More easy ways to use less plastic

Loving, protecting and living on the earth!

Plastic - part 3

In a recent post, I asked people to send me suggestions on easy way to use less plastic in the kitchen.

Here are the suggestions I received:

1. Buy only fresh produce that is not packaged at all.

2. Use wax paper.

3.If you have to use plastic, use the smallest size bag or segment that you can.

4. Never buy bottled water.

The one about bottled water was submitted multiple times.

So, how about you? How have you cut down on the use of plastic in your kitchen?

Loving, protecting and living on the earth!

I write many blogs about the environment and how we must all do our part to slow climate change and to protect our natural resources. This page will be a page for sharing ideas, inventions and discoveries. I hope it engenders a real conversation about what individuals can do in big and little ways.

Here’s a question to start us off. Plastic is so much a part of our lives. It seems to be a part of almost everything we buy – on the packaging, if not in the product itself. So much of what we use in our homes is plastic, and to make matters worse, so much of it is one use plastic- cellophane wraps, plastic bags, plastic sandwich and freezer bags.

Question: What are the ways you reduce the use of plastic in your life? Let’s see how many ideas we can get.

Here is one thing I do. It doesn't sound like much, but after years of using plastic without even thinking about it, it was a big change for me. Now I hardly ever wrap anything in any kind of plastic for storage. Instead, I use glass containers for leftovers.

A simple easy change at the grocery store - I don't put my produce in plastic bags when I buy it. Why put apples, lettuce, tomatoes, etc in a plastic bag in your grocery cart just to put it in another bag to carry it home? My produce always arrives home just fine even though it is packed loose in my reusable grocery bags. (I have quite a variety of bags that I use for toting groceries. I think I got them all free and I just keep accumulating them. )I realize that for much of the world using reusable bags is the most common practice imaginable, but for many of us here in the U.S., it is something we actually had to "learn" to do.  The same goes for not wrapping things in plastic...a learning curve for us here in the U.S.

Please add some suggestions for reducing or eliminating your use of plastic in your home. The more ideas we share, no matter how simple, the more we help people like ourselves make simple changes, and if enough us make simple changes it adds up to a big change. Even it you think it is something everyone already does, put it in a comment anyway. You never know what an impact your one idea may have.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

Earth Day 2014

Please join me in a Thunderclap in honor of Earth Day. If everyone of my readers, friends on Facebook, and Twitter followers joins my campaign and shares it with their friends, we can reach 1000s of people by April 29. We need to keep the momentum from Earth Day, April 22, alive and growing! The message is simple - the time is now for us to unite our hands and hearts to slow climate change.

Yesterday the United Nations issued a report warning that governments are not doing enough to prevent profound environmental risks in coming decades...not centuries, decades!  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/14/science/earth/un-climate-panel-warns-speedier-action-is-needed-to-avert-disaster.html?_r=0

This is exactly the message in my novel, I Call Myself Earth Girl. 

The silver lining in all this is that there is still time to do something about it if we have an intensive effort over the next 15 years.

The most encouraging aspect of all this is that for the first time ever the political will to take serious, committed action on the environment is rising across the globe.

I believe this will is the direct result of the grass roots efforts by people like you and me to raise awareness and to keep environmental issues front and center in our conversations, emails, and letters to our governmental leaders.

So, here it is... a call to action now! We have 15 years to save the future for our children, grandchildren and all those who follow.

We have been chosen to transition humanity to a new way of living, that will allow all to have a decent standard of living, achieved by living in harmony with nature and with each other.

The scientific evidence is clear. We can not wait. We must not wait.

It is our privilege and our responsibility because we are the humans who live on this planet right now. We can not let our differences divide us and keep us from solving the greatest problem of our time.

When it comes to climate change we can not be Democrats or Republicans. We can not let religious beliefs, national boundaries, political and economic philosophies divide us.

We must do all we can to learn how to reduce our own carbon footprints now. We must continue to protest, petition and speak out against policies that harm the environment. We can not wait for someone else to do it for us.

This is our problem because this is our planet, our lives, our future.

We are the leaders we have been waiting for!

Please join me with optimism and faith in your fellow human beings.

I believe making the necessary changes within 15 years is the biggest challenge the worldwide community has ever faced. I believe we can do it.  But not without YOU!

