans to quit complaining about what their government is doing and just be grateful for living in the manner to which we have become accustomed, without looking and understanding what is happening, is a big mistake that I hope people don't take to heart. (I haven't included Mr. Craig's opinion but you can find it here.)

I hit "REPLY ALL" and asked everyone to Please do be grateful but Please do NOT stop thinking... Within a day, my brother David wrote this beautiful and poignant response, for which I am endlessly thankful:

Ah, how to start.

As I sit here with my infant son sleeping comfortably on my chest. I read this commentary, and I don't care who wrote it. I am always happy to be reminded of all that I have to be thankful for. We all need to take time to appreciate those that we love around us, and time to unwind away from the crazy world around us.

I'll start with how I am thankful that I have two beautiful, gentle, healthy, wonderful sons. But that doesn't mean that at moments, my heart isn't filled with the grounding reality that at the prime of their lives, they could get dragged off to some armed conflict based on lies and sent back in bodybags.

I am thankful that I live in a warm, dry house with a quality of life unheard of on this planet until the last 50 years. But that doesn't keep me from realizing that with the technology that we have in place at this moment, if every man woman and child on our planet had this same quality of life, our environment would (without question) collapse in not years, but days.

I am thankful that I don't have to worry about my family being victims of violent crime, even though I know that the widening chasm between rich and poor, and the failings of education in this country will most certainly ensure that this is just a golden age. We won't have that luxury for long unless we figure out some very important policy gaps and start supporting our fellow man substantially. And it doesn't keep me from remembering occasionally that there are sizeable portions of our own population who live in jungle fear in poor urban neighborhoods.

I am thankful that I live in a country so full of caring people - doctors, engineers, builders, heroes of all varieties, and that even if our constitution gets whittled away and our government gets us so used to lies that we don't notice, we WILL still come together in groups that warm our hearts, and in crisis will probably rise to the occasion and make things better. But it doesn't keep me from remembering that there are places in this country where the police are feared, and fire trucks rarely come because the economic base can't support good rescue services.

I am thankful for science, for showing us how to treat terrible diseases, and for letting us find truth about the world.

I am thankful for this president for very backwards reasons, for being such a terrible president that it wakes up the electorate to what power can do to a group of people... and for taking our country to a place of near economic and military collapse so that we no longer have the means to pursue hegemony over the oil of the planet.

I am thankful that oil has officially reached its peak production, and the price of gasoline is being driven to prices that we can't afford (thanks again to our president's military adventures). F inally those technologies that are so crucial to the health of our planet and survival of so many species, including ours, will be driven inexorably to the forefront, and no global warming deniers will have even financial reasons to deny the energy revolution that will save us.

I am thankful for the possibility of recession, aside from the pains that it will cause many families, because it will wake us up to the unsustainability of our lifestyles. It will teach us that our grandparents learned the most valuable lessons during World War II, that we need to live frugally, and responsibly, and not waste like there is no tomorrow. It will teach us that a dollar spent has to be a dollar earned. It will bring us right back down to the reality of how we need to live.

I am thankful that the clothes I wear are affordable, even while realizing that accepting them means I contribute in some small way to slave labor in China and environmental disaster in some place th at I probably won't ever see.

There are ways out of all of this. And I agree that drowning yourself in disaster-filled news isn't the answer. But neither is living in a bubble of blissful ignorance. And neither is clinging to religion if that religion is trying to convince you that this administration isn't lying to us, or championing things like banning gay marriage at the expense of responsible public policy.

It is very easy to get tied up in problems that are too big for us as individuals to fathom, much less solve. It i s very easy to allow disappointment to cloud our days. But let me just suggest that another way is to simply digest the problems with the belief that we can fix it eventually, or if you happen to be religious, to have faith that your god or gods will help us do the work that we have to do.

We have to review these problems with care as we look at the policies our politicians champion and vote always and responsibly. Liberals shouldn't be hitting the all democrat tab, and neocons shouldn't hit the republican tab. We need to take a bit of time and really understand what we are voting for. We need to hold our politicians to standards of honesty and integrity. Lies need to be a reason to dismiss them. We need to understand the shifting line between spin and dishonesty. And pin it down, hard, in a place that we hold our own friends and relatives accountable for.

Ah, it hurts the bra in, but so does learning a new language or anything that is big. Maybe some of us aren't up to the task. But that doesn't mean we have any excuse to not try, and allowing any crap like Britney Spears gossip or Montel Williams shows into our heads greatly reduces our capacity for keeping our eye on the ball.

Fill yourself up with thanks of all that we have here, and then with that strength holding you up, realize

that our lifestyles are NOT sustainable, and that we are part of a very small percentage of the people on this planet that are as lucky, and we have a responsibility to do what it takes to find what is most important and get rid of the excess so the rest of them can hope for a life worth living as well.

If you have read this far, I love you.

David

I am filled up to the brim with thanks for more than I can say.
Thanks for the opportunity to make this trip, to share what we are learning, to see great friends and meet new people, to be encouraged by all the people who care and who are willing to make change...and for everybody who has been supporting us along this trip. As I said to one of my dear NY friends who sends us random comments every week or so, You are keeping us afloat, truly.

Happy Thanksgiving!!! with all the good stuff...

Day 128-131: San Francisco Green Festival

2007-11-16T22:12:00.000-08:00

Flying home from Oahu, we felt torn - sad to leave such a beautiful place, worried for its preservation and ready to get back to the mainland.

We were picked up at the airport by our friend, Michael, and brought back to his place, where Rachel Carson waited for us in the garage. Funny how attached we become to material things, and how we anthropomorphize them - I actually apologized to our dashboard lemur for leaving him home instead of bringing him to Hawaii with us to ride on the rental car dash...and patted Rachel Carson on her Y...

Next morning had us up early, repacked into the car and headed to San Francisco's Green Festival - a major green marketing event sponsored by Global Exchange. We parked, got badges at Media check-in, and Mark went to find our contact people...and then we were off into the mayhem. There were booths selling everything from independent media to hempfood to hanging bamboo baby hammocks to CSA's (Community Supported Agriculture) to the local PG&E to our good friend Andy at Chicobags. It was like a giant overwhelming Eco bazaar, throngs of people milling around making contacts and buying alternative holiday gifts...It was a bit difficult to step out of the consumer mindset...but I got out of there only buying my husband a back support for when he is editing all night hunched over his computer...

We interviewed people every day, and were even a part of the Green Festival team that followed Deepak Chopra. (His book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, was at one time my "Bible," and may be the closest thing I have found to the kind of universal spirituality that I can relate to. But he has many many others.) Ben walked with Deepak, asking what gives him hope. Deepak's answer, that hope implies despair so he does not hope, was referenced in his audience address later that evening to 5 balconies and a full floor of people, and I squoze Ben's hand for having planted a seed.

My favorite interview was with a young man named Ryan Mlynarczyk, (who i don't have a picture of, cause sometimes i forget the most important things). Ryan is gearing up this month for his cross-country trip, by bicycle, documenting sustainable communities (his favorite green way of living). We had been hearing of Ryan for some time so I was eager to meet him, and when I finally found his booth, and he saw the YERT on my media tag, he held out his hands to me and hugged me right away. The boys arrived and we took turns interviewing each other in the Sustainable Communities booth, totally joyful meeting like-minded fellow travelers out to see the world change! However, Ryan, unlike YERT (which had a few years of savings to draw from), is starting his trip on a few dollars, a happy prayer and the clothes on his back. I hope that people all over America will visit Ryan's current website, bookmark his coming documentary website, and offer him all the comforts they can afford!!! YERT vouches for him as a genuine beautiful soul...

