Gah, I hate all those catalogs that pour in this time of year! I just signed up at Catalog Choice, which is free. I don’t feel I should have to PAY for the privilege of not receiving this crap, but this video mentions some of the other services available that do charge:

Save the trees! Save the landfills!

I love this little video that packs a lot of great information about the energy costs of our food:

Thanks to Small Failures for the link.

Three weeks ago, I unplugged the idiot tube as part of the 90% reduction challenge, and then something odd happened: I started to like it. After a few days the incessant voices repeating slogans and jingles in my head began to fade away, and I could hear my own thoughts for a change. What a novelty! Slowly, I stopped worrying about the lives of characters in my favorite shows and began to think about my own life.

I started coming to my own conclusions about how to spend my time and money. I began cooking from scratch and planning a small balcony garden. I checked out copious numbers of books from the library and pored through them ravenously. I spent more time talking and laughing with friends and family. [Ed. note: And crying -- one dear friend died a few days ago.]

And I really saw for the first time, that Howard Beale was right.

When the movie Network was made over 30 years ago, I was just starting my own career in broadcasting. I never actually saw the whole thing, just clips here and there, but I heard so much about it that eventually, I thought that I did see it. I didn’t realize my mistake until today, when I watched another clip, one that’s not so famous.

Or maybe I did see it and just forgot about that scene, who knows. One thing I do know is that I’m going to buy the DVD and make my own, homegrown TV-addict son watch it at least once.

Back when the movie came out, I remember the knowing laughter from fellow broadcasters and reviewers. But they weren’t reacting to the message that Peter Finch, as Howard Beale, was delivering to his audience: that television had the power to take over our minds and thus, the world. They thought Faye Dunaway’s character, a network executive who realized the company could make a fortune by turning the ranting anchorman into a hit show, was the brilliant inside joke of the movie. And she was. What they didn’t know was that everything screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky said in Beale’s rants would eventually come chillingly true.

Or maybe they did know. Maybe I’m the oblivious one who finally woke up when I pulled the plug. Who knows, maybe more of us would wake up by doing the same.

Try it. You’ll like it.

Sunday July 1st 2007: One Hour NO Power

At midday on Sunday July 1st 2007 we are asking everyone concerned about the effects of climate change to simply turn everything (non-vital) off for an hour. That’s one hour with no cars, computers, TVs, etc. Through your support and lobbying we would also like as many businesses as possible to join in and publicly show their commitment to tackling climate change.

One Hour No Power aims to raise awareness of our collective ability to tackle climate change through our everyday lives.

This is a people powered event for everyone to help shape. Share your ideas for One Hour No Power by adding your comments to the event blog and find help with promoting the event locally on our ‘Join In’ page.

It’s up to you how you spend the hour. You could hold a sponsored event for your favourite environmental group, take to the roads on your bike, write your personal green action plan for the coming year or simply spend time with family and friends.

Please join in and switch off between 12-1 pm on Sunday 1st July (in your local time zone).

Thank you for your support.

I forgot to take a picture of my homemade yogurt before I ate it but as you can tell, I ate it. Therefore, it passed the taste test. I sliced up a banana, added some stevia and pecans. All organic. Yummy. Not as tangy as I like, probably because I used storebought yogurt as a starter. Next time, I’ll use actual yogurt starter. Btw, it was easy-peasy to make, and cost less than half what storebought organic yogurt costs. AND — no icky plastic container to recycle. Win-win.

I’m a list-making fool tonight. For one thing, I’ve narrowed down the veggies I want to grow on the balcony — the list needs more pruning. [Pruning! Get it? Me so funny.]

Then I decided I’d better write down all these goals and dreams that have been swimming around in my head, you know, so I don’t forget anything.

Hooboy, this ought to keep me out of trouble! Any more ideas?

The nice thing about living in San Diego is that it’s never too late to start a garden. It’s just a matter of what to plant and when to plant it. Oh, and where. Kind of like the five w’s we learned in journalism class [who, what, where, when and um, how -- I know, not a w, but...whatever. Hey, there's a w for you.]

