Nina's Blog

The Natural Step

2008-11-13T07:08:00.000-08:00

"The non-sustainable path of society is not about some natural catastrophe that we need to tackle. It's about human desires and curiosity and wittiness and the decisions that lie behind our non-sustainable development..." ( The Natural Step Story).

This is why BJEN and the Jewish community and the entire religious world need to get behind the sustainability movement. We live in a world of limited resources and capacity but with a human appetite that is expansive and infinite. That is the human blessing. And if not well-guided, that will be our curse. How we reconcile these two conflicting elements of life is a spiritual question. What, or when, is enough? How do we get beyond stuffness to satisfaction? What is our rightful place on this earth? To what extent do we have rights to the earth's resources? In how long a time horizon do we measure satisfaction, reciprocity and compensation?

Judaism, as all religious traditions, seeks to help us answer these questions. Ultimately, their answers determine our behavior. It is not as if we have no current environmental ethic. We do. We may not have named it yet, and we may not like it when we do. But we live one. The question is: is it the one we are proud of?

Meanwhile, in the world of litigation and EPA, the 11/14 Grist.org reports:

In a major win for environmentalists, the U.S. EPA's Environmental Appeals Board handed down a landmark decision on Thursday that essentially puts a freeze on the construction of as many as 100 new coal-fired power plants around the U.S.

It will now be up to the Obama administration to develop rules on carbon dioxide emissions from such plants.

In July 2007, the EPA issued a permit for a proposed Bonanza coal-fired power plant in Utah. Lawyers for the Sierra Club, Western Resource Advocates, and Environmental Defense filed a request that the permit be overturned because it did not require any controls on carbon dioxide pollution. The enviros pointed to the Supreme Court's April 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, which found that the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

"Essentially what this decision does is it gives the Obama administration a clean slate to decide what our nation's energy future should be," said Joanne Spalding, the senior attorney at the Sierra Club who argued the case before the board. "It puts it back in the lap of an Obama EPA to determine how to treat greenhouse-gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, and it gives the opportunity to establish policies that will essentially favor clean energy and impose restrictions on fossil fuels that emit lots of greenhouse gases."

Many of us have great hopes for the Obama administration, in this area as so many others. But we cannot sit idly by and observe and judge. We must continue to support and advocate. Even if only from our computers at home! Shabbat shalom.

Our President-Elect

2008-11-05T05:15:00.000-08:00

I confess: I wept during Obama's speech last night. Truly wept as I had not done in a long time. They were tears of relief. They were tears of gratitude. They were tears that undammed the clogged and unwanted reservoir of pain and embarrassment and worry and frustration that had built up for too many years. The flow opened the reservoir, letting it empty. It is making room for tomorrow.

I needed to hear the words he spoke, words of hope, unity, daring, dignified confidence. They called me to duty and sacrifice, to believe in our collective wisdom, talents and abilities. How can I not respond? And how long has it been since our leaders so believed in us that we were deeply moved to believe in them?

I have dear friends and family who supported McCain. This entry is not about politics. It is not about them and us. It is about America, and how we again are being called to be our best selves and lead this imperiled world to a blessed future.

For all of us, it is a new day. And it is up to us to help make it a great one for all humanity.

In order to do that, among all the other sacred challenges we face, we must also continue to work for a healthy, green world. Please take a look at President-Elect Obama's environmental and energy policies.

You can find them on his website, and easily see them if you simple google 'barack obama environment'. I am attaching two weblinks - hoping they will provide an easy access to them. But if not, with a tiny bit of exertion on your part, you will readily find them.

This is his policy on the environment:

www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/EnvironmentFactSheet.pdf

This is his policy on energy:

www.barackobama.com/issues/energy/

May we, and the world, work together to build a new, blessed era for us all.

Eleven green(ing) synagogues

2008-11-03T04:52:00.000-08:00

Sunday morning, 12 people representing 9 synagogues gathered at my house as part of the BJEN (Baltimore Jewish Environmental Network) training kick-off for greening our local synagogues.

We studied Jewish text; reviewed our Green Covenant of Commitment (online at www.bjen.org along with our Green Synagogue guide) that participating synagogues will sign as an expression of their values, actions and commitment; we learned about energy audits and greening our simchas, where to find additional practical guidance and resources; and most of all, met to support each other as we all embark on this sacred task.

Each synagogue is approaching this effort in a way that is unique to its needs, demography and capacity. That is as it should be. Greening is not a one-size-fits-all enterprise. But it does have a few elements in come that we felt in abundance yesterday:

-- a deep concern and conscientious awe for the natural world and the gifts it offers us
-- an optimism and belief that we can make a difference, that the human spirit and technological advances can help us reverse this unsustainable lifestyle, even as they helped us get into it
-- that living an environmentally aware and self-renewing (aka sustainable) life brings us meaning, purpose, joy and delight
-- that being more aware of our consuming habits and of the origins of the things we eat and use and buy to live, and of all the people along the way who made getting that stuff possible, raises our appreciation for the miracles of life and all those who participated in the long process of enabling us to have what we have.
-- a sense that we are privileged to be able to work on this effort

It was a moving, historic morning. Yasher koach, kudos, to all the participants and synagogues involved in greening Baltimore's Jewish community. May your hard work see great results. And may you be satisfied with the fruit of your labor.

lessons learned from wood burning stoves

2008-11-02T03:44:00.001-08:00

I know there are many of you who are way ahead of me on this one. I must confess that not only am I a late-comer to the joys and environmental value of wood burning stoves, but I actually bought a house with one and removed it in the renovations!

Now, I see the light. First of all, it calms you better than an aquarium. The hearthiness, the earthiness, the physical engagement (you have to manage the wood flow, the air flow, the cleanliness, the timing), the visual comfort of the flames, the colors and the show, especially if the window is spacious. (The heat of the fire cleans the window constantly so it is always clear.)

I have a backyard filled with wood, and with the cost of oil these days (yup, my electricity is all wind powered but my heat is oil), this stove will pay for itself in 2-3 years.

Here are things I am learning about the benefits of a wood-burning stove:

-- the newest stoves have a burn cycle that consumes most of the smoke's particulate matter and is said to burn so efficiently that it leaves less of a residue (including less CO2 - though I welcome an explanation of how this works) than naturally decomposing wood.

-- CO2 put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels is CO2 that what would have been safely sequestered deep underground, save for the fact that we dug it out of the ground, and are now releasing it. Burning fossil fuel changes the CO2 equation, for the worse.

-- CO2 put into the atmosphere by burning wood would have been released into the atmosphere through decomposition anyway. So by burning wood, we are not adding to the cycle of existing above-ground, loose, CO2. That is, burning wood is CO2 neutral - and sustainable, as long as additional trees grow in their stead. (The source of the wood for these stoves could become an issue if we begin to destroy more trees than are replanted. A net-loss of tree cover is bad - no matter what the reason for cutting down the trees.)

-- Most interesting to me, however, is what I learned about radiant stoves and how that is being emulated in the broader construction and building maintenance business.

Wood stoves largely come in two varieties: circulating air and radiant. They both burn wood efficiently. They both heat the house. But one (circulating air) heats the air directly, and the other (radiant) heats a material (cast iron or soapstone) that absorbs and stores the heat and releases it evenly over an extended period of time. To heat air directly is to allow the heat to dissipate quickly. When the fire is gone, so is the heat. But when the fire's heat is absorbed by these efficient heat-storing materials, and released slowly over time, the fire keeps heating even after it is out.

The lessons learned here go beyond wood burning stoves. We build power plants to meet the maximum peak energy demand of a region. That is, we have to build new power plants mostly because most of us wake up between 6 am and 9 am and use hot water, lights, shavers, hair dryers, toasters, microwaves, coffee machines all at the same time. However, at 3:00 am, almost all of us are asleep, and the energy demand is minimal. If we could somehow shift our energy use schedule, and spread it out more evenly over the course of the day, we would not have to continue building new power plants at the same rate as is demanded today.

However, few of us are going to get up at 3:00 am or stumble around in the dark or otherwise make the significant shifts we have to (moving up to 50% of our daily energy use to off-peak hours). However, if the burden were placed not on the consumer to shift their use, but placed on the industry to create ways to store its energy, that might be a most useful tactic.

