LILL's LIST

I was really chuffed recently to read that there will be a vegetable garden at the White House this spring. The Obamas want to grow food for their kitchen and provide a good example, especially to kids. As a matter of fact, a nearby class will be participating in the project. Students from Bancroft Elementary School will be on hand today as the First Lady breaks ground for the garden on the south lawn of the White House grounds.

One person who is really excited about the garden is Alice Waters of Chez Panisse Restaurant in California, where she’s been serving and lobbying for local food for decades. As a matter of fact, she’s also been lobbying in Washington since 1992 for a White House garden with a series of fund raisers where local, organic and natural food was on the menu to showcase its benefits.

Ms. Waters also supports something that could change the educational system in this country: sustainable, edible schoolyards. Instead of the blacktop that surrounds so many schools, how about gardens where children – and teachers – can raise their own food instead of the current bland, processed institutional food cafeterias serve? It would also get kids out of the classroom and into the fresh air and sunshine, which would boost their moods and probably their test scores.

One other piece of news I read this week, although it’s old news, reinforces this idea of gardening in schoolyards and backyards. I came across something I had read a long time ago but forgotten. Soil contains beneficial bacteria that actually make you feel good when you get it on your skin. Yup. Far from being a bad thing, getting down and dirty in the garden raises your serotonin levels and gives you that “feel-good” feeling. Who knew?

Well, to tell you the truth, I knew. Until I read about the bacteria, I didn’t know why gardening without gloves made me feel relaxed and happy, but I knew that I felt better, slept better and smiled more starting on the day I began to prepare my garden for spring planting.

So, let’s hope the Obamas and their children actually grub around in the dirt, rather than leaving the gardening to the White House groundkeepers. Along with eating the first tomato or radish, gardening’s bacterial benefits could go a long way toward counteracting the stress of the next four years for them.

When times are tough economically, it’s easy to tell ourselves that the most endangered species is our standard of living. It’s hard to worry about saving the whales or slowing climate change when we’re worrying that we’ve overdrawn our checking account – again – with that last trip to the supermarket.

Maybe, we think, it’s time to stop spending so much on organic food and planet-friendly cleaning supplies. And do we really need to worry so much about what we put on our skin or can we just grab that store brand baby shampoo and save a buck?

I’m in the same boat as a lot of people. Our income has gotten smaller. Our taxes have gone up. The geek is paying more for gas to get to the computer mines. It seems like everything is going up except our income. I’ve stood in the supermarket produce section, literally weighing two tomatoes in my hand, wondering if it’s really a big deal if I don’t buy the organic one that costs twice as much as the one that was grown by a Big Agro company.

What do I – a woman who writes a blog about the importance of being Green – do in this situation? You might be surprised. I’ll tell you within this list of 5 things you can do to resolve your own supermarket dilemmas and decisions that seem to pit money against the health of your family and the planet.

1. If the Green, organic or natural version is just too darned expensive, don’t buy the item, period. Like the tomatoes I compared, sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to pay an outrageous price for out of season produce. (Of course, in Maine in winter, that leaves you with pine cones, juniper berries and birch tips, but still.) Instead of tomatoes, I bought some nice organic onions and garlic, which are just as healthy as tomatoes. Together with dried beans and some organic carrots, I made a thick, hearty bean soup that lasted us for three meals and cost much less than a dollar a serving.

2. Get some staples, like flours and other bulk foods, at a co-op or health food store. We buy all our organic grains and flours at a local co-op which has much lower prices on those items. Spices, too, are usually a lot cheaper if you fill a little plastic baggie with them at the health food store or co-op and then transfer them to containers at home.

3. Keep your cleaning routine and supplies simple. I get by with liquid glycerine soap, Sal Suds, Sal Soda, Baking Soda, White Vinegar and lemonade mix for keeping everything clean and de-germed. (I use the cheap, store-brand lemonade mix to clean the toilet bowls once a month. The citric acid does a good job if left in it overnight.)

4. Make a little go a long way. I buy organic stew beef and make four meals with it. I add veggies and rice or grains to make two stir fry meals. For soup, I add beans, peas, rice and/or macaroni. Or I thicken the broth with sweet potatoes pureed in the processor or add miso to make the soup taste beefier.

5. Plan your meals around what’s on sale or what you have in the freezer. I go online to check the sales at the two supermarkets in my area. Then I look in my cupboard to see what I have on hand that will go with what’s on special this week. I plan my meals and make a shopping list around those meals. I try to keep meals simple but interesting, by adding little garnishes or extras.

