Waiting for hammerfall as the economy teeters

The Dow is around 8500 now. So I think it's a fair question; what do we do for work, if layoffs happen?

Me, I'm simultaneously looking for work and trying to build my free-lance client base so I can have the bases covered either way. And if my clientele builds, theoretically I can recommend friends for other work, like web design, photography or illustration that are related to what I do but outside my ability set.

And because Natasha and I own our own house, live in a city with a high demand for rental property, and still are making our mortgage payments, we've talked briefly about letting the spare room or -- if we can find a way to make it work -- potentially the entire house, though I'd prefer to avoid that alternative if we can.

The big thing right now is to reduce expenses however we can. We make our own bread, and as many of our meals from scratch as we can, which has kept our food bill fairly steady the past year, particularly with the garden providing beans, tomatoes, and some other vegetables. I've been relying on the library more than ever for books and movies, and expect that if it comes to it during the winter, I'll probably spend most of the day there as well, using the WiFi connection to get my work done in a building where I don't have to foot the heating bill myself.

Some friends of ours came up with a great way to reduce their expenses, by sharing a house with another family. It gives them all full access to an entire house (for the most part), for half the price. Utilities are cut in two, food becomes cheaper per person because of the economies of scale, and the hosting family gets extra money for their mortgage while the second family is saving on their rent.

One perspective that I have found helps is to consider that everything you buy assumes the intrinsic value of the money you spent buying it. Thus, if I spend $14 on a pair of pants, those pants are worth $14 even if I can't wear them anymore. So, rather than throwing them out (and tossing my money into a landfill) or simply recycling them (thereby tossing my money into a recycling bin), I find some other use for the material, to get more bang for my buck.

Thus I have a rug made of old jeans; a tote bag also made from denim that saves me 2 cents every time I use it at the supermarket; a blanket-in-progress made from socks and other clothes too worn out to be useful as clothes, but quite warm as a blanket.

Our trash output has dropped to one garbage can every month, or less; we spend no money on fertilizer, because we compost so much; and I'm in the process of turning an old vanity sink into a game cabinet because I saw a new use for the wood and basic structure, with a few alterations.

If more of us had this attitude, and for a longer time -- it used to be standard practice for Americans, as in the rest of the world as well -- we probably wouldn't be in quite the dire straits that we're in now.


Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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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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a good craft

Now here's a craft Rachel has made that we'll be using for years to come. It's a new pencil holder for the house.

I wish crafts at the library were half this interesting and useful. Most crafts there, or in other programs, are unimaginative things like "Glue stuff to this cheap piece of plastic and add some wire ties. Now you have a butterfly to leave lying around the floor until it's been stepped on so many times that your father finally throws it away, except you see it in the wastebasket two days later and throw a fit."

Doing the craft was a snap. I took clothespins apart, showed Rachel how to glue them onto an empty Morton salt canister, and then watched her do it.

This wasn't a very complicated craft -- as noted, it involves dismantling clothespins and gluing them to a Morton salt canister -- but this is something no one is throwing out. Tomorrow morning, when the glue is all dried, Rachel is going to load our pens and pencils into it, and we'll have a nice, convenient place to keep them all, instead of leaving them lying on the countertop. My brother made one of these more than 30 years ago, and my parents still have it on the island cupboard in their kitchen.

When did crayons and glue become the way to do crafts anyway? Wouldn't it be better if kids either made things that actually were useful, or at least learned the beginnings of a skill (such as braiding or knitting) that one day could lead them to produce useful things?

Show me the advantage in following the directions in a kit of self-adhesive precut shapes to make a cheap snowman that'll fall apart by Christmas. 'Cause I can't see one.



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.

bad news for the bees

Big-size problems are brewing for agriculture in the United States: The honeybee population is dwindling dramatically. From the Star-Ledger:

Jean-Claude Tassot felt the sunshine spilling over his shoulders. It was unseasonably warm for January -- a good day, he decided, to check his honeybees. So Tassot jumped in his truck and rumbled over the back roads of Morris County to the first of the eight farms where he stores his boxes of hives.

"When you first take the cover off, usually you can see the bees," said Tassot. "But when I looked, there was nothing. I kept looking (but) the hives were all dead."

Read the entire article

It's tough to say what the culprit is, whether it's pesticides, bioengineered corn, mites or some previously unknown disease, but what's bad for the honeybees is bad for the entire agricultural industry and everyone who eats food that requires pollination. (That would include the human race.)

Best thing to do? Stop using pesticides and messing with the DNA of our food, plant a vegetable garden, and give part of your lawn over to wildflowers, so that wild honeybees, if there are any near you, can start to make a comeback.

Who the heck needs grass? Most of us wouldn't have a clue how to eat it, it's dull to see if for acre after acre, and it doesn't do much for biodiversity if everyone's growing turf on their corner of suburbia. I'll never understand how it became our chief crop in the first place.

my footprint

So I took the test at www.myfootprint.org, and while I'll agree that I'm not as environmentally sensitive as I should be, I think the recycling, composting and other day-to-day things we do here at the house make us a little better than this.

Nah. I'm probably just being defensive.

CATEGORY	GLOBAL ACRES
Food	6.9
Mobility	1
Shelter	7.4
Goods/Services	5.7
TOTAL FOOTPRINT	21
In comparison, the average ecological footprint in your country is 24 global acres per person. Worldwide, there exists 4.5 biologically productive global acres per person. If everyone lived like you, we would need 4.7 planets.

Want to make a difference on Earth Day? Go organic

Today is Earth Day. Forget for a minute the canard you've Heard about how every day should be Earth Day, and how we should love the earth, our universal mother. Popular as they are, such oversimple sentiments produce little of the meaningful change that Earth Day has been about for the last 34 years. If you want to make a difference, go organic.

That means two things, the simpler being a change in diet, and the second a more encompassing change in lifestyle. A basic organic lifestyle involves a commitment to buying — or, better yet, raising — produce grown without chemical fertilizers, pesticides or defoliant. Part of that is just a matter of taste. Organically grown carrots taste more like carrots, the tomatoes taste more like tomatoes and the apples taste more like apples, than the usual fare we settle for at the supermarket. Once the sole purview of health food stores, organic food in the last several years has moved into America's supermarkets, making it increasingly easier to find, even in the prepared foods section.

If you're already accustomed to eating organic produce, make the leap to other foods. Organic meats can be harder to come by than organic produce, but they are well worth the effort. As with organic produce, organic meat is at once more flavorful and far healthier than conventional meat, coming as it does from animals that are not confined to narrow cages nor subjected to the other inhumane conditions that are a standard practice among factory farms.

Besides food, there are any number of other organic practices that any of us can implement easily and reasonably cheaply. Skip the chemical fertilizers, and build the soil in your yard with natural supplements such as finished compost or organic fertilizers. Forget the pesticides, and add a birdfeeder or bat box to your back yard and let nature take care of the biting, stinging, crawling insects. A commitment to organic gardening makes for a much more beautiful and far healthier lawn in the long run than chemical treatments that leach the natural nutrients out of the soil, put young children at risk, and pollute our waterways.

Like anything else that is worth undertaking, adopting an organic lifestyle is something that will come in stages. Take the first steps today, and make this Earth Day one where you make a difference that will last a lifetime