That is, what if the power companies generated a steady rate of energy 24 hours a day - and stored it in big batteries (or whatever creative technology they can devise - and I believe they can with the proper incentives and investments). The public, you and me, would draw on the energy as we needed it - and could even be enticed to shift some of our energy use, say, dishwashing, oven cleaning and clothes washing to off-peak hours, especially since many of these appliances are coming with built-in timers to help us do that.

But mostly, with efficient storage systems, the generation of energy could be constant even while the consumption of energy would still follow the circadian flow of human activity. Would this reduce our energy use or our CO2 emissions? Maybe. I need to learn more about that. But it would reduce the cost and waste associated with building and operating additional, unnecessary, facilities.

Heat storage and delayed release is what my stove is teaching me. That is what some construction companies and businesses are doing. They are using materials that can store and time-release the heat and cool that they have stored to ease peak-time energy crunches.

Solutions are at hand. There is no one single magic bullet - but with thousands of little innovations, we can conserve, shift and redirect our energy so that we can run a more efficient, and ultimately healthier society, both for the economy and the environment.

a garden outside our windows

2008-10-30T05:29:00.001-07:00

I had the pleasure of hearing Delegate Jon Cardin speak the other night of his commitment to environmental causes. He mentioned a statistic I had never heard before: the State of Maryland loses an average of 6000 acres of tree cover a year and we only plant approximately 850 acres of trees. Assuming we lose some of those new trees to drought and illness and neglect, the problem becomes even worse.

This loss of trees, he goes on to say, has to be stopped. This is bad for all sorts of reasons: loss of trees contributes to increased CO2 emissions suffocating the atmosphere; increases in erosion; reduces the soil's capacity to filter out pollutants; reduces shade and moisture; reduces an invaluable air-scrubbing quality that trees provide; and reduces the amount of fresh oxygen that trees return to the atmosphere in their respiration.

What can we do? First and foremost, plant more trees in our own yards. Small trees can even grow in planters on porches outside our apartments. Get together and plant small groves of different kinds of trees that are friendly to and comfortable in our growing zone. (You can find a list of native trees at Treemendous Maryland's website: http://www.dnr.state.md.us/criticalarea/trees.html

Second, plant trees at our synagogues. Many of our congregations have large, expansive lawns. Planting orchards and groves of trees on them offer a variety of benefits:

-- it adds natural beauty to our over-civilized urban and suburban landscapes.
-- it connects each of us involved in the process of playing in the dirt in an most intimate way with the land around us
-- it adds all the benefits that trees provide: shade, healthier air, outdoor programming spaces, soil conservation and health, water purification, spiritual delight
-- it is less expensive to maintain trees than to constantly mow, seed, fertilize, and otherwise maintain our lawns
-- it diminishes the environmental harm that lawns cause. Nutrient and pesticide runoff harm our drinking water, the public waterways and the wildlife and economy that is dependent on them. [The urban lawn is estimated to receive an annual input of five to seven pounds of pesticides per acre (Schueler, 1995b) www.stormwatercenter.net].

In addition, traditional gas-powered lawn mowers are responsible for 5 percent of the nation's air pollution, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. One gas mower running for an hour emits the same amount of pollutants as eight new cars driving 55 mph for the same amount of time, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. (www.dailycamera.com)

Imagine Sukkot in the midst of an apple orchard; or Passover with the fragrance of magnolia blowing in the shul. Talk to your rabbi and facilities committee now to begin planning for the spring planting season.

Third, support upcoming legislation that responds to this issue. (When we learn of such legislation, hopefully in the upcoming spring 2009 session, we will pass that information along to you.)

Trees won't solve all our problems, but the truth is, we cannot live without them.

Celebration of the Seasons

2008-10-16T08:20:00.000-07:00

It is that time of year when the beech and poplar and dogwood trees in my front yard turn a golden hue. The sun's reflection off their leaves floods the evening with thick, honeyed air. It seems as if just down the road, the air gets thicker still, and you can taste the sweetness of honey suspended on colored droplets.

I witness one my favorite joys of fall from my office window. All summer long, the leaves have grown, turned deepening shades of green, and spied the ground from many stories up. Secure in their slendor but stalwart attachment to their branches, they witnessed the warmth and storms of summer safe from their arboreal perch.

But after all those months, the time for their great migratory adventure has come: the fall cascade of the leaves from tree limb to ground cover is here. Throughout the day, they fall, one by one. But on occasion, there is a grand rustling, like a murmur moving through a crowd.

And then it begins: the rain of leaves. The air is filled with floating, golden flotsam, turning and waving in an earth-toned ticker-tape parade, the leaves rustling their hurrahs for the passing glories of summer. Then, when the air is spent and all tuckered out, ground and leaf finally meet for the first time since eyeing each other way back last spring. All then becomes quiet. The leaves settling in, cozying down in communion with the ground.

In the midst of a weary world, torn apart by human blunders, it is comforting, indeed healing, to see this annual celebration of the seasons, by the seasons. Kudos and bravo. And many heartfelt thanks.

revolution in time

2008-10-12T04:07:00.000-07:00

In his book called, A Revolution in Time, David Landes writes about the impact, and I would add imperialism, even a touch of tyranny, of the household clock. "A chamber clock or watch is something very different [from the public clocks displayed on clocktowers in village squares and official buildings that were only visible when you passed by, and only heard when they chimed at intervals. The household clock, in comparison, provides] an ever visible, ever audible companion and monitor. A turning hand, specifically a minute hand (the hour hand turns so slowly as to seem still), is a measure of time used, time spent, time wasted, time lost. As such it was a prod and key to personal achievement and productivity."

Our lives, our attitudes toward time, and thus toward how we measured, spent and filled or squandered time, changed with this new, quotidian technology of personal clocks. (And all the more so watches. For even if we could not escape the constancy of measuring ourselves against time at home, without a watch, we could hope for a brief reprieve when we were out and about.)

Today, it is almost impossible to imagine living beyond the limits of finely calibrated time. Vacations sometimes allow that - unless of course we are on tours which need to adhere to their schedule; or make appointments or reservations or other commitments that require us to be aware of the time.

Perhaps that is why childhood is so large, so endless. Perhaps it is because children tell time by the sun, by the amount of light left in the day to play outside. Or until they tire and say enough. They are never working toward a pre-determined terminal moment. Adults always measure time, wondering at the start how much time there is until the finish. I remember times as a child playing games or reading or listening to music so intently that I did not notice the passing of time, did not look at a clock to say, only fifteen more minutes until I have to stop. To fill those fifteen minutes without a sense of end, without an awareness of their limitation, made those fifteen minutes part of eternity. To be aware of counting down may make the moments more precious, true, but it also makes them tenser, and shorter.

Almost everything electronic we own today has a clock in it - both those we can see and those we can't. Modernity is swathed in the precision of time-keeping. Technology doesn't just create stuff. It also manufactures culture, and therefore refashions our spirits.

Shabbat and the holidays are the closest things we have today that help us erase the tyranny of timekeeping brought upon us by our brilliance in technology, and return us to the awareness of universal time. (The necessity to run services on schedule is a most unfortunate conundrum that breaks the flow and spirit of these days expansive immersion in time.)

Their imposition on the flow of our work, especially when they fall mid-week, their disruption of our daily routine, and their re-orientating our approach to the ways of timekeeping and the pace and flow of our days, may just be one of their greatest gifts.

Time, and our experience of it, are as much a part of our environment as the trees, the water and the air. While all these things are "out there," independent of us, we experience them through the lens, stuff and attitude of our culture. True, we must choose to use our time well. Both Judaism and modernity call us to do that. But we must also learn to live it deeply, to measure it by the heavens, and not just by the clock. To imagine each moment a member of eternity and not a commodity that comes, and is then consumed.

Paradoxically enough, it is our calendar, the Jewish calendar, that today can best remind us of the timelessness of time. Tomorrow is Sukkot - when we are cast back to the Exodus, the settlement of the land of Israel, the bountiful harvest, the past celebrations of the holiday and the menu planning for our meals this coming week. Time coming together in a moment of eternity, around the dinner table, under the heavens, with the smell of fallen leaves and pine trees filling the air.

