Skip to main content

Extreme green

I know, I know, Kermit's tag line has been used ad nauseam in recent months, but it's so true: It's not easy bein' green.

This is one of the most honest commentaries on the green movement that I've seen. Stanley Fish is old and cranky, yes, but I totally understand his point. And I agree. I mean, we all want to do what we can do to save Mother Earth, but why make yourself crazy? And how do we know that what we're doing in our day-to-day lives are actually being carried through? I speak, for instance, of our wacky, throw-everything-into-one-bin system of recycling here in my home state...how do we know that the plastic milk jugs are being adequately separated from the green-glass wine bottles?

I say do what you can do within your financial means and comfort zone, and always be mindful of your footprint.

Extremism in any form is dangerous, even extreme green.

(Read some of the vitriolic comments to Fish's post, too...scary radical tree huggers!)

TODAY I'M GRATEFUL FOR
time with my best girls in NJ...it's always better when we're together.

(Oh, and I'm really grateful for Memere's sewing skills!)
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A boy and his cat

Our backyard is a decent size and backs to woods. Every time a visitor steps onto our back deck, friend, family, and neighbor alike, we hear "What a yard! You need to get that kid a dog!" Apparently this is the natural progression here in Suburbia: house + yard + boy child + dog = happiness. Now, it's one thing to hear about our need of dog from friends or family who know us, but coming from neighbors and relative strangers it gets a bit old. My first response is always, Why do you think so? Which makes people hem and haw because they don't want to insult me by saying what's really on their minds: Because you're depriving that child of a human sibling , and he needs a friend . One problem: We're not dog people. I mean, we like other people's dogs, and I often think having a dog would be a major motivation to walk long distances regularly and get myself into shape. But a dog is like a toddler who will never grow up. They are needy, and they bark and poo...
3 comments
Read more

Ottomania!

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about ottomans. A ridiculous amount of time, actually, given the number of other things I truly should focus my thoughts on. I find, though, that when the world outside gets scary (and scary is a truly relative term these days) I turn to online shopping for things I don't really need. Actually, it's more like online browsing; I rarely purchase. I spend hours searching for, oh, erasable colored gel pens or standing desks or all-natural curly-hair gel or the perfect black sweater. (Yes, these are things I've fixated on over this winter; I still haven't clicked "buy" nor settled on any of them.) This week, it's ottomans. By the way, my girl  Brené  Brown would call this behavior numbing . I'm okay with that. Because online browsing is way less detrimental (so far) than chain smoking, which is what I'd really like to do when the world is scary. It's a way to escape, to daydream, to focus on things tha...
16 comments
Read more

Grown-up words and what to do about them

We know our children are little sponges who soak up all our words, actions, mannerisms. They are often parrots, but even more often they are fun house mirrors, amplifying and exaggerating our own idiosyncratic behaviors until we cringe, laugh, or hang our heads in shame. Yesterday while cleaning up his toys, Sweet Boy got frustrated trying to put one of his train pieces together. Instead of crying or raging like he would have a few weeks ago, he threw the toy down and yelled, "Oh, fuck it!" Oh. My. Lord. The air was sucked out of the room. We were suspended in time and space, frozen as our eyes met. I took a split second to consider my options: (1) Freak out and yell at him---scare him into never saying it again; (2) Ask him to repeat what he said, because maybe I heard it wrong and I don't want to overreact; (3) Ask where he heard that word, stuff his mouth full of soap, then call the offending child's parent immediately (a la The Christmas Story ); (4) Ignore it so ...
4 comments
Read more