Odds and Ends

I'm taking a page from EcoGeoFemme's book today, and trying to be productive today, so this one's going to be short.

After a few days of being (somewhat) TP-free, I can safely say that it is WAY less weird and off-putting than you would think. Up until the first time I didn't use toilet paper, I thought that going TP-free was a big mistake. I was sure I wasn't going to last the month. But frankly, now that I've tried it, I don't think I'll go back.

And in honor of January Less Disposable Month, I also started reading "Garbage Land" by Elizabeth Royte. So look for a couple posts about that coming up. And I *might* do a garbage diary for next week, though I haven't fully committed to the time and ickiness that that would take.

What else? Freeze Yer Buns! I had a nice respite from freezing my buns while I was at my uncle's house and my mom's house. But now I'm back, so last night, I tried out the rice sock for the first time. And aside from the fact that I spilled rice all over the counter while filling the sock, it worked just dandy. So thanks, to Mouse for his suggestion.

And now, I better get to my to-do list. Happy Friday!

I Didn't Realize How Badly I Wanted A Woman In The White House Until She Lost the Caucus

I feel like I'm going to cry.

I want this so badly. A woman. Madame President. I mean, of course I like Clinton on her own merits. I think she's intelligent, and fierce, and strong, and yes, experienced. But for me, it always came down to this.

She's a woman.

I don't know why it matters so much to me, but it does. I want a woman. I want America to finally, FINALLY follow in the footsteps of Great Britain, Germany, India, and Pakistan. This is long overdue. And yet? It seems like our only shot. For a very long while anyway.

Don't get me wrong. I like Obama (though I wish he'd waited a few more years before seeking the nomination), and obviously, I'll support whoever the Democratic nominee eventually is. And hey, it's about time we had a minority president, too, right? As a non-white person, I can definitely appreciate that.

But I guess I've always been a woman first and a minority second. And so I yearn for that day, one day, when those who claim America will never elect a woman, or that a woman wouldn't be respected by Arab leaders, or that women just don't have what it takes, will be proved wrong.

I really hope that day is November 4, 2008.

Murder Most Brutal- The Death of the Electric Car

Last night I watched "Who Killed the Electric Car" directed by former EV1 driver, Chris Paine. I got so frustrated, that I had to pause the movie a couple times, and pace around like a mad woman until I was ready to keep watching.

I don't remember much about the electric car when it came out. I vaguely remember having a discussion with my dad about the battery life, but I certainly don't remember seeing any commercials for it, nor do I remember the electric cars being readily available like the Toyota Prius is.

Well it turns out, the electric car wasn't readily available. You pretty much had to be a celebrity to get one, and even then you had to go through a million hoops before GM would grudgingly consent to let you drive the damn car. Even then, GM would only let you LEASE it, so that they could take it back from you when your lease ended. Which they did. Yup, in the end, GM forcibly TOOK back every electric car on the roads. GM took electric cars from people willing to pay good money for them. And then what did GM do? They crushed the cars.

Why? Why on earth would GM make it so impossible to get one of their products?

The movie doesn't really explain why a company would be quite so cannibalistic about their own product, though Paine suggests that part of the reason is that electric cars cost almost nothing to maintain, so GM got worried that they would lose out on maintenance fees if the electric car became too popular.

But it wasn't just GM consipiring to keep the electric car away from the American consumer. The movie fingers other culprits such as big oil and, most distressingly, the California Air Resources Board. See, the California Air Resources Board is a branch of the California EPA and it's designed to serve and protect Californians, right? Except, they didn't. Instead, the board chose to serve and protect GM and Texaco by gutting the California Zero-Emissions Vehicle Law.

So what does this all mean? Basically, that we COULD all be zipping around in electric vehicles right now, but that Big Oil and Big Auto colluded to take away the electric car, the government sided with the corporations, and the American consumer never put up a fuss.

Okay but what about those batteries? Wasn't the electric car's battery pretty unreliable.

Actually, yes, the first battery installed in the original electric cars was unreliable because GM chose to use an inferior battery. The batteries for the second generation of electric cars lasted 100 miles per charge. Which does present a problem for long car trips, but as a commuter car, 100 miles per charge is plenty. Drive to work, plug your car in, and by the time you drive home your car will be fully charged again. But NOW we have even BETTER batteries. So today, an electric car could go 300 miles without needing to be charged. How often do you drive more than 300 miles in a day? Once a year? Twice? Hell, for those handful of times, you can just RENT a gas-powered car with all the savings you'll get from not having to buy gas every other day of the year.

What's so frustrating is that this technology exists in the here and now. We're in an oil crisis, gas prices are high, and global warming is becoming more and more of a problem. Electric cars should be a no brainer. We should all be driving them or at the very least, we should all be driving hybrid plug-ins. But we aren't.

What about those hydrogen fuel cell cars we keep hearing about? Well, the movie was pretty disparaging about those cars. First of all, the technology isn't currently available and probably won't be for at least another 20 years. Electric car technology is available NOW. Secondly, hydrogen cars are not as clean as electric cars, because electric cars can be powered by solar and wind powered electricity. So why all the fuss about hydrogen fuel cell cars? Well Big Oil and Big Auto figure, by making a huge to-do about a technology that is at least 20 years off, they can take our attention away from electric cars, and still continue to make money off of those fossil fuel burning cars.

It was definitely depressing and frustrating to watch this movie, but it was also highly informative, and I urge you all to watch the movie and after you watch, take action.

Mea Culpa

Earlier today I was thrown into a tail-spin by Amelia who asked me if I'm so worried about napkins and Kleenex and toilet paper and what not, why don't I just not fly?

It's a completely valid question; one that she had every right to ask. Why do I fly?