Other thing I really liked about the Festival was the amount of free organic food samples that were offered all around the inner section. I wasn't feeling all that well for about the whole festival so being able to fill up my mug with orange juice at any time for free was a boon.
Also, a girl named Echo gave me a pair of wings on Friday when I admired them, so Sunday I was wearing them all day. People smiled except if we were really crowdy and they bumped someone.

Next stop: Nevada. No offense, but I wished we could skip it and head straight to Arizona, Ben's family and Thanksgiving...

Day 126: recap from Oahu

2007-11-06T23:17:00.000-08:00

Ben is sick, caught my Maui cold! Sorry, Babe.

On to Oahu, where the lovely Smith family shared their home with us for a few days.

We had a rare treat on this leg of the trip - Since we're driving a rental car and don't have our year's worth of stuff, we were able to bring a guest with us to our daily interviews! (Thanks for coming, Rachelle!) We drove to the Lyon Arboretum where Director Christopher Dunn showed us some basement seedbanks and explained to us the difference between non-native species ("alien," - not necessarily bad) and invasive species (also alien - but very bad - take over whole ecosystems, competing for air, light, soil, etc.) He described to us the distinction between indigenous species (native) and endemic species (native but occurring nowhere else in the world) and told us that Hawaii has the highest percentage of endemic species in the World, and they are disappearing rapidly.

Part of what botanical gardens do is collect, preserve, and propagate specimens of plants that may no longer occur in the wild, in the hopes of possibly reintroducing them at some future point. We walked into an incubator of just such specimens at Lyon, and were struck by the nursery of seeds and seedlings, growing each in their own little test tube of jelly nutrient. We were even more struck by the ruthless mosquitos (incidentally not native to Hawaii at all - special thanks to whoever brought those over).

We headed to University of Hawaii's student sustainability meeting a little late, so Ben and I went ahead with the camera while Mark and Rachelle looked for parking. We creaked open the red door at the top of the 6th Floor of Saunders Hall onto a full room of engaged faces. These people are excited about sustainability! They are doers: architects, engineers, business majors, green builders, environmental studies majors and graduate and doctorate students working to make change happen right there on campus. A charming dark-eyed mechanical engineer named Shanah Trevenna leads this group with a focus and a fire that is infectious. Her determination and optimism seem amazingly matched by the willingness of the student team to come up with answers to our most pressing environmental challenges. (ie: The team is finding ways to save the University $$ by studying sustainable energy alternatives, and then offering to make the changes themselves, in exchange for a portion of the savings. And the University is going for it!)
It's working!

One of their professors is Ira Rohter, who authored the book, Green Hawaii, In it, he tried to describe a sustainable path for the Islands so that people might get an idea what that would look like and gravitate toward that. Since the professor wrote Green Hawaii in 1992, with many projections about what the future could look like, we were interested in getting his take on Hawaii's current state of wellness and how he now pictures the future. More later, but the most important thing to me was Prof Rohter's belief that it is not a question of IF the world will change but WHEN in our lifetime, and will we be able to meet the challenges that are coming. I asked him, What tools will we need, to be prepared? He said we need to relearn some skills. Knowing how to grow food, how to cook, how to sew, even something as simple as knowing how to cut bread will make the transition less of a shock. Guess I better start working on that goat farm?

Our last interview on Oahu was with Christy Martin, of CGAPS, Coordinating Group on Alien Pest Species. Christy talked to us more about the importance of keeping Hawaii free of invasive flora and fauna and the difficulty in keeping out alien species on such a high tourist destination. Ben, in particular, is likening humans to the invasive species. Oahu, in particular, is so developed that the air smells like smog and all you see are high-rise buildings and parking lots, big box stores and highways. What used to be one of the most easily sustained human settlements, without the use of electricity, now has to import 90% of its energy and 75% of its food from outside the islands. Not a very good use of natural resources that were already there, and not a very good use of traditional wisdom that was already there.

And yet, somehow, the local Hawaiian people maintain a sense of community that isn't found in most of suburbia. They still hang out with each other on porches after sunset and tell stories, they still sit around the beach and cook for each other. They may be more prepared than the rest of us when it comes time to rely on our friends and neighbors to embrace our changing world. Anyway, we thank them for welcoming us onto their homeland. Mahalo.

Day 121: YERT passed the 1/3 point...

2007-11-06T12:36:00.000-08:00

Real quick:
YERT passed the 1/3 mark...on Mark's 33rd Birthday.
Happy Birthday, Mark!
and Happy 1/3 of the way to everyone who is coming along on this trip...

http://www.csgnetwork.com/waterusagecalc.html

Day 120-123: Maui: Eco Travel and Sustainability

2007-11-05T17:21:00.000-08:00

Halloween:
Our shaky shaky flight to Maui left us holding hands and hugging the seatbacks in front of us, but we landed safely and were met at the airport by one of the co-founders of Bio-Beetle Eco Rental Cars, Pam Wolf. We were thrilled to find an environmentally friendly auto rental, especially after the unavoidable "eco-sin" of flying across the ocean. The little VW Bugs get 35-40 mpg and run on 100% vegetable oil from Pacific Biodiesel, which uses primarily recycled cooking oil, diverting a reported 40 tons of used oil per month from landfills!

Pam drove us 5 short minutes to Bio-Beetle HQ, where she and partner, Shaun Stenshol, wear several hats. Besides Bio-Beetle, these two bought and now run Maui Recycling Service, out of the same office, and they have taken on the additional burden of caring for dozens of feral cats which, ear-tipped (neutered) and well-fed, definitely color the office atmosphere...

The car wasn't the only thing offered to us at Bio-Beetle. Once our paperwork was complete and we were ready to take off, Pam and Sean offered us the use of a cooler, (since people often buy disposable coolers and toss them out), a book or two to help navigate our way around the island, and even a tupperware to hold our food scraps (so that we wouldn't have to take out food in disposable to go boxes). Talk about doing your part to help tourists have less impact on the planet! They even use completely non-toxic soap to wash their VW Bugs, inside and out! Ask your grandmother what vinegar can do...

Feeling incredibly light in our carbon feetprints, we drove our little green bio-beetle straight to one of the vegetarian restaurants recommended to us (Pam & Sean included their favorite dishes at each restaurant in our paperwork) and feasted, before bouncing down the dirt roads into the jungle that was our temporary resting place: The Kahua Institute, a self-touted spiritual retreat and working bamboo farm about 16 miles South of Kahului. I am not sure what a working bamboo farm is but I would be lying if I said I didn't find it beautiful. I have so many pictures from this place, I will have to include a link to the album...someone remind me...

