Follow Up On Our Green Remodel

As I wrote two weeks ago, we've been in the middle of a bathroom remodel. I loaded a picture of the "before" bathroom, and then really couldn't post it; it was just too awful! But I will show you some of the rubble that was hauled out.

Remodelling, is very difficult to do in a "green" way, though we did the best we could. We reused two mirrors in the new bathroom. We recycled every bit of cardboard, plastic and metal we could. It's truly amazing how much cardboard there was from the packing for the new elements. I purchased low-VOC paint from Home Depot that I was very pleased with, and thankful not to have that intense paint smell in the house during a week when we had to keep the house closed up tight.

Still, a lot of stuff went to the landfill: old ceramic flooring with it's cement sub-floor, some rotted wood sub-flooring (so glad we found that and could get it repaired!), wall tile and sheet rock, and the dilapidated cabinet. A lot of heat energy was lost from the house on those cold days as the remodellers ran in and out to their truck and to the back yard, where they were sawing things.

There are a lot of things I love about the "new" bathroom, but I think my favorite is the Solatube skylight. All day long the bathroom is bathed in warm light, even on the cloudiest days, and it is unnecessary to turn on a light in there at all if the sun is up.

I also am kind of amazed by the new water-saver toilet. We had one from the first generation of water-savers and it... didn't really do the job, if you know what I mean. This one is tremendously better. I did a little rough calculating and I think it should pay for itself in reduced water bills within about 15 months. Toilets are relatively inexpensive. If you can possibly do it, I would encourage you to think about replacing your current one with one of the new ones, for both financial and environmental reasons.

I learned another interesting thing during this process. It is not recommended that a Formica-type laminate counter top be used in a bathroom any more. The glues used to make them have been reformulated to make them safer, and they don't stand up to the warm, steamy environment of a bathroom. That meant I had to look at solid surface counters. I had some crazy luck- there was a pre-drilled granite counter top that was on sale so cheap (and included the sinks) that it cost less than other more plebeian choices. This was a sort of embarrassment of riches!

In the end, we wound up with this:

Our daughter, currently the main user of this bathroom, says it looks like it belongs in someone else's house, because it's "so trendy". Of course, ten years from now it will be passe and outdated, but we're not exactly slaves to fashion, so this is probably how it will look until Mike and I can't live in a house with stairs anymore. Fortunately, I'm pretty happy with it.

Our Own Stimulus Package-A Green Bathroom Remodel

Today my main bathroom is being completely gutted. Over the course of the next week, it will be transformed from a very dilapidated and dated original 1961 bathroom into something I'm actually not embarrassed to have a guest see.

I know that right now most people are pulling in their horns financially and building projects are few and far between. We did think hard before committing to the project. Our reasoning went something like this:

1. We've been planning and saving for this project for a long time, and unless something major is encountered, we should be able to complete it for cash.

2. It's not frivolous. That bathroom was truly in bad condition, with sinks and a tub that were so pitted they could not be kept clean, a water-inefficient toilet, a vanity cabinet with the veneer peeling off, medicine cabinets that wouldn't shut all the way, and an old Formica counter top that had been scrubbed so many times the finish was completely worn off. And don't even get me started on the dated colors, etc. I really don't think our home would sell at all without redoing it. We aren't planning to sell, but it's always wise to keep a house, which for most people is a one of their largest assets, in marketable condition.

3. We can keep two terrific remodelers in work, add some sales tax into our local coffers, and help keep our lumber yard, hardware store, and housewares store in business.

4. If we do our research, we could make this room more energy and water-use efficient, as well. For instance, it's a windowless room in the middle of our upstairs. My research led me to plan the instalation of a Solatube sky-light, which will bring daylight in, reducing the need for electric lighting in both the bathroom and, when the door is open, the hallway. We are also getting one of the most water-efficient toilets available (which I found on sale at a bargain-basement price!), as well as a more efficient showerhead and faucets. Even the exhaust fan will be more efficient and much more quiet.

We are also trying to send as little to the landfill as possible. We are reusing the two mirrors- they are really good ones, and new high quality mirrors are expensive. We simply removed them from the front of the old medicine cabinets, and will remount them with a frame around them. The current faucets will be used by a local mission that refurbishes substandard housing because they are only about five years old and in great condition (but won't fit in the pre-drilled holes in the new counter top). All metal items will be taken to a scrap metal yard to be recycled, and we may even get a few bucks for our trouble. All plastic will go into the recycling bin. The old shower curtain will become a drop cloth for painting. The faded old towels will be given to the homeless shelter for the men to use when they shower.

I plan to post on this project again as it finishes, to let you know how these sustainable changes go. Hopefully, I can give you a good idea that you might be able to use if you are undertaking a project like this yourself. I might even get brave enough to post "before and after" photos!

