As Ruby gets older I find myself worrying more and more about how she is going to relate to the culture around us.  Specifically, I've been obsessing over how the media is going to influence her regardless of my  and my family's wishes.

I remember growing up in the suburbs watching endless TV.  I still get, out of nowhere, the jingles of shows and commercials in my head from when I was a kid.  Just thinking of the hours wasted on that junk makes me sick.  There have been many books on how the media influences us and our children.  I'm sure it's debatable what the consequences are, but how do I minimize them for Ruby.  I don't want some greedy food or toy company deciding how my daughter feels about herself and influencing her decisions. 

I didn't really possess the ability to step back from it all the media junk and be able to critique it properly until my late teens and when I discovered Adbusters.  Is it possible to help Ruby look at advertising objectively as a kid?  Could we instill this ability in her at a younger age?  I doubt it.  So how do we as parents deal with the glut of commercialism running roughshod over our family, our values, and possibly our health?

The first step we've taken towards providing a buffer around us is to not watch TV.  Now, I'm not sure if this will last (think so), but it won't help when Ruby goes to friends house.  Last thing we want is for her to go crazy because we've deprived her of something at home.  So that's TV, what is left?  Well there are magazines, the internet (HUGE), movies, pop music (yuk!), friends at school, the school itself, holiday gift giving pressure, stores, fast food, and on and on.  It is really tough to protect yourself from companies who spend millions (billions?) on marketing to your kid. 

Advice or ideas are welcome.

I keep hearing of stories about racism that are targeted towards Obama. The last was on the most recent podcast of This American Life.  There is no way I want to repeat what that racist act was, totally despicable, so you'll have to listen for yourself.  I'm no anthropologist, sociologist, or psychologist, but this race issue has me thinking about the roots of racism.  The one thing I keep coming back to is competition. 

Way back in the tribal era, I'm sure that competition between tribes was pretty fierce, no matter where on the globe you called home.  But cooperation must have been a greater force in the world.  Human society couldn't have made it this far if not for cooperation.  So what gives, why do we still have these pockets of fierce competition of which I believe racism is a product of? And will they ever go away?

So how to resolve this extreme competition?  How do we move towards more cooperation among people to a tipping point where things like racism all but disappear? Is the answer education?  I think I it would be a good place to start.  How do we as a society shift into a frame of mind that says education is a right not a privilege?  Is this possible?

I know I have a lot of questions, must be the uncertain times.  But I keep coming back to one idea that could make a difference, be the change that you want to see in the world.  What if we as a society became an example of collective cooperation for the rest of the world to see?  Or will we continue to uphold the competition dogma that breeds hate and mistrust? I for one would like a renewed commitment to nonviolence from America.

photo by tony the misfit

On Living on Earth last week, I heard about this great new car company who is arranging for the comeback of the electric car.  I say comeback and if you've ever seen Who Killed the Electric Car you know what I mean.  Do you remember the old GM EV1?  If not you should watch the documentary about it. 

This new company, Better Place, is trying to make sure that the infrastructure is in place for electric vehicles.  And to date, they have some pretty big backers to help them succeed, like countries.  Yeah, that's right, countries. And not little old places like Iceland, although I doubt they could afford to do anything right now.  No, rather major players like France and Australia.  They also have a major car company willing to go along with their plans, Renault-Nissan.

Their approach is to make sure there is plug-in charging all over the place, and also battery-swapping stations, in case you need to go more than 100 miles.  You would pull in and the battery gets swapped out. 

Maybe this is one of those, "sure and we'll all be driving flying cars in like 10 years" things, but it is worth a look.  I think a lot of us are hungry for a new way to drive and are willing to take a risk to do so (as long as it's affordable.)  This idea must have a million bugs to work out, but at least we can learn from other nations how it goes first.  Plus, they have millions already to get things started.

 
photo by kevindooley

Getting started composting your kitchen waste is relatively easy and there are some good reasons for doing so.  Food waste makes up a huge proportion of what ends up in the landfill, about 25% when combined with yard waste according to the USEPA.  Food rotting in landfills also contributes to methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas.  Methane is a result of anaerobic digestion, meaning the food is rotting in the absence of air.  Composting at home is an aerobic process and the methane emissions are far reduced.