Kahua's commitment to sustainability was impressive. The entire facility is run off-grid on solar energy with a back-up biodiesel generator for emergencies. There is no flushing of anything into the toilets other than human waste (that includes toilet paper). Compost bins are provided in every kitchen and guests use them to compost all veggie/fruit leftovers (skins, peels, seeds, stems, etc.). The Kahua Institute feeds these leavings to a boxful of worms, who then turn them into the most useful beautiful soil you ever saw. See Vermiculture. (Here is another interesting worm composting link.) In every house, guests are reminded to conserve water and electricity. There's no A/C or heating, just screens and seabreezes blowing through, but you better believe we learned not to leave any openings for mosquitos.

In Paia, we bought local bread, cheese, goat butter (oh man that was amaaaaazing) and all kinda crazy local fruits at Mana Health Food, and stocked our little fridge, then headed North as Mark & Ben were deadset on seeing the famed rowdy Lahaina Parades. (I will add here that crowds are not my favorite thing and that I had developed a pretty annoying cold.)

Apparently, this year, the police decided to crack down on lewd costumes, obscenity and public drunkenness, so the whole thing seemed rather tame compared to the previews we'd read. We got some pretty good interviews though, about some fairly serious things, from some Transformers, some lions, some huge blowup people and a girl dressed as a martini (She wins the prize, in my opinion, for the most original costume. I would have a picture but I was manning the video camera...).

If the Big Island seemed an arid moonscape, Maui was the jungle. Though we got feasted on by mosquitos on both islands. I am sad to report that we have not observed many birds on either isle, aside from doves, pigeons, blackbirds and sparrows - are those the default birds when all the other birds die off? We have seen a few Japanese Yelloweyes, but I'm disappointed. I kind of thought that, staying in the "jungle," we would have seen a few more...

There is an incredibly overpowering smell of rotten eggs pervading the entirety of Kahalui that we were told comes from the local Sugarcane Plant (photo, left). hmmm... We did not take time to delve. We were taking time for much-needed diversion from the crazy YERT pace we have developed for ourselves. While we did maintain our challenges in Maui, we at least weren't chasing down interviews, and Ben wasn't editing like crazy. We read books, hiked, swam in the ocean, snorkeled with fishes and sea turtles and saw a spotted eagle ray up close and personal. We interviewed Kahua's founder, Katira, and her resident bamboo specialist, TJ, and we got some people together at the Institute to show support for Step it Up 2007!

We are discovering that Hawaii has a very complex and unique set of environmental, cultural, economic and social issues. Here, what was once a completely sustainable agricultural community with perfect weather and no need for modern "conveniences" has become a polluted, overdeveloped unaffordable piece of real estate that imports 75% of its food and 90% of its energy from elsewhere. Is it any wonder that residents of the smaller islands are wary of a Superferry that will allow people to ship over all their stuff from overcrowded Honolulu and just move in and take over their island too? Do they have any reason to think that their wild places will not be swallowed up by the endless stream of humans immigrating to less developed areas with balmy breezes and a beautiful view?

Well, somebody got one thing right. There is no such thing in Hawaii as a private beach.
Take that, Ramada.

Day 116-119: Hawaii: The Big Island

2007-10-31T01:38:00.001-07:00

ok so
The flight to Hawaii happened.
My camera still doesn't have good focus but i am just taking pictures anyway till we get to Oahu.

YERT spent the first 3 days here hiding out in an eco-lodge on the Big Island called Lova Lava Land Eco Lodge which has one YURT (Ben & I are staying in) and quite a few VW buses to choose from. (The bus Mark is staying in is called Daisy.) Anitra and Trond are great hosts who are doing their best to lighten their load on the earth by running their establishment entirely off of solar panels, complete with gravity-fed shower and composting toilet. On our first day they had a neighborhood BBQ and cooked us tofu burgers with cheese that were pretty tasty...

We have eaten every meal at the Desert Rose just up the street; We now have their menu memorized. Did not set bare foot in black sand or sandal on lava until Ben finished the Iowa pod (which was finally birthed yesterday at the Desert Rose). As soon as he was done, we put on swimming suits and drove North 20 mins to one of the loveliest beaches I have swum in. We stepped into the clearest blue water and one of the most gentle - and powerful - surfs I have ever experienced. We swam out over our heads and the boys floated on their backs, it was so sweet....but on our way back in i got pummeled and am still fishing sand out of my ears, among other things.

Today we checked out the Energy Lab near Kona airport for a few hours, then drove down the South Point, stopping only for cookies from the bakery with no bag. South Point happens to be the Southernmost tip of the Island but also the Southernmost point of the entire USA, so Ben was super-psyched to be there. He loves the superlatives and was sorry that there was no sign announcing that fact. Plus now he owes me $5.

Tomorrow we are going to interview our host here at the Lodge before heading off to Maui where we might actually take those couple of days off that we keep threatening...

for now, happy halloween.

Day 115: Headed to Hawaii: YERT is finally going to stay in a yUrt!

2007-10-25T23:50:00.000-07:00

OK I know that flying to Hawaii is the LEAST environmentally friendly thing we are doing on this entire trip, and I don’t really believe in purchasing “carbon offsets” to relieve our guilt about our flight… but we “offset” the journey nonetheless and I am totally CHARGED about getting to see these islands that I have never seen before outside of Magnum PI and Ricardo Montalban…
We will be leaving our car in a friend’s garage (Thanks, Michael and Katie!!) and renting as eco-friendly an auto as we can once on the Big Island…I totally have a headache in anticipation.

OH! looking forward to some nature! I have heard about the black beaches, volcanoes, amazing balmy winds and brilliant birds like the japanese white eye and the java sparrow, and I am more than excited to see them. (Hawaii even has its own penguins, for heaven’s sake!) Hopefully we will have fabulous still photos for you…but our little Canon Elph has stopped focusing properly…one too many drops out of my lap onto the pavement as we’d spill out of the car in the dark at a new destination…so we’ll search for a store that’ll honor the amazing 1-yr Warranty. Wish us luck! I will not be a happy camper without the little camera that has become my best friend on this trip…

AND…YERT is finally staying in a YERT. Our friend, Emily Ellis, found one on the big island with wifi, and emailed us the link. (Thanks, Em!) We are psyched. For privacy’s sake we have also rented a converted VW bus that Mark may frequent. I can’t believe we are about to relax…

GOAL: To actually take it easy for a day or two before diving into all things environmental.
Also: Possibly to find a ukulele on the Big Island that is somewhat affordable (what they call seconds). YERT has got to start making some music…
Also: snorkeling…

(Because all work and no play makes YERT dull-ish.)
That’s all for now, as we continue packing for tomorrow…no sleep till…the big Island…

Day 105-107: CA: Greening the Palm Tree State

2007-10-19T00:24:00.000-07:00

The last few days have been kind of terrific in my opinion, in that we got to stay with the Maylands in LA, I got to take my first yoga class so far on this journey (Thank you, Aria!) and Ben and I got to sing in a reading of a developing animated musical called Willoughby Tree which Mark taped. (Here I am recording with Jason, Thank you, Jason!) Though still green (the musical is about trees lol), the musical reading was a blessed departure from interviewing, filming and blogging. (I would include editing in that list but that Ben was still editing the Chicago pod and didn't finish until just a few hours before we performed.)

On the interview front, we visited with Dr. Yorem Cohen, professor at UCLA's Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department (also Director of the Water Technology Research Center) to gather some of Dr. Cohen's thoughts on the future of water desalination technology in America and where we are headed regarding the sustainability of our water resources.