For instance, we have oatmeal a lot in the winter. I love it, but the rest of the family gets tired of it, so I’ve learned how to disguise it with blueberries, chopped apple and cinnamon, maple syrup, apple pie or pumpkin pie spice, raisins and cinnamon. When I add raisins or apples, I put them right into the water that I boil before I put the oats in. It really sweetens the cereal and – in the case of the raisins, you probably won’t need additional sweetener.

To paraphrase: When the going gets tough, the tough get creative. Don’t let the economy be an excuse to get slack. Use coupons for paper goods and cosmetics that are planet-friendly. Go online to find coupons and specials. Be very persistent and adamant about living a green lifestyle and if you have a tip for going Green when you feel like you can’t afford to, please share it in a comment.

One of my favorite places on the Net is Natural News where Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, dispenses news, views and reviews of everything health-related. Unlike some of the Fish Oil Salesmen (the modern version of Snake Oil Salesmen), Mike doesn’t just paste up some tacky recycled content in an effort to get you to buy stuff. Yes, he sells a lot of the things he writes about, but there’s no pressure to buy and he’s obviously an advocate for a healthier, more planet-friendly lifestyle. I’ve never bought anything from him and I’ve been a subscriber for a long time.

Anyhow, one of his recent posts, “Helping People Isn’t Complicated: Four Simple Steps To A Better World”, really struck a chord with me. I’ve always believed that the world would be a very different and better place if everyone helped someone else as often as they could.  I’ve seen this from both sides.

I grew up dirt poor, raised by a single mother who worked in factories to support my brothers and me. There were many times when we didn’t have enough food and I remember my mother throwing winter coats over us because we didn’t have heat in the dead of winter in New England.  My mother was too proud to accept government help, so we struggled along, hungry, cold and discouraged. What a difference it would have made if someone at our church or in the community had brought us some groceries once in awhile or a couple of warm blankets. But she wouldn’t ask and they didn’t offer.

After I left home, I traveled around the US by thumb – a very stupid thing for an 18 year old woman to do. But it was the 70′s and “everyone was doing it” so I did.  I worked at day labor jobs, donated blood as often as I could and picked vegetables and fruits, but there were times when there were no jobs and I panhandled for small change. Once in awhile, someone would tell me that they wouldn’t give me change, because they were afraid I’d spend it on drink (I’d never had a drink in my life at the time), so they gave me cups of coffee, doughnuts or sandwiches. One woman gave me a warm winter coat and a pair of mittens when I was in St. Louis in a sleet storm. A mother and daughter gave me a blanket. I think my favorite donation was a big thermos of hot homemade soup. I used the thermos for the rest of my trip.

The point of all this is that helping people means giving them what they need, not just throwing money at an organization that “helps people” and feeling like we’ve done our duty to the world. It means that we don’t have to have a big bank account to lend a helping hand to someone else.

It might mean that you use the money you were going to spend on a coffee and donut to buy a coffee and donut for that guy who begs for change on the corner near your office building. It could mean that you pay for groceries for an obviously struggling single mom or elderly person when they’re standing in line in front of you at the supermarket.

Helping can mean going through your closets, grabbing all those old but still good winter coats and walking around downtown asking homeless people if they want one. Or you could find a homeless shelter and ask if they’d take them and give them out. What about blankets? Sleeping bags you don’t use anymore? Are there people in your neighborhood or around town who are cold at night because they can’t afford to keep their heat up enough to warm their houses or apartments? I can tell you from personal experience that it’s really hard to sleep when you’re shivering.

There are so many things we can do. The Natural News article has a list at the end of organizations that help people directly and there are tons more on the Net. Sure, you can just give them some money if you have it to give and that’s a really good thing. But beyond that, it might be better to find someone in need and fill that need, personally, if you can.

Poverty is a real barrier to healing and protecting our planet. I don’t believe that we can be really eco-conscious without caring for our fellow human beings as well as we care for the Earth.

(From 2/2007 at my poor neglected first blog, News From Hawkhill Acres.)

I think I’ve cursed myself. Remember my mantra, “I’m a willow; I can bend”? Well, as my ds would say, I’ve had to bend so much I’ve been pretzelized! It’s my own fault, because I will keep making these foolish plans and writing “To Do” lists. And then, to compound my folly, I actually try to follow them. What is that definition of insanity again? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting it to turn out differently? Yeah, that’s the one.