One major reason I like to compost at home is that my trash isn't nearly as stinky (especially if you're a vegetarian.)  Food waste is also mostly water and trucking around all that water is expensive and wasteful of fossil fuels.  Overall, I'm not really concerned about creating compost to use for my garden, I just really want the make the food disappear.  And it is amazing how fast that can happen.  Here's what we do:

1. Collect the waste in the kitchen.  If this isn't easy or attractive the process will stop here.  We use a crock we bought from IKEA.  It was cheap and the porcelain finish is easy to clean.  Although the wood lid is starting to come apart, otherwise it is great.  You really don't want plastic as that will stain and start to smell over time.  You also don't want anything too big.  I take ours out every night. 
2. Use a good composting bin.  Ours was free from the city.  Well it's not exactly free (what is?)  We traded our yard waste pickup for the bin.  This is kind of a bad option since now we have a pile of yard debris piling up.  I'm planning on asking my neighbor if I can slip a bit in with his now and then, but I haven't asked yet. 
   
   photo by gogreenwithgc
3. Tend the bin on a regular basis.  This doesn't take much time.  I make sure I have other things to mix with the food like grass clippings, weeds, leaves, maybe some soil.  Now that I have the bin almost full, I just take some out of the bottom and add it to the top when it needs it.  When I add the next load of food, I create a small hole in the compost, dump in the food, and cover it up.  You don't want the food uncovered as this attracts flies and is smelly.  I also like to mix the whole thing pretty well about once a month. 

That's it.  Dump it in and it disappears, without a smell, really.  When I first starting composting food waste, I didn't use a bin at all, I just dug a hole in the ground and kept the soil in a pile next to the hole.  I would dump the food in and sprinkle soil over it.  I used a small wire cage to keep out the vermin.  Really low tech.  I've heard of some folks keeping worm bins indoors to eat their food waste.  I have wanted to get back into using worms but haven't made it yet.  Maybe I'll just buy some at the bait shop and throw them in the bin.  Let me know if you have any questions about getting started. 

I had a thought the other day.  Instead of making two loaves of bread like I normally do, why not take the one loaf and turn it into bagels instead?  Can I use the same dough recipe?  Will it work out?  Turns out that I can use the same dough, just treat it like for bagels.  See for yourself if it turned out.

It is much quicker than making a loaf of bread too.  Once the dough is together, instead of putting it in a bowl to rise, you make 5-6 balls and let them sit for 15 minutes.  Take each ball and roll it with your hands into a tube shape until it is just wider than both of your hands side-by-side.  Take the little snake you made and form it into a circle and crimp the ends together carefully.  Let the newly formed rings sit for about 10 mintues and in the meantime bring a big pot of water to boil.  Drop the rings in the water, as much as will fit at once, and boil for 1 minute on each side.  Take out of the water and let dry for a few minutes on a plate.  Put the bagels on a greased baking sheet and bake for 20 mintues at 425 F flipping half way through.  Cool on a rack and get ready to enjoy your fresh baked bagels.  You can also add toppings by dipping the bagels on a dry plate with the toppings spread out on and bake on the topping side down first. 

I’ve switched from using folders to organize my emails to using tags, something that you can do in Thunderbird and Gmail. Essentially I leave all my emails in my inbox and tag them. You can use more than one tag per email too which allows you to put them in more than one category or “folder”. Say I get an email about one of my projects, I can tag it with that project name and then also to-do. Using Thunderbird I can create a smart search on a tag and save the results as a folder. So I can find that one email in three places: by the project name, looking at my to-do emails, and just by looking in my inbox. What I find frustrating with email is trying to locate a month old email that I need and not being able to find it, or finding all the emails that relate to only one of my projects. Having multiple locations increases my chance of finding that email again, instead of hunting through 30 folders to find it. Email search is getting better but sometimes returns too many results to be of much use.

Last week I was traveling in Houston for the Soil Science Society of America annual conference. At my hotel there was no free wi-fi, but there was access at the convention center. This made for checking my email a sporadic event that resulted in just scanning my inbox for necessities and leaving the rest for later. By the end of the week I had almost 100 new emails. I know that some folks would have much more than that, but for me it was a lot. Whenever this happens it reminds me of how much email is both a royal pain and an amazing communication tool at the same time. Figuring out a good system to manage it all can help to save time and reduce the stress associated with a busting inbox. My next plan is to investigate using filters to manage how the mail comes in. Not sure if it will help but finding little tricks to make email a more pleasant experience is worth the time investigating.

Another conversation is how to reduce the amount we use email to communicate. Can we increase our IM use to help this? Or perhaps dropping notes to each other in social networks like writing on Facebook walls or sending messages via Twitter. I for one would be willing to try this out in my workplace.