What he told us is that desalination technology, particularly for reverse osmosis membranes, is about 30 yrs old and needs a booster! (This rings familiar as we just heard Stanford's President commenting in the roundtable about technology for solar panels having stalled in its tracks 15 yrs ago.) New improved technology is a major focus of research but needs more financial support, as does the infrastructure of desalination plants on our coastlines. This is tricky because water issues are generally state-oriented, and many states do not see a water shortage issue (ie: the Northeast) and therefore do not feel any financial responsibility toward supporting desalination.

The Federal Government regulates some water rights but most water laws are decided at the state and regional level. Which seems odd considering that, except for lakes and ponds, most waterways do not sit still. Many states share rivers. And tributaries travel through states into others. Many states are fed by the same aquifer. So, how do these state laws work with each other regarding water rights?
We would love to talk to someone regarding these question so if any of you out there have a clue where to send us to find out, please don't hesitate to email us directly...
Also, "Big Agriculture" gets huge subsidies from the government for the water that they use to irrigate crops, masking the true cost of water collection/filtration/transport...

We talked to Rupal Patel of Communities for Clean Ports, who described a notably increased cancer risk in communities living close to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. We then visited with Art Wong (Port of Long Beach Assistant Director of Communications/Public Information Officer), who let us know that this massive Port is working hard to reduce pollution and change the way that ships and trucks think about energy with its Green Port Policy. Although he isn't certain exactly how fast the changes are going to take place, he believes that they will and he is looking forward to it. He told us that marine life has doubled in the last 2 decades, and bird life has quadrupled, so he feels encouraged.

But Wong is a realist when it comes to keeping business relations afloat. Changing things at the Port of Long Beach is important, says Wong, because "We have this little window where we're the only port..." for many companies, so boats will have to comply with the new greener initiatives to dock there. "Where are the resources to clean up gonna come from if we screw this up and scare away all business?" The Port is voluntarily looking for ways to improve its pollution profile, awarding "green flags" and discounted docking rates to ships for compliance with the voluntary speed limit reduction (saves fuel and pollutes less). "We know now that we have an impact," says Wong. "The Port needs to weigh in because the Federal Government is working too slowly - We can't wait for the federal government to legislate." So, the Port is offering "literally billions" of dollars to innovators to come up with energy and technology shipping alternatives. Wong adds, "When you require people to make greener technology, it's amazing what they can come up with...We don't know if any of them will work but we hope that they will. We don't know what we've started and we don't know where it's gonna go but it's gotta be better than what we've got now."

Gotta start somewhere...

Day 104: Stanford Reunion, Fleet Street and here comes LA...

2007-10-15T16:21:00.000-07:00

Well, this was going to be a blog about the hard hitting heavies roundtable that happened early in the morning this past Saturday at Stanford on homecoming weekend...but as the talk was long and involved (and my blogs tend to be long and involved) and as it is also apparently available on i-tunes in its entirety, i'm leaving it for now. I mean, it was cool. But it was supposed to touch on the issue of water, as well as oil, and it didn't. I was disappointed that it didn't touch on peace or simplicity, but rather on technology and making the internet more accessible to more people in the far reaches of the planet so that they don't all become terrorists. Call me old-fashioned but it really does seem like consuming less and conserving resources is really the very first most common sensical thing to do...

We interviewed noone this weekend for YERT! The time was blocked out for the boys reunion (pretty handy that it was Mark's 10-yr and Ben's 15th). Ben and Mark were both chosen for their class panels to talk about what they are doing now, which was a great way to connect people to YERT and get some new ideas. I was along for the ride, happy to meet Ben's old friends, happy to see people I had met once before at weddings...happy to see all their little families growing with kids running around. (If anyone is wondering, I am feeling wistful about family and HOME.)

We stayed with former Fleet-Streeter, Bill Moore, who put post-its on the light fixtures so we'd know which ones we could turn on in the house without going against our No Incandescent Bulbs rule (Thank you, Bill!) (Fleet Street is a tight-knit Stanford men's A Capella group that both Ben and Mark were a part of. In fact, it is how they met). I played finger soccer with Bill's young son, Clayton, and then watched as they set up the maddening Candyland game...We went to supper at Jing Jing's with the current Fleet Street crew. Who are Younglins. That's all I am going to say. Babes still in the woods. They're making them younger all the time or something. We watched their 2 songs at the end of the homecoming show and my boys got nostalgic about their time and waxed on about how much things change...that's what reunions are for, I guess.

The massive outpouring of support from friends old and new about what YERT is doing felt good. People want to know what is happening, what we are finding out in our trip around the country, and what they can/should do. We were happy to oblige...

I am feeling a little bit burned out on environmental bad news but fortunately Mark has been all over the planning for Los Angeles. And fortunately, our hosts, Jason and Aria Mayland today provided me with my favoritest kinds of distraction and stress-relievers ever: recording sessions and yoga class, respectively.

Ben is still working on that dang Illinois pod, and I am staying out of it. Good Luck, honey. I am going to bed. Tomorrow: into the fray that is LA.

Day 101: Al Gore shares the Nobel Peace Prize with the IPCC

2007-10-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

Just really quick before I hit the hay,
i have to say that this morning's news was welcome.
AL Gore has now won the Nobel Peace Prize, on top of winning the Oscar for Inconvenient Truth.

So, I can't help but wonder: Will Al Gore run again for president?
Cause I believe I would vote for him if he did...

Day 100: I'll try to recap Oregon and move on...

2007-10-10T23:17:00.000-07:00

Well, we arrived in California and were shocked to find Fox News broadcasting Live from the gas pumps at Chevron. WHAT??? IS GOING ON???

We have fancy emails out to Arnold (Schwarzenegger) and Ellen (DeGeneres) but are not holding our breaths. Mom seems desperate for us to try to contact Leonardo DiCaprio but we haven't time to try to have his people call our people... oh wait, that's just us...

Time marches on and Ben is still editing the Illinois pod (hence our 3-month check-in video.) hopefully to finish tonight so that the boys can enjoy their respective Stanford reunions tomorrow.
It's a new moon.

Here, I'll finish off Oregon as well as i can:
Just before we left Portland, Ben and I stopped by the BTA (Bicycle Transportation Alliance) of Portland to interview Scott Bricker about Portland's amazing track record. During the interview Ben popped down the hall and set up another interview with the communications director the the Portland light rail system (TRIMET). Mary Fetsch, you are a trooper. (That lovely woman stayed and talked to us on-camera for over half an hour even having just endured a crown replacement and the right side of her face waking up.) The interview was wonderful, there were tons of people using the service, and the footage of the trains going by was fantastic. Well, potentially fantastic. I haven't exactly mastered the art of avoiding passersby when shooting...We even saw people getting on with their bicycles...

The drive to Eugene was rainy and uneventful, except for the numbers of Subarus. We landed somewhat wearily at Mark's relatives, who were gracious and wonderful and already fully on board with everything YERT is trying to do. Michael said that he sometimes worries that his 9-yr old twins are on the verge of becoming environmental nazis. Go girls, go!