Have a joyous sukkot.

understanding genesis

2008-10-05T08:11:00.000-07:00

In less than two weeks, we will be reading Genesis 1, starting again our annual round of sacred storytelling.

Four decades ago, Genesis 1:28 was targeted as a principal cause of the western world's ethic of environmental abuse and resource degradation. This in turn led to hundreds of articles arguing about whether the western environmental ethic can be blamed on biblical religion. The debate continues to this very day. Yet, even assuming that such an interpretation of this verse is technically defensible, that is, that one can literally read those words in a way that gives unbridled license for humanity to use nature as it pleases, there are two significant challenges we can offer: (1) it clearly disregards the rest of the narratives and laws in the Torah that more precisely define the biblical land ethic and biblical economic traditions; (2) and it assigns a level of attention and influence to an otherwise an arcane verse that is enjoyed by almost no other verse in the Bible save, perhaps, the Ten Commandments.

So what is this brouhaha all about? Let's begin with the verse that is at the epicenter of this debate:

[And to the man and woman God said:] "Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on the earth." (Genesis 1:28)

Whatever the origin of the Genesis story, we should take it seriously, for no matter what the "truth" of the events, the story still holds sacred meaning. That is the task of Torah - to provide meaning through law and narrative, its own version of truth.

The question we must ask, then, is: what is this bit of the story, this bit of truth, trying to teach us?

Casting ourselves into the place of the first humans, we can understand why the story has this be God's first communication with humanity. Before we can build civilizations, before we can create a system of justice, before we can design laws of equity, pursue ethics, act fairly, before we could even honor and praise God or see the awe in the world that God created and gave to us, we needed to know that we would be alright. We needed to know we could survive, that our environment was friendly, that we could lay down in peace and rise up in peace; that we could eat and be warm and protected from the things that go bump in the night.

Imagine, then, being plunked down in this gorgeous but foreign, potentially dangerous wilderness. The first thing we would need to do is get the lay of the land; see what it was and what it had to offer, in both blessings and dangers. We would need to find a way to live with, and live from, the wonders and riches and surprises around us. We would need to learn what could we eat, and what we couldn't. We would need to learn how to avoid being eaten, maimed, made sick or otherwise harmed by the elements, vegetation and animals around us. We would need a way to understand and successfully manage the world around us.

That is what we learn from the story: that our ancestors saw the world both potentially as an Eden, full of verdancy and fertility and goodness. And that they saw it as a place of danger and challenge that needed taming for us to survive.

Today, we rarely if ever feel the raw, engulfing, overwhelming power of nature. We rarely are in a place so lost, so helpless, that there is no hope that others will find us. Rarely do we feel the terror of aloneness, just us, our wits and the physical world all around.

Hurricanes, earthquakes, nor'easters, tzunamis are all awesome and devastating episodes of nature. But they are just that: episodes. At most, thank goodness, they happen only now and then (though the "then" seems to be increasing in frequency and vigor given the climate change we are experiencing and creating).

Imagine, though, living in a world where it is all wilderness, all strange, all raw, all engulfing. That is the world that the first humans found themselves in. Even more, that it is the world that the tellers of this tale felt they lived in. To be vulnerable to attack by predatory animals, criminals, illness, infection, a pregnancy gone wrong, mental illness, accidents, drought, floods, fire, heat, cold were everyday fears that defined their lives.

How comforting it must have been to know that from the moment of creation, we have been given the right, the mandate, to control and manage our environment so that we can hedge against being constantly threatened by the whim of nature's harsh indifference.

Genesis 1:28 was not license to ravage the world, but a mandate to understand and manage it well.

Samson Raphael Hirsh, a 19th century rabbinic scholar and populist, reminds us to look at what comes immediately after this command in this chapter of Genesis. Remember that the first man and woman were created on the afternoon of the sixth day of the week of creation. Immediately after creating humanity and charging them with knowing, exploring and managing themselves in this world, God rests. For the man and woman, then, their first day, their first experience of the world was, Shabbat.

What does this teach us? That humanity's first act, first experience, was not to do but to look and see and be with the earth. Before they undertook any act of managing and controlling, they had to experience, and feel a part of, the cycles and rhythms and pulse of the earth.

That is a lesson we need to learn even today.

Bidding 5768 goodbye

2008-09-28T18:31:00.000-07:00

The difficulties we are experiencing at the end of this year are certainly making it a pleasure to bid it goodbye. The financial markets worldwide, led by the United States mortgage fiasco, are teetering and fragile. Unemployment is up. Consumer confidence is down. Ethical behavior is in tatters. Basic rights guaranteed under the constitution of the United States are sliced away in the guise of security and our own best interest. How could the Treasury Secretary even imagine, even as a bargaining ploy, to dare ask for the exclusive, non-reviewable, non-challengeable, non-supervised right to single-handedly manage and distribute $700 billion?

And we just learned that despite all our efforts at stabilizing our atmospheric greenhouse gases, they rose 3% this past year, almost all increases coming from the developing world. China - now the largest contributor to greenhouse gases - is responsible for 60% of this 3% increase. The good news is that we in the "developed world" are holding our emissions steady - and soon might be able to see them decline. Just this past week Maryland and nine other eastern states held their first Regional Greenhouse Gas carbon auction, which will both limits CO2 emissions and create funds for alternative energy research.

So while things are looking rough we cannot throw up our hands. Just as China is beginning to crack down on manufacturing abuses that are killing their children, sooner or later China will begin to crack down on the pollution that is killing the world's environment. And when they do, we should be ready with technologies that can help them. Then, we will be the grand exporters and China the importers. We will turn the economic tables. Green industry, research and technology can re-establish America at the head of the technological revolution and enable us to become the green industry leaders. But we must invest well, fully and wisely.

This is not the time to be timid.

We created the money to prosecute a fabricated war; and to bail out a banking industry that could have avoided this whole fiasco if it just did not seek usurious rates from greed-driven mortgages.

We might not think we have any money left over for grand, Manhattan Project like efforts to green our industries, but surely if we do not invest in efficiency technologies, in new renewable forms of energy, we will within ten years be spending billions of dollars we also do not have to take care of people displaced by - and repair their homes damaged in - increasingly angry storms, spend more money on a gallon of clean water than a gallon of gasoline when local water systems are polluted and unhealthy, heat and cool our homes with over-priced energy that continues to degrade the environment.

The environmental picture is not looking much better despite all our efforts. But we cannot stop - rather must work harder. How do we do that and not give in to despair? What keeps us going?

No doubt we each have our own answer. In no small measure it is the company we keep, the comforting and encouraging presence of those who care just as much as we. And just like the star thrower - who threw back all the starfish he could, even thought there were many more he could not - we do what we can, hoping that cumulatively someday it will all add up to something big. No doubt someday it will.

And some of us keep going for the pure joy we get from less, from a life of increased simplicity. From buying less, and wasting less, and disturbing the world less. Surprisingly, the less gives me so much more - a greater appreciation of all, an awareness of worlds in littler things and individual acts. Being green isn't just good; it is fundamentally, life-alteringly, fulfilling.

My very best wishes to you all for a healthy, sweet, green new year, filled with its full share of blessings that will heal this fractured world of ours.

Shana tova

Big News

2008-09-21T04:48:00.000-07:00

Two big bits of news for us to celebrate this week:

The No Child Left Inside bill passed overwhelmingly in the House this past week, thanks to its lead sponsor, Maryland's very own John Sarbanes, and to the hard work of BJEN's Ricky Gratz, who also forwarded to me the following email from the NCLI Coordinator, Don Baugh.

In a major victory for our young people, the US House of Representatives
overwhelmingly passed a landmark bill today to support environmental
education.

The bi-partisan vote of 293 to 109 for the No Child Left Inside (NCLI)
Act is a show of support by the House of Representatives for the
importance of outdoor education and environmental literacy.

