crisis of faith

* our first sunflower of the year!

i feel as though i have been separated from this blog. it has been a few days, but not that long. i feel as though it has been weeks, months, years since i have written you. illness has been a barrier to my cause here (a stomach virus running virulently through my house and my father’s subsequent heart problems have distracted me).

but it feels like more, oh no, it feels like i have had a crisis of faith. i have had moments when i have felt weak. initially, i had a great moment, a revelation. i saw the light and all was clear. the church bells were ringing and my head was screwed on straight. the light streamed down from the heavens and the almighty smiled upon me with streaming rays of fractured light broken through the clouds. he spoke to me, “you shall not indulge in the disaster that is the modern world, this plastic, consuming, wasteful society.” and the earth shook and so did my knees. this powerful vision lifted the polyester veil off my eyes and revealed to my heart my mission and gave my fists the power to lift up in defiance against the mad, speed driven, hungry, angry world. and i gave my howard dean scream....

my focus was so clean and clear, (especially when my daughter wasn’t here). i gardened, i cooked, i canned. then i started getting deeper into it. cant waste food. cant waste food. must save... so i bought jars and started canning. made butter, yogurt, some cheese, granola.... and more. more time and energy was put into preparing food. more research done. now there seems to be less time to spend with my family. when i die, just pickle me then landfill me. the refuse of our great society will entomb me and i will last longer than Tutankhamen.

fun, fun, where did the fun go? the truth is i really enjoy cooking and being mindful and poking fun at myself for trying. but then a day comes where there is so much plastic being used and dumped that it feels like an avalanche burying my faith, suffocating my passion. today i wanted to take a picture of all the plastic that my family threw away, but i thought it would be too depressing. we went to see my father in the hospital. in the name of cleanliness, to stem the spread of any vaguely potential disease, plastic cups were disposed of left and right. and here goes my mea culpa, my liberal guilt, my lash myself on the back with plastic pokey things till i feel the flush of pain. i didn’t have my cup, and i didn’t even try to make sure everyone even kept their own or tried to mark each one. nothing. i did nothing as cup after cup went in the waste basket, filling up faster than you can say armageddon. (ok, so i like hyperbole, shoot me with a nuclear missile.)

but really, i felt so glad my father was well, (and a little shell shocked at the thought of his demise), i seemed sideswiped by this new chain of events. i realized how my own lack of preparedness lead me to this place. why didn’t i even have a cup with me? if i can’t remember, who can?

i talked to my husband and told him that i was resolved to hook my cup to my pants. he said it would be unwieldy. i said so what? he said, i would like to have a bag with a plate, cup and utensils in it. and just have it all the time, like a pocketbook, handbag sort of thing. wow! the lights lit brighter, the angels started to sing in my ear again.

of course i had tried an earlier version of this, but i kept the bag in the car, and only took it out when i knew i was going to eat. that put the guerilla eating events on the attack. i was often unprepared for such events, just as the hospital visit had derailed me.

but now i am newly excited and motivated (and have a new lease on life along with my father). now i will be sewing and saving some fabric from the landfill and making my own bags with pockets for dishes and silverware and a cup. i must get on my sewing horse and fly now.

guilty as charged

I am very excited to announce that I have applied to be a board member of HVME, a non-profit organization dedicated to removing reusables from the waste stream. I have decided to do this because I needed some concrete action to follow up on my convictions and rantings. I highly recommend that anyone who needs arts and crafts materials, building materials, and or, anything in between. Really I recommend that you just visit the next time you go by- there are so many cool things. It also is a great resource for teachers. It is located in the trailers behind the New Paltz recycling center.

I am so happy that I went to visit the operation because I realized a few things. The first is that New Paltz recycling center takes electronics- even though you have to pay to have it taken care of (I don’t know how much). The second thing that I realized was that this resource is here (though newly relocated from Stewart Airport) and I have never taken advantage of it. I realized with dismay that I have never used this great resource.

There are so many more ecologically friendly things that I could do and I wonder why I have resistance to doing many of them.

In my defense, and hopefully to inspire, I do drive a hybrid, reuse and recycle when I can. For our remodeling jobs I have chosen bamboo and marmoleum for the flooring, I even get my milk from payne’s farm in New Paltz with glass ball jars. We put in a fuel efficient wood stove this past winter to cut down on our fuel oil use. I almost never throw food scraps away as we have dogs, a goat and chickens.

Yet there always seems so much more to be done. What I can do better: I buy lots of stuff new and don’t always take the time to consult a green buying handbook, or search for good used ones. I also don’t always buy bulk because I don’t think I can use my glass containers at the health food store, but I haven’t even asked. I drive lots, I throw tons of garbage away, and I, I, I, don’t know, but I feel trapped in a lifestyle that forces me to purchase and discard, purchase and discard. Lather, rinse and repeat....

Some of it is me, things I can change just by being more aware of it. For example, at a friend’s house the other day, I found out that rather than recycling, the paper went into a reuse pile so that the other side could be used. This itself was interesting. I didn’t do this, I just recycled. I tried using the other side for stuff, and occasionally do, but was put off of doing this because of, well, fashion, is one way to put it, or perhaps, one could say peer pressure. I never saw anyone else but one friend other of mine that did it, years ago. I didn’t want to be seen as weird or my papers as “dirty.” I do it for notes and art with little ones, but nothing professional.

A huge part of this is social reality. If we all help each other with hints and support for living ecologically correctly, then it will be easier to build a movement. The flip side of this is that there is a social perception problem here. Poor people reuse, rich people buy new. It is a status thing. What are the best ways for changing this? I would love to hear some ideas...