Mendolonium

Somehow I lost my way.  It didn’t happen all at once, but was a slow process, like getting lost in a place you thought you knew how to navigate through.  One wrong turn, thinking “I’ll just go down this road awhile, then I will find a place to turn around.”  By the time I realized I was well and truly lost, I didn’t know how to find my way back.  And I had picked up two “passengers”; wonderful little boys who have brought me a joy more deep than any I ever known, yet demanded so much of me I could not navigate my way back.

I was lost in a job I hated; it was a boring and meaningless path – taken solely for the good pay and benefits along with a desirable seven minute commute.  I tried to ignore the job; look for another path with more interest, but the same benefits.  I thought that perhaps I could be happy by pouring my ambition and intellect into my children, my home, and my garden.  The children are more intellectually stimulating than I ever thought they could be, but they are not enough.  The house is the only true home I have ever known, but it is not enough.  The garden is flourishing, but it is not enough.  I am not my children.  I am not my home.  I am not my garden.

Ah ha, I thought!  I will work for the cause of building sustainable food systems.  I am passionate and knowledgeable about that.  But working three days a week, taking care of the children all day two days a week, and most of the day another two days a week; all the while baking bread, hanging out the laundry, starting seeds, and bringing order to the clutter – there was no time left for much of anything else.  I have managed to do a little for just myself:  exercise class, this blog, plowing through library books at one in the morning, but it is not enough.  I need to go farther than exercise class.  I want to write books, not just read them.

Somehow in my mind the choice crystallized into three options.

• Option A:  Stay in my current, easy job.  Work part-time.  Have enough time for the kids, the house, and the garden.  Work on living ever more sustainably with the goal of working less outside the home – disengaging our lives from the “machine” that is modern society.  Perhaps even “stay-home” full time some day?  Homeschool?
• Option B:  Look for a new job.  Find an interesting, meaningful, “save the world”  part-time job with the same pay, benefits, schedule, and commute as my current job.  Perfectly balance motherhood and work.  Live happily ever after.
• Option C:  Look for a new job.  Find an interesting, meaningful, “save the world” job.  Accept that such a job will be demanding and full-time.  Jeff has offered to stay home with the children.  They will be well loved and taken care of.  Make the most of our time together on the weekends.  Buy the bread.  Order more takeout.  Accept that to have an interesting, modern job I must lead a more modern, unsustainable life.

I tried option A, but after three years of trying I couldn’t do it anymore – it was partly responsible for landing me in a therapist’s office soaking in post-partum depression.  I tried option B.  Not surprisingly, technical jobs such as mine pay vastly more than jobs where one saves the world at a non-profit.  And those jobs aren’t part-time either – not unless you would like to volunteer.  I flirted with Option C:  went on a couple of interviews, contacted colleagues about new opportunities.  Jobs were offered.  Opportunities were presented and I realized that I didn’t want Option C anymore than Option A.  I cannot be myself with Option A and I cannot be the mother I love to be with Option C.  I was paralyzed.

One night a few weeks ago I couldn’t take my life for one more second and I lumbered out of the woods like a bear emerging from hibernation and made changes.  And I chose Option D:  none of the above.  I fired off a midnight email to an old colleague and asked how to get my “old” (the job I had pre-Thomas) job back.  I was happier then – traveling the country and the world, solving problems, living my own life.  “But the commute!” (1+ hour) I protested.  “But those aren’t the problems I want to solve.  I want to save the world!” I protested.  “I can’t leave my children.  I don’t want to travel.” I protested.  I decided to accept that the commute is not sustainable – but neither is depression.  I decided that I can’t think about saving the world if I am miserable in my own.  I decided that I can leave my children for a bit – brief absences will make our hearts grow fonder.  I decided to work two days a week rather than three – even while the children will be in school one day a week.  I will have one day – one blessed day to write, to research what I really want to be, to take classes.  It seems like utter decadence to do such a thing, yet I am giddy with the thought.  I will continue to bake the bread, hang the laundry, and start the seeds, but the housework will revert to a true 50/50 split between Jeff and I. It won’t be perfect, but I will begin living my life again.  I will find a way to live in the modern world while it lasts and build a sustainable future.

I walked through LAX on Tuesday morning to catch a flight to Washington, D.C.  Walking through terminal 7 to catch a United plane, something I’ve done  dozens of times, but not for the past (nearly) four years was like slipping into a comfortable pair of shoes.  It wasn’t exactly like old times; I carried a breast pump and pictures of my children with me.  I had packed a lunch with carrots I pulled out of the ground with the boys not even 24 hours before.  And I smiled.   I have found myself:  mother, wife, farmer, writer, intellectual, Gina.