This bill, sponsored by U.S. Rep. John P. Sarbanes of Maryland, is
designed to help states provide high-quality outdoor and environmental
instruction. The legislation is intended to fix the unintended
consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act by keeping public schools
from becoming too narrow in their focus on standardized testing and by
restoring the rich and academically challenging experiences outdoor
education provides. Nature provides a powerfully motivating classroom.
Children will carry the lessons they learn outdoors for the rest of
their lives.

Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island is the lead Senate sponsor of the No
Child Left Inside Act. The House vote underscores the strong
Congressional support for environmental education and sets the stage for
including NCLI as part of a broader elementary and secondary education
bill in the next Congress.

The No Child Left Inside Coalition, was the driving force behind this
legislation. With 745 organizations, representing over 40 million
people, the people spoke and Congress listened. While the coalition has
members in all 50 states, it was started here on the Bay, by CBF and
others, all with fire in their gut on this issue. Please congratulate
the founding members of the "Dream Team", Charlie Stek, Gary Heath, Jeri
Thomson, Monica Healy, Tom Waldron, Brian Day, Anita Kraemer, Bob Hoyt
and Bo Hoppin who started this effort in September 2006. Also thanks to
the wealth of other experts now on the team from NWF, Sierra Club,
NAAEE, Audubon and Project Learning Tree. A very special thanks to
Rep. Sarbanes and his staff, who were stellar throughout this campaign,
and whose artful lawmaking made this historic moment possible.

Find out more: go to www.cbf.org and click on the No Child Left Inside box.

Also, the first Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative carbon pollution auction will be held in four days, on September 25. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is the first mandatory, market-based effort in the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Ten Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states - including Maryland - will cap and then reduce CO₂ emissions from the power sector 10% by 2018.

States will sell emission allowances through auctions and invest proceeds in consumer benefits: energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other clean energy technologies. RGGI will spur innovation in the clean energy economy and create green jobs in each state.

This is a huge step forward to use the power of the marketplace to spur the marketplace to produce less pollution, more conservation techniques, invest in research and development, create green jobs and technology and turn a profit at the same time.

Keep your eyes open. Let's see how it goes!

Telling the story

2008-09-14T07:09:00.000-07:00

"One of the most important needs a comprehensible universe meets is the ability to project the future."

I came across this line in a book by Jeffrey Fager entitled, Land Tenure and the Biblical Jubilee. And suddenly, it all became clear. Sort of. At least some of it did.

Amidst discussions about the origins and meaning of biblical land reform, Fager gives us a refresher course on the necessity of stories. Humans need to make sense of the world, to set all of life's chaotic elements in order, to recall a usable past, and through that, build a vision of an irresistible tomorrow.

"Once a universe is understood, it is possible to know how to live in it because there is a continuity between the descriptive (what is) and the normative (what ought to be)." Bottom line, we cannot live without stories linking what we choose to do today with where we want to be tomorrow.

That is what we seek from our culture. That is what we demand from our religions.

But that is what is so scary about today's non-green behaviors. That is what is so scary about a story captured by the catchy refrain: "Drill, baby, drill". It is a story all about now; it is a story all about me. And it will blithely, crushingly, burden our children of tomorrow

Once upon a time, even as recently as 50 years ago, we had a vision of a future that outlived our meager lives. Time was measured in generations, and generations were measured in decades, not months; success was measured in how much we saved, not spent; our worth was measured by what we gave away, not what we earned; business-folk cared as much about the quality of their product as they did about their stock portfolio.

But with modernity came quarterly earnings reports, global markets, digital clocks. Time was measured in now; eternity is the time between the pressing of the enter button and the repainting of the screen.

Which is to say, we have fallen pray to the moment, the now. Society has failed to give us a vision that can shine past the shelf-life of the food in our refrigerator, much less excite the rest of our tomorrows.

Why not drill now, even though at best it is a quick fix which will leave all humanity in an even deeper hole, with increased environmental, energy and financial distress, but it also eases the tax burden of Alaskan citizens? Why worry now about running out of continental shelves and Alaskan wildlife refuges to dig in and destroy? That is, oh, ten years away. Why not just keep doing what we have always been doing?

Why worry about what happens when we continue to pursue centralized power from materials ripped and sucked and blasted out of the ground, materials that enrich the owners and stakeholders but continue to destabilize the atmosphere and our oceans, and through continued centralization put millions of individuals at risk from hurricanes and other natural disasters, technological glitches and those seeking mischief or destruction?

Why worry about what about green house gas emissions that will continue to degrade our slender slip of breathable atmosphere so that whatever our children seek to do may be for naught anyway for the climate change dice will have been thrown? That is not now.

That is the failure of our current society; the failure to tell us a story about the future that includes the world the day after tomorrow. Especially when that day looks mighty bleak right now.

We used to be able to see further. We used to be able to care more. But the story of buying now and paying later has been so successful. The problem is, few people read far enough to see what happens "later."

The mortgage crisis gives us a glimpse. And with yet another venerable financial firm biting the dust, the sight is far from pretty. Perhaps now we can get people to turn the page and see what later will look in a selfish, "Drill, baby, drill" world. As none other than T. Boone Pickens is telling us: America possesses 3% of the world oil reserves yet uses 25% of the world's oil. You don't have to be a math genius to realize that all the drilling in Alaska and off the coasts will not give us the oil we crave.

It is time for environmentalists, and Jews who care, to speak another story, an irresistible story that we can offer to offset the "Drill here, drill now, no change" narrative. We can't win through lawsuits, or cost savings, or convenience alone. Compelling stories aren't always cheap, and they aren't always convenient. But they fill the soul, and they allow our children to look back, and bless us.

Let's work on crafting, and telling, that story.

Birkat Hahammah - Blessing the Sun

2008-08-24T04:31:00.000-07:00

On April 8, 2009, something will happen that the world has not seen happen in 28 years: the sun will return to the place of its creation, at the very time of its creation. Or so the rabbis tell us. And the Jewish community will do what it hasn't done in 28 years: gather to bless the anniversary of the birth of the sun.

(For a nice synopsis of this ritual, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkat_HaHammah)

If you are over 50, you may be wondering why you don't remember this from 27 years ago. That's because this is such a minor event in the Jewish calendar that most people paid it no attention. One tradition even says that if the sky is overcast that day, forget it.

Indeed, the very nature of the celebration is an open question. At minimum, one gets up early in the morning and recites the blessing: Blessed are You our Gd, who fashions Creation. More expansively, one gathers in a group at sunrise and recites a host of prayers culled from Torah, Prophets, Psalms and the siddur.

So, if 27 years ago this was not a big deal, why the blog now?

Because for Birkat Hahammah 2009, the Jewish environmental community is coming together around this rare opportunity to promote both a deep appreciation for the endlessly surprising and expansive wisdom of Judaism AND an awareness of our critical need to move away from fossil fuels and commit ourselves fully to developing alternative energy technologies, led by solar energy.

COEJL - the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life - is coordinating a nationwide effort led by a partnership of Jewish environmental organizations including Kayam Farm at the Pearlstone Conference and Retreat Center (and BJEN) - to promote a year long effort of education, programming and celebration. We are calling this the Year of the Sun, with the highlight being on April 8, 2009.

Part of our celebration will be a Sun Covenant that you, your family, your synagogue or group can sign to commit to making changes that will promote the use alternative energy and limit the use of fossil fuels. This covenant will be posted on a website devoted to this celebration - which will go live around Sukkot. (look for it then: www.blessthesun.org)

Here in Baltimore, BJEN and Kayam Farm are teaming up to create a year-long menu of programs to engage the Baltimore Jewish community.

This confluence of contemporary need (to press the expansion of alternative energy) and a rare Jewish holiday celebrating the sun is extraordinary. Please help us make the most of it - personally, spiritually and politically.

the games and the bodies

2008-08-21T17:48:00.000-07:00

The Olympics were fraught with controversy this year: despite China's promises to the IOC, we witnessed her continued violation of human rights, the country's world-threatening environmental degradation driven by their exploding economy, their manufacturing short-cuts motivated by greed that tainted and poisoned their products, their training (abuse?) of children to become champions... And yet.

In the midst of the Games, every evening I eagerly keep my date with the TV. It is the drama of the competition, yes, that is attractive, the lure of the chase. But I believe I would watch even if there were no medals. What draws me most is the magnificence of the athletes' bodies.