In coming blog posts I will be sharing resources and asking readers to do so too. If you blog, please reblog this post, or do a blog of your own about this topic. Blogging gives us a free opportunity to reach people across the globe.

Let's get this movement moving full speed ahead!

Available at all online bookstores as a paperback and available in all ebook formats. Support your local book seller by asking them to order it. ISBN - 978 1 78279 049 5

What if the world stopped spinning?

What if the world stopped spinning?

If it just stood still on its axis and refused to move?

If at every latitude and longitude, the sun and moon stayed still?

What if somewhere it is always sunrise and somewhere else the sun is always setting?

What if some live forever in total darkness and others in unrelenting light?

What if the earth just took a stand and said, “I will not turn once more, not one degree, not even the 100^th of a degree, until you learn to love me?”

What if the earth were to shout to us, “I have done all I will do for you. I will not provide succulent morsels for your wasteful tongues after you rape me with violence and pollution?”

What if she told us that she was finished with the struggle, that it just was not worth it anymore?

What if she screamed in anger and in pain, “I have no more tears to shed for you. You have hurt me more than I am willing to endure. You come to me for everything you need and give nothing in return.”

What if she said in a voice full of despair, “ It is too hard to sustain life when you choose to kill and maim each other as a way to solve problems.”

“I can not keep spinning. I will no longer enable you to destroy us both. I have given all I have to give. It is your turn now.”

What if in the bright light of the un-turning world, we could never stop seeing all that we have taken from her, if we were forced to stare at desolation?

What if in the perpetual darkness we could never again see the beauty of a flower, a tree, a mountain stream, waves breaking on the sand?

What if some lived in the glory of an eternal dawn or the beauty of an eternal sunset, knowing that the rest of the world would never ever see it?

If it was you, could you stand to know that you were one of the few to be so lucky?Knowing that so many are denied light and so many others never given the respite of the dark?

What if we had no choice? What if the earth just stopped giving? What if there was nothing we could do to change her mind?

No pleading, no promises, no planting trees, no conserving energy, no cleaning polluted waters, no small gestures to show we care.

Would we realize how small these gestures are? Would we be sorry that we did not do more?