Whether you’ve been following the live pictures of oil spewing out of the blown wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico or whether you have been getting news of the catastrophe through more pedestrian means such as reading the newspaper; the conclusion is the same:  what is likely to be considered the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history is unfolding before our eyes.  I say U.S. history, because environmental catastrophes of this magnitude are all too common in other regions of the world.  For example did you know Nigeria, which supplies 40% of the U.S. crude oil supply, is the oil spill capitol of the world; a dubious distinction it has “earned” with cumulative oil leaks  equivalent to the current Gulf spill every single year .  I didn’t know that until recently.  Why didn’t I know; because that disaster most directly affects people of color in a poor nation?  The Gulf spill is  playing out on the white, tourist friendly (or shall I say formerly tourist friendly) beaches of a rich, first world country and is thus receiving constant attention.  Oil leaking out into the environment is certainly most unwelcome regardless of location; but I do welcome increased scrutiny on oil:  how it is extracted, how it is used, and the consequences of that use.  I have heard inklings of the larger picture from the media, musings that “we need to reduce our dependence on oil”.  True enough, but musings from the media are not being translated into real change.  To be perfectly blunt:  we need to vastly reduce our energy usage and there is one obvious way to do so:  to stop driving our cars.  We don’t need to “Drill Baby Drill”…or new rallying cry should be to “Walk Baby Walk”.

Reform has to be far more sweeping than increased oversight of drilling operations, we need policies that dramatically curb the use of personal automobiles, and by extension oil, and we need them quickly.  While BP is certainly, to use a phrase my mother taught me, “guilty as sin” the United States government (both Republican and Democratic administrations) has crafted and implemented policies that effectively encourage the use of oil;  specifically the extensive of cars by individual citizens.  In order to dramatically reduce our use of fossil fuel and all its attendant negative consequences we need government policies that encourage us to hang up our car keys and put on our walking shoes.  President Obama has yet to solicit my opinion, but if he were to ask here is what I have in mind:

• Massive investment in public transportation infrastructure.  People cannot give up their cars if they cannot get to where they need to go without one.  Rural areas should have regional transport hubs; places where one can park their car and then take a train or bus to another regional transport hub…think someone trying to get from Fresno, California to Santa Barbara California or from Columbus, Nebraska to Grand Island, Nebraska.  Service needs to be predictable, efficient, and reasonably priced.  In urban areas it must be completely possible to get around without the use of a car at all.  Specifically, major schools, cultural centers, hospitals, airports, shopping districts, etc. all need to be able to accessed quickly and efficiently.  In Los Angeles, it is something of a joke that our light rail system does not go major destinations such as the airports, UCLA, the county museums, or the county hospitals.  Expensive infrastructure investments could be a difficult proposition given our increasing economic austerity; however such investments build something lasting that would provide us and future generations with a better life.  Last month’s jobs data reported that 411,000 government jobs were created as temporary census workers.  Can you imagine the positive economic and societal impact from 411,000 long-term, well-paying jobs that actually built something rather than just counted people.
• Disincentivise the use of gas through additional taxes on the oil industry and on gasoline itself.  This would not be politically popular, but it would be effective.  When gas spiked to nearly $5.00 per gallon, I heard countless, well-educated, upper middle class people say, “With gas so expensive, I am really thinking about how to minimize my driving” or “I figured out how to use the train/bus/bike to get to work”.  Now that the price of gas is down to a more “reasonable” $3.00 per gallon, where are the vast majority of those people…back in their cars.  Double the price of gas and I can guarantee you that people will think twice before driving.  You will also create a large new constituency to support public transportation.  You may argue that such an increase in prices will hurt people economically and I will wholeheartedly agree with you…that’s the point.  Is your concern for the poor and those struggling to get by?  Chances are those folks are already using public transport, walking, and limiting their driving – they’ve never been able to afford driving around in an SUV.  Is your concern for the middle class folks who are struggling with job losses, adjusting mortgages, and the like?  It was the price of housing, health care, and food that likely got those people to the edge of economic survival in the first place…why not raise the price of gas and help those folks out with healthcare or staying in their homes? Why the sudden concern for them over gas prices?  Are you concerned about small businesses? If your business model depends on large amounts of gasoline based transportation; then that is a heavily polluting business model that we need to think long and hard about maintaining. How might we help those people transform into sustainable business models?  The price of goods and services needs to accurately reflect their costs; the price of gasoline does not accurately reflect its devastating environmental cost; if it did we’d use a lot less.
• Making communities pedestrian, bike, and public transport friendly, while making them less hospitable to cars.  Some ideas:  safe bike corridors (perhaps by removing on street parking).  Any new building should allow pediatricians access without having to traipse through a parking lot.  Bike racks should be provided.  Parking should be limited and should be fee-based…no free parking.
• Improve the quality of and require students to attend neighborhood schools.  In Pasadena, “school choice” has resulted in some schools flourishing as involved parents from higher socio-economic backgrounds work to improve a school and then other similar parents subsequently improve the school resulting in a positive feedback loop.  The converse is also true; some schools are virtually abandoned by involved families and are left at the bottom of the heap.  The system results in thousands of students every day being driven to schools outside of walking distance from their home.  This scenario repeats itself over and over across America.  What a ridiculous waste of energy when nearly every home in Pasadena has at least two public elementary schools less than one mile away.  What if students were required to attend a neighborhood school and those neighborhoods schools were all high quality?  Why you would reduce gasoline consumption, desegregate schools, and improve education.
• Lead by example.  The government should be a model of energy conservation; Consideration should be given to silting facilities near public transportation.  Employees should be given incentives to use public transportation or walk/bike.