Sunday Stroll- November 16, 2008

At the beginning of the week we still had beautiful fall color. Then, Tuesday night it dropped down to 19 degrees F, and the Big Leaf Drop began in earnest.

I've been nursing a little foot injury, so my husband got stuck with Round One of the raking job. It was lovely 36 degrees while he worked, with a stiff wind and a light precipitation of some sort- snow? sleet? drizzle?- coming down.

We could never find room to compost all our leaves at home, but fortunately our city has a collection program and they are all taken to a municipal yard waste recycling location. Next spring folks can go out there and get very good mulch, or even have it delivered to their homes for a reasonable price.

We've got thirteen bags for them this week and will have that much or more next week, including things that we need to clear out of the garden.

That's my "stroll", so to speak, this week. If you'd like to see if anyone else did something more interesting, head on over to The Quiet Country House.

Review-"How To Grow Fresh Air" by Dr. B..C. Wolverton

We had our first frost this week, which meant there was an evening when we had to speedily bring in all the potted plants that have spent the warm weather outside, enjoying the extra sunlight and fresh rainwater. Finding room for them inside, especially accounting for their sunlight needs was tricky, because we already have a certain number of houseplants that reside indoors year 'round. This year we also have a large contingent of green things that have moved home with our daughter, who appears to have inherited her love of plants from me. She had a large, sunny bedroom in an old house she shared with some other girls on campus, and a couple of her plant-children are pretty big. We now have plants stuffed in nearly every nook and cranny that is anywhere near a window!

As much as I love houseplants for their beauty, and the homeyness I think they lend to any room, there is another good reason to have them. In his book "How To Grow Fresh Air", Dr. B. C. Wolverton synthesizes 25 years of research on indoor air quality, and explains how we can prevent Sick Building Syndrome, which can cause allergic and respiratory problems. Since most Americans spend about 95% of their time indoors, this is very important information.

Wolverton worked for NASA, teaming with others to find ways to keep air breathable in space stations, and potentially in sealed modular housing that could be used to inhabit other planets. They studied what chemicals building materials, furniture, and appliances and electronics off-gas into the indoor atmosphere, and which plants most effectively remove certain gasses and toxins.

I appreciated the careful explanation of what chemicals are present in our buildings, and what effect they have on our health. Wolverton is able to make this information accessible to some one like me, who does not have a strong background in chemistry. He gives a clear review of the process of plant respiration.

After you learn all this information, there is a good chapter on caring for the plants. Then, most helpful of all, is an extensive list of plants to choose from, with photos, care information, and an explanation of which chemicals that particular plant is good at removing from the environment. For instance, some plants are very useful used in close proximity to computer equipment, some are especially good in bedrooms, since they do more of their breathing at night, when you are sleeping there, and so on.

I loved this book for it's readability, accessible research, and the way it broadened my understanding of the symbiotic relationship we have with the plant kingdom. If you are new to the houseplant world, you should be able to get off to a good start with the growing information. If you are an old hand at it, you will still learn plenty of interest to you. If you are interested in environmental issues, and how to live in a less toxic space, this book would definitely be of use to you, as well.

I would give this book 5 out of 5 stars.

For more book reviews, go check out The Blogging Bookworm.

The APLS Blog Carnival-Education

For this month's APLS blog carnival, members were asked to write about environmental education- how we learned about the issues ourselves, and/or how we teach others about them.

At first I wasn't going to write anything (again!). I had written once before about how I came to be concerned about the environment on a personal level, despite the fact that I am otherwise fairly conservative socially and politically. I have also reviewed a couple of books I felt described far better than I could how Christians can embrace creation care from an ethical point of view without compromising on other concerns.

After thinking about it a bit, I decided I did want to write a post for the carnival. One reason I challenged myself to do this is because, honestly, it's been hard the last couple of months to hang in there with the green blogging world. Blogs I have loved, that were essentially about how to make changes in personal lifestyles in order to live more sustainably, suddenly became intensely political. I know people have strong opinions, but I also want to be sure that I don't "sit in the seat of mockers", a position we are advised to avoid in Psalm 1. There are plenty of mockers to be found on both sides of the political spectrum right now, and I'm not going to sit there with them, because even if you are just sitting there, not saying anything, your presence can be construed to be agreement with them. Guilt by association, so to speak.

But, in a couple weeks the election will be over, and we can all get back to writing about sustainable living and encourage each other again. That's something I'm not willing to give up on. I have learned a LOT from the blog world that is very, very helpful, and I'm sure we can continue to do so for a long time to come. And we have to, really. When even a Texas oil baron like T. Boone Pickens is saying, essentially "Hey, people, wake up! We've got a crisis in the making when it comes to energy, and we should not be fiddling while Rome burns!", you know we need to just doggedly find a way to cooperate with each other and get the job done, whether we agree on other stuff or not. So first and foremost, in talking about education, I want to give credit where it's due, to the green blogging community. You guys were out there writing about this stuff while everyone else was snoozing, and now, a lot of your suggestions are now popping up in homemaking magazines, HGTV, and my local newspaper. You put your money where your mouth is and figured out how to convince your spouses and kids to conserve and recycle and get off the "gimmee" cycle, and the rest of us can now see that it is doable.

