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Teasers, Agitprop, and Funnies
maxwell at cowgirlfunk dot com
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Thursday, October 22, 2009
We Are All Connected
In the event that you have not already seen Symphony of Science's gorgeous auto tuned masterpiece, please remedy below. Science! Wonder! 50 Things: Part One "Guarding Our Buried Treasures"
So, the first section of our little experiment begins to address the problems of limited resources. How can we use things responsibly? How do we take care of them? How can we reduce, reuse, and recycle? How can we best dispose of things that cannot be recycled or reused? I believe we live in a universe teeming with abundance (and empty space) but that's no excuse for seeing how quickly we can alternately devour and fill it with trash. The fact that the earth has such abundance and we've still managed to muck it up for ourselves really says something about human potential. On the other hand, destruction and abandon are great fun for a two year old. That may be an obstacle, but it may be an asset here too. First up is glass recycling. This is something we do already, although I'm a little embarrassed to admit that most of our glass consists of empty wine and beer bottles. Eric saves the mason jars that pasta sauce comes in, despite some of my grumbling. "REUSE!" he proclaims. It is a big R. More on glass recycling later, but I'm curious to know where you store your recycling and if you have any clever reuse projects or ideas. As an aside, I asked the two year old if she'd like to have a "secret" name for the blog. She suggested Agent Froggie. I somehow doubt that will stick. Labels: 50 Things, Green, Recycle, Reuse Wednesday, October 21, 2009
The Year of 50 Simple Things (With a few weeks off for Holidays)
Almost a two years ago, January 19, 2008 to be exact, I wrote about owning 50 Simple Things Kids can do to Save the Earth as a child. You actually don't need to click those links. You can scroll down the page a bit and view that post. That should give you an idea of how infrequently I've been updating. I have a child. I used to write about her on the baby blog called the MiniMax and I'm glad to have that collection of writings, even if it could easily be categorized as Not Very Well Written Writings From That Year I Didn't Sleep. Eventually my baby wasn't such a baby anymore. Yesterday she was helping me recycle. Then I found my old book and I got a crazy, terrible idea that will probably come back to bite me. What if we went through the book together? The book was written in 1990. What still holds true as we near 2010? What can be simplified to the point that a two year old can get it? I don't know if this is a good idea, or a terrible mistake. I don't know if I have the fortitude to show up here for a year and keep talking about it. I am looking forward to the attempt. Wednesday, September 30, 2009
In Which I Plead Ignorance and Ask the Internet for Ideas
Part of my dream of moving to Austin entailed wider, more open spaces and growing my own vegetables. We still live in a fairly urban environment but I had dreams of moving towards a life less on grid. There are plenty of accomplished urban gardeners in New York, so it's hardly an excuse, but my ability and experience keeping plants alive was limited to whatever grew in our window and didn't die when we left for longer than a week. I had Animal, Vegetable, Miracle dreams whose reality reflect The Poisonwood Bible. It has been a study so far in discovering my own ignorance, which is humbling but has its uses.  In the beginning of the summer we had a few tomatoes and the biggest obstacle was convincing our daughter not to pick them green. Then the pinworms came. Pestilence, weather, and my own gardening ignorance continued to ravage the little plot of land I tended. I haven't given up. I saved seeds from various heirloom tomato plants I hope to grow next season. We have a small lemon tree bearing fruit. The jalapeno plant, after losing every single leaf and bloom over the hottest part of the summer, has revived and there are even a few tiny peppers growing. This brings me to aphids, which have been making a scene all summer but now seem to be in full out riot mode. At least so far these aphids are not being herded and milked by ants like the full working ranch we had going on an earlier pepper plant. I planted marigold seeds and little marigold plants are growing...but that has not helped yet. Understandable. Yesterday a kind ladybug stopped by to eat a meal. Hooray. I transferred a marigold plant nearby and today I found that some of the aphids, instead of being repelled by it, have migrated to it. It's too hot to ship ladybugs, which may not be a good or green idea anyway, and once they are released I have no way to contain them. Any ideas? Thursday, July 23, 2009
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
E Pluribus Unum
I went back this morning, sorting through my hidden archives and internet way back machines to find what I had written on November 3, 2004. I had posted a large section of the Audacity of Hope speech Barack Obama gave at the Democratic convention. I think it still stands up.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Plastics