We closed the transportation triumvirate with an interview at LTD Rapid Transit bus system in Eugene. This innovative bus system has dedicated bus lanes in the middle of the street with grassy medians and, since its inception 4 months ago, has seen ridership increase by over 50 %.
(I'll check those numbers for tomorrow as i am getting sleepy and less than precise). A pretty good way to keep those cars off the road, and give commuters a chance to get some more work done on the way to work, ahem.

A delicious dinner followed by stimulating conversation and solid sleep prepared us for this morning's drive to Ashland. The weather was beautiful. We parked the car at our hosts' house, walked down the hill past all the Tibetan prayer flags and Subarus, ate Italian and then sat to watch As You Like It at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. (The man who played Touchstone was wonderful.) Don't mind if we do.

Day 96, 97: OR; green families, bicycling, green Diapers, recycling...

2007-10-09T18:44:00.001-07:00

Googling Oregon on the Internet, we kept finding "greenest state in America," so we entered Portland with pretty high expectations of environmental...ness washing over us and the YERT camera. Like every other environmentally conscious place we've been, the Subarus are here in spades...

Even though YERT wasn't sure that we'd captured completley the green essence of the city, we decided to take a few hours off on our last night in Portland and just be human, visiting our already-green families. Ben and I went to Jason and his Marcelle's house, ate grape tomatoes out of their beautiful organic backyard garden and joined them for vegetarian dinner at a local local eatery while Mark continued visiting with his family (Carl, Darcy and little Kieran) and doing homework.

Monday was Columbus Day, which we kept hearing was a holiday... We set out in the morning with sleep in our eyes, determined to catch some commuters cycling over the Hawthorne Bridge on their way to work. Ben and Mark set up camp on the downtown fork of the bridge and i set off in search of...what else...coffee. (Surprisingly, Starbucks on two adjacent corners was the "option." I was kind of expecting some kind of organic local brew? Call me spoiled...i DID just come from Seattle.) Anyhow, we got one interview with a cyclist and a couple with pedestrians, and got some nice footage of the bicycles passing autos on the bridge.

Next, we headed over to the headquarters of gdiapers to talk with its founders about the benefit of compostable diapers as an antidote to the environmental impacts of "50 million disposable diapers entering the landfill every day, where they sit for up to 500 years..." I was excited to talk to co-founder Jason Graham-Nye because I grew up nannying for families that used cloth diapers and some who used "disposables." The former uses a LOT of water to clean and the latter is just SO MUCH WASTE. My brother and his wife used compostable diapers for their son, Miles, and loved them, so I bought gdiapers for my two girlfriends who were having their first babes. Girls? In between feedings, you wanna let me know how that's going?
Moms, I encourage you to check gdiapers out, they're AMAZING!!!

While we're on the subject of waste, I'll skip ahead a day because we went to visit Bring Recycling "Planetary Improvement" Store in Eugene this morning, a veritable bounty of a salvage yard, and I am inspired. Dad you would have been thrilled. Bring is proud to be "one of the nation’s oldest non-profit recyclers." I asked Julie Daniels if we should be thinking: Reuse, Reduce, Recycle, in that order - and she said, "Rethink. We want people to rethink how they are buying things in the first place. We want them to understand that the biggest amount of energy is used in the initial product manufacture, and to rethink how much stuff they really need to buy in the first place. Then, if they have to recycle something, they can bring it here."

Bring's mission is beautiful:

to promote a healthy and sustainable environment through education, innovative conservation programs and
community involvement in conserving natural resources. We help people understand the connection between
the resources they use and the clean air, pure water and wild places they value.

and hasn't changed since they began as a non-profit organization in 1971, but there are some new things: They are now bonded and licensed to help people in the deconstruction of their property. If someone is remodeling or demolishing, they can hire Bring to come and take it all their salvage away, which is a useful service since proper recycling of demolition materials is required by Oregon law. (yay!) This extra income has afforded the company the support to move to a new location with much more space, and to begin to retrofit existing buildings into a solar energy-powered office complete with living roof, bio-swales with native plants to catch stormwater runoff, filtering toxins that spill onto the parking lot from visitors' cars and machine parts that are recycled there. From what we can see, Bring walks the talk. The "new" office's walls used to be the roof of Babes topless bar, the lighting fixtures are the ones that were already there, just with much more efficient bulbs, the bathroom floors are inlaid with random pieces of salvaged marmoleum, and the outdoor decks are recycled telephone poles and TREX.

Go Bring!!!

And the icing on this garbage cake is art! Bring has an eye to aesthetic, and a belief in the importance of art in a sustainable and meaningful life. There is art in the lobby for all to enjoy and regular art classes and craft reuse workshops at Bring to supplement instruction on the basics of recycling... we're looking forward to seeing some more of this...

Oregon's amazing recycling law

Day 94, 95: OR: Portland's Rain Gardens and Beaded Cars

2007-10-07T13:53:00.000-07:00

Hello, we are in Portland...Oregon this time, one of the best bicycling towns in America, we are told.
We went to Roots Organic Brewery last night and tried their Heather beer made without Hops...Ben and I are still not much into beer but what did excite us was the Sustainable Resource Directory of Portland, basically this sort of "greenpages" book of green and sustainable businesses, from landscapers to dentists to mutual funds to housecleaning. It's THICK, like our yellow pages in Astoria, Queens! Wow. Impressive. We realize we will never have enough time to cover the sustainability of Portland.

Well, the Office of Sustainability never did call us back though we actually did try to get ahold of them a full week and a half before getting to theri town.
But we did get to meet with Amber Clayton of the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services on Friday when we rolled in. She met us at a local house to show us how residents altered their existing yard by turning their traditional grass lawn into a "rain garden" that makes use of native plants (like Xeriscaping in Colorado) and collects rainwater in pools (not like Colorado where they're not allowed) in order to decrease runoff into sewers. She showed us how the house's downspouts were changed from running directly down into the sewer system, which is how many homes' spouts are configured, to running horizontally out into the yard swales where water can be absorbed and filtered before slowly making its way down. We filmed Amber driving away in her awesome Smartcar! Cutest little car on the market for all of you single girls who are not looking to start a family anytime soon and who feel too naked on a scooter...

Oh, Carl and Darcy took us to the most delicious pizza joint called Hot Lips that was happy to serve us on pizza trays with no garbage! (Thanks, guys!!!) but I had to include a picture of this amazing car parked on the street that was completely covered with beads...yes, the entire car is completely beaded. NOt environmental, perhaps, but totally cool.

We are looking forward to filming the mass exodus of cyclists on their way to work tomorrow, over the Hawthorne Bridge, and hopefully we'll get a chance to talk to some of the commuters about how they like biking to work... maybe even get sme words from the BTA (Bicycle Transportation Alliance) about how Portland got to be so darn bicycle-friendly...

singing off for now...sleepy...

Day 92,93: WA: On to the Heavy. Saving the Sound, and Salmon.

2007-10-06T11:16:00.000-07:00

We spent the first two days rainy days in Seattle at Snowden and Dana's house, catching up on homework, and getting to know baby Adele. It's definitely getting colder. I wonder: Is it more environmentally responsible to buy new organic warm pants or to go to the Salvation Army and buy someone's old still-warm pants? I know which is friendlier to our wallet...

