the problem with teaching children

The problem with teaching children is that they learn, and often it is not convenient for us that they do so.

I have been teaching the girls for some time now that it's important to conserve. Turn off the lights when you're not using them, take shorter showers, reduce what you use, reuse it in new and interesting ways, recycle things, and compost. You can call it being green, living in the balance, or living sustainably, but it boils down to common sense. It saves money and natural resources.

So tonight as we walked past the neighbor's house, the girls stopped to look at what he's throwing out. It's an old vanity sink, sans the sink. Nice, solid wood. There were a few holes where the pipes went, but for the most part it's pretty decent wood. My daughters saw potential at once.

"You know, dad," the younger child says. "You could make a dollhouse with this wood."

I have to stop teaching my kids things.

reuse: plastic cereal bags

I don't know if they're microwave safe, but the plastic bags that cereal comes in, inside the boxes, make a great substitute for waxed paper.

We had a get-together here at the house on Saturday, where I grilled some burgers. When I made the patties, I laid them between layers of a bag we had finished all the Cheerios in just a couple days earlier. I had pulled the bag apart at its seams, and cut it into quarters, so it was perfect for layering. Make four burgers, slap down a sheet of the bag, make four more burgers, and so on.

No need to buy waxed paper, no need to buy paper towels. I already owned the bags and had no other use for them, so this was ideal. I saved the money and threw out something I would have thrown out anyway, after getting one more use from it.

It feels like a win-win to me.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Trading old books for new on PaperBackSwap

Join me in sticking it to corporate America. Join PaperbackSwap.com, and take a stand against consumerism.

The web site, which boasts hordes of bibliophilic members, is based on the decidedly sensible philosophy that if you're not going to read the book collecting dust on your shelf, chances are good that someone else will. The site provides a virtual clearinghouse for these books, giving avid readers a chance to pass old books along to new homes, keeping them out of the trash and in circulation.

It's also useful for saving money. Since joining about three weeks ago, I've found new homes for four of my old books, worth in aggregate about $40 bought new at a bookstore, or about $20 at a typical used bookstore. The new owners haven't had to pay a cent. (These books probably got snatched up so quickly because they're out of print, and have a strong appeal to a small demographic group.)

It works like this. You join the site, and agree to give away books you no longer read. The books can't be advance review copies, and they have to be free of water damage and in readable condition, and must have their covers.

Once you list the books, any other member can request a book of yours, which you then ship at no expense to them. That might seem like a downside initially, but the flipside is also true. You don't have to pay a cent for books sent to you, either.

Just by joining the site and posting an initial 10 books, you get credit for two free orders. Each time you ship a book to another member, you get another credit. Thus, just for joining and having four books that other people wanted, I now have six credits toward books that I want.

Alas, no one right now is offering any of the graphic novels by Alan Moore or Walt Simonson that I've been looking for. On the other hand, today I ordered a "Charlie Bone" book for Evangeline, and a Magic Tree House Merlin mission for Rachel. The site probably will come in handy for locating book club selections also.

So I ask everyone who reads my blog: Join the site and put its power to use.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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the passing of an era

Today, for the first time, I have paid more than $3 for a gallon of gas in this state. Up until now, the highest price I have paid was $2.99, and that was two years ago, when gas prices first reached the stratosphere.

I have made it my goal to reduce the amount of gas we buy for our car to one tank a month, if at all possible. I'm working toward this by walking Evangeline to school in the morning and home from school in the afternoon, combining trips as much as possible, and carpooling with other people when opportunity presents itself.

I also am avoiding accelerating and braking needlessly, which doubtless makes me annoying to the drivers behind me, but it'll save them gas too.

If I re-enter the work force, as seems likely I must, my goal is to land a job here in Nova Bastille or in one of the immediately adjacent municipalities so I can bicycle to work. We're not even going to look at new cars that get less than 40 mpg, and 50 mpg will be our gold standard.