The flip side of the question is, what am I doing to educate others on sustainable living? The answer is, just leading by example. At least I try to. It's not perfect. However, when I see my grown kids committing themselves to sustainable habits, I give myself a little, tiny mental pat on the back. I know I'm not the only, or even the main influence on them (and they are still young enough to want to make sure I know that!), but hopefully I have contributed at least a little to their habits for the future. If we don't look past ourselves into the future, we could easily grow discouraged. My kids encourage me when I see them putting into practice things I tried to model for them.

So, mixed in with all the pictures of my flower beds and posts about my job as a church choir director, and just things I find inspirational and want to share with others, I will still be posting about that other thing that I think is important: being a good steward of the world the Lord created for our use and enjoyment. I'll still be riding my bike to work. I'll still be composting and turning out lights and catching my shower warm-up water to re-use to flush the toilet. And I'll still be reading and learning from the green bloggers.

**"Is Anybody Listening?"-painting by Michael Owen Thomas

Book Review-The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan

I was contacted by Green Bean and told to quit whining about my garden and get busy and write a book report!

Actually, that's not in the least true, and you all know it. From all I can tell Green Bean is about as nice as pie. But if she had said that, she would have been right on, because I've been procrastinating, and it's high time I told you about a this book, because I really enjoyed reading it.

"The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Egan falls into my favorite genre of non-fiction, which is social history. I love to read about the ordinary people who lived through a certain time period, and how they responded to the events. For many years I was friends with a lady (who actually was my high school English teacher and a member of my church) who grew up living in a dugout in Southeastern Colorado, as the daughter of a dry-land wheat farmer. She was such an impressive person; so forthright, sensible, and good-humored. She talked about taking a stick to the garden to beat off rattlesnakes, going out with her siblings to hunt for dried cow-chips to burn in their cook-stove, eating cooked cracked wheat for every meal one year when they had to live on their seed wheat, and, sadly, that they all suffered from chronic lung ailments from a childhood spent choking on dust. Any book that told me more about the life she led was interesting to me.

Timothy Egan went to the area that was once know as the Dust Bowl, and interviewed elderly residents who lived through the six continuous years of devastating drought that exacerbated the damage that farmers had unwittingly done to what had been excellent grazing land. These folks were not the Okies that we think of from "The Grapes of Wrath". The Okies were mostly from Eastern Oklahoma, Arkansas, and East Texas, and were poor share-croppers that were displaced by disruptions in the economy. Rather, these were people who had claimed land of their own through the Homestead Act, and were convinced that it could be farmed at a profit. They, for the most part, did not leave, because they were land owners, and they naturally always thought the next year would bring rain and they would make a crop. Some had farmed there very successfully in the 1920's, not realizing that they were experiencing an unusually wet decade. Then, with the 1930's the drought came.

Egan writes about the hardships faced by these people, the mistakes they made in their farming practices, and how a single man, Hugh Bennett, convinced the the government to help these folks learn a new way of farming that could restore the land. One thing he brings out is that the homesteaders were pressured by the government in the 20's to raise wheat, against the better judgement of some who knew the area was drought-prone, and that they were also somewhat doomed to poverty by the rule that stated they could only claim 160 acres, an inadequate amount of land to support a family on the high plains. It was difficult for President Roosevelt to admit that those mistakes had been made, but Hugh Bennett, a soil scientist, finally convinced him, and that allowed for a new approach, offering incentives to farmers to take land out of production and replant it in grass, teaching contour plowing, planting windbreaks, and all sorts of other practices that are routine today.

Reading the first person accounts, I was struck by what a long period of time these massive dust storms went on. For six years, people lived essentially in a blizzard of dust, unable to farm, unable to keep their cars running, unable even to keep schools open, never mind earn a living or even raise a vegetable garden. Their livestock died, their children and older people died of dust pneumonia, their roads and farm equipment were buried by drifts of dirt.

At one point, reading the book in bed, I put it down thinking I couldn't read about yet another dust storm. I turned out the light, and, as I lay in bed, I realized that that was the point of the book. The storms just went on and on and on. It was the only way to help the reader understand what the farmers on the Great Plains went through.

I wish that more time had been spent actually talking about the new soil conservation practices that were implemented. I kept reading, thinking that we would get to the turning point, so to speak, and enjoy the benefits of the new methods. Instead, the book essentially ends with the decision by Roosevelt to agree to Hugh Bennett's initiatives. A short chapter at the end showing us what the area is like today would have been nice.