It seems the big environmental issues in Seattle are specifically related to a rapidly growing population along its coast: Stormwater runoff into Puget Sound from new and existing developments is listed as the #1 toxic pollutant and Seattle is concentrating hard on Waste Management/Recycling issues. Snow & Dana told us that, along with providing regular trash and recycling bins, the city now also provides composting bins for lawn and food waste. Councilman Conlin told us that 30% of all collected garbage in Seattle is foodwaste, and his "zero waste" plan for Seattle capitalizes on this potential soil resource by collecting it from individual homes and restaurants and composting it offsite. Pretty cool.

Then there is the Sound. When we first arrived in Seattle, we spent our first freezing windy Saturday at a beach cleanup on the edge of Golden Gardens. Ben and Mark interviewed volunteer beach cleaners, and filmed people chopping up invasive locust runners and picking up garbage off the sand while I hid in the bushes for windbreak with purple lips, chattering teeth and travelmug of coffee, waiting for my wonderful brother, Andrew, and his wife to show. Once they arrived, it was joyful visiting time for me, and I thank the boys for being understanding...and for agreeing to warm Indian buffet for lunch...

One of the people we met at the beach clean up, Sue Joerger, runs a non-profit called Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, that takes Industry (and sometimes government agencies, ie:EPA) to task for violating the environmental laws that protect the Sound and the creatures who live in and use it. We joined Sue on an excursion through the Sound to the Duwamish River and saw firsthand the impact that Industry has had on the profile of the Sound. Machine after machine after machine are the water's edge, with 1 or 2 feeble attempts at reclaiming tiny wetlands areas looking sad indeed. Sue told us that her little nonprofit of only 6 employees sues 30-50 companies a year for not complying with pollution regulations and that, once fined, the companies usually do not violate again! (yeah, Sue!) But the laws are not strict enough to support the health/restoration of the salmon population, which she said has decreased 95%.
(You read that number right. I asked her twice.)

Salmon are unique to the Pacific Northwest, and are sacred to the Native American tribes who live in the area. We took the ferry across to the Peninsula and met with Rob Elofson, River Restoration Coordinator for the Lower Elwha Klallam Indian tribe. The tribe started asking the federal government more than two decades ago for the deconstruction of 2 dams along the Elwha River, in order to restore the natural ecosystem and hopefully see a return of a healthy salmon population, which are key to their culture and traditions. When it was discovered that bringing the dams down would actually be cheaper than renewing their licenses and keeping them operational, the decision was made to deconstruct and so, in 2012, the Elwha and the Glines Canyon Dams will come out and the river will begin to be restored. These aren't the first dams to be deconstructed but they are the biggest.

Olympic National Park spokeswoman Barb Maynes talked to us in the soggy rain for about an hour in her wonderful Park Ranger hat (not shown in this picture as it hadn't started raining yet), standing in front of one of the doomed dams. She is optimistic about the effects that the dam removal will have on wild animal and plant life restoration around the river and in the Park, and is looking forward to seeing a return of diversity there. She did say that one of the misconceptions of local recreational fishermen is that the Tribes are responsible for the decline of the salmon population, and she assured us that is simply not the case. There is tons of information out there but basically there was a court decision made by Judge Boldt in 1974 (called the Boldt Decision) that gives Western Washington Native Tribes a right to 50% of fish harvest, and all other recreational non-tribal fishermen a right to the other 50%. Of course, if the fish population is down 95%, then all fishermen are unsatisfied with the outcome. Not surprisingly, Native Americans understand the reason for the decline and wish to restore the natural land while recreational fishermen (at least the ones we talked to) choose to blame the decline on treaty rights to fish, and want simply to change who gets to harvest and how.

Rob Elofson stressed the importance of studying the river area following the removal of the dams, including reintroduction of Salmon to the area, hatcheries, reclamation, fishing, etc., so the effects of the reclamation on the ecosystem can be assessed, and learned from. He hopes that the removal of the Elwha and Glimes Canyon Dams will be a positive example of how we can begin to undo the damage done to our ecosystems by unnatural alteration for irrigation and power. I asked Barb Maynes how long she thought it might be before the river would actually be restored to its pre-dammed state, so that we could plan our return to see it in its glory. She thought about 20 years. That's a date.

**Rob: I hope very hard that soon enough we will all realize that WE ARE the natural world, as you do. For now, we will travel around proudly wearing our new Tribal ballcaps emblazoned with the words: "Bring our Dammed Salmon back!"

Day 88-90: WA: Seattle: First, the Fun: Xeco's awesome environmental trading cards and Theo organic chocolate

2007-10-06T09:27:00.000-07:00

Seattle: As expected, a bounty of coffeeshops and people running, biking and walking regardless of the weather. Also, in keeping with our observations thus far, Seattle's high percentage of Subarus seems to directly relate to its high percentage of environmentally conscious citizens...In fact, does someone want to start sending around a petition to Subaru re: a Plug-in Hybrid? because, from what we can tell, Subaru owners would have bought that ticket decades ago.

(*side note: I also noticed an abundance of Naturopathic/Homeopathic Clinics, for the first time on this trip...)

We enjoyed talking to Seattle City Councilman Richard Conlin about new legislation allowing pygmy goats as Seattle pets but, more to the topic, about his optimistic goal of Zero Waste for the city. Using a combination of education, opportunity and incentives, legislators are proving environmentalism a no-brainer for the few financially-myopic holdouts. Conlin says that he doesn't have to work terribly hard since Seattlans generally pride themselves on being "environmental."

Lovely eco-Entrepreneur Amy Tucker explained the birth of her brainchild, uber earth-friendly Xeko Games (Endangered Species trading cards- SO COOL - Definitely check them out, particularly if you have kids!). She then toured us around the dang cute neighborhood of Fremont (aka the Center of the Universe), introduced us to our first taste of Truffle Oil French fries at the Baguette Box (which she allows herself once a week), and then hooked us up with a fabulously impromptu and decadent tour of Theo Organic Chocolate Factory by owner and fellow enviro-businessman, Joe Whinney. As nice as he is brilliant (in my cocoa-tinted opinion), Joe is "proud to be the first roaster of Fair Trade Certified™ cocoa beans and the only roaster of organic cocoa beans in the United States." Which is WONDERFUL but frankly, once we got a taste of his divine chocolate in our yaps, we just really didn't even care all that much about knowing the details.

I have to say, whatever the reason, the happiness quotient at both Xeko and Theo seemed wonderfully and ridiculously high, and I have to recommend them both, for anyone visiting the Fremont area. Just watch out for the Troll under the bridge. He's got a thing for Volkswagons...

Day 94: We're going out of order for just a minute, folks...

2007-10-05T14:20:00.000-07:00

Ok lack of good sleep, good exercise or real downtime have taken a toll on my psyche so my apologies for not being on top of my game...I will be getting back to the travelog and etc., but for now let me just sort of say where we are at today.

We have just completed our 3rd full month on the road. yay.

We are in Portland, OR, staying with the family Wildes who just treated us to the most wonderful blue cheese garlic tomato pizza at Hotlips. (Thank you, Mark's cousin, Carl, his sweet wife, Darcy and babe, Kieran) We got interviewed this morning at a Starbucks and we interviewed a lady today at someone's house...and got some more interviews lined up...

We got some packages sent here for us that were cool. The organic YERT T-shirts that we ordered through zazzle came (girls sizes are pretty small, onesies are super-cute) and also our Klean Kanteens came. So now I don't have an excuse not to drink enough water.

