Working Hands

This morning I filled up a sink with hot water to soak my hands. The tendonitis in my right hand and wrist is so acute that I have to begin my day with this service to myself before I can even hold a toothbrush. It provides a nice moment of enforced stillness.

My hands aren't "pretty" these days. They are bigger than they were a few months ago. I have calloused palms, and the fingernails are trimmed short. There are stains on my thumbs and forefingers from some turning, twisting task I did yesterday while working on the drip irrigation. They are rough and work-worn, and strong, despite the tendonitis. I feel a sort of pride in my hands that overcomes any notion that women should have soft, graceful hands. Instead, I have tough, graceful hands. This is the result of my reorientation towards self-sufficiency and recovered ability to act on my own behalf.

I’ve always been a “doer,” and had a fierce pride in doing things for myself, my way. However, there were simply some realms into which I could not or would not venture. Being handy with tools was one of those—I relied on my friends, significant others, or hired skilled professionals. I didn’t see regular household maintenance or improvement as a HAPPY opportunity. Let’s just say that I’ve thrown a few screwdrivers in temper tantrums along the way toward my current limited but much improved capability.

I’ve been learning to do those once reviled tasks by starting small and keeping in mind that each effort helps combat entropy—my “purpose” in life these days. The biggest difference between the end result of throwing tools, and brushing off my hands to survey a job adequately completed by my own two hands is this: TIME. It takes a long time for this novice to install a new doorbell, snake a clogged drain, install a drip irrigation timer and lines, or clean up a pack rat midden. Part of that time is used in assembling the right tools, accounting for trial and error, repeated head scratching over “interesting” printed instructions, resting my hands, recharging the handheld drill, taking a series of trips to the hardware store, and the sheer grinding audacity to keep going when everything is in a heap or tangle.

My recent efforts have taught me some discretion, too. Now I have a pretty good idea about what I might attempt by myself versus something I’ll leave to an expert. A few weeks ago I met a wonderful octogenarian handyman who comes to work with his retired RN wife, and I pay him to do with grace, efficiency and durability what I can’t or won’t do myself. There is much less desperation and much more pride in this approach.

My next self-taught course in simple living and self-sufficiency will be sewing. I’ve had numerous opportunities to learn from others. My mother, my grandmother, my ex-husband's grandmother and others have offered to teach me, but I couldn’t maintain the motivation or summon the patience. (Remind me to tell you the story of my one week enrolled in a high school home economics class before I switched to computers--as if learning to make a boolian loop so some clever phrase could pass across a nine-inch monitor was more applicable for my life than cooking, sewing and playing mother to an egg for a week).

Maybe adulthood brings an increased respect for basic householding needs. It turns out that such domestic tasks are not necessarily the drudgery and labor that women of my generation have been socialized to reject in favor of “important” work. They are ways to make a living, to keep a home, to achieve. It will be interesting to see how the appearance of my hands changes as I take on this new kind of work.

Kindred Spirits

I've been gratified by the response to my blog so far. I announced it to my friends, far and wide, and received many responses with comments about what they are doing in their part of the planet to make a positive difference. W, in Hawaii, is exploring vermiculture. C, in Northern Arizona, is learning his own lessons about simplicity. D, in Florida, is feeding her children tasty free-range chicken and eliminating preservatives, coloring and other nasty stuff from their diet. Good on ya, mates! Let's keep it up...

Low Impact Week Starts June 1st. Wanna Play?

No Impact Man pointed me to this initiative. See the Crunchy Chicken Blog for guidelines on how to play.

I already do most of the things on this list, so here are the extra efforts I'll go to this coming week:

Try to visit as many local farmers' markets as I can this week, as long as each one is not too far away and can be included with other essential errands/car trips

Take the bus to see how that might work for getting to work

Unplug the TV, VCR, DVD player and stereo all week to see what my kids do. Heh heh heh...

Happy days as you go lightly...
Heather

Living Simple Ain't Easy

I'm one of those people who has craved simplicity for so long that I've helped subsidize an entire genre of books on the topic. So I KNOW that simply reading about it doesn't do the job, nor does it fulfill the longing. But I've also had a pretty realistic idea of what simple living really means. I didn't really have daydreams about lollygagging my life away, reading with my feet up and eating carob bon-bons.

I was raised with these principles, after all. Chopping kindling, digging rocks out of the ground before planting the vegetable garden, walking home from cross country practice, etc. were not really EASY. And yet I've wanted to go back to that kind of life, and bring my kids along with me. I want them to have memories of home-cooked meals, supplemented with home-grown accoutrements. I want the random TV dinner-type meal to be the rare exception, and maybe even as much of a treat as it was for me when I was a kid... remember those Swansons macaroni meals in the aluminum foil trays? Yum. I don't eat that now because of trans fats... I digress.