Every morning that we awake healthy and whole and able to tend to our daily tasks, we are witness to a miracle of life. Yet we hardly pay attention. We do not rise and offer a dance of joy, soaked with a sense of overwhelming gratitude. We do not stand in awe in front of the mirror and wonder at the miracle of the human eye or the dexterity of the only organ that is outside our bodies, or better, the boundary of our bodies, that keeps the right things in and the wrong things out and that bounds a entire universe inside of us.

Our bodies are so complicated, I am certain that we laymen only know a minor portion of what they do. Every now and then we hear of a disease that draws attention to a body function that we never knew about or never thought could misfire that way. The magnificent, interwoven complexity of our bodies goes unnoticed until something goes wrong.

But come the Olympics, and it is not loss or brokenness that brings us awareness of the majesty of the human body. Rather it is the awe of wholeness, sculpture and beauty. Finely worked (ignoring the abuses that may be heaped upon it for the purposes of the Games), the human body is stunning. The muscles flow, dive deep and reappear. The skin shines, the limbs move with an ease, power and speed the rest of us can only ache for.

I would imagine gym membership bumps up around the Olympics. Some of us are moved to cease taking our bodies for granted; no longer believe we can excuse our flabbiness or laziness.
We see what can happen, what is locked inside ourselves if we but tend to our health better.

And so it is with the world - how full and fruitful and ripe it can be if we treat it right. Nature can be magnificent, if we help it along in the right way. Environmentalism, like the Olympics, doesn't mean leaving nature alone. It means working with it to bring it to its optimal fullness, its most radiant health.

So, see you in the Senior Olympics in a couple of years?

Rehoboth Bay

2008-08-12T08:05:00.001-07:00

There is a spit of land in Delaware that is two blocks wide. In the morning, you can roll eastward out of bed and catch the day’s sunrise over the placid Atlantic. In the evening, you can stroll westward to the eastern banks of the Rehoboth Bay and catch the sunset over the distant trees.

I have been coming to this place for 25 years and never really knew that before. Evidently, many other people don’t know it either. With literally tens of thousands of people vacationing here, my family and I were one of only three groups who gathered on a public pier to watch the evening show at pocket-sized Monigle Park,

Compared to the beaches on the ocean side of the spit, this park is small, roughly the size of a modern Great Room. It is bounded by rocks that serve as breakers, dune grass to hold the sand in place and a handful of beach houses of modest and grand proportions.

While the surf at the ocean lunges and sweeps, this water at the bay gently laps its shore. Today is a most glorious day at the park. Nine in the morning, and no one to be seen. Just the distant voices of families at ease. Cool, dry air and a cloudless sky. Seagulls gracing the wind. About as close to peace as you can get in a robust resort area like Rehoboth.

If I had the leisure, and the talent, I would create a Year of Sunrises and Sunsets. Imagine what it would be like to capture the daily show of the beauty and power that brings all things to life on earth. Through rain and storm and clarity and haze, to catch the changing moods of our planet in the face of the sun, across the reach of a year.

What astonishes me is that this show happens every day, and truth be told, most days I don’t even notice. Of course, I can tell if it is light or dark outside, whether I need to turn on the lights or draw down the shades. I pay attention to the progression of weekly sunsets that tell me when Shabbat is to begin. But noting the mundane majesty of this solar perambulation? I only wish. Witnessing the brightening of the sky each morning does not cause me to gasp at the sheer splendor and blessing of this most life affirming act. Although it should. Even with the nudge of the daily blessings I most often fail in this constant call of awareness. It often takes illness, or loss, or more kindly the unbroken vastness of a maritime horizon to remind me of the awe and necessity of nature. How much we depend on it and how much we still do not know.

A few years ago, a man full of hubris declared the end of scientific inquiry. He argued that we had essentially conquered all the major frontiers and the rest is just tinkering. The truth is, we still don’t know what gravity is and what makes it work. We don’t know what fired the Big Bang, where all that energy came from or exactly where it is going. We don’t know what determines consciousness or conscience. One day, I hope we do. How awesome it would be to know these things.

For now, everyday, we whirl and twirl around our life source on our corner of the Milky Way in our neck of the Universe. It is good, now and then, to remember this, look up, and have it, for a moment, take our breath away.

No There There

2008-08-10T10:23:00.000-07:00

Thursdays are magic days. We usually call them trash days, but they often feel like magic. Thursday mornings, my neighbors and I dutifully, and gratefully, shlep our trashcans, full of decaying, odorous debris with seven days’ worth of personal waste, to the bottom of our driveways. We leave it there, and walk away. Poof, when we return, that trash has disappeared.

Our world is once again clean, clear, and more to the nose. Out of sight, out of mind. Gone. Away. And so, in our world of magical thinking, all is good.

That is what we used to think. But today we know this to be wrong. We know now that what goes around, comes around. There is no “away”. There is no there there. No place on earth is unaffected by the detritus and debris that we create through the consumption of our lives. It is reported that the Alaskan Inuit have the world’s highest levels of DDT and PDBs in their bodies – though they live thousands of miles from the sources.

Many of us have begun to respond. We try to limit our waste. We recycle everything from plastic bags to banana peels. And yet, as conscientious as we may be, we still have garbage bags every week to set out on the corner. Commercial packaging is part of the problem. Non-recyclable plastics is another. I suppose unnecessary purchases is a third. And while we can control the last, we cannot personally control the first two. Which is why living an environmentally friendly, or sustainable, life, is not something we can achieve only by our personal behavior. We need to move the movers, the makers, the manufacturers, merchants and money-lenders. We need to promote and support legislation that requires reduced waste and proper disposal.

Anthony Cortese, a former Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and now president of Second Nature (www.secondnature.org), tells us that as Americans, we “consume the equivalent of our body weight in solid materials daily, over 94% of which goes to waste before we ever see the product or service. It takes about 2000 pounds of material, most of which went to waste, to make a laptop computer.”

The stuff that we personally consume represents only a small portion of the overall waste we are responsible for.

What to do about it? Yes, keep recycling, reducing, reusing. Keep learning and encouraging others to do the same. And, just as much, when you do go shopping, make your purchases make a statement. Buy products from manufacturers who work to reduce the waste stream they create from production, to packaging, to transportation to disposal.

Watch this fun 20 minute video to learn about moving from a linear, unsustainable production model to a cyclical, sustainable production model. The Story of Stuff (www.storyofstuff.com).

Then before you make your next purchase, check out the most environmentally friendly products available. For more information on a world of green products, visit www.coopamerica.org. Get their Green Pages. Let your purchases help change the world.

the trouble, and promise, of lists

2008-08-10T09:07:00.000-07:00

The word “sustainability” is taking root in society. Along with the word "green," it is becoming the official term of art for the cultural transformation we need to survive on this planet. The question is, though, amid its popularity, what does it mean? Or more precisely, what do people think when they hear the word "sustainability"? And what does that predict about our ability to make the societal changes necessary to heal the earth?

Dr. Daniel Sherman, a professor of environmental policy and decision-making at the University of Puget Sound, asked this very question to members of his campus community and came up with a challenging finding. "The dominant association," he writes of the word 'sustainability', "is a list of prescribed practices for [people] to adopt, or feel guilty for failing to adopt."

There is good news here, and not-so-good news. The good news is that people are increasingly convinced that there is a problem and that they can, and should, do something about it. In response, sometimes they do; and sometimes they don't. (Wait. That's still part of the good news.)

The not-so-good news, he suggests, is that this to-do list approach either supplants or defers a deeper understanding of the true meaning. Sustainability does not, after all, mean an isolated list of discrete things to do. It reflects a 360 degree attitude that guides the everyday acts of our lives. It is a belief that we need to use things fairly, wisely and well today so that others can use them fairly, wisely and well tomorrow. To treat sustainability as a list of "shoulds" is imagining it to be so much less than it is.