I invite everyone else reading this to join me in sticking it to Big Oil.

what i throw out

• broken things
• packaging

 

what i recycle

• junk mail
• finished mail
• magazines past their usefulness
• retired office paper
• flat cardboard
• corrugated cardboard
• plastic bottles
• plastic cartons
• glass jars
• newspaper

toward zero waste

Evangeline's school, where I am on the board of trustees, is working toward becoming a green facility as part of the next phase of our building plan: solar power, a green roof, worm composting, the whole thing.

 

Worm composting?

 

One of the teachers and I were talking recently about moving beyond recycling paper, plastic and metal, and getting the children to practice the rest of the recycling process, the one that involves breaking down organic waste and producing compost to beautify the school flower beds and lawn. Essentially, we would begin in the upper grades and trickle down, setting up a worm composting bin in each classroom where kids can toss unwanted vegetables or fruit from snacktime. Worms in the bins -- red wrigglers -- would eat the food and in the process turn it into gardening gold, which our school badly needs. (The soil is so bad that the grass is not growing along its rhizomes, as it would in healthy soil.)

 

Vermicomposting is completely natural, produces valuable nutrients, and as long as no one tosses in meat, cheese or a carton of milk, it won't attract mice or create a bad smell.

 

Composting only makes sense for schools, homes and businesses. A third of the garbage Americans put into the waste stream is yard waste -- fully compostable things like grass and leaves. Once it enters the waste stream, we burn fuel transporting it, we waste land burying it, and we lose out on the resources that we could (and should) be reclaiming from the materials. Instead, they fester inside a landfill, out of reach.

 

So I like the idea of putting composters in the classrooms. It'd be hands-on education for the kids, who will get to see "their" worms and connect food, waste and the lifecycle; and it will reduce the school's waste output, particularly if we can expand the program with an outdoor composter that can handle dairy and meet as well. Those are available, and without the worry of attracting rodents, but they go for $160 and come only by the dozen. Ideally, we should be getting our waste output as close as we can to the point that we're tossing out nothing but plastics that can't be recycled.

 

I like the idea of composting, period. It's the fourth leg of recycling, and it's high time more of us started doing it.

things i put in my compost pile

• leaves from my yard
• leaves from other yards
• other people's grass clippings
• bad fruit
• weeds
• egg shells
• apple cores
• carrot and potato peels
• dryer lint
• hair from my hairbrush
• toenail and fingernail clippings
• newspaper too wet to recycle
• vegetable waste
• contents of the vacuum bag
• banana peels
• orange and lemon rinds
• old jack-o'lanterns
• kiwifruit skins

back on the bike

I got the bike out of the basement this evening to go to an arts festival committee meeting in Hoover Point.

I've been taking the car to the Wednesday meetings, but since gas is now past $3 a gallon, I'm trying to use the bike more. I'll be taking it to Bible study tomorrow night too. It's a great feeling, but I honestly can't believe how out of shape I've become in the past several years. I used to commute to Hillsborough, about 15 miles away from here, on my bike back when I was the editor of the the local newspaper there.

It was an odd feeling at first, being back on the bike after about four years off it. I was a little unsteady with my balance, and kept braking because I would wobble when I went too fast. When I got down to the highway, I walked it across and then rode on the bike path that goes through the park by the river. That was a nice trip, and even though it was a little off-roadish at a few points, I did all right.

Actually, the whole trip went pretty smoothly. There were a few points where I felt a little tight up against the cars in traffic, but I never had to get off the bike and walk it up the hill like I had to do back in college when I rode up the hill past the AGD house toward Easton Hall. Despite leaving the house only fifteen minutes before the meeting started, I managed to get there just five minutes late, maybe less, and before the meeting had even started.

I was a little winded, but not worn out. This is definitely something I need to do more of. Plans call for using the bike to make trips to the supermarket for one or two items, to Target for a couple returns and to buy a bike lock, and other short trips around town. I'm trying to figure out a way I can use the bike to get Evangeline to school in the morning so we can save the gas there too, since the trips to her school and Rachel's preschool are likely to be our biggest regular gas uses.