So the other day as I strung a clothesline in the back yard, shook out the damp clothes from the washing machine, and clipped them up with light-duty clothespins, I realized that taking this extra fifteen to twenty minutes certainly used up more time than rolling the wads of wet clothes into the dryer, twisting a dial and pushing a button. But when I went back inside the house, it was QUIET. No dull rumbling, no extra heat generated so I'd have to turn down the air conditioning. While I was outside, I watched our resident cardinals flirt and twitter and shake up the branches of the lemon tree. I took a few minutes to survey my little vegetable garden efforts and bent to pull a few weeds. I watched a high-flying airplane trace a con trail against the blue, blue sky.

It seems almost trite to sing the praises of these small moments, but sometimes Trite means True. I felt better after hanging my laundry because I did it deliberately. I fit in a little Mindful Meditation, hey, look at that. Also, the desert sun dried most of the clothes in less than twenty minutes, which is certainly faster than my electric dryer. In terms of altruism, I spared the Earth a couple of pounds of carbon emissions and put aside a tiny bit of coal for someone who needs it more than I do.

I'm not quite to the point where I am taking a year to do a No Impact Experiment, like Colin Beavan and family in New York City, or Barbara Kingsolver and family in Appalachia, as accounted in her book, Animal, Vegetable, and Miracle: A Year of Food Life. (Not unless I get a book deal out of it, that is. Any takers?) However, I am inspired by their efforts, and instructed by the lessons they share by doing it the hard way so I can follow in their footsteps with greater ease.

The children stir, it's time to get them dressed and fed and to day care so I can get to work. Maybe later, if I'm lucky, I'll get to do the laundry.

Cheers,
Heather

Compost Happens

I've managed to engage in one small aspect of Sustainable Home Living for years and years in all the various residences I've occupied. It's so normal to me now that when I am cooking at a friend's house, I invariably walk around with a handful of vegetable scraps, asking, "Where's your compost bucket?"

I suppose it is just "What you do" because we had a compost pile at home while I was growing up, until our dog Sapphire, a well-fed, wag-your-whole-body black lab garnered the title Compost Queen because she liked to roll in the pile. Even that didn't stop us, but the bears did. We still have to figure out how to bear-proof a compost heap.

Several years ago, the City of Tucson subsidized these great beehive compost bins, for which I got up EARLY to drive to the park to get in line for the limited supply of bins. Good thing for my efforts, because they soon ran out. One of my friends mentioned that she has hers in a garage, and doesn't use it because of a pest problem. When she offered to sell it to me, I started salivating.

I know--there is a lot of weird psychological stuff going on in these posts, from potty training to pushing buttons to salivating at the idea of rotting garbage. I'll leave the diagnoses to the professionals. But really, if you tasted some of the volunteer tomatoes, squash and other morsels that have sprung from my compost heap without any input from me, your mouth might start to water, too. And I KNOW that if you came over for dinner and got to snip your own salad herbs, rinse 'em, dress 'em and eat 'em, you wouldn't even chortle. Yum yum.

Compost is great. No matter how much organic waste I toss in, the pile stays about the same size. I water it, stir it around every once in a while, and keep adding kitchen scraps. My oldest kid eagerly volunteers, "I'll take out the compost, Mama!" (You have to train them early when you're a single mom with medical challenges. It's not slave labor, it's, uh, helpful education. No matter that he's still in preschool.)

I started going garden crazy this season, and I mined the soil for the first time at this house. Before that I'd had to be content with the five or six lucious volunteer compost-cultivated tomatoes I plucked each season. But now I'm getting deliberate about harvesting my dinner. I also had to do something to disguise those big silver cisterns in my yard after a neighbor complained that a big steel tank out in the desert was ugly. Give me a season for fast-growing Tombstone rose and trumpet vine, and it will be better. Especially if I scoop some of that moist, dark, wormy, spongy, aromatic compost and spread it liberally over the planting beds and tree wells.

What I like best is that it's EASY. Granted, I take out the trash in three separate containers, but that's a small effort. When I'm not well, I can just toss the scraps on the pile and go back to bed. I can leave it be and it will happen all by itself. My compost is the way I like my men: low maintenance, nurturing, darkly handsome... Okay, that's enough of that. I must be punchy this morning. Though there is something to that metaphor that bears investigation.

Here is some information for the novice composter. It's hard to mess it up, and there is compost for every scale and location. This is one area where I'm all for entropy... for a good cause.

How to Compost: http://www.howtocompost.org/

How to Make Compost: http://www.compostguide.com/

Guide to Composting: http://www.gardenguides.com/how-to/tipstechniques/planning/compost.asp

Happy Composting!