By now you've probably heard of the many ways plastic bags are the minions of Satan, made of polyethylene, a petroleum product, ending up in the landfills but also in our oceans where they look like food to turtles and other sea animals. We've bought cloth bags, but simply buying them doesn't really solve anything. We're still working on the implementing our new cloth bags. We tend to shop daily and we don't always have the cloth bags with us when we go. (Or perhaps I have them, but I'm home with the baby who isn't feeling well, and Eric can pick up food on his way home, but he doesn't have the cloth bags.) We're working on it. At the very least we have stopped throwing away the plastic bags, and are holding onto them to reuse, and most importantly, recycle soon at a store near us. City Council Passes Bill for Recycling of Plastic Bags The City Council on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a bill requiring large stores and retail chains to collect and recycle plastic bags they give to shoppers. New York is by far the largest American city to enact so broad a measure to limit the environmental impact of the bags. Altogether, each year the country is estimated to use 86 billion bags, which end up blowing down city streets, or tangled in the stomachs of whales and sea turtles, or buried in landfills where, environmental organizations say, they persist for as long as 1,000 years. I think it's important to use the cloth bags, and we're working on being organized enough to do that. I look forward to soon being able to recycle the plastic bags we have now. Also, I have a special love for sea turtles. I had the opportunity to swim with a few in Hawaii when I was pregnant with our daughter. If I have a spiritual animal it may very well be the sea turtle. I understand not everyone feels that way. It doesn't really matter if I love sea turtles or not. At some point it goes beyond sea turtles, and even the ways that their lives effect the ecosystem at large, even back to my own household. Carrying my new goods home every day in plastic bags, never giving a thought to where they go when I am done or how disposable they really are is a symptom of living unconsciously, just one of the many ways I've been wandering through life asleep. I'd like to wake up for a while and see where that leads. In other plastic news, I've been turning over all my cartons, looking for the numbers in the recycling symbol before realizing that for curbside recycling in New York, the numbers don't matter. New York will only take plastic containers where the neck is smaller than the bottle. I didn't really take this in, even though I posted recycling info below. So what can I do with my recyclable plastics with good numbers (or bad) that aren't so shapely? And what do good plastic and bad plastic numbers mean? I kind of know, and I have a vague sense of places that might take them, but I don't know really. I'll try to look into that and get back to you. Monday, January 28, 2008
Gdiapers: Starter Kit
A post about a possible alternative to the disposable/cloth diaper debate and living green with baby at The Mini Max. Sunday, January 20, 2008
Wide Open Spaces
You might have heard that we had a baby, and ever since the apartment has just gotten smaller and smaller. A few weeks ago Eric rented a storage space for those things that we really will want to save for the day when we might have more space or another baby (!) but no longer need at the moment. However, I don't want this new space to just become a place to put our garbage so we can buy new garbage (as I say garbage in the most endearing way, I love my garbage!) At the same time I'm all about decluttering. I think it's vital to my well being and the well being of my family. I have space to think in a room that is filled with less stuff. Becoming a mom is turning me into a person with the desire to be a minimalist, but with the reality of carrying three times more things around me with every move I make. Here is some of the things we have been doing and I hope to do with all our stuff. Clothes and some appliances (the juicemaker?) will go to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. Old computers and an old television set were dropped off at Build It Green. We have more electronics to pass along. Left to our own devices we tend to just hold onto these things for years. I think this is a great program if you live in New York. They will wipe your hard drives clean, or you can do it yourself with one of the free programs they mention on the site. Here's a list of what they accept: Working and non-working: New York has curbside recycling. We have been diligently recycling our cans, glass, and plastic for years, but we have not been recycling our paper. We don't take a newspaper, I read it online, and I was frankly ignorant of the rules, so we haven't been taking advantage of that. Here are the rules for recycling in NYC from the National Resources Defense Council. You can also read about them at the NYC Wastele$$ site. Paper: Yes Metal Glass, and Plastic: Yes See, I didn't know that milk cartons were recycled with the plastic bottles. We've cleaned out our pantry and are getting rid of the small amounts of latex paint we were saving for touch ups that will never happen. NYCWastele$$ also provides information fro recycling and donating latex paint. You can find out about recycling in your area by visiting Earth 911. Labels: Declutter, Green, Recycle, Reduce, Reuse |