I want to start planting something on my balcony soon, though. Something edible. But what? The last time I tried it was a joke, partly because I didn’t know how to properly care for the poor plants, and partly because I planted things I had no interest in actually eating. Like cucumbers. And jalapeno peppers. Not that I don’t like them — I just don’t go out of my way to eat them. So I thought I’d better make a list of fruits and vegetables that I actually eat and then figure out which ones would be good candidates for my balcony garden [obviously, some of these, like apples, oranges and avocadoes, wouldn't work]:

Wow. I didn’t realize how healthy my diet has become in the past few years. This is a HUGE change from the way I used to eat pre-Nicole, my dear friend in Guatay who taught me how to cook and eat healthy food. It’s simple, really, but like a lot of Americans these days, I grew up on fast and convenience food. I was terrified of fresh produce. Now I’m excited when I discover something new — like my latest passion, fennel [yum].

So yes, fennel will have to be among the first things I plant, but I want to be careful not to be too ambitious because I tend to fizzle out when the work gets too hard and my back starts hurting. Herbs and salad greens sound good. Maybe I should leave it at that for now.

I do need to consider the peculiarities of the location. My west-facing balcony is 5 x 15 feet, large enough for lots of plants, but I need to leave room for hanging laundry and storing garden stuff. And I need a way to hide all that from public view, because we’re not supposed to be hanging laundry and storing stuff on the balcony. As long as it’s hidden, the manager doesn’t say anything. Also, the sun turns the space into a solar oven in summer, good for the actual solar oven I’d like to build but not so good for comfortable living inside with a minimum of air conditioning. So I’ve hung blinds for privacy and to create a cool space between the blazing sun and the apartment wall. They work pretty well, but hello — plants need sunlight!

An herb/salad garden would probably do pretty well in the shady environment, but I got this insanely ambitious idea today — a vertical garden! Grow vines up the railings and hang baskets or string for the vines from the ceiling — a living, green replacement for the blinds that would shade the balcony and apartment while at the same time feeding us!

I must be crazy — I can’t do something that grandiose with my bad back, low energy and lack of gardening experience. But wouldn’t it be cool?

Freedom is growing your own food. That’s the philosophy of Jules Dervaes and his three grown children. They are supporting themselves by farming almost every inch of their 1/10th-acre yard in Pasadena, California — complete with chickens, ducks and goats. Their amazing urban farm, which yields three TONS of yummy organic food per year, is called Path to Freedom. View the video.

I need to get organized, and I’m not talking about sorting papers and decluttering my home, though I need to do that too — oy, do I! No, I’m talking about mental organization.

In the past month or so — since Earth Day, really — I’ve been obsessively reading everything I can about how to reduce my impact on the world. And man, there is a LOT to read.

The thing is, in order to a] meet the 90% reduction challenge in the next year and b] prepare for what I believe is the coming collapse of our economy, I need to learn survival skills that pretty much everyone knew 100 years ago. And I need to learn fast, because nobody knows when the shit will hit the fan.

I need to learn these things not so much for my own survival — I am 60, after all, and not in the best health; I probably don’t have more than 10 or 15 years left — but for my kids. I can’t talk or force them into this — they’re not ready yet — but I can learn these skills, model them, and pass them along when they are ready. My family is really going to need me when things get bad, so I’m feeling a real sense of urgency here.

And, I don’t know what else to call it, scatteredness. It’s all too much to process, and that has led to a certain, shall we say, paralysis. What should I do first? How do I do it? I don’t know enough. I’m too sick/old/tired to do this. Better take another nap.

What to do? Make lists, of course! Here are some of the skills I’m trying to learn or brush up on:

• gardening for food on my apartment balcony [try, try again, right?]
• worm composting on said balcony
• cooking from scratch [including things like almond milk and yogurt to reduce store-bought packaging]
• preserving food
• sewing/knitting/mending [thank goodness I learned to sew as a kid and recently taught myself to knit]
• repairing things instead of replacing them
• recycling [not so much a skill as a habit to cultivate]
• water conservation [another much-needed habit here in drought-ridden SoCal]

I’ll be adding to the list as I think of things. Any suggestions? Links to tutorials welcome!

Greenpa lives without a refrigerator and has for 3 decades. He says if you live in a city- you do not need a refrigerator. AT ALL. And there are people who are trying it. Wow. I’ve just experienced a mind shift.