So, yesterday, the first thing on my list was paying bills and the last thing on my list was digging out the yummy sock yarn that I’ve been holding out like a carrot on a stick, to force myself to do what needs to be done. It’s three skeins of Fortissima Colori self-striping superwash wool that will make a gorgeous pair of socks for me to wear with my low-rent Croc-clone clogs this Spring.

Unfortunately, between the bills and the yarn was a list of several other things that I had to wade through, so I poured another cup of tea, sat down at the trusty Compaq and fired up Billpay. Or tried to. Actually, I never got as far as Billpay, because I couldn’t log onto online banking. The bank’s software was delusional and told me my computer wasn’t registered, so I’d have to enter my bankcard number and pin and issue number on the front of the card. Issues! I’d give it issues! I’m the one with issues because I knew that I had registered my dratted computer a long time ago and had used the online service almost daily since then.

Fuming, I entered my information. But the stupid software wasn’t buying it. Another error message flashed on the screen, this time telling me that my information didn’t match their information and if I tried to pull this stunt again, they’d lock me out of my account. An empty threat, I thought, since I was already effectively locked out of my account,because their idiot programmers had evidently been under the influence of hallucinogens or bad takeout food or something when they set up the damned site.

I called the bank’s help number, navigated my way through several levels of choice menus, none of which had the choice I wanted, and finally got to an actual person. In a slow, measured monotone, he introduced himself as Scott, but I didn’t catch his title. He may have been the janitor for all I know, but I was so happy to hear human-speak instead of robotic phonetics, I didn’t care at that point. I told him my problem, gave him my account number and he said he’d look at the log. That sounded promising. Now we’d find out where the bank had screwed up.

“The problem is that your computer isn’t registered,” he said.

“I registered my computer,” I said, “I’ve been using it since I registered it, so I know it’s registered.”

“You may have registered it,” he answered, “But it’s not registered.”

Ah, this certainly helped to clarify things. My computer was registered but not registered. No wonder I was having problems. Maybe it was one of those quantum physics things like quarks or antimatter or neutrinos. You know, where something is something and its direct opposite at the same time. Or maybe it’s that something is nothing and something at the same time. Well, we’ll have to go into that in my Stephen Hawking post and that’s slated for later. I bet he’d know what to do with a wonky banking site.

Well, anyway, Scott and I soldiered on, backing and filling until we got to a state of detente, only a little less shaky than the one between the Israelis and the Palestinians. We really could have used Jimmy Carter, but we had to make do with his supervisor, Emma, who spoke with a heavy Indian accent and only understood about one word in three that either Scott or I said. She suggested that the problem might lie in my “goo key”. There was a moment of silence after she said this, but then Scott jumped on the “goo key” bandwagon and said, “Of course, that’s almost certainly what it is.”

Ah. So, was my goo key stuck? Had I inadvertently hit the goo key by mistake, which would be easy to do since I wasn’t aware that I had a goo key until Emma brought it up? And, most important of all, I asked, what does one DO when one has a problem with one’s goo key?

“Well,” Emma said, “You must undo this goo key and then re-do the goo key with another goo key. But this time, you must make it a good goo key, not a bad one.”

Of course, why hadn’t I thought of that? I’m sure by now that – unlike me – most of you have figured out that “goo key” was Emma’s mispronunciation of “cookie” and that’s why my computer wasn’t showing up as a registered computer on the bank’s site. Fixing it was simple, according to Emma. All I had to do was re-enroll my account on the online banking site and I’d be paying bills like nobody’s bidness inside of five minutes. She and Scott even walked me through the whole thing, just in case I was as stupid as their impression of me indicated, so it only took about twice as long. Think Gandhi giving directions with Ben Stein doing a voice over – simultaneously.

The bank site let me in. I thanked Emma and Scott, profusely, hung up the phone and, with tears streaming down my cheeks (I was eating a sandwich of tuna and red onion because by now it was lunchtime), I clicked on Billpay and turned to reach for the folder of bills on the filing cabinet behind me. When I turned back, I almost choked on my tuna. There on the top of the screen was the Billpay payee list, where I keep all the information I need to pay all my bills each month. And there underneath the “Payee” tab was a small line of print that read, “You have no payees on your list”.