What if it was too late? What if the world just couldn’t take it anymore?

~~~

I wrote this more than two years ago and complacency about the environment is still widespread. Yet, I am hopeful. I see more news stories about climate change than I did two years ago. I see more about the environment on social media. So, I think change has begun at a grassroots level.

This makes me hopeful because I truly believe you and I and many millions across the globe will be the ones to accept the honor and privilege of transitioning our species to a new way of living in harmony with nature. We are the generations that will figure how to use our technology to protect, rather than destroy, and we will also figure out when using technology is not the best solution for our health and the health of our planet.

A book that gives us some solutions and lots of hope is Cows Save the Planet by Judith D. Schwartz.  http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/cows_save_the_planet:paperback

What books would you recommend?

Is the First Great Drought happening now?

We have been given the incredible gift of access to knowledge and access to each other. We are in this adventure called life together as members of the only real race, the human race.

Dearest readers,

I have to share something important with you. The more I learn about the drought in California and other states, the more I am convinced that we are actually experiencing the First Great Drought I wrote about as fiction in I Call Myself Earth Girl. While I was working on the novel in 2010 and 2011, I was aware that the western and southern states were experiencing severe drought conditions, including more and longer-lasting forest fires. At the time, I did not think that these droughts would still be going on in 2014.

In the book, Gloria is a contemporary woman living in Newport, RI.  She is disturbed by recurring dreams in which a young girl who calls herself Earth Girl speaks to her. Gloria eventually becomes convinced that she is pregnant with Earth Girl's child who was conceived in another lifetime. In the dreams, Earth Girl recounts the story of her life to Gloria. She tells of living in a bleak and barren time.

She first mentions the drought this way:                                                                                    My father told once told me that they stopped putting pictures in books when he was a boy. ... Once, I heard him tell my mother that he thought they kept the pictures out of books because they didn't want the next generations to know how beautiful everything had been before the first great drought.

Later in the story, Earth Girl recounts her father's fears that a Second Great Drought had begun. He predicts that millions of people will die because the second great drought is happening before the earth has had time to recover fully from the first one. He knows how bad things became during the previous large scale drought. He tells his daughter that "people didn't pay attention to the first great drought until it was too late."

Earth Girl also tells Gloria what her mother told her about the droughts and famine:       But people weren't very smart, she said, because if the famine was in a different country, they would just thank God it wasn't happening to them. They didn't even notice when bigger parts of their own countries got drier and drier and they had less drinking water and less water for hydroelectric power. ... She said that people kept on doing all the things that hurt the earth and then they were surprised when the earth could not recover.  

I think that we are the people to whom Earth Girl's parents were referring. We are not  paying enough attention and soon it will be too late. If you find this hard to believe, please do a Google search on droughts. I will include some links to articles at the end of this blog, but if you do your own search, you will be amazed at what you find. There is a wealth of information, and yet, there seems to be a dearth of concern in the general public.

At first Gloria did not pay attention to the mention of the droughts. When she finally does, she is distressed to discover that in 2011, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published this report:                                                                                          An intense drought has gripped the southern tier of the U. S for several months, accompanied by destructive wildfires, low water supplies, and failed crops. Dry conditions emerged as early as October of last year and culminated in one of the driest winter and spring seasons in the observed record for the region. ... At the peak of this year's drought in July, exceptional drought conditions were spread across nearly 12 percent of the U.S., from Arizona to Florida, reaching the highest recorded level of drought since the U.S. Drought Monitor began reporting conditions 12 years ago.

This excerpt is not fiction. I copied it directly from the report. Gloria is alarmed by what she reads, but she does not want to believe that it really matters. She asks herself if this could be the beginning of the first great drought that Earth Girl keeps talking about in the dreams. She tries to convince herself that it is not:                                                                  Get a grip, girl! Don't let some crazy dream make you think this stuff really matters. If this was really serious, the government, the scientists and politicians would be all over it. There is no way they would ignore this stuff.

 Is Gloria right? Would the government ignore something this serious? Wouldn't politicians on both sides of the aisle devote hours to this? After all, the drought and its effects - including lack of clean water and failing crops - are major problems.

And if that drought were continuing, wouldn't it be a major news story? If we were really in a serious drought, wouldn't the networks devote as much time to it as they did to Justin Bieber egging a neighbor's house, or Paula Deen's lawsuit, or the birth of the newest heir to the British throne?

Of course, they would!                                                                                                                   But, they didn't.                                                                                                                                   So I am.

In the first of the Earth Girl series, a young girl named Ella does pay attention and she begs grown-ups to pay attention too. In the sequel, Ella's father, one of the many who did not pay attention, is now dead and living in three different realities. Two of those realities are in the future, but they are very different from each other. One is the future that may result if people don't pay attention.  The other is the future that may be ours if people do pay attention.

I feel compelled to draw people's attention to the seriousness of climate change and the impending water crisis in my novels, in my blog, on Twitter, facebook, and in general conversation. Just take a moment to think about what life would be like for you if water were a scarce  luxury instead of something you take for granted. (I realize that in some parts of the world this is a reality right now.)

Think about this:  Today, one-third of the world's population is living without access to adequate supplies of freshwater. By 2025, up to two-thirds of people in the world may be facing serious water shortages, including people in 35 percent of  cities in the U.S. (Statistic from WATER CONSCIOUSNESS)

