|
|
By Chris, on April 12, 2008, at 5:21 pm We don’t know if there’s anyone out there who still hasn’t seen An Inconvenient Truth, but if you haven’t, you really should see it. Al Gore now has a new slide show with some updated statistics up on TED. It’s about a half hour long but it’s well worth watching.
Some of the reasons people who have not watched the movie have given (besides those who for whatever reasons of their own still absolutely refuse to believe global warming exists/is our fault) are that ‘it’s depressing’ and ‘there’s nothing we can do about it anyway’ but actually that’s not true. An Inconvenient Truth really brought home to us the fact that there are things that can be done, as individuals, as nations, and as a united planet, but the window of opportunity in which to do these things is disappearing and the longer we keep our heads in the sand the less chance there is that we can change the outcome.
We expected to come out of the theater depressed and defeated when we saw the film back when it first came out, and instead it actually gave us hope; it helped set us on a path of changing the way we see things and do things. As we made these changes, and adapted to new ways of thinking and acting, it made other steps that previously seemed impractical much more approachable. If you try to do it all at once, it seems insurmountable, but the answer is not to throw up your arms and say “it won’t make a difference anyway” but rather to do whatever you can, and add more as you are able. If enough people make little changes, it helps pave the way for the bigger ones that are needed — we have to completely rethink our behavior on a massive scale but this starts with small steps for each person.
By Chris, on April 4, 2008, at 2:59 pm Joy’s latest solution to the ongoing ant war:
Apparently ants hate cinnamon. The cats don’t seem to be offended by it, and this is working better than the “cat food moat” which Simon turned into “cat food soup”.
By Chris, on April 4, 2008, at 2:27 pm Sunday we went downtown to The Noodle Shop (yum!) and we passed a black man, who appeared to be in his mid to late fifties, sitting on a concrete wall. His left leg was missing above the knee and the stump was propped on a bucket, and as we went by he quietly asked “if we could spare some change on our way back through”. Panhandlers always make me feel awkward and I hurried past him without making eye contact, but all the way up the street I thought about it… how it must be horrible to be sitting out in the cold like that (it was really raw on Sunday, barely went over forty degrees and bitterly windy) and having people look at you like you are dirt… or just not look at you at all, like I did.
I know you always hear stories about how people panhandling are running a scam, or will just spend the money on alcohol or drugs, but maybe that’s just our society’s way of justifying treating human beings like trash? I’ve actually once seen someone toss some change at a man who was begging, and say “you’d better not spend it on a bottle of wine!” which seems so arrogant and disrespectful to me. Or you hear ‘they should get a job’ but how many jobs are there out there right now, let alone for crippled men near retirement age? We read a book recently that paints a pretty good picture of how hard it is for someone who has become homeless to get turned around, “The Street Lawyer” by John Grisham, and I think this helped give us a better understanding of how the “just get a job” answer falls short in reality.
As we ate, I thought about all the statistics on homelessness and mental illness, and how a large percentage of the homeless are Vietnam vets who never got proper treatment for post traumatic stress disorder and other illnesses when they came back. I can’t imagine what that must be like, and am in awe of the bravery of all the men and women who have fought (and are fighting now) for their country, regardless of my feelings on the wars themselves.
Still mulling this all over in my head when we finished our noodles, I mentioned to Joy that I’d like to give the man that had been on the sidewalk some cash — she’d been thinking the same thing as well and agreed it was a great idea. We had three bucks between us and gave it to the man on our way back past. I wish I was better with words and not so shy, or I would have also thanked him for his sacrifice, but I couldn’t figure out a way to say that. He thanked us both and said “God bless you.” Maybe he’ll spend it on booze but that’s his decision and his path to follow, who are we to judge, or to put strings on our gift?
By Chris, on April 4, 2008, at 2:15 pm Well, we did end up playing a game of scrabble during Earth Hour. It was almost eerie how quiet it seemed, and we usually don’t have our TV on so the missing noise was various heater fans and stuff I guess. We started off a bit better than usual but at the end I was down to staring at my usual five identical vowels, an x and a q and we managed to get rid of our tiles creating such brilliant words as “if” “axe” and “is” but at least we finished. We’re still falling well short of the suggested ‘good player score’ but it was fun. We should turn everything off more often.
I looked for Earth Hour related press coverage, to see how much the power statistics were affected, but didn’t find much. Sadly, most of the major news sites seemed to ignore it. I did see a statistic that Toronto saved the equivalent of an entire power plant’s output for that hour, and the northern Illinois area (Chicago was one of the big participants) saved 7%. What I really hope came about out of it all, was more of an awareness of just how much crap we all have in our houses drawing power that we don’t even need. We have our computer, printer, router and DSL modem on a UPS and now turn that off instead of just turning the computer off. I’d like to implement the same thing with surge bars and whatever appliances we have that don’t need to sit all day (or sometimes for days) pulling power on standby when we don’t use them.
As is usually the case around here when the blog is a bit quiet, a lot has been going on. The biggest thing is that I have a new job! Downside is that I will be on the road pretty much all day long, over a 200 mile radius. Upside is that it represents a big pay jump, no more wear and tear on my own car, fantastic benefits, and it’s going to be doing something I will find interesting. I’ll be installing and supporting computer systems for online laboratory orders and results. The software is pretty cool. I am in the midst of training right now.
There is one other really big downside, and that is that Joy and I no longer get to work together. I really miss that  …. but this is something that will help us so much. If we keep our bills down and really put our noses to the grindstone, we can use the extra money to get our bills paid off and start saving for the future.
The new job required some new clothes, never a great deal of fun as I hate clothes shopping. We hit the big Goodwill in Candler and two resale shops and got tons of really great stuff for both of us for less than two hundred bucks total. We always buy used clothing (except underthings) wherever possible, to minimize our contribution to the Big Consumer Machine, as a form of recycling, and because it’s very cost-effective. Most of the items we got would each have originally retailed for over twenty dollars, a couple of the pairs of shoes quite a bit more than that.There was one pair of shoes in one of the resale shops, in new condition, that were selling for I think fifteen bucks, and you could still see a sticker inside one shoe that read $220 from the original store. Alas, those were neither of our sizes.
|
|
Recent Comments