I also think an exploration of the way Roosevelt's farm subsidy system needed a sunset clause, without which we have been stuck with ongoing economic intervention by the government, would have been helpful. We've yet to extricate ourselves from the New Deal, which, though very much needed in the Depression, is now an albatross around our necks. It was good history for me, though, and allowed me to understand better how we got where we are today.

I would give this book a 4 out of 5 stars if you like social history, and 3 out of 5 if you are looking for a green read. Personally, I like the combination. I thought this was a worthwhile read.

To read more reviews, go to The Blogging Bookworm.

Complementarity

"God works in the world. The best way to understand the connection between divine and natural causes is complementarity. For example, a painting can be described ‘scientifically’ in terms of the distribution of chemicals on a surface, but it can also be described in terms of the plan and intention of the artist. We can have two (or more) descriptions of the same object which do not overlap or contradict in any way; we call them complementary. In the same way, God can be understood as working in the world (by faith: Hebrews 11:3) without conflicting or diminishing any scientific (or rational) knowledge we may have of the same event."

Professor R. J. (Sam) Berry, Professor of Genetics at the University of London.

No Escapism Here

"Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is."- C.S. Lewis

Back To Bottled Milk, And Helping Others To Boot

As I have continued to look for way to reduce our family's environmental impact, I have been looking a lot at the packaging our everyday groceries and household items come in. I want to reduce the amount of trash we send off to the landfill, sure, but I even would like to reduce the amount of recycling we produce. I try to keep in mind that the first word in "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" is reduce. By purchasing fewer disposable items to begin with, and using what we purchase until it is completely worn out/used up, we automatically live more sustainably, with the side benefit of saving lots of money, too!

I found myself making lots of little decisions along these lines this week when I was doing our routine errands. At Walgreens, I went to buy my usual Dove liquid bodywash, and found myself hesitating, thinking about the plastic bottle it comes in. It is recyclable. But plastic is a petroleum based product, and I would like to see us using less of that. Fortunately, I notice for the first time that right under the liquid bodywash there was Dove bar soap that was the same formulation, essentially- mildly exfoliating, etc. I could get that with much less packaging, and it was 6 bars for the same price. So, I chose that. One small change, I know, but they do add up over the course of time.

At the grocery store I again purchased a brand of milk our store has just begun to carry, Heartland Dairy. I first started buying it because it came in returnable glass bottles, like the ones I remember using when I was a kid. I loved that we were not going to have to recycle milk jugs. I also remember milk tasting better from glass bottles. My daughter is the big milk-drinker at our house, and she was initially a little weirded out by the glass bottles. It amazed me to think that she had never actually seen them in her whole life!

One day, as I was eating breakfast, staring at the milk bottle half asleep, I noticed that the logo for Heartland made the letter T look like a cross. Intriguing. I looked more closely. In tiny print at the bottom of the bottle, there was a website listed. I pointed this out to Mike, and he promptly visited the site. It turns out, Heartland Creamery is a business used as part of a ministry for people in recovery. This ministry has several businesses, all designed to give employment to people who need to learn a positive work ethic and gain an excellent reference for the future. A young man we know who grew up near this ministry says they are doing wonderful things for people who need help recovering from addictions.

So, now I feel even better about my change to returnable bottles! To really clinch the deal, they produce hormone-free products.

If you would like to see more about the other things this ministry does, you can go to Heartland Ministries. If you live in the Midwest, I would like to highly encourage you to look for Heartland products in your store. Returning the bottles has not been a hassle at all, and you could be helping some people who need a hand up.

Think On These Things

In the last couple of days, there has been a big discussion going on on another blog about "peak oil". In other words, have we used up all the easily acquired oil, and will our world economic system collapse because we don't know how to live without it?

I like a little light summer reading, so I've been following the conversation. I don't have a strong opinion about peak oil, other than that it is a finite (at some point) resource and when we use it we cause pollution. I don't see why I personally need to know any more than that. What has surprised me, though, is the number of people who really believe that civilization will disappear and we will all have to survive by the skin of our teeth, fending off rioting masses of thugs who will want to break into our homes and steal our food. When I tried to reassure one young woman that just because she is medically fragile doesn't mean she will be left to die in some survival-of-the-fittest Apocalypse, someone else gave me the business about being unrealistic about how kind and caring the American public is.

Wow. If I read enough of that kind of stuff, I may just begin to think that way myself.

Therein lies the key. What are you putting in your head? Because what you put in is what you become. If you spend your day thinking about a scary future, or how nasty people really are, or who is out to get you, well, how can you be hopeful at all? I'm not talking about having your head in the sand about real problems that need solutions, or blissfully continuing down a selfish path that will truly harm future generations. I'm talking about hope.