Take a moment to picture some of your favorite natural places. How different will they be without water? California is already finding this out. Why aren't we alarmed by this?

Of course, being alarmed really counts for nothing. Figuring out how we, as individuals, can make a difference is what really matters. One way is to let your local, state and federal government representatives know that environmental protection matters to you. I'll be blogging about this in various ways throughout the rest of 2014.

If you're with me in this, please spread the word. Share this blog or re-blog it. Write your own blog about it. Put this on facebook. Bring it up in conversation with your friends.

It matters. Let's not wait to discover how much it matters. It will be too late by then.

As I have written a few times in my blog, we have the privilege of being the people who are on earth right now at this critical juncture in human history. Thanks to the internet and the ease of communication across continents we can transcend national barriers and collaborate together to solve these problems. We have been given the incredible gift of access to knowledge and access to each other. We are in this together as members of the only real race, the human race.

Let's use these gifts now. Let's revel in our privilege of being alive right now when we have the power to improve the present and shape the future.

Do it for your loved ones.                                                                                                                Do it for my loved ones.                                                                                                                  Do it for everyone who has loved ones.                                                                                          Do it for those who struggle with lack of water now.                                                                      Do it for those who will live in the future that our choices create for them.                                Do it because you can.                                                                                                                          If you don't, who will?

Dry reservoir photo: http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/2014/01/california-suffering-possibly-its-worst-drought-in-a-century/#1

Forest fire photo: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/10/17/report-western-wildfires-growing-more-intense-insurers-deeply-concerned/

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/dec/17/planet-climate-change-risk-drought-famine-epidemic

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/feb/18/california-drought-as-seen-from-space-nasa-picture/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/01/16/drought-west-disaster-declarations/4522651/

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/DroughtFacts/

WATER CONSCIOUSNESS - How We All Have to Change to Protect Our Most Critical Resource

AlterNet Books, San Francisco,  2008

www.alternet.org

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/amid-drought-california-and-other-western-states-gird-for-a-landmark-year-in-forest-fires/2014/02/13/ec23fbae-9417-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html

Come join me in the mission of the new millenium

We are the lucky ones who get to participate in the  most amazing adventure of the new millenium.

My dear readers, I have come to a turning point with this blog. I started it when I was looking for a publisher for my book. I named the blog What a Heart Can Hold with the general intention of writing about all sorts of different things and building up a readership before I actually signed with a publisher. It turns out that I found a publisher sooner than I expected (yay!) It also turns out that writing a blog about all sorts of different things is not necessarily the best way to promote a novel. So, I intend to reinvent this blog over the course of the next few weeks (well, let's be truthful...the next few months).

I noticed looking back on my posts  that there are topics I just naturally wrote about the most: the environment, peace, and the power of love. Although I only wrote once directly about my book, without even being consciously aware of it, I was writing most often about the three major themes in my novel. This makes sense because these are topics that fill my heart to overflowing.

Now I am working on the sequel to the book and I find myself frustrated by trying to promote my first novel while writing the next one. I feel that I spend too much time on promotion and not enough on writing. I have the uncomfortable feeling of letting my passion be dulled by the need to promote. In the past few weeks, I have been moved to finish this book and get its message out SOON because I believe that every one of us is being called to create a new and better future.

Although I never would have predicted this, I feel that my purpose in life is to get people to pay attention to this. More specifically, I feel that I have a message for all of us who are living right now:                                                                                                                                 We are all now, at this very minute, living through a transition of enormous significance.  I believe that we have been chosen by God, or the universe, the spirit world, or random chance to guide ourselves and this planet on which we live through a period of vast change.

In the last 5 years, almost all continents have experienced extreme drought conditions.  We need to take this seriously and we need to do whatever is needed to reverse this trend. If the trend can not be reversed, we need to figure out how to make sure everyone has access to clean water. This should be a major concern of all governments and all citizens, everywhere.

This is our task as the people who are living on the planet right now. It is our responsibility. But it is more than a task and a responsibility. It is a privilege. It is an honor to be the people who are living on this precious planet right now. We are the lucky ones who get to participate in the  most amazing adventure of the new millenium.

We have been chosen to usher humanity into a new and better way of living. We, yes my dear reader, you and I, were born to be living here now for a reason!  We are the leaders we have been waiting for.

The earth has been placed in our hands.

Do you see how beautiful it is? Can you feel the life that pulses through it? Look carefully at it. Its beauty is majestic. Yet it is fragile and growing ever more so.  It needs our care. It needs our love. It needs us to learn to work together to protect its resources. This is our challenge. This may even be why we are here!

We can do this.  Let's begin right now. Together.

 

Available as a paperback in bookstores and all online retailers. Available in all ebook formats, including Kindle and Nook.

Martin Luther King's network of mutuality

There are so many reasons to honor the memory and the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. My blog will be one of many to praise his courage, his compassion and his gift to move people with his words...a gift that most bloggers would love to have. I was 16 in 1964 and I was deeply moved by King's message of non-violent resistance. His cause was just. His words were eloquent and inspirational, moving those who agreed with him, and often those who did not.

I wish that we had such an inspiring voice for the cause of peace, disarmament