I always seem to start making our bread too late in the day.  Tonight looks like we'll be up till 11:30 waiting for the bread to be done.  Sure we could go to bed 15 or 20 mintues earlier than that, but we can't resist the lure of having that first warm piece of bread.  I just kneaded the bread for the second time a popped it in the pans for the second rise.  I'll turn the oven on in about 20 minutes or so.  Sometimes I'll put the pans with the rising loaves on the top of the oven for the last bit of rising just to help speed them up a bit.  The summer months make the rising happen so much quicker.  In winter, I tend to put the bread in the bathroom to rise with the space heater on, otherwise it just takes too long.

The bread tonight is the second time I've made this new recipe, a multi-grain.  It is basically the same as my standard 2/3 whole wheat loaf, but this time I add the following:

2 tbs sesame seeds
2 tbs golden flax seeds
2 tbs millet (could be another grain)
some oatmeal or sunflower seeds
1 c rye flour substituting for 1 c of the all-purpose flour

This makes for a hartier loaf than my normal whole wheat bread.  It also doesn't rise as much, but it is really good!

photo by Jimee, Jackie, Tom & Asha

On the This American Life podcast this week is a story about a man in Harlem who started baby college for the residents there.  He decided that he needed to try and reach out and help as many children as possible succeed in life.  And this started with not concentrating on helping lift the parents out of poverty so much as trying to educate them to help their children succeed, to break the cycle of poverty.

Research supports the idea that the most critical time in a person's development is between the ages of 0-3.  If parents can just read to their children every night, the chances of that child succeeding goes way, way up, regardless if they are poor, rich, or whatever.  There is hope to make the world a better place, and it starts right from the beginning.

Oh, you should also check out the new NPR Planet Money podcast to get the scoop on what is going on with the financial woes.  They update it almost every day.  It started from a story on This American Life about the securities blowup, a really great explanation of what happened and why. 

photo by adwriter

Some time ago, I heard John McCain remark about how under his presidency he wouldn't spend $3 million of taxpayers money to study bear DNA in Montana.  I heard this when watching the video in which he made the infamous "middle class is $5 million" joke.  Just after that not-so-funny remark, he stated that he wouldn't spend money to study bear DNA.  Wait a minute here.  I suddenly forgot all about the $5 million comment, instead I was shocked that he doesn't believe that spending money on science is important.  OK, I'm stretching it a bit in saying "science" meaning all of science since I'm sure he is for some of it (military).  But really, do I trust a politician to decide which science is important or not?  Where does McCain stand on funding scientific research? 

You might say that I have a personal interest in federal research dollars since my salary comes from federal research spending.  In any case, Living on Earth just interviewed the scientist that is performing that very same bear DNA study cited by McCain.  Turns out that the grizzly has endangered species protection making it required by federal law to study it before actions can take place in its habitat that could be disruptive (like oil drilling.)  I guess John should check up on what he criticizes for a nice campaign trail blurb.  Or could it be that he doesn't support federal protection of species? 

photo by peter.macdonald on flickr

I came upon a recent quote, in a baby shower announcement of all places:

We cannot do everything, but we can all do something

So if you are going to do something, your part of the "green" thing, a major player that you might not have considered before is your diet.  A recent study by David Pimentel from Cornell University has calculated the amount of fossil fuel energy that is in an average American diet (listen to him on Living on Earth.)  They found that on average we consume 600 gallons of oil per person per year through our food.  Meaning that it requires a lot energy to produce, package, ship, sell, and take home our food.  This study also suggests that America could reduce the energy consumption in the food industry by 50%.

By examining what you eat and making some small changes, you can find ways to reduce your environmental impact on many fronts.

• Shipping.  To reduce the amount your food is transported, eat in season whenever you can.  This way you don't get apples from New Zealand.  Try to also source local ingredients from local farms.  This also has the added benefit to keeping your money local, not sent off to some unknown part of the country or world.  Join a local CSA.
• Chemicals.  Organic agriculture uses less pesticides than conventional farming.  The production and application of pesticides contributes to environmental degradation, not to mention the risks to farmer worker and consumer health.  See the Organic Center's pocket guide to pesticides in foods.
• Meat.  Try reducing the amount of meat you eat.  Meat production takes a much heavier toll on the environment generally requiring more energy and water to produce.  Look for local, sustainably produced meats when you do eat it.  In Oregon, we have a supply of locally raised lambs like Cattail Creek.

Good resources to finding local and sustainable foods is Local Harvest and the Eat Well Guide. 

Does this mean that I do all of these things all of the time?  No, but one purchase, or lack of purchase, here and there does add up.  Plus getting involved with your local foodshed brings a new connection with your food and community that you might not have expected.  It wasn't that long ago when everyone ate like this.  It's time for the new generation to bring back some of our forgotten food traditions. 

photo by Sakurako Kitsa