One of my favorite verses from the Bible says "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things." (Philippians 4:8) It falls into that category of "taking every thought captive for Christ", practicing the discipline of positive thought, through the power of the Holy Spirit. That's not thinking about things that are false, but comforting ("oh, we'll never run out of oil"), because the verse states clearly that we should think about what is true. It's not sending "positive thoughts" out into the universe in the hope that they will somehow change reality. No. It's looking at what is very, very real, but very, very good, and focusing on that. That's how we can see God working. That's how we can find hope minute by minute.

So, I'm going to start a new post label category: Think On These Things. When I find something true, noble, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy, I'm going to post it and label it with that label. Because there is a lot of that out there. Because God is working, all around us. Because there is hope.

Here's something to start with:

Sunday Stroll-July 13, 2008

For my Sunday Stroll, I could show you my climbing rose, covered with Japanese beetles, but I won't. I could show you my hollyhocks, covered with Japanese beetles, but I won't. So, I'll show you the oak leaf hydrangeas again. The beetles don't like them, thank goodness. They are starting to lose the bright green-tinted white color they start off with, and fading to a beige-y pink that is very nice. I love that the blossoms last so long on these shrubs. Planting them was the best landscaping decision I ever made.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I am trying to make sure my yard is wild-life friendly. I've been checking things off of the list of requirements put out by the National Wildlife Federation for becoming an officially sanctioned wildlife landscape. Mostly, it involves making sure there is water, cover, food sources, and a diversity of plantings to attract the largest number of birds, butterflies, and small mammals.

Well, honestly, I'm not working too hard on the small mammal part. Seems like we've always had those in abundance. We're a regular highway interchange for squirrels, and I wasn't about to build the squirrel equivalent of a Cracker Barrel here. We also are apparently the favorite nightspot for possums, and when they've really been partying hard, they knock over our trash cans. There is also at least one raccoon that scares the little white socks right off our guard-kitties. I think he is the one working his way through this old stump. We left the stump as an inexpensive seating option out in the shady part of the yard, and various children used to sit on it to think deep thoughts. I suppose we can give it up to the 'coon, now, since the kids are grown.

I promised to keep you posted on the pumpkins being grown across the street. They're going gang-busters this week, since we had 3.6 inches of rain in five days on our block. Here are a couple of the little ones:

This one is bigger than any we ever bought for the family at Halloween:

Here, you can see the arrangement the gardener made to shade one. He must think this one has real competitive possibilities. If it is not shaded to keep the skin soft, it will grown so fast that it will split. It was so muddy, I didn't want to kneel to give a better perspective. The leaves on the pumpkin plants are about waist high, if that gives you some idea.

That's it for today. If you want to check in on the other Strollers, pop over to The Quiet Country House.

Biblical Simple Living

From Francis Chan's video blog.

Wearing My Christmas Colors

A few days ago, Melinda at Elements In Time asked readers to comment on what it was that made them become passionate about environmental issues. I responded, but I've continued to think about this since then. What made me, a conservative Midwesterner, raised in the red half of the Twin Cities, and a devout Baptist, also add into my identity the color green? How could I possibly integrate this element into the other elements and come up with an alloy that would hold together? I know this has been a mystery to some of my friends, and certainly to some of my blogging friends, and I'm sure there are people who are convinced I will eventually give up the green thing as some fad that has passed, and there are other people who secretly believe that I will turn from the dark side and renounce my moderately conservative evangelical world view as a relic of our Puritan past.

But that's not going to happen. It all works just fine for me. It's all been part of the real me since I was a child, really. I can care about sustainability without crossing the line into New Age Gaia worship; I can base my social conservatism on Biblical principles; I can evaluate economic systems based on what I think is most compassionate to the the poor and encouraging to the hard-working, and I can do that without hating people who disagree with me. Because, honestly, nobody walking this earth right now has it all figured out, and so we might as well keep talking respectfully with each other, and just enjoying each other as companions on the road of life.

I look back on a childhood spent, basically, outside. Okay, maybe I was a bit of a tom-boy, but really, children back then were pretty much expected to play outside. You came home from school, you changed out of your dress and school shoes into play clothes and you went outside. So did all the other kids in the neighborhood (and it was the baby boom so there were a lot of kids!), and you played. Or, if you wanted some alone time, you laid on the grass and looked at the clouds, or you sat in the crab apple tree and read a book. There were vacant lots, in which we dug holes. Why, I don't know, but we dug them. We girls played house in the weeds, and we made dinners of sour clover served on giant velvet-leaf platters. If it was cold we played in the snow. And there weren't any parents out there supervising, so stuff happened. I fell through the ice into a pond once. I fell out of trees a few times. I fell off a skateboard and broke my wrist. I ran a toboggan into a tree. I wasn't a clumsy child, I just wasn't safely sitting in front of a TV. None of us were. If there was blood, we went in a got a hug and a band-aide, and maybe a graham cracker, and then we went back outside. Our mothers did not bat an eye if we got filthy; they expected that. It meant we had played hard and had a good time. It meant that they could put us to bed at 8pm and know we'd be sound asleep in about two minutes.