We just spent the last week or so in the state of Washington where I took a record number of photos and got to see my brother Stephen Andrew and his lovely wife, Yves, which was wonderful, and where we spoke to our first Native American on this trip, as well as our first National Park Ranger.

We are still trying to figure out how to do everything and there is still not enough of us to do it. I finally had to leave the boys upstairs and come be by myself bc the discussions are making me totally stressed. I know they're important and all but I find them maddening. I was going to blog but then I got down here and i cannot concentrate. And I feel fat.

Hormones aren't helping. Still, it's a worthy gig. I'll be better tomorrow,
when the Portland Farmers Market is hosting cheesemakers of all kinds.
That won't help the fat part, but it will probably taste awesome.
signing off, the girl portion of this trip,
julie

Day 81,82: Elk Bend, ID... 60 yrs of living on oatmeal and chef boyardee in a cave...sustainability in spades...

2007-09-25T18:28:00.000-07:00

Fate - well, actually, our car's being covered with big vinyl YERT signs - introduced us to super cool Rhode Island couple, Joe & Rebecca back in July (see Friday, July 20 blog, last paragraph). They called to us across a Thai restaurant, "What's YERT?" After we got to know them a bit, they told us that if we passed through Elk Bend, Idaho, we should stay in their cabin - or better yet, their cave... and talk to a old fella named Dugout Dick who carved a bunch of mines into the hillside back in the 40's, turning them into shelters when he didn't find so much usable ore.

Well, Elk Bend is a bit off the beaten path but a man who's lived in a cave for the last 60 or so years is an example of sustainability we would not miss and so, a day later than we'd planned (due to the Vermont pod taking 4 dys longer to produce than we'd hoped), I wrote down the directions Rebecca had emailed me, ending with, "Look for the emus..." and YERT drove North from Utah with visions of caves with double beds and large flightless birds...

After hours of rolling hills and rain and no cell phone service, we emptied out of Rachel Carson onto a gravel drive at the feet of the Caretaker, Jim, a bright-eyed scrappy fellow with a hearty hello, and his two wonderful dogs, Max and Hailey, who leaned on us and brought us the ball, respectively.

Joe & Rebecca's cabin was like mother's warm arms. Jim had lit the woodburning stove for the very first time just before we got there. He took us on a tour of the whole place (He was only recently made caretaker but nevertheless is obviously fiercely fond of it all). We filmed inside the little side paddock where the emu laid down, and down again, when Jim petted him just so, and then we walked the labyrinth Rebecca built out of stones...

Jim led the way to Dugout Dick's hillside where we found Joe & Rebecca's cave - "2 over from Dick's," just where Rebecca said it would be. It was cold and rainy outside but inside the cave was warm and dry. They aren't really caves, i should say, but mineshafts built into and out from the earth, with doors and windows of scrap automobile parts and various recovered "junk" items like woodburning stoves and little cabinets of scrap wood...all the air smelled sweet with sagebrush...but the hillside was littered with trash.

There were cats everywhere. Little mama cats and kittens and littler kittens still, all crying and scrambling under our feet in case of falling food. I am a cat person. I have rescued my share. I have laid dead kittens in the garbage after they perished in my backyard, but I found myself swallowing hard. We were out in the middle of nowhere, there was nobody to take care of these little guys at all, and they were starving. I decided to focus on the task at hand.
Dick was not around. But we did talk to Bruce, a sometime cave-dweller who looks after Dick much of the time. Bruce gave us quite a profound interview, inside his dark little house with his gasoline fueled lantern, and his library books on the "windowsill." We filmed him and his little black blind-in-one-eye cat, Pennzoil and thanked him, planning to be back the following morning to catch Dugout Dick himself.

*Delicious Milestone!: Jim provided us our first real opportunity to cook dinner for someone; He had fresh food for us. Mark broiled the salmon, I sauteed vegetables, Ben made salad, and then Jim opened a bottle of the most delicious red wine, which we did not refuse. *Trash note: We decided early on that we could not drink single bottles of beer but if our host(s) uncorked a bottle, it would be unseemly not to help them drink it...

Have to admit I hadn't had wine in awhile. By the time dinner was all eaten, and we got to watch some of Jim's stunt driving on TV, i was rosy and all I wanted to do was to climb upstairs in my sock feet, and snuggle under the covers of the cozy double bed with Ben. Cave, schmave. I was in heaven. So, Mark spent the night there!
And Max the Pointer spent the night on the bed with me and Ben. He is a very big dog.

Next day, Mark came back from his field trip, we had a nice breakfast of duck egg omelets, toast and coffee, and then we headed back to the caves for the big interview. Bruce, who had been reticent to sign a release form, finally acquiesced, thankfully. Then we went to find Dugout. The door to his inner cave was all black and shut. Ben called in to him and Dick hollered back. We went in, we could barely see him, our eyes weren't used to the dark. The cave smelled of thick old smoke and the pictures on the wall were completely opaque with soot. I didn't last long in there as the tiniest kittens came out from under the sofa, mewing, couldn't have been more than 3 wks old. I spent the entire interview walking around with the 4 babies tucked in my jacket for warmth, 'til they fell asleep crying from hunger, their little eyes puss-y and swollen, their tiny tummies empty. There was no food for them or for their mother, who was nowhere to be seen. She probably had her head in a Chef Boyardee can somewhere, desperately licking at at the last drops of artificial tomato sauce.

I heard the boys talking, asking Dick questions, heard his pauses and muffled replies, looked in every once in awhile to see his red miner hat bobbing slowly, heard him singing a song to his long lost love, Bonnie. Dugout Dick is almost 92 yrs old and lives on Chef Boyardee and Oatmeal. He has done for years, lives more sustainably than anybody I have met in these United States, lives on practically nothing. But I couldn't appreciate his lack of carbon footprint for all the little cats that needed fixing. My stupid little girl heart broke when it was time to go and I set the 4 baby kittens back down onto the filthy sooty floor with no mother cat near, and no nest, mewing their tiny kitten hearts out, scrambling back to my feet.

I couldn't say anything at all in the car. We stopped by Jim's one last time and I told him about the littlest ones, in case he might consider taking them somewhere. He went the very next day and found a vet who will spay all the cats for free but he didn't find all of the kittens. Jim said in the end Dick seemed sad and pointed his cane to underneath the couch. Only one little kitten was still alive, last I heard, the very littlest pale orange one. It's funny, she's the one I thought would be the first to go, she seemed so much smaller and mewed so much less than the others.

Anyway, who knows when the kitties came to the caves. Years ago, probably. Probably Dick did not ask for them to come, just started giving them his leftovers because they showed up and he felt sorry for them. Now they are many. Dick lives his life as he has for the last 60 yrs, and still leaves out his leftovers for them...I am, meanwhile, very thankful for Jim.

Not sure of the end to this story. Dugout Dick has a mining claim on the land which allows him to stay there. When he dies, the land will go back to BLM (Bureau of Land Management) and no one knows what will happen to the "caves." Bruce says that he plans to carry on the same idea with land he's bought just down the way. But for now, anyone can pay just a dollar a day to stay in a cave on the hill, to the miner who lives in the hillside. For $25 a month, or $300 a year, you can live off the grid, and be warm. Think about it. There is an outhouse. But please, do something about the cats.