While not great news, this is not bad news either. For sometimes, lists can transcend themselves. When we begin to learn something, we often begin with lists. As a child we are taught to say thank you, I am sorry, and please in certain situations. But we also learn, as we grow older, that those words are not isolated acts, not numbered items on a limited to-do list of politeness. Rather, they are markers, symbols, of deeper, intersecting values of gratitude, remorse, humility, caring, kindness. What begins with lists can morph into values and beliefs that define our lives. Put another way, over time, we become what we do. And one day, we realize we no longer need to check the list to know how to behave.

Sometimes, though, lists never rise above themselves. They remain external enumerations of things that we might forget if we don’t write them down. In such a case, they never transcend their particularity. They never become more than the things they are. We never see the big picture. They do not change our spirit or the way we choose to live on this earth.

Perhaps what Dr. Sherman's findings are telling us is not that sustainability is misunderstood, but rather that it is in its first stage of absorption. We may in fact be on the way to making the values of sustainability part of our personal and cultural identity. If we successfully make that transformation, we are witnessing the birth of a new era. Let's do it.

approach of fall

2008-08-04T17:25:00.001-07:00

The sounds at dusk and the cool of early morning announce the slow and distant approach of fall. As if on cue, we turned the corner into August and the evening orchestra picked up a whole string section. In addition to the cicadas, and that rattling noise of some unknown (to me) insect, the crickets have added their song.

I love the crickets. They carpet the evening air with their melodies. But I find them sad, too. For they are the harbingers of summer's end. Oh, there will still be hot days when the tar on the road bubbles and the sun is too hot to handle. There is still time for swimming and vacation and lazy nights. But at the edges of daylight, in between the breathing of evening's warmth, the cool touch of fall reaches out and strokes you.

If fall weren't such a vibrant, crisp season, if it didn't feel more like release than loss, the harbinger of summer's end would be downright melancholy. Instead, I choose to sit outside til the sky and the leaves merge in their nighttime garb, and offer blessings for the peace around me.

can't phone home

2008-07-28T17:50:00.000-07:00

One of the last vestiges of family unity is disappearing - the family phone number. This is a lot more momentous than you might think. First of all, if you have to reach someone's mother, are you sure you want to bother them on the cell phone, when you don't know where they are or what they are doing? Second, cell phone numbers still aren't listed. How do you look someone up when they don't have a home phone? How do you find out where they live?

Even more, this is the era of growing individuation, when we walk around with plugs sticking in our ears, radically distancing us from one another even when we stand just a hair's breadth away, draped in our private cocoons woven in threads of invisible sound. Family phone numbers symbolically kept us together, even if we eat at different times, if our kids listen to their MP3s when driving with us in the car, and text their friends while we are talking to them.

We have lost the iconic family dinner; rarely gather weekly in front of the TV for a favorite family show; certainly don't sit around the hearth and tell stories or read out loud to one another; hardly play together in this generationally-divided world, and long ago lost our family crest with our ancestral coat of arms. We even have ceded common surnames shared by all members of the family, what with women keeping their given names (like me) and blended families bringing different names into one abode.

At least we could all point to the shared home phone number. Everyone who lived in that house could be reached there. To know that the other members of your household possessed that number, too, was a signal that no matter whatever else might divide you, those seven numbers made you an indivisible unit. You belonged to and were responsible for each other.

Believe me, I never thought of this until today, when a friend of mine emailed me to say that she was giving up her house phone number. Everyone in the family would now only be reachable through their personal cell phones. I immediately felt a loss. I enjoyed the serendipity of calling them and speaking to whomever answered the phone. I felt close to all the members. Sometimes I wanted to connect to the family, not an individual. Now when I want to invite the family for dinner, I have to choose whom to call. I have to decide who represents the family. The sense of whole is lost.

If I feel a loss of center for them, do they feel the same loss of center? To me, family phone numbers are powerful symbols. Even when my children are at college, with dorm numbers and cell numbers, our home phone number is their phone number. We are bound by seven digits even when separated by hundreds of miles. My phone number ceases being theirs when they get married, or move out to pursue a career. It is as much a rite-of-passage as getting a driver's license.

Life-changing events severe family connections to the home phone number. When children leave to build homes of their own. When divorce divides a family. That is life as it is meant to be. That is when home numbers change.

My friend will save almost $200 by disconnecting her home phone. It is a trend that has begun and will no doubt continue, much to the symbolic loss of a family center. I doubt we can reverse it. But at least let us mourn the loss of home-ness that it symbolizes. Perhaps we can find a substitute for it (reinvent the family crests?). And maybe in a dashing display, we can use the money we save to pay for one last celebratory family dinner: Chinese, home-delivery.

staying at home VI - front lawns

2008-07-18T04:55:00.001-07:00

In the 1750's, when posted in Winchester, VA, George Washington did three things to strengthen the area: built a fort (Fort Loudon), restored a sense of order and hope, and had every household plant hundreds of apple trees.

Today, Winchester, VA boasts that it is the apple capital of the nation, and it hosts an annual, blow-out Apple Festival. All told, the county has 700,000 apple trees, courtesy, no doubt, of our founding father's foresight. (This was a full 40 years before the legendary Johnny Appleseed set forth on his historic crusade.)

I was delighted to hear this as I thought about my paltry but valiant apple "trees" on my front lawn.

This past March, I planted 8 apple seedlings. No more than twigs, some only 1 foot high, the others a towering 2 feet. Lodi, Jonathan and Winesap - a necessary trilogy for proper fertilization, or so I was told. I lost one tree to the voracious nibblings of our large four-footed friends. The others are recuperating from their tops being unceremoniously lopped off by darling deer dentals, so that they lost a full year's worth of growth and are enduring the botanical equivalent of PTSD. After that, I began to spray the trees with Deer Off, an environmentally-friendly, non-toxic repellant (evidently, deer don't like garlic).

Now, the survivors stand, straight if not tall, waving their fistful of leaves as if they were banners arrayed in a tiny parade. It will be years before branches develop, never mind fruit. But I planted the trees for the long haul.

When my family first moved into this Stevenson area in the 1950's, the area around Fort Garrison was all apple orchard. Planted, no doubt, like the trees in Winchester, in an effort to provide the local residents with harvests that could provide nourishment all year round. These orchards were part of the landscape and beauty of the area. When the houses were built, the trees were brought down.

But why, I wondered, couldn't we re-introduce them on our lawns? There is today a cultural conceit that demands that front lawns be pristine, emerald swatches of constant demands. And polllution. The fossil fuel we use to mow the lawns (never mind to transport the man and machine to tend to them); the pesticides and herbicides we use to treat them; the money and time we squander on them, make them not at all the nature-friendly areas we imagine.

There is, in fact, a nascent guerrilla effort to take back the lawn and turn us all into gentlemen farmers. I will confess that neither my lawn - with its lack of full sun, nor myself - with my lack of ability, are good for vegetable gardening. But fruit trees? In the spring they offer luscious fragrance; in the summer, budding promise; in the fall, the fruit of their labors; and in the winter, their gnarled beauty. What is not to like about fruit trees?

So for better or worse, I have joined the ranks of others out there somewhere who are also bucking the manicured front- lawn idolatry of our nation and planting fruit trees there.

It will be five or six years before my "trees" develop sufficiently to bring forth their first harvest. And even then, it will only be with the cooperation of my deer friends.

But I look forward to inviting you all to the first annual Cardin-Reisner Apple Harvest festival, hopefully well before my dotage. And if you too plant now, I would be honored to come and celebrate yours.

hide and secrete?

2008-07-16T07:11:00.000-07:00

The on-line version of Scientific American posted this fascinating news item July 14:

Volcanic rocks deep beneath the sea off the coast of California, Oregon and Washington State might prove one of the best places to store the carbon dioxide emissions that are causing global warming, a new study finds. In fact, the very instability that causes earthquakes and eruptions adds an extra layer of protection to keep the CO₂ from ever escaping.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other experts, including the G8 (Group of Eight) leaders of the world's richest nations, have called carbon capture and storage a critical tool in the fight against climate change. In essence, such technology catches the CO₂ and other pollutants emitted when coal or other fossil fuels are burned. It is then compressed into a liquid and, theoretically, pumped deep beneath the surface to be permanently trapped.