Many Waters

Water harvesting. Physical therapy. Meditation. Anger management. There are many motivations for this activity.

Here is a "Before" picture of my efforts to redirect rainwater to make the most of this precious desert resource. Eventually I'll be able to link back to this with my proud "After" shot.

In the meantime, I've been having a good time out in the sun and rain, digging little trenches and building berms, with no real plan behind it, despite my semi-scientific observation and photographs of where the water puddles. The most fun I've had in weeks was last Wednesday when it rained for over an hour, and I went outside with my shovel and a hat and played in the mud. It's not science, and it's not precise, and it's not even very orderly. But it feels good and it will lead to better things.

A Polemic against Planned Obsolescence

Note: This column was originally published in the Winter 2007 edition of The SAWPer, the Newsletter of the Southern Arizona Writing Project.

Recently, my cell phone contract came up for renewal. I reluctantly conceded that I “need” my cell phone to coordinate events in my role of divorced co-parent of two preschool children, gypsy scholar, and freelancer who is hardly ever in one predictable place with a real phone where I can be reached. So I renewed the contract. My phone promptly malfunctioned--I’m not kidding--the same week! When I went to the Unnamed Wireless Store to describe and solve my problem, the salesman joked that they had a “button” to push at the reactivation of each contract so customers have to “upgrade” their phones after they’re already committed. “Just kidding,” he said. Ha, ha, I said, muttering under my breath about seeing the design and marketing principle of planned obsolescence in action.

When informed that no, my cell phone could NOT be fixed, I insisted that I be pointed to the cheapest replacement model they had. The sales staff got my message and stopped trying to describe in delectable terms the lusciously necessary features of the shiny phones attached by wires to the displays in the center of the store, and led me to the back, to a nondescript grey shelf with two options. The one I selected (as if it mattered) wasn’t in stock.

I assumed that this new phone would fit right into my lifestyle, presto chango. To some extent, it did; for a “small fee” I had them transfer over all the stored telephone numbers and other information I’d fumbled to enter into my phone over the two years I owned it. But none of the “accessories” fit the new phone: not the battery rechargers (for home or auto) nor the handy belt clip/carrying case, or any of the other glamorous cell phone add-ons that lined the shelves, but that I’d rejected the first time, and certainly wasn’t going for now.

“What am I supposed to do with all this old stuff?” I asked. An apologetic shrug was the only answer I received. Now it’s all in a bag on a shelf in my office closet, waiting for its new home—along with an old computer hard drive, an old laptop, and various computer accessories that have started to pile up as I’ve upgraded over the years. Once I took my old Apple Macintosh—the one with the four inch monitor that I’d purchased upon graduation from college—to a local computer store because I heard they “donated” old equipment to some worthy cause. I handed over a box of bulky machinery and attachments, and watched as it was haphazardly piled into a storage shed in the back of the shopping center to join a tiny representative sample of all the abandoned plastic, metal, rubber, and whatever mysterious ingredients make up these technological tools we are learning to make use of every day. What really happens to all that stuff?

“Donate your old phone to the Brewster Center,” a friend advised me when I began to formulate my rant. “They distribute the phones to victims of domestic violence to use in case of emergency.” That would be a great idea if my phone worked, but in that case, I’d still be using it myself. I’ve also been advised by well-meaning friends to “donate” my old computer to a school. Sounds great, do something to support education! I’m all for that!

But here’s what I don’t know: if I don’t want the crummy old thing and my needs have outgrown its capacities, or if it doesn’t even work anymore (which is really the only reason I tend to replace something like that), why would I want to burden someone else with it? Does an average school system have a process for the intake, repair, distribution, installation and maintenance of these antique machines? I somehow doubt it; feel free, readers, to correct me if I’m wrong.

I can’t in good conscience pass on my pain in the neck to someone else. I need more viable, conscionable alternatives, and I need to know more about the path my junk will take when it leaves my care: not just where it goes next, but where it ultimately ends up. If it is dumped in a landfill now or after it’s been driven around town a few times, it’s still “my bad,” to use a bit of current vernacular. My karmically-motivated, individually accountable self is still winning out over the part of me that wants to clear my clutter in a nice clean sweep for the new year.

Ultimately, I want to do something to put a stop to the practice of planned obsolescence. Tweaking the circuitry for every new model is certainly commercially feasible--what a way to make a buck on newer and shinier gadgets--but it creates a gigantic mess in a very short amount of time, if a cell phone or computer has an active lifespan of only a few years, and so many of us are clamoring for the newer, faster (or simply functional) model. What can I do as a semi-conscious consumer and ordinary citizen to make a whit of difference, aside from ranting about the problem?

