PART 1: 52 More and 52 More and More and More

Thank you all for your posts and enlightened comments these last weeks. I have been busy out shopping! But before I forget, Gabe & Dave, thanks for your great comments on the Sonoma Mountain Village response (off the Blog). Dave, it was good to hear about the Aprovecho Community and Gabe your comment: "My hope, surprise surprise, is that our family could make a more radical change, entirely throw out the whole American paradigm and not just try to paint brown shit green, that is, live exactly the same life as before but now just powered by solar energy", was priceless! Sincerely, I appreciate the dynamic conversation and sharing convictions. I have been a slacker on this Blog but have truly been inspired and provoked (also pissed) reading it at times. Let me explain. For example I have been inspired by Kira's comments to reduce egg consumption. It must have hit me at the right moment cuz I threw out the remaining (past freshness date) eggs that I had in the frig that I hardly use anyway and thought---I could do that...Baby Step... The next recipe I made "Tofu Quiche", I used flax meal and made it completely vegan. Didn't miss the eggs... Kira sharing the comment led to inspiring me to take an action that was in my comfort zone. Nothing too noble here. But provoked is just the exhaustion I feel from realizing this is a conversation David & I have led for DECADES---seriously since we were 19 years old (we are 54 now...do the math). We have been at the extremes (not like Gabe exactly) but close to it (our stories would include the shack, the housesit, the empty army barracks, the Boycott Newsletter, etc). We have intensely struggled in every phase of our relationship: to marry or not vs just living together, to have children or not since the end was coming...and during our years in Berkeley to live communally or keep renting or to buy a house or not to buy...and when the kids were little we attended all the protest marches, as well as peace rallies, trying to save ourselves and couciousness-raise for the benefit of our church, neighbors and children. So did we just "sell out", "get old and lazy", "been there, done that", "join the matrix", "compromise our ethics and values" (same as "selling out")? Yes and no...maybe and maybe not... Perhaps we are guilty as Gabe says, being just another cog in the "American paradigm" and I am fully aware and recognize that I am part of the problem...and that you are too. To be human! In India and China there are literally billions of people who are consumers and loving it. They will most surely surpass us in consumption and manage to ruin the environment long before the US of A can even decide to "limit green house gases" or before we can even finish our blogging efforts of enlightening and challenging one another to be better people. So what we do may be "too little, too late". But hey, I'm not saying I'm off the hook or I'm resigning myself to doom by "those people"... We and our fellow Americans are doing a damn good job of this all by ourselves---trouble is, as far as the 3rd world goes, we started something that is now out of our control. The smell of daily burning plastic and choking smog in India is fresh in my mind... So where does this leave the conversation---oh yeah back to being so busy since I have been out shopping. No kidding, here is what I have recently purchased in part: 4GB Pin Drive, 7 Balloons, 3 DVD + R for copies, 3 Lasagna Pans (various sizes), Popcorn Maker for Kira's Birthday, Flat Iron for my hair (not sure I will keep it), a cool and stylish top at REI, 2 Ex-Officio Shirts & 1 pants for David's Birthday (also from REI), Desk top computer with the latest greatest powerful stuff and the WINNER IS: a new Sony Bravia 40"LCD HDTV that arrived today! It is like a very nice (but bigger) computer screen and has an "Energy Star" rating to boot! I am a righteous person because I waited until my one & only 13 year old energy consuming Mitsubishi 32" TV actually died before making this purchase. I am justified because at least I didn't get a 46" or 56" or 60" etc size screen and the energy consuming home theater toys that go with it! I am holy because I'm not like those other people... My consumer religion tells me so!

[Check out cool Sierra Club site that examines "how green is my": TV, Bike, Laundry: http://www.sierraclub.org/howgreen. I scored 90% on my TV test! ]

Since this is so long I will close Part 1 and leave you with this meditation that Gabe & Kira are familiar with:

Found on www.amazon.com
Are My Hands Clean?
by Sweet Honey In The RockFrom the Album Live at Carnegie Hall

Are My Hands Clean?
Lyrics and music by Bernice Johnson Reagon. Songtalk Publishing Co. 1985
Performed by Sweet Honey in the Rock. Sweet Honey in the Rock, Live at Carnegie Hall

I wear garments touched by hands from all over the world
35% cotton, 65% polyester, the journey begins in Central America
In the cotton fields of El Salvador
In a province soaked in blood,
Pesticide-sprayed workers toil in a broiling sun
Pulling cotton for two dollars a day.
Then we move on up to another rung—Cargill
A top-forty trading conglomerate, takes the cotton through the Panama Canal
Up the Eastern seaboard, coming to the US of A for the first time
In South Carolina
At the Burlington mills
Joins a shipment of polyester filament courtesy of the New Jersey petro-chemical mills of Dupont
Dupont strands of filament begin in the South American country of Venezuela Where oil
riggers bring up oil from the earth for six dollars a day
Then Exxon, largest oil company in the world,
Upgrades the product in the country of Trinidad and Tobago
Then back into the Caribbean and Atlantic Seas
To the factories of Dupont
On the way to the Burlington mills
In South Carolina
To meet the cotton from the blood-soaked fields of El Salvador
In South Carolina
Burlington factories hum with the business of weaving oil and cotton into miles of fabric
for Sears
Who takes this bounty back into the Caribbean Sea
Headed for Haiti this time—May she be one day soon free—
Far from the Port-au-Prince palace
Third world women toil doing piece work to Sears specifications
For three dollars a day my sisters make my blouse
It leaves the third world for the last time
Coming back into the sea to be sealed in plastic for me
This third world sister
And I go to the Sears department store where I buy my blouse
On sale for 20% discount
Are my hands clean?

Love you all the best I can :-)
Lakshmi