Such technologies have been demonstrated on a small scale to enhance the recovery of oil from tapped out fields; pumping down the CO₂ pushes up more of the black gold. But geophysicist David Goldberg of Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., and his colleagues found that pumping such CO₂ into basalt rock beneath the ocean floor might be a better solution.

Specifically, liquid CO₂ is heavier than the water above it at 8,850 feet (2,700 meters) or more under the surface, meaning any leaks would never bubble back into the atmosphere. Further, the CO₂ mixes with the volcanically warmed water below the surface and undergoes chemical reactions within the basalt (the black rock created from rapidly cooling lava) to form carbonate compounds—otherwise known as chalk—effectively locking up the greenhouse gas in mineral form. The 650-foot (200-meter) layer of marine sediment on top of the basalt rock acts as yet another barrier. "You have three superimposed trapping mechanisms to keep your CO₂ below the sea bottom and out of the atmosphere," Goldberg says. "It's insurance on insurance on insurance."

This is a great solution IF we want to keep mining, digging and burning fossil fuels. The question is, do we? Why spend all this money on the excavation of fossil fuels, the degradation of the environment (especially with the extraction of coal) and then the cost of sequestration, all for a time-limited and volume-limited commodity when we could put that creative energy, money and public support behind renewable energies?

Clearly, no one technology is going to be the be-all-and-end-all solution, so sequestration might be one part of the solution. But we have to keep the other renewable options on the table, moving forward and well-funded and publicly supported.

Enjoy this fabulous summer weather!

Staying at Home V - Homespun Salons

2008-07-06T13:34:00.001-07:00

(This is the fifth in a series of the art of staying at home)

Part of the art, and joy, of staying home is that it allows us to discover new ways of being.

Travel, of course, does this effortlessly (as long as we don't thwart it by sealing ourselves up in a tourist's cocoon.) It literally takes us out of our daily habits, our ritual ways of being, our programmed schedules, food and daily interactions . That is part of what makes travel so alluring, and so stressful, all at once. The familiar externalities that hold our identity together are missing when we are abroad. Those being shed, we are freer to explore both the world and ourselves.

But the best staying-at-home experiences can do this too. We just have to plan for it. In fact, there is a gift that home exploration offers that traveling denies us. At home, we can experiment and unveil new parts of ourselves while in the midst and presence of our friends and family. If they are part of this remaking and remodeling of ourselves, they can better accept it, understand it, and support it. With them as our partners in growth, we can more readily be accepted as the new kind of friend, neighbor, citizen, self we want to be.

Being at home without the commitments of work or school allows us to alter our patterns and our expected roles in our community. Vacations gift us not only with the time, but also, should we choose to grasp it, the psychic latitude, to experiment with becoming more of the kind of person we want to be. Even if our designs are not inclined toward change, but rather toward expanding, extending, who we already are, staying at home affords us more time to do that.

One grand extravagance we can give ourselves, and our community of friends, is to become the host for the neighborhood's Salon. (see the Wikipedia entry for more information on the nature, history and role of Jewish women in the salons of Europe.)

The salons of Europe over the past 400 years were breeding grounds for the development of culture, thought and an intoxicating mix of guests. They were places where the narrowed boundaries of art, politics, literature and social class were bravely trespassed in the protective company of a gracious host, the salonierre.

How enchanting to host a salon in one's home. Whether with musicians or poets, artists or politicians, or scientists, or best of all, all of them. Everyone benefits: the community, the guests, the host and, if managed well, the environment.

The collateral benefits of attending to the environment send us back to our roots, to the basics of home, community, appreciation of the homespun entertainment, cultivation of our own talents, and a strengthening of our love of place. It is not only the appreciation of local food that caring for the environment and the high price of fuel are teaching us. It is also the appreciation of community, local talents, a sense of belonging to this place. All it takes to make it happen is for us to make it so.

The Art and Soul of Staying at Home IV

2008-07-04T06:13:00.000-07:00

Clearly, avoiding travel during these days of pumped up fuel prices is on everyone's mind. I just read about "stay-cations" - places to go when holidaying at home. The zeitgeist is at work again.

I thought about this while listening to a captivating story on NPR about Marta Becket. Marta is 83, a former dancer New York-quality professional dancer who stumbled onto an abandoned theater on the outskirts of Death Valley Junction over 40 years ago. Peering into the darkened theater through a hole in the door, Marta says she felt like she was looking at the other half of herself. This place belonged to her and she belonged to it. She and her husband settled there and got to work rehabilitating this personal Shangri-La.

For forty years Marta has performed on the stage of the theater she named the Armagosa Opera House. Recruiting an audience in such a remote and sparsely populated area was, shall we say, difficult. But no matter who showed up (or didn't), Marta performed.

One of the most engaging aspects of the story is how Marta buoyed herself through the slow, isolated times and created the audience she needed to keep her going. Looking around one day at the bare white walls, Marta determined to paint an appreciative gallery of spellbound spectators. For four years, she populated the walls of the theater with a richly designed and ornately executed Spanish renaissance congregation: a king and queen front and center; courtiers and commoners, lovers and drunkards, priests and nuns. When she finished that, she tackled the ceiling, with cherubs and doves.

I thought about this as I opened my vacuous, monochromatic closet door this morning. Now, while I do not have the skills with which Marta Becket is graced, I do have one valuable commodity - lots of blank doors. What if, during this time of staying at home, I threw my inhibitions to the wind, researched landscapes of the hills of Jerusalem, the Judean desert, Sefad; recreated the interiors of 18th century shtetl homes, and surrounded myself with leaves, trees and spices from the Bible? What if the vacant canvas leading into the closets of my home were transformed into portals of our imagination. Pigment paradise.

I will definitely need some help pursuing this. And I will be grateful to whitewash that can, as a last resort, cover up all my artistic sins. But what an awesome memento of staying at home these magical murals would be.

Staying at Home III - The Trees in my Forest

2008-07-03T07:02:00.001-07:00

Walking back from putting out the trash this beautiful summer morning, I paused more than usual to take a look at my trees. I am getting much better at identifying them through their leaves (although -easy it sounds - I am still struggling a bit). But I wondered if I could identify them by their bark. While there are clear differences with, say, birch trees (that peel), or beech trees (that are smooth), often, bark can look so generic. Still, my tree-identification books assure me it can be done. So every now and then I try.

Today, I paid attention to the stately tulip poplar trees that line my driveway. This tree is native to this area and clearly content to lay down roots and generously populate my woods. That is to say, it is by far the most common tree on my property. When one fell on our house a year or so ago (such is the price we pay to live beneath the protective shade of these modest giants), the tree surgeons told us, in the pauses between the chomping of the chainsaw, that this wood is popular for cabinetry, paneling, siding. You can see why just by looking: when packed together in clusters, they shoot straight up for 100 feet before branching. That's a lot of clean, fine boards.

But what I just noticed today among the specimens that have a bit more space around them, is that their bark shows signs of the tree limbs that grew, and broke off, as the tree aged. Stacked in a line climbing the sides of these trees are faint tracings of arcs, like boarded up gateways of long-ago fairy kingdoms. The mundane, almost bored, familiarity I had been feeling toward my abundance of my American tulip trees transformed into awe at the sight of this cascade of archways.

It reminded me that though we too shed bits of our former selves, they are never fully gone. We carry their tracings as markings upon our souls (and sometimes as scars upon our bodies!), recalling the adventure of our former dreams, or foolishness.

Such is the gift of pausing while Staying at Home. Getting to know (better) the trees and bushes in your yard or neighborhood could be rewarding past-time while you stay at home. Tree and leaf identification books can be found at almost any library. Friends can be an unexpected source of wisdom. So can the internet.

Seeing the variability of the same species can be awesome. When grown in clusters, as we noted, the tulip poplar grows tall and stately with no branches, for almost 100 feet. Yet when standing alone, often as a decorative specimen, its branches can flow down near to the very base. I knew nothing of this until I moved to this house. And even then it has been a slow self-education. (Who knew that the nectar from the flowers of the tulip poplar serve as a major source of honey in the Appalachian area?)

Okay, maybe it is just me. But instead of my trees feeling like strangers, like the neighbors down the block whose names I don't know, the trees are now part of my home. That is a nice reward for staying at home.