So, I grew up loving the natural outside world, where you could watch a cercropia moth emerge from it's cocoon and stretch it's wings. Where you could pull foxtail stems to chew on. Where you could look up at the sky and think, "Looks like it's going to rain here in a minute. I'd better hurry home!" Where you could find baby bunnies in the weeds where their mothers had hidden them. Where you could find broken bird eggshells to add to your cigar-box full of special rocks and jay feathers, and honey-locust seed-pods. Kids don't get to do that so much anymore, and I think that's too bad. That's how I came to love the natural world and want to preserve it.

I watched and helped my grandparents garden on a pretty grand scale, both vegetables and flowers. I also watched my dad work hard on the city council to help site a new landfill when the old one got full, and become one of the earliest advocates of recycling. We were recycling at our house before anyone else I knew, because he thought it was imperative that we not use up our land fill options. I saw the beginnings of the environmental movement locally when some residents decided to prevent the damming of the Sangamon that would have flooded Allerton Park. I was in eighth grade when the first EarthDay was celebrated. I took a wonderful biology-for-non-majors sequence in college that turned me on to the amazing world around me even further. I camped and hiked, ran and biked.

I wanted my sky to stay blue, I wanted my favorite butterflies to visit my flowers every year. I wanted my children to have the same experiences that I had had, and was disappointed that they couldn't quite do that, because things had already changed too much. My husband and I always tried to instill that love of the outdoors in them through hiking and camping. We taught them to recycle, to think about how they transported themselves, to avoid wasting resources because they were valuable for all kinds of reasons, to be frugal so you could give to those less fortunate, to avoid ostentation because it was better to cultivate humility. It all went together.

I have believed for some time that we need to make some pretty significant lifestyle changes so we can keep from poisoning ourselves with our own waste. Then, a year or so ago one of my sons put me on to Colin Beavan's No Impact Man blog, and I was fascinated. I didn't agree with a lot of his politics, but that was okay; I admired his efforts to challenge all of us to evaluate the way we live.

I started to hear about Al Gore's movie. I was reluctant to see it, because, no offense to Mr. Gore, but he always seemed like kind of a dull speaker, and I couldn't imagine watching him for two hours. My husband was not at all interested in wasting movie rental money on a documentary of any kind, but especially this one. However, gradually we began to feel we should see it so we could discuss it intelligently with those who had watched it. I promised myself that I would try to keep an open mind. After seeing it, to my real surprise, I felt he made his case, and so did my husband. We decided to push ourselves further to practice a greener way of life.

The most daunting thing for us is all the political nonsense that everyone wants to add into the issue of climate change. But, whatever, my husband and I are going to live by our convictions on this issue just like we do on all the others. So, everyone, left and right, can think we're weirdos. Oh, well; that's nothing new.

Book Review-Serve God, Save the Planet

As part of GreenBean's Bookworm Challenge I chose to read a couple of books this month.

First, I borrowed Barbara Kingsolver's book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" from my daughter-in-law Traci. I can see why Traci liked this book. She's a dietitian, and a farm girl, so all the discussion of gardening, cooking, and nutrition was right up her alley. I liked the book mostly for Kingsolver's writing style. Having at one time had a very large vegetable garden of my own, it brought back memories of the hard work, seasonal business of putting up the produce, and some of the frustrations of that life. Actually, not enough of the frustrations, in my opinion. She doesn't seem to have had her green beans annihilated by bean-leaf beetles, or her zucchini plants killed by squash bugs, or her sweet corn raided by squirrels and raccoons. Maybe I'm just a pest-magnate, and maybe working with a bunch of small children underfoot was another distraction, but my experience was not as idyllic as hers seems to have been. I don't really do the vegetable garden thing any more.

I also felt the additional material inserted by her husband broke the flow of the narrative she was writing, and I wound up skipping those parts as I got further into the book. However, her visit to the Amish farm in Ohio was a lot of fun to read about. All in all, I found the book to be a pretty good read.

Next, I read "Serve God, Save the Planet" by Matthew Sleeth. This book was highly recommended to me by Donna. Sleeth is a physician who became alarmed at the increase in asthma cases he was seeing, as well as the uptick in cancer diagnoses. He could see their correlation to the increase in environmental pollution, and felt it was time to sound the alarm about what was happening to our health. He also comments on mental health issues that he attributes to lifestyle. He and his family chose to radically simplify their lives by reducing their material belongings, and , eventually, moving into a house that was comparable in size to the garage of their original house. He left the practice of medicine and began to speak at churches about the need for Christians, motivated by the command to "Love one another", to take seriously the care of God's Creation.

Sleeth's reasoned arguments, under girded with Scripture, as well as his appendixes that outline his methods of changing his lifestyle, outline for group study of the issues, and quotes from famous Christian thinkers about the subject of Creation Care, made this book valuable.

