Green Resolutions

So, Australia is on fire, the Amazon rain forest is being destroyed, there is more plastic in the ocean than fish, there are still children in cages and separated from their parents, and the bone spur idiot in the White House is trying to get us into yet another Middle East war to distract us from his impeachment. 

It is, as someone commented, like putting a band-aid on a gangrenous leg, but I continue to struggle to do something positive in the face of so much awfulness. 

On my wish list this Christmas were re-usable produce bags, stretchy silicon lids (to replace plastic wrap, and glass storage containers.  So I guess that's my resolution for the new year -- to reduce my consumption of single use plastics. 

I've ordered some new canvas shopping bags to replace the smelly recycled plastic ones from the grocery. I've also ordered a bar of shampoo/soap and a cardboard packaged deodorant stick in hopes of getting rid of a few more plastic things in my life. 

Though I'm quite good about recycling, I realize that recycling isn't the answer.  And these tiny steps aren't either. It's going to take a massive world-wide effort to stop treating the Earth and her oceans like a garbage dump.

I'd like to see huge incentives for scientists to come up with naturally degradable plastic replacements and with a means of transforming existing plastic into something useful--like maybe energy, or building materials. 

I'd like to see the end of dumping garbage at sea.

I'd like to see this country wake up to the perils of climate change and begin to treat it as the global emergency it is.

I'd like to see the end of the Bone Spur presidency.

Meanwhile, I'm lighting that single candle ... rather than cursing the dark.

It's Not Easy Being Green

The holiday decorations are going up in Marshall; the Thanksgiving turkey has been reduced to a delicious broth; I've made a start on Christmas cards; now comes the Christmas shopping.

In the past I've relied on John's woodworking and Amazon to do most of the work but, nudged by my daughter-in-law in Atlanta's wish list, I'm investigating some Fair Trade, environmentally and socially active businesses.  I was pleasantly surprised by many and slightly overwhelmed by others. So many choices -- cruelty-free, sustainable, vegan, woman or minority run, politically active-- I applaud the intentions, even as my head swims..

I'm trying to pay special attention to cutting back on plastic--all those sad pictures of sea creatures killed by eating/being trapped by plastic are haunting to me. But it's everywhere-- my toothbrush, my bottle of Dawn for washing dishes, the containers I freeze leftovers in-- the list is endless.

Ever since the early Seventies, I've used cloth napkins rather than paper, composted/fed to chickens food scraps, and tried to follow the maxim "Use it up; Wear it out; Make it do; Do without" -- well, at least the first three quarters of it. 

But today, almost every decision is fraught with difficult choices. I'm just going to have to get better at this. I've taken my own shopping bags to the grocery for years. Now I've asked for reusable cloth produce bags for Christmas. I reuse the plastic bags as much as possible and when I finally dispose of them, I tie them in knots so they won't blow around at the landfill 

Grocery shopping yesterday presented me with a new decision-making opportunity. I needed to buy eggs. (A possum got in our hen house and killed the rooster a few nights ago. The girls were traumatized and their egg output, already low due to the time of year, has dropped off.)

I definitely wanted cage free/free range eggs. Organic would be nice but not a deal breaker. And I wanted a cardboard carton, not foam, not see-through plastic. 

I settled for cage free in cardboard -- all the other candidates were encased in plastic.

When the Last Bee Has Been Poisoned . . .

When the last bee has been poisoned,

When the last sweet drop of honey is gone,

When precious plants are pollinated by hand

(Produce too expensive for the likes of you and me,)

When the busy buzz of wings is forever silenced,

then will we at last see that, blind and unaware,

 we had been entertaining angels all along?

Pinhook by Janisse Ray

from the publisher's website: "Janisse Ray, award-winning author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and Wild Card Quilt, writes an evocative paean to wildness and wilderness restoration with an extraordinary journey into southern Georgia's Pinhook Swamp.

Pinhook Swamp acts as a vital watershed and wildlife corridor, a link between the great southern wildernesses of Okefenokee Swamp and Osceola National Forest. Together Okefenokee, Osceola, and Pinhook form one of the largest expanse of protected wild land east of the Mississippi River. This is one of America's last truly wild places, and Pinhook takes us into its heart.

Ray comes to know Pinhook intimately as she joins the fight to protect it, spending the night in the swamp, tasting honey made from its flowers, tracking wildlife, and talking to others about their relationship with the swamp. Ray sees Pinhook through the eyes of the people who live there--naturalists, beekeepers, homesteaders, hunters, and locals at the country store. In lyrical, down-home prose, she draws together the swamp's need for restoration and the human desire for wholeness and wildness in our own lives and landscapes."

This is such a fine book. Ray looks closely at the smallest things and writes of them like a poet. I highly recommend it.

This lovely book seems to me particularly important just now when, in the name of job creation, we have politicians calling for exploring for oil in the  Everglades, dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency, easing the regulations against smog, rolling back years of progress toward a less polluted world . . .

Talk about a fragmented land.  Some people think it's laughable to worry about species extinction or air quality or global warming. 

Others of us fear that, if the anti-environmentalists have their way. we'll be on the road to a future that looks like this.

 

I'm deeply afraid of the direction things are going.  The mindset that decides to deal with global warming by denying it . . . while turning up the air conditioner, thus adding to the problem, is all  too common.

But I'm preaching to the choir, I expect. 

Meanwhile, I'll be looking for more of Janisse Ray's books.