I wish I had a better answer. But the sad and unfortunate truth is that flying is my environmental Achilles heel.

Part of the reason I fly so much is because my close friends and family are scattered on three continents. And part of the reason I fly is because travel is one of my greatest passions. Ironically, it's travel that has made me care so much for this here planet. I want to be able to show my children the unsullied blue of the Nile, and the magnificence of the Taj Mahal. I want them to wander the hills of San Francisco, and spy the Golden Gate Bridge through the fog. I want them to get their feet muddy while walking in an Indian village during monsoon season, and I want them to experience a good old-fashioned Midwestern summer thunderstorm.

Travel is seeing my friends and family. Travel is seeing the world. Travel is, well, I hesitate to use the phrase "raison d'etre," but it's close.

Of course, I can offer you excuses. Planes are going to take off whether or not I'm on them, so why not fly? Yes, ideally if enough people refuse to fly, the airlines will cut the number of flight scheduled, but frankly airline travel is becoming a bigger and bigger pain every year, and yet people are still flying more than ever. Why give up something I love so much for an ideal that might not come to pass?

And I can try to assuage my guilt by buying carbon offsets which I do religiously.

But the fact of the matter remains that I'm not willing to give up flying. Not now anyway. So what does that mean? Should I just give up, and go back to my former consumerist, throw-it-away-and-don't-think-about-the-consequences lifestyle? Does my air travel cancel out everything else?

I don't know. Maybe it does. But I have to believe that everything else I do counts for something. At the very least, if I'm not giving up flying, then I damn well BETTER turn off my heat and give up toilet paper, right?

WARNING: This Post Contains TMI

The nature of this challenge requires me to talk about things that a lady does not discuss. Luckily, I am not a lady. But some of you may be ladies or gentlemen, or you may simply not want to read about le toilette while you eat your lunch. So for any post that seems to cross certain boundaries, I'm going to give you fair warning. So stop reading this post now, or read at your own risk!

With that out of the way, many of you have been asking what I'm going to do now that I'm giving up toilet paper. I did some research on going tp-free before I started the challenge, and I came to the conclusion that cloth wipes were not for me. For starters, it would require doing my laundry more than the once every three weeks that I currently get around to doing it.

So I talked to my mom. Apparently, in the mother country, people don't use toilet paper. Instead, they use, well ... a mug of water and their left hand. No muss, no fuss, just wash your hands and you're good to go. (Incidentally, this is why Indians give, receive and eat with their right hands. It's seen as bad manners to give someone something with your left hand considering where your left hand has been.)

Well, that was informative, but using a mug seemed like a recipe for getting water all over my bathroom.

And then I remembered that Vanessa at Green as a Thistle had gone toilet paper free. And she had eschewed cloth wipes in favor of a squirty water bottle and doing a little booty dance.

Perfect!

I had to do a little juggling of household cleaners in order to free up a squirty water bottle. (I used the bottle that my Method Shower Spray came in so that in case there was some residue left after I had washed it out, at least it would be non-toxic.) Then I added water, and a few squirts of liquid soap and I was good to go.

And the result? It's cold, that water that comes out of the squirty bottle! And I look really silly doing a little dance in my bathroom. But? I also feel nice and clean, and I suspect that after I get used to it, I won't want to go back to my scratchy recycled toilet paper.

#*&%- Violations 1&2

Well, I'm sad to say that JaLeDiMo has not started off fortuitously. Violation #1 occurred at approximately 6:30 pm in the ladies room of a restaurant. I used the facilities, thanked God that my stipulations allow me to use toilet paper when not at home, got out, washed my hands, and absent-mindedly grabbed a paper towel to dry my hands. It was not until I threw the paper towel away that I remembered that I'm not allowed paper towels anymore.

AUGH. I mentally berated myself, and then tried to put it behind me, and enjoy my dinner. It takes time to re-adjust. Now that I've made this mistake, I won't make it again. Or so I told myself.

And then? Just a few hours later, came Violation #2. I was on an airplane and, again without thinking too much, I ordered a Diet Coke. Which honestly, I shouldn't have done, because drinks come in plastic disposable cups, but at least plastic cups are not on the list of explicitly banned items. BUT, napkins ARE on that list, and guess what the flight attendant handed me when she handed me my plastic cup of chemicals-that-are-going-to kill-me? Yup, a napkin. And did I hand it back to her and tell her I didn't need it? No, I did not, because it didn't even occur to me that she was handing me a napkin. Not even for a second did it cross my EXTREMELY SLOW mind. It wasn't until the flight attendant came back to take the trash, and I handed her the cup and napkin that I HADN'T EVEN USED, that I suddenly realized with horror that I had just taken a napkin, and proceeded to throw it away.

And then the plane hit some turbulence and I thought morosely, "Great, I'm going to die. And my last act will have been to Throw Away a Napkin. Excellent."

Luckily, I did not die. Instead, I am alive, and feeling fairly guilty about my multiple violations in one day. I do think though that it shows how deeply ingrained this "culture of disposability" is for many of us. It simply does not occur to most of us to think about what we throw away and where it goes. I hope with this challenge this month to permanently change my mindset. So even when I do throw things away, I won't do so mindlessly.

January Less Disposable Month

Well it's January 1st which means that it's time to unveil my January challenge. Thanks to everyone for their comments. It seemed like the Diva Cup challenge was the most popular, so I decided to come up with a challenge that would incorporate the Diva Cup but that would also require changes the rest of the month.

And so, JaLeDiMo. Which means, for one month, no paper napkins, no paper towels, no kleenex, no tampons, and -this is the big one- no toilet paper for numero uno when I'm at home.

Ack. I'm kind of freaking out just thinking about this challenge. It's going to be a crazy month.