I’ve posed a lot of questions without providing a single solution. At the moment I don’t have enough of the tenacity required to serve as investigative reporter, so all I can do is show where I have started in my own search for solutions. I hope some of this information can help others battle the growing mound of technical detritus that is backing up in homes and/or workplaces (I know I’m not the only one).

As a parent, educator and common citizen of our planet, I charge myself and others to think carefully and critically about the solutions we choose to implement as we deal with this issue. Please, let us learn ways to defeat the monster of consumerism and clean up its defecation while responsibly sustaining the convenience and quality of our lives.

Places to start:
• McDonough, William and Michael Braungart. 2002. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. New York: North Point Press.
If the issues that I touch on in this column disturb you even a little bit, PLEASE read this book. Then join the Cradle to Cradle Community.
• A web resource by Earth911: Making Every Day Earth Day. This site answers some of my questions with its various informative links, and even provides a search function (by zip code for precision) to find reuse and recycling centers in our own communities.

Walking the Walk: Investing in Sustainability

I'm an educator. The most BASIC premise of my philosophy of teaching is to be a good role model, practice what I preach, observe The Golden Rule, walk the walk, talk the talk, be a woman of action.

To that end, I want to share a few of my own humble efforts to Save The World. I have to point out that Technicians for Sustainability manifested my intention with their excellent work. Talk about walking the walk--they really do put values into action.

And yes, they include my testimonial in the rotation of compliments on their work on the homepage. I just found that when I verified the link so I could share with y'all. "It's amazing what pride and serenity I feel as I go about my daily routine, and see the results of your efforts and my investment. I have wanted to do this work for years, and it feels like a big accomplishment to finally have all of these systems in place. I am very, very pleased." Heather S., solar hot water, photovoltaic and rainwater catchment customer. Amazing how tickled I get to see my name in print, especially in unexpected sources. It's like that scene in Amelie where the discouraged writer, Hipolito, sees a quote from his work painted on the wall with his name beneath it. It puts a little hop in your step.

I have two rainwater collection cisterns made of corrugated culverts. One is 4x8 feet, and it holds approximately 650 gallons of water, and receives about 520 gallons per 1 inch of rain. Another is 5x8 feet, and holds approximately 1,000 gallons of water, receiving about 480 gallons per one inch of rainfall.

My Photovoltaic System is 3,150 watts DC with an estimated monthly production of 400KWH. My estimated monthly environmental savings include 890 pounds of CO2, 400 pounds of coal, 1.5 pounds NOx and 2.5 pounds of SO2. (For the techies, my system is, specifically, a 18 Solarworld 175 monoP model with a Xantrex GT3.0 inverter, mounted on a shingle roof with a 32° pitch.)

My solar hot water heater is a Sunearth Solaray closed loop system. This includes a 4x8-foot solar collector mounted above the garage, an 80 gallon water electric water heater with internal heat exchanger, differential controller and AC pump.

I have a Metlund electric water pumping system that brings hot water to my master bathroom (furthest from the water heater) by pulling water from the hot water tank and returning ambient house temperature water back to the hot water tank. I push a button, wait a few minutes while the small motor under my sink whirs away, then I step right into a warm shower. Not a single gallon gets poured down the drain while I wait for the water to heat up. The kids enjoy pushing buttons, especially for a good cause. The pump was installed with grace by The Solar Store, where I also obtained a solar oven.

I have two Gerber 1.6 gpf (gallons per flush!) dual flush toilets, which use air to help move waste along the way to the septic tank. My timing may not have been very good for installing those last year at the peak of potty training my youngest, because they are LOUD and he's still afraid to flush the toilet in his bathroom. "Let's do it together," he says, and then he shudders and jumps and asserts, "I'm brave!" when the deed is done.

My children enjoy taking their showers out on the patio with my solar shower, a device that I unearthed from my camping box. The novelty hasn't yet worn off, and the 4 gallons of water gives my patio-side mint collection a good watering every evening.

So this is some of what I do at home to Live in Syn(tropy).

Cheers,
Heather

The Blog Begins

Hey there, Hi there, Ho there, it's Heather.

Yes, Marla, you were right... eventually I had to cave in and do the Blog thing.

The theme of this blog is defeating entropy. That's big enough to encompass my current passions for sustainability, permaculture, solar power, water harvesting, desert gardening, eating locally, frugality, effective education, creative inquiry, healing, and simple living. I'll share some of my most inspiring sources, toss out a few observations here and there, and engage in dialogue about what we can do, as individuals, to contribute to the positive forces of negative entropy. How's that for a beginning?

If this isn't much for your Blog appetite, please visit No Impact Man. He's doing a great experiment in New York City, and though we haven't met yet, he's a kindred spirit.

Cheers,
Heather