One of my favorite quotes from this book: "Love is not part of the rhetoric of global leaders, power brokers, or conglomerates. It does not make the evening news. It does not appear in medical journals". In contrast, he points out, "love one another" supersedes all of Christ's commandments except the command to love God. A Christian's motivation to live simply is to share wealth with those in need. The motivation to live an environmentally responsible lifestyle is to prevent harm to others and honor God's beautiful creation. I related to these motives far more easily than Kingsolver's. I recommend this book highly.

I appreciate the push from this challenge to read these books, which I might not have done otherwise. Thanks, GreenBean!!

Calvin on Creation Care

"Let him who posseses a field, so partake of its yearly fruits, that he may not suffer the ground to be injured by negligence; but let him endeavor to hand it down to posterity as he recieved it, or even better cultivated. Let him so feed on its fruits, that he neither dissipates it by luxury, nor permits it to be marred or ruined by neglect...Let every one regard himself as the steward of God in all things which he posseses."

John Calvin

Brainstorming

I promised another post, offering some common ground for the green community that Green Bean and Arduous would like to build, and I owe them that much, after side tracking the conversation yesterday. Here's what I'm thinking:

1.Let's all brainstorm a good name for this group. I actually like APLS (Affluent People Living Sustainably). I remember when that discussion started, there were some suggestions that were a little pretentious, and I was kind of cringing until Green Bean's husband thought of APLS. It didn't have any words in it that could be misconstrued as belittling others, and that's why I like it. We need a name something like APLS.

2.Better steer clear of "church". All Christians are taught that the church represents Christ's physical presence here on earth. It's going to be very tough to avoid offending a large segment of the the US population if you use the word church.

3.Let's also assume that there are good people in both political parties that care about the environment, even if they disagree on the war, abortion, gay marriage, or the graduated tax ( and about 500 other things). So let's make sure this remains focused and doesn't gather weird accretions that will cause people to run the other way. Red, blue, or purple, we all breathe the air, drink the water, try to find healthy food, and don't want our coastal cities to flood. Wouldn't it be refreshing to get past the political stuff and actually accomplish something!

So, comments and ideas are welcome here, or I'm sure at either of the other two blogs. You are a very creative bunch, so I'm sure we can come up with something terrific! And all you lurkers, too- I know you're out there, so de-lurk and help us. The more voices on this the better.

The Green Movement's New Twist On Church

Two of my favorite bloggers (GreenBean and Arduous) have posted in the last day or two about comparisons between the evangelical community and the environmentalist community made in the book "Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility" by Ted Nordhausen and Michael Schellenberger. I haven't read the book yet, (I hope to soon) but it sounds like there is a significant paradigm shift in it's approach to the green movement. Environmentalist are being encouraged to adopt a church model, and help found a "Church of Climate Change" for the green movement.

As an evangelical, this naturally intrigues me. I find it sort of flattering that we are viewed as having some things that people are longing for: community, positive messages, a sense of peace and meaning, positive self-esteem, and even joy. And here I thought we were seen as a bunch of self-righteous kooks! It's refreshing to finally be viewed with a different lens.

Of course, it's also a little odd to think about a "church" that does everything that a church usually does, but without the God part. In fact, I honestly can't wrap my mind around that, no matter how hard I try. Christ is the center of the church. He's the reason it exists. When we go to church, He's all we talk about, all we sing about, the motivator for all our outward actions. In fact, He's the glue that holds us together, because, being human and all, we're too ornery to keep it all together on our own. No amount of trying to act nice would ever make our community possible. It's when people forget about Christ and start trying to make church happen on their own terms that it usually all falls apart.

A lot of perfectly nice people have wonderful social groups, whether it's a book club, a bowling league, the Farm Bureau, or the pals down at the Master Gardening office, and when someone gets sick or loses a family member or a job, the casseroles may come in, or the offers of baby-sitting, or the help cleaning up from the disaster. I've experienced that myself. I've also seen a few people who claimed church membership who could be pretty difficult to deal with. We are by no means a perfect bunch.

I have seen my green blogging friends wrestle with so many of the very same things we wrestle with at church: materialism and consumerism vs. asceticism; hopelessness vs. hopefulness; the value of individual action vs. corporate action; whether the political process has any value at all or should be abandoned; the difficulty of speaking truth to power; the necessity for, and fruitlessness of, self-discipline; long lists of "thou shalt nots" vs. freedom from guilt-inducing rules; fanaticism vs. moderation; feeling like the rest of the world views one as some kind of nut. I could go on and on about the similarities.

I have also observed green bloggers accept the fact that it may be necessary to live with alternative values in order find happiness and fulfillment, just as Christians have accepted the fact that we live in an inexplicable parallel universe with it's own alternate value system called the Kingdom of God. I have seen them search intensely for the truth that is hidden beneath the falsehoods of our culture. It's the thing I admire most about them- and I do admire them, prodigiously! Thank goodness for people who care about the truth!