Day 83-85: Idaho, cont: On wolves, mining mountaintops for microscopic gold, and WWJD? p.s, one word: solarroadways.

2007-09-25T15:01:00.000-07:00

After saying goodbye to Jim and the critters, YERT headed toward Boise, where a lovely lady named Bonnie was waiting to hear from us since we'd had no cell phone service or internet connection for days. We saw more gorgeous scenery and hills, such as this one, left, with its encouraging message, as well as some weird sights like completely burnt forests, and what looked to be have been a river with no water in it...

Mark had to finally call Bonnie from a roadside phone booth. I had forgotten how a phone booth could look so necessary. By the time we rolled in, it was dark but not too dark for us to realize what an awesomely cute neighborhood she lives in (She calls it a completely blue neighborhood in a red state). She had made amazing veggie dishes for us (thank you, Bonnie!) and we also got to talk to Chris Walser and his cool wife, who told us that the Governor of Idaho went on record saying that he wanted to be the first to "tag" a wolf when the Bush Administration opens season on them (in the works.)

Mark got to do two of his Al Gore Climate presentations on Monday, at Albertson College and then talked to students afterwards about what YERT has been up to, while Ben and I went downtown and walked into a wonderful building that seemed to be filled withsustainable environmental goodness. We talked to Jessie Timberlake of Defenders of Wildlife about their wolf compensation plan - "paying" farmers for livestock lost to the occasional wolf's meal - who then suggested that we go downstairs and talk to John Robeson at the Idaho Conservation League (awesome as Ben had been trying to get ahold of John anyway.)

John Robeson is part of Idaho Conservation League, a grassroots organization that is protesting against the Atlanta gold mine (a Canadian company has mining rights to the land, which, according to the Mining Law of 1872, gives them carte blanche to do with as they will). The process to leach microscopic gold out of tons of dirt by cyanide takes off an entire mountaintop at the headwaters of the Boise River, and cannot guarantee not to leach cyanide into groundwater and the river itself. As John said: To the people who fish there, who swim there, who drink from that river (all of Boise), the Boise River is worth much MORE than gold.

At about 6pm Ben and I wrapped up with John and turned our cellphones back on, but not soon enough to get to Mark and to our next appointment with an environmental reporter named Jill. We had gone right over our time and Mark was stalling for us but she had been having trouble reaching us when we were out in Elk Bend and was done, so we lost that interview. We felt pretty bad about it until her husband, Bob, took us to dinner and explained that she was actually quite swamped with work and was relieved not to have the appointment. (Thanks, Bob!)

Our next stop was a surprise. It was John's recommendation - the Evangelical Vineyards. Here, Christians are sensing an imbalance and coming together to be better stewards of God's Green Earth: Let's Tend the Garden. (See also Restoring Eden.) Ben and Mark interviewed Josh, one of the flock, who told us of a dog-shaped B&B on our way up North. (I just googled b&b central idaho shaped like a dog and we found our place to stay. Ben made sure that we did it immediately as he did not want to miss out on this great opportunity.) Then we interviewed the gardener, "Mr. Bill," (Bill Meeker) who insisted that when we pick the organic raspberries, we must eat one for every two we put in the basket. Mr. Jim also told me that the best success for the community garden is getting people to adopt a vegetable. Then they care about its development, and it thrives from individual attention. Hence his giant melons.

The Dog Bark Park in Cottonwood, ID, was built and painted like a giant beagle. We got there in the dark. Ben and I slept in the body, Mark slept in the head. We had a bit of a hard night; Ben is tired of my mothering him and i am tired of not being a real mother. lots of crying. horrible sleep. no fun in the dog. likely fault of 85 days and no days off. next morning breakfast was all tender, and crap coffee. After we ate we went back to the "Inn" and talked to its owner in his chainsaw sculpture workshop. He and his wife use only deadwood for their carvings and offer their sawdust and wood shavings to farmers for fields. They have had the same truck for 23 yrs, just keep on repairing it. That feels pretty sustainable to them. Our still camera died bc i had not charged batteries, hence no photo of the Inn.

And then there's solar roadways. This seems a crazy idea but if somebody can take this guy's cool ideas and make them work, we are all for it. Go onto the website just to sign onto his encouragement page!!!

Day 80: Parks in the Park(ing) Spaces, UT, and how it feels to finish a pod on Vermont...

2007-09-25T14:40:00.000-07:00

I should be letting Ben write this blog, since he was the one with a total of 8 hours sleep in 4 nights of working on the mountain of footage that was Vermont. Over 10 hours of tape he whittled down to 7 minutes of video. That was like 80 hours of work. My husband. My hero! sigh.

Needless to say, these heroics would not do and so we had a sort of 'realism' conference once he was in the clear. We have once again committed as a team to try to focus a little more even as we are entering another US state so that we may find the strength not to turn the camera on every time a wonderful opportunity comes up ... because they come up and up and up! It is hard not to want to shoot everything, really it is. But we won't last a year at last week's pace.

That said, when Mark stumbled upon a worldwide event called PARK(ing) Day we blew that commitment right out the window. It was also being celebrated right in the heart of Salt Lake City just 20 minutes from where we were staying! We 3 looked at each other and there we went. We drove downtown, fed our meter, and left Rachel in search of greener pastures - of parking spaces laid with sod, furnished with park benches and lawn chairs - with nerf football, sesame cheese doodles (from the bulk bin at Wild Oats - have i highly recommended these before?) and a book for good measure. As if we would take the time to read.

The boys played some tackle nerfootball with some locals. Everybody involved was super cool and laid back. A metermaid stopped her golf cart for a minute, made a call, then rolled away. A police officer strolling by asked what was going on and when he was given the rundown, he smiled and finally said, "Alright. Watch your meter." We had a nice interview with Shauna Kerr of TPL (Trust for Public Land)-Utah, and I won my first ever game of croquet all while cars were driving by. A 3-pc suit carrying a briefcase stopped and asked, "What in the world are you all doing?" and when it was explained that we were all just taking a couple of hours to imagine what it would be like to have more parks and less parking spaces downtown, he just said, "Alright." Only one accident was reported from rubbernecking motorists on Main Street. Some might call that a success.

Day 79, 80: UT: Where a whole lot of RED and a little BLUE make GREEN!

2007-09-20T21:52:00.001-07:00

We were told Utah is sometimes called the "reddest" state, and Environmentalists are sometimes called "Treehuggers." What happens when Republicans realize that caring for the environment can make good economic sense? Before we left Utah, we met with Rich (R) and Marsha (D), who are working together for Living Green Expo to bring awareness to this issue that affects all of us, no matter our political affiliation. As Rich noted, caring for the environment used to be part of the Conservative Party's platform, starting way back with Ulysses Grant and carried further by Teddy Roosevelt....

We spoke with Salt Lake City's Mayor, Rocky Anderson, who also believes that the environment is NOT a party issue (See his on-camera mayoral challenge from yesterday!)

So, I have crap internet connection here. I am not going to frustrate myself by trying to post and add pictures. I will instead say "Welcome!" to our brand new nephew, as yet unnamed, "We can't wait to meet you in the spring when we are scheduled to be in Connecticut. So glad you are a tiny baby and will have no remembrance that we missed your first days..."