Note that some of these solutions are relatively inexpensive (a return to neighborhood schools) or neutral (parking restrictions incorporated during the design phase), and others may actually be revenue positive (increased gas taxes).  These thoughts are useful and important, but I honestly don’t hold for a top-down government solution.  In my opinion it is far more likely that real change will come from the bottom up:  quite literally by “voting with our feet”.

The effects of massive gasoline usage can be subtle; increased asthma rates in children due to breathing exhaust pollutants, decreased rainfall due to global warming; sea level rise flooding villages in Bangladesh.  While the human burning of fossil fuels has definitively caused great harm to our health and our climate the connection is sometimes difficult to make.  Now the connection is made plain to us in the images of the Gulf spill; one of oil’s many catastrophes:  black liquid chugging relentlessly out into the ocean, dead oil-soaked birds staring out at us vacantly; sobbing fishermen wondering how they will ever work again to feed their families.  At the same time we see the CEO of BP, Tony Hayward make stunningly selfish statements such as his now infamous “I’d like my life back”.   We see the oil industry for what it really is:  a profit generating machine; destroying lives and the environment for short-term gain. The gasoline that you pump into your tank didn’t magically appear at the gas station.  It was pumped from somewhere, and some of it was almost certainly spilled in the process.  The money that you pay for gasoline isn’t enriching the lives of the people from where it was pumped; it is lining the pockets of oil investors with billions of dollars per year.   I hear people asking, “What can I do?” about the oil spill in the Gulf, “How can I help?”  I saw recently that a program has been set up where you can automatically text a donation to the clean-up effort from your mobile phone; you get to feel good without getting your hands dirty, without effecting real change or doing real work.  If you want to donate, by all means do so.  But let’s be honest, neither BP nor we as concerned citizens can buy our way out of this problem.  You want to punish BP, you want to stop this from happening again and continuing to happen to people in places like the Niger delta?  It’s not about what you do…it’s about what you don’t do.

Don’t drive.

I know it isn’t easy to dramatically reduce our driving; to change our entire way of life.  I don’t wish to trivialize what we need to do.  But we have a choice.  Anyone who has access to a computer, how has the luxury of reading a blog; has choices.  You can choose to get in the car and burn the oil that was pumped out of the ground.  Or you can choose to walk.  What are you going to do?

Walk Baby Walk!

There’s a Tim McGraw Song, Where the Green Grass Grows, I like to listen to from time to time.  It speaks to a theme familiar in American life since the industrial revolution:

Rural vs. Urban

Homogeneous vs. Diverse

Conservative vs. Liberal

Slow vs. Fast

Safe vs. Dangerous

Grass vs. Concrete

Dull vs. Exciting

Backward vs. Cultured

Open Space vs. Crowded

Country vs. City

Tim wants to live where the green grass grows, watch his corn pop up in rows, and plant his dreams where the peaceful river flows.  Hell, I want that too.  Sounds good.  Sign me up.  But Tim goes on to tell us that he’s from “a map dot, a stop sign on the black top”.  He laments that “there’s concrete growin’ in the city park”, that he doesn’t know who his neighbors are, and that there’s “bars on the corner”.  Well, actually our neighborhood park is pretty spectacular.  I know my neighbors and count them among my closest friends.  And  there aren’t any bars on the corner of our neighborhood, but there is a nice little Italian grocery.  Tim’s song speaks to me on the days I have to take to the freeway and I become a speck on the concrete beast winding its way throughout Los Angeles.   Even after 13 years in Pasadena, I still feel a bit claustrophobic by the relatively close spacing of the houses   When I go outside to  garden I  dream being greeted with silence rather than the sound of leaf blowers, wind chimes, and the dull roar of the nearest freeway.