I'm certainly not a better person than any of them, but I am part of the called-out-of-the-culture group called "the church of the Living God, who is the pillar and foundation of Truth" (1 Timothy 3:15). That's where I live each day, in that Kingdom. Anyone who is actively seeking the truth is my near and dear neighbor. Left to our own devices, humans aren't going to find that much sought-after truth. But that's not a hopeless situation. I don't mean to say that I, personally, always know, without equivocation, the truth in every situation, but I know Who does.

That's the difference between the The Church of Climate Change, and the Church of the Living God: Who, ultimately, holds the Truth.

The Quit Now Challenge

Today I bought a retractable clothes line and my handy-dandy husband just attached it to the back of the house. So, tomorrow I'm back in business for hanging wash!! I've been wanting to do this since reading Green Bean's lyrical post on the joys of hanging her laundry out. Now, Chile's given me the kick in the pants I needed to get this done. Thanks, guys!

Now, we have had 6 inches of rain in the last five days, so that should tell you that it will take a fair amount of commitment to do this faithfully. The ground is still a little squishy out there, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for good weather tomorrow so I can get this show on the road.

Aargh! Now I'm Behind

I left town for a few days (wonderful!) and now I feel like there are about ten posts I need to write to get caught up. As if someone was holding a gun to my head to do this.

Tonight, I'll just get a few things out of the way.

1. I keep getting wrapped up in these challenges! So, for Chile's, I'm giving up the dryer for the summer. I'll let you know how that goes. We get a fair amount of rain here. I did it years ago, with a bigger family in the house, but now that I actually have a dryer, I may be tempted to break down and use it.

2. For GreenBean's reading challenge, I still haven't finished the book I originally committed to, because I keep finding others that appeal to me more. But I just finished "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" and am now reading "Serve God, Save he Planet", and I have this great idea for a compare and contrast review of those two books. Sometime this week.

3. Arduous has just started a really neat challenge to encourage people to be more generous. Pop over there and sign on for that one! I can't wait to see what happens when people open their eyes to the needs around them.

4. There was no Sunday Stroll this week, unless you count my little Malorie's high-speed crawling. It's just too cute when crawling baby girls have little ruffles on the seat of their pants! Oh, wait, I promised myself that I would not be a boring Nanna talking all about her adorable grandchild! But trust me, she IS adorable!

5. Lastly, I just want to say I don't understand why gas was $4.03 here and $3.69 in Claremore.
That seems like a big difference to me. Not sure I'll ever understand the economics of fuel prices.

What's On Your List?

Today was desk clean-off day. The main reason I have to clean off my desk is that I have an inordinate fondness for making lists and outlines, and then keeping them in neat little stacks and never looking at them! I subscribe to the theory that I should get things off my mind and on to paper, so I write and write and write. I think what it really does is organize my thoughts. Then I don't actually need the lists and outlines.

Anyway, there were a lot of little pieces of scratch paper with home improvement lists. Some of those were nice to see; we've done a lot of work to the house this past year and a half, since the deer came through and got us started with the insurance claim. I made little check marks by all we'd finished , consolidated what we still needed to do on to one list, and threw the remainder away. See what I mean? It's obsessive. But I love to do it anyway.

Then I found something kind of interesting. Last fall, I read the book "Garbage Land" by Elizabeth Royte. Some of you will roll your eyes and think "Yes, I knew she was weird, and this proves it! She reads books about garbage!" I do love the subject of garbage. Ask me all about it, when you have an hour or two to spare. Anyway, after reading that book I sat down and made some of my little lists.

Sources of Paper/how to deal w/it:
1.newspaper-recycle; use for mulch
2.magazines-cancel those not read; share at work; recycle
3.junk mail-get off lists; recycle; re-use blank stuff; scratch paper
4.packaging-refuse as much as possible; reuse; recycle
5.office paper-receive and store records electronically; compost shredded material; recycle
6.kitchen paper-use cloth napkins; rags; ceramic plates only

See, I told you it was obsessive! But the cool thing is, we've done all of it. In fact, we've cut back on our trash output so much that we can go three weeks without putting anything at the curb, and then it's just one container for trash, and two recycling tubs.

There was also a list for plastic:
1.milk and soy milk jugs-buy in glass returnables, recycle
2.cottage cheese, sour cream, yogurt tubs-make my own yogurt; recycle
3.bubble packaging-?? reuse
4.grocery bags-use cloth

Again, we've done it.

Glass and Cans:
beverage cans and bottles-stop drinking it!
food cans-use more home-made foods

Done, and done.

So, as you can see, my life is full of action and excitement. Please excuse me while I line my pencils up in a nice neat row.