After a couple minutes of stunned silence, my brain managed to grasp the fact that re-enrolling had deleted all the information I had so painstakingly created over the years that we’ve had the account. The only way I could pay bills from Billpay was by entering each creditor’s account information into the payee list all over again. Of course, I didn’t have to do it all in one day. I only needed to enter the bills that were due immediately. There were five of them and it took me about an hour to gather the information and then enter it. True, if I was more organized and didn’t shove paid bills into a dresser drawer, stash vital information on the kitchen counter with one of my daughter’s Bratz dolls for a paperweight, and lose about one third of all the pieces of paper that come into the house, it might have been easier and quicker. Hey, so I’m not Martha Stewart. (On the other hand, I haven’t been to jail, never ask my friends to use my handmade Ultrasuede coasters and I’ll let you turn around in my driveway without calling the cops. So maybe it’s a draw.)

By two o’clock, the bills were paid and I had managed to unload and load the dishwasher, but I was definitely flagging in the stretch and there were still four things to do on my list before I got to cast on my socks. I won’t turn this blog into a book. I’ll just say that I cleaned the pellet stove, which consists of knocking the slag off the burn box with a hammer and chisel and washing the window with glass cleaner and paper towel. Then I helped my son cook fudge for his friend’s sleepover, which would have been easier if either of us had remembered to get butter the day before when we were shopping. Luckily, the little store four miles up the road had some when I boogied on up there, but by the time I got back, it was too late to do the last thing that separated me from starting my socks, which was re-hanging the homemade street sign at the end of the driveway. (Vandals stole the official one last Halloween.) That was, unless I wanted to do it by flashlight, and I didn’t.

So, no socks. No yummy self-striping yarn winding sinuously around my fingers and the bamboo needles, making little swooshy noises as it turns itself into k2p2 ribbing. Nope, I made myself a promise and I stuck to it and I’m a better woman for it. No one can say I neglect my duties to pursue my pleasures. But, today, I sent my son down to put up the sign and sat myself down with a cup of tea, an oatmeal goo-key and my yarn, and got to the second item on today’s “To Do” list. “Complete ribbing on two socks.” When I’m done, I’ll get on to the rest of my list – if I have time.

I’m still shaky from a bout with a flu-like illness that knocked me for a loop, so bear with me if I’m not up to Pulitzer Prize winning prose at the moment. However, that’s never stopped me before, now has it?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how hard it is for humans (that would be me) to let go of things, even when they don’t work for us anymore. I guess it’s the time of year that has me so philosophical.

As I approach 60, I find myself examining my life with an eye to streamlining it and removing the clutter that I’ve been dragging around with me like Marley’s chain. (No, not THAT Marley, the other Marley, the one in A Christmas Carol.)

My cell phone, for instance. I hate phones, even landlines. I find it very hard to have a conversation with someone I can’t see when I have to respond immediately. In an email, I can think about what I’m saying and avoid the dreaded “foot in mouth disease” that I’m so prone to over the phone.

When cell phones entered my life, I realized that one of my refuges from phone calls, the car, was now just another place where I was on a leash. But, because I had a sick kid and two other kids who weren’t always with me, I rationalized that I really did need to keep my cell phone on at all times.

Why, then, did I almost never get a call that couldn’t have waited? Most of my calls were from my geek husband who loves phones more than he likes interacting in person. Or from my teenaged son, asking me when I was getting home and could I pick up more chocolate.

After a while, I started wondering whether cell phones were a health risk. I read studies, many of which seemed to indicate that they are. I discussed it with Geekdaddy and he agreed that there might be some degree of risk with them, but disagreed when I suggested that we might be able to live without them.

Well, I’ve thought about it and read some more results from studies and I’m losing my cell phone – or almost. I’ll still have one in my car, but it’s going to be turned off. If I need it, I’ll turn it on and use it as briefly as possible. And it won’t be to tell my son that I’m on my way with more chocolate. It’ll be because there’s something that really can’t wait until I get home to be dealt with.

When I’m writing, I tell my kids not to interrupt me unless there are flames or blood. And more than a drop of blood at that. It’s the same thing with cell phones and me from now on. Unless I need an ambulance, AAA or a Saint Bernard, my phone will be off.

I no longer have a sick kid and my other two kids are 11 and 18 and well able to dial their geeky dad’s cell phone which is permanently welded to his belt. Or they can wait until I get home like I used to do when phones were black and came with wires.