And then there are the days when the city seems to me to encompass everything wonderful in the world.    Our neighborhood here has shown me just how much I value a home where I can walk to the library, post office, shopping,  farmer’s market, and parks.  I am less than a one mile walk to train station from which I can, quite literally, use as my jumping off point to the entire world.  And it is almost-sitcom perfect, how our tiny street is now home to six boys age four and under.  I smile every time I hear our neighbor’s four year old son shout from his open window across the street, “Thomas!!!” and the top of his lungs.

Dammit, I want both…the city and the country.  Why do we have to choose?

As I drove over the Los Angeles river this week and noticed the trees growing up in a soft-bottomed stretch, I realized that the choice between urban and rural is a false choice.  The answer to this “choice” has been given to us as the monstrosity that is suburbia, but this is not the way things have to be.  Why can’t rivers and creeks flow though the city?   Why can’t Pasadena be a city of roses and of mini-farms?  Why the hell can’t city gardeners put down their leaf blowers and pick up a rake? I want the best of both worlds and if modern society doesn’t offer it to me than I suppose we shall just have to go about creating it ourselves?  Want to join me?

A few weeks ago I covered our current and past year gasoline usage. Today I am going to summarize our natural gas usage. In the U.S., the average household uses 1000 therms of natural gas per year. In our house we use natural gas for cooking, drying clothes, and heating.

In 2007 we used 517 therms or 52% of the national average. The table above shows that through the first six months of this year we have used 227 therms or 23 % of the national average of natural gas. If we are to keep consuming at the same rate, we will use 46% of the national average by the end of the year.

What factors go into our usage?

• My sister lived with us from July of 2007 through mid-March 2008. This resulted in somewhat higher usage than we would have otherwise had. She still does her laundry at our house – resulting in approximately 2 additional loads through the clothes dryer each week.
• Our numbers are somewhat increased over what might be typical because I dry 2 – 3 loads of cloth diapers per week using the dryer.
• Our numbers are slightly reduced because I dry one load of laundry per week on a indoor clothesline (set up over the bathtub).
• I use the stove - a lot. I bake virtually all of our own bread and cook nearly all of our meals. It is not unusual for the oven to be running continuously for several hours on one of my non working days.
• Our stove is a big, old fabulous 1948 Wedgewood behemoth. Even when I am not cooking there are 4 pilot lights on burning 24/7.
• Our house is primarily heated with a one gas powered floor furnace in the center of our hallway. We believe it was installed in the 60s. I doubt that it is very efficient. Due it’s location we usually have it cranked up in the winter which results in a very hot hallway and marginally warmer areas elsewhere in the house.
• This past winter I turned off the furnace (pilot light included) in late January because it was doing such a poor job of heating the house. We instead relied on electric heaters, blankets, and Southern California weather.

How can we do better?

• Do less laundry: I have been trying to reduce our laundry burden by reusing towels, pajamas, and other clothes (if not truly dirty). This also has the added benefits of reducing our electric and water usage as well.
• Install an additional indoor clothesline: We purchased a second clothesline (actually a shower rod) to place above the bathtub; now we “just” have to install it.
• Install an outdoor clothesline: as soon as the backyard is done we plan to install a large retractable clothesline over the driveway. I hope that this will significantly reduce our clothes dryer usage.
• My stove has two ovens and four burners. I most often use the left oven and left side burners. I am considering turning off the pilot lights (2) to the right side of the stove and lighting it as needed.
• Build or purchase a solar oven and/or a wood burning oven for outdoor use. I have grand plans to someday build an outdoor masonry or earth oven for baking bread and pizza.
• Keep the furnace off next winter and use warm clothing, sunlight, and sporadic heating with wood (in the fireplace) and electric space heaters to keep warm. We have begun collecting firewood (from downed street trees, etc.) for winter heating.

Besides the environmental benefits, what are some additional benefits of reducing our consumption of natural gas?

• Less laundry = more time for fun things for Jeff and I. I am the washer and dryer of the clothes, he is the folder. Neither of us think that doing laundry is even remotely fun.
• Exercise. Using a clothes line to dry clothes will result in little more exercise for me each day.
• A cooler kitchen. Turing off the pilot lights and doing more cooking outdoors will certainly help keep our kitchen cooler. Our kitchen is on the west side of our house and when baking in the summer the combination of the heat from the oven and the heat from the afternoon sun can make the kitchen uninhabitable.
• Better tasting food. There is nothing like pizza or bread baked in a wood fired oven.

We have a significant way to go until our natural gas usage is at only 10% of the national average. One of our first challenges will be to determine exactly where our natural gas usage is going now; for example is the stove the greatest user or is it the laundry? We plan to do some experimentation to determine where our greatest usage is so that we can tailor our conservation effectively.