Thankfully, I didn't take a spill on my bike this time, and I didn't have any near-death experiences either. (That's what the next few months will be for.)

pain at the pump

Gas prices here in New Jersey and throughout the United States have been positively painful latelyevels. I filled my car's gas tank on Tuesday, even though it was three-quarters full, because I was passing a gas station where regular fuel was $2.55 and I had no idea when I would see gas that cheaply again. Since then, when I took the car out on Wednesday, I saw gas going for as high as $3.19. I'm sure it's even worse in other states.

So, in a fit of civic-mindedness, I actually wrote to my elected officials Thursday night and asked them, not to lower gasoline prices, but to encourage greater conservation efforts and, more importantly, to encourage our nation's auto manufacturers to produce the alternative-fuel vehicles we have heard much about but seen little of.

On the first front, I believe Congress could do much to encourage greater conservation simply with an appeal to our nation's industries to allow telecommuting when possible, and even providing a financial incentive such as a tax credit or other recognition for businesses that encourage telecommuting. They also could prevail upon Bush to stop flying to Crawford, Texas, all the time, ground their limosines, and encourage the use of more fuel-efficient vehicles, like hybrids, for starters.

It would also be nice to see more options in terms of fuel. Internal combustion engines can be modified fairly easily to run on natural gas, as I witnessed firsthand in New Zealand in 1987, and again in Haiti during the ill-conceived embargo of the previous Bush and Clinton administrations. Aside from the post office trucks and a few other government-type vehicles, I'm aware of no such vehicles here in the United States, let alone places for people to fuel them.

More to the point, I've heard reports of prototype fuel cell vehicles for years, but I'm not aware of any efforts to put them into mass production. It would be nice if our elected officials exerted some effort to encourage these alternatives. Left to the market, these changes are going to be disastrously slow in coming and horrendously expensive when they do.

This current presidential administration has been extremely friendly to the automotive and oil industries, through measures such as relaxing fuel-economy standards in early 2001. It's past time we as a nation took seriously our obligation to consider the environment and the economy we will be leaving our children. Any incentive the government can give the auto industry to break our dependence on imported oil can only be a good thing.

summer frost

Now that July is here, I've decided it's time to break out my sweatshirts and other heavy clothing. I'm worried about getting frostbite.

This might seem odd, considering that the temperature for the past week has rarely dipped below 100 degrees, but I stand by my statement. For some reason, Americans have a fascination with air conditioning that drives us to get the temperature inside as cold as it is hot outside.

Maybe I don't mind the heat so much because I grew up without air conditioning. Maybe my blood is still thin from living in Haiti from 1992 to 1993. Or maybe everyone else has thyroid problems.

I just don't understand why we feel the need to freeze ourselves during the hottest season of the year. Humanity lived without air conditioning or fans for at least five years before they were invented. At least 3 percent of the world survives without those things today, even in the tropics, but you would never know it by visiting most public places around here.

The advantages to over-air conditioning are pretty clear for restaurants, since they can increase their freezer space by the size of the dining room, but it still boggles my mind.

One restaurant Natasha and I visited awhile ago had the air conditioning turned up full-blast before the season's heat had even begun in earnest. It might have been 80 degrees outside, warm enough to wear shorts, but not necessarily warm enough to go shirtless.

Inside, it was so cold that the hair on my arms and legs stood on end. I shivered uncontrollably. Hanging on the wall next to me was a frozen side of beef.

"Could you turn the air conditioning down?" I asked the waiter when he came to get our drink orders. I had to repeat myself twice because my teeth were chattering. "It's freezing in here."

The waiter looked down his nose at me, out of a fur-lined parka that looked like it had once been an Arctic seal.

"You're the only who thinks so," he said coldly. His breath misted in the air in front of him.

