so i just got back from a vacation that was a weird medley of super eco-friendly places (like san francisco, home of the best farmers' market, a ban on plastic bags, probably somewhere you could feasibly stick to a 100 mile diet of sorts and lots of parks to sit around in circles and play dylan) and other ones that are complete abominations of the natural environment (like vegas - probably the biggest waste of resources on our continent that made me feel pretty guilty most of the time).
i feel like my own life and personality are similarily mashed up. i don't really fit into the stereotypical "tree hugger" mentality (i like to bathe, shave my legs and brush my hair, for starters), but a lot of things about being a good cappy don't sit well either. i want to be able to get rid of all my stuff and be free to just go (for example to china, like our treeman friend on the left. a true character from berkely) wherever, but i'm stupidly attached to a lot of my material goods (notably snowy, my computer, my ipod, and all my kitchen gadgets and tools). i don't like buying things, but i like having things, but i want to not want to have things (or buy them). augh!
the omnivore's dilemma (one of my favorite christmas presents! it's so ers-like in its optimism) has made me think a lot more about the food i eat. supermarket organic isn't really the answer, it seems (i suspected this all along), but sadly, our farmers' market season is pretty short here and it really isn't feasible or environmentally sound for me to grow all my own foods in the backyard i don't have, so what do i do? probably the first step should be just to cut out beef. someday i will! maybe i'll switch to an all sheep's milk dairy diet.
it doesn't make it easier that my friends are split into two separate camps (which i am slowly trying to integrate. one at a time). the ones who are far more stereotypically treehugger-esque than i and then there are the ones who drive giant cars and buy bottled water all the time (can we even really be friends?). there is a middle ground, of course. they are the ones that keep me sane. the world is a pretty depressing place, and if you think about where we're going (down the tubes), it's easy to get too wrapped up in it. so i guess my goals for this year include trying to find my own centre of things- not on the crazy left *or* the crazy right.
2 comments:
hooray for your first post!
I think the we'd all be much better off if people started looking to the middle more than the extremes on either side.
And yes, finding organic, grass-fed, pastured, beef that was raised relatively close to us was NOT an easy task.
I had similar thoughts about Orlando running through the back of my head. At the same time I had a really good time riding roller coasters and swimming and enjoying the warm weather, I kept thinking in the back of my head, "This is unsustainable. If we're lucky, I might be able to bring my kids here once." The sprinkler systems in the hotels watered more of the sidewalks than the lawns; the sidewalk from our hotel to Downtown Disney (and the other hotels along said path) were disconnected from the hotels themselves, meaning you got to negotiate the parking lots with other cars who were not expecting people to be in their way. Recycling? What recycling?
It's not to say that Disney overall isn't putting some effort into it - if you're there for a Disney vacation, the buses, monorails, boats are all you need to get around. They were pretty full during "rush hour." But the parking lots were even more so. And why are the more environmentally friendly napkins only available at Animal Kingdom?
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