Staying at Home II: Closets

2008-06-30T09:14:00.000-07:00

Closets are full of contradictions. They coddle the things we wish to keep safe, and, somewhat conspiratorily, swallow up the stuff we wish to throw away (but can’t). They hold at the ready our quotidian matter, and absorb into their deepest recesses the stuff we want to hide. They are our best friends and our most dangerous informants.
We love them and hate them. One thing is for certain, we never have enough of them.

Most of the time, we take them for granted. Things go in and things come out, and as long as this exchange remains uneventful - no bats, for example, clinging to our sweaters, and no sinkholes gobbling up our shoes, that is, no unexplained disappearances, or re-appearances – life goes merrily on.

But life inside a closet is anything but uneventful. Two black sweaters emerge where one used to be; shorts vanish; strange coats materialize; ties multiply obscenely; toys spontaneously whir and burst into motion; and don’t even bother talking about the sock drawer. Sometimes closets seem to have a life of their own.

If pressed, we would have to acknowledge: closets are not all that benign. They are not just recesses in the walls where our material stuff resides. They are more accurately citadels that harbor our hopes, dreams and fears; a refuge for all the emotional detritus our souls stir up that our minds cannot readily deal with, so we put out of sight. And of all the places in a home, we know, therefore, that it is our closets that lead to the land of imagination.

As wife and mother, I moved into two different houses, seven years apart, each with a linen closet on the upstairs landing. Both houses were adequate to the needs of our family. Both seemed perfectly serviceable when we moved in. And yet, within a month (I want to say a week) of living there, I had the same dream: I was exploring my new house and found myself on the upstairs landing. I looked at the linen closet door and remembered thinking, ‘Funny, this wasn’t here before.’ So I approached the door and opened it (this dream door opened inward, on a hinge; the “real” door slid from side to side).

And as I opened it, I was flooded with bright light. Through the light, I saw a staircase, which I ascended. At the top was an enormous empty room, practically doubling the square-footage of our new house. I thought, How fortunate are we! And how amazing that we didn’t know about this door and this room til now!

I am sure Jung and company would have many things to say about this dream. I always took it to represent the new adventures, the unwritten story, the space to grow that awaited my family. It was a symbol of possibilities, of expansiveness, of not being trapped. And while it was triggered by a radical change of place, it holds a message that continues to serve me well, no matter what my station in life, and no matter how long I have lived in my home.

As children, we knew that leaving the closet door open at night was reckless. No one told us this. We just knew. Neglecting even the tiniest of openings was tantamount to inviting Armageddon. Word would travel like lightening throughout the monster world: Security breach in Matthew’s bedroom, 114 Maple Drive. They would begin to gather in our closet, slip through that crack and terrorize us in bed.

If there weren’t monsters in our closet, there were at least secret doorways to enchanted places through the darkened inner walls. The closet, of course, denied all this. It masqueraded as a passive, inanimate receptacle oblivious to our visits. But we knew better. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; The Indian in the Cupboard; even what happened to us when we closed ourselves in with our flashlights proved us right. Things came alive in there, and they plotted and planned and played when we weren’t watching.

Closets, like attics, both reveal and conceal a storehouse of our psychic energies. And every now and then, we have to clean them up. Both for their sake, and for ours.

A great Staying at Home adventure is found in this most avoided of all chores: cleaning the closets. When I was a grad student, I knew who of my colleagues were married and who were not simply by listening to them describe their winter vacations: those who said they were going skiing or to Cancun were not married; those who said they were cleaning their closets, were.

So, wait for that rainy day, when a trip to the neighborhood pool or nature hike have to be postponed, change into comfortable clothes, and attack your closets. The question now becomes, which one? First, be sure you have permission to enter said closet. If it is spouses or a child’s, permission is essential. One never knows what one might find there – and it is better off keeping it that way.

Second, to model good behavior, to set the household standard and to give others time to clean up their own, it is always a good idea to either start with yours, or a very public closet. These are two different experiences. The public closet requires public engagement: clarification of who owns this baseball glove and who still fits into this jacket. Or who got this game for their birthday and does it belong here or in their bedroom. Cleaning public closets is an exercise in boundary setting and lessons about the Commons. Things left in the Commons are governed by the rules of the Commons. At some point, these need to be clarified and witnessed by all. Things that are of private use should be stored in private space. Cleaning the public closets is a family, as well as quasi-legal, affair.

Cleaning one’s own closet is a different matter. Waiting til everyone is out of the house, or at least gainfully occupied elsewhere, is not inappropriate. The dread with which we approach this task is often offset by the discoveries, sweet - sad and achingly powerful - that await us. Or overtake us. And sometimes we just want to be there, alone. Uninterrupted.

At this point you might be wondering why this topic is an entry on my blog. That is a good question. For the moment, I have two inter-related answers.

(1) Everything we do contributes to our global footprint. Finding great ways to discover more and be more while consuming less and wasting less (fuel, money, stuff) is essential if we are to sustain sustainable lifestyles. Nobody sticks with an unsatisfying diet.

(2) Most of us have too much stuff. If we go through it regularly, we can reduce our off-site storage; recycle our unwanted housewares that can be of great use to others; reduce the clutter in our homes; shed our redundant clothes and shoes; dampen the desire to keep purchasing more; recapture bits of our personal history that we tend to forget; make room for those objects with greater personal resonance; and otherwise construct a more satisfying life that enriches our children while fulfilling us.

And, I love thinking, talking and writing about homes.

staying at home

2008-06-29T07:28:00.001-07:00

For a host of reasons that you know all too well, many of us are staying closer to home. Job insecurity, stock market decline, rising energy costs, unstable food prices. Spending money on a discretionary trip right now feels expensive, if not downright extravagant.

So we forgo it, make do without and plan for next year.

But staying at home need not be the disappointing, second-best, self-sacrifice it sometimes is made out to be.

As a student of homes and how we live in them, I feel like it is time for me to come out of the closet. I like staying home. I like the way the house changes its pace and patterns when I am on vacation. And I like the way it teaches and changes me in turn.

Vacation schedules differ from work schedules, and our lighting patterns broadcast that. Lights in a house are like semaphores on a ship. The pattern with which they go on and off reflect the nature and purpose of the life we inhabit. We see this more in others than ourselves. An episodic change in the lighting habits of a neighbor often signals a celebration, a meeting, trouble, even death. A habitual change often signals a new neighbor. Changing our lighting pattern reflects a change in our habit.

So too in the use of rooms. The kitchen often enjoys more company on vacation as I learn to make new dishes, using both familiar and exotic foods (even locally grown foods can be exotic to natives depending on our food habits). Or the kitchen is abandoned as I seek to avoid all forms of domesticity and housekeeping.

My husband's paternal grandmother, a diminutive powerhouse of a homemaker, used to say it didn't matter where they went for vacation - as long as she didn't have to cook. (That was a difficult wish to fulfill for a kosher family in America in the early to mid-20th century.) For her, vacation was more a release from responsibilities, a liberated time allowing for a reconnection with and elevation of primacy of self than a discovery of others. I imagine that if her husband had hired a cook and cleaning crew to take over those chores every day for two weeks, despite her initial protestations (they would mess things up, they would break things, they would lose things, they would get in the way...), she would have been in heaven. (Though he might have heard some requisite fault-finding in their performance afterward.)

There is great spiritual power in the discovery of others: other places, other cultures, other foods, other habits, other ways of time, other kinds of flora and fauna, other use of natural resources. And travel is a prime way to experience that discovery.

But we often overlook the spiritual power of re-discovery of self, of home, of us in our place. There is so much we take for granted, overlook, never even knew.

Perhaps the unspoken gift of this time of increased at-home-ness will be this rediscovery of self and place. And with this rediscovery, a re-enchantment of self in place.

I am hoping over the summer months to publish several entries that speak to the discoveries and blessings we can encounter at home as we save fuel and energy and money by Staying at Home.

I hope to write about closets and neighborhood trees and home-spun entertainment and walking and all the sundry discoveries of the mysteries and hidden joys that we miss during the busyness of our lives.