"Fine," I snapped, wondering if it would be bad form to chop the table up for firewood. "Leave it alone. But bring me a cup of hot chocolate."

Natasha grew up in the desert, so she's usually even more affected by the cold than I. This spring, when everyone else in our church was wearing shorts and light shirts, Natasha was still wearing her long johns under her jeans, and had a T-shirt and a flannel shirt under a heavy sweatshirt she's had since college.

"I have a high surface area-to-volume ratio," is her most common defense.

The members of our church have been running a pool since April on when Natasha finally would be hot and come to church in shorts and a T-shirt. Now that she's five months pregnant, Natasha finally did just that, much to the delight of the elderly woman who won the pool, which passed the $5,000 mark in late June.

Natasha impressed even me with how hot she's been feeling lately. When we moved into our new house, the previous owner told me he was leaving behind a some functional air conditioning units in the basement.

Since air conditioning units are great at driving up the electric bill, I figured at the time that we wouldn't use them.

Wrong. Last week Natasha said she'd really like to have one in the bedroom so she can sleep. Who am I to tell her no?

At least we got some extra freezer space out of the deal.

gas out

In case you didn't know, Friday is supposed to be the day of the great American "gas out."

Friday is the day when drivers all across the country are supposed to boycott gasoline stations, according to a petition circulating on the Internet. Supposedly, by not buying gas, the American consumer public will send a clear message to oil companies -- and the oil-producing countries in the Middle East -- that the recent hikes in the price of gas are unacceptable.

Yeah. That'll work.

I heard about this undertaking through an e-mail a friend sent me. The message has been circulating nearly two months now and, given the nature of the Internet, probably will circulate in one form or another as long as there are people with e-mail.

The text runs something like this:

It's time we did something about the price of gasoline in America! We are all sick and tired of high prices when there are literally millions of gallons in storage.

Know what I found out? If there was just one day when no one purchased any gasoline, prices would drop drastically. ...

I have decided to see how many Americans we can get to not buy any gasoline on one particular day!

Let's have a gas out! Do not buy any gasoline on April 30, 1999! Buy on Thursday before, or Saturday after. Do not buy any gasoline on Friday, April 30, 1999.

After outlining this strategy, the author of the note asks for gullible readers like my friend to pass the letter on to as many people as possible, with the assurance that only a few million participants will be enough. After all, we can make a difference.

I rank this particular exploit right up there with tilting at windmills as a suitable pastime for Don Quixote. Much as I love the idea of the common person "sending a message" to the corporate world, I'm unconvinced that a boycott of this nature is going to have any real effect; moreover, it strikes me as incredibly immature.

It's quite possible the nameless author of this petition doesn't remember the mid-1970s. I was less than 10, but I remember some parts quite clearly. As I recall, the world supposedly was running out of oil then, and by the end of the century, so popular belief had it, all the fossil fuels would be gone.

We had strict rationing of gasoline based on the last number on our license plates. If your plate ended in an even number and you had an empty tank on an odd day of the month, you were out of luck. A few years earlier, when I was too young to remember, there were limits on how many gallons motorists could buy at one time.

Nowadays gas costs about $1 a gallon in Central Jersey, a little less in some places and a little more in others. I usually can fill my Cavalier for less than $15. I'll assume the author is from California, where a gallon of unleaded costs about $1.80, according to the Gas Out Web site. He still doesn't know how good he has it.

When I was in Haiti during the 1994 embargo, gasoline cost upward of $40 U.S. a gallon and had to be bought on the black market because it was being smuggled in from the Dominican Republic. Even in countries not currently under economic sanctions, gasoline can cost about $4 or $5 a gallon everyday.

So while I admire the idealism, however misplaced it has to be, I feel kind of sorry for people who are up in arms over a measly 20-cent gas hike. If they really want to send a message to the oil industry, they should buy a bicycle and ride that to work all summer instead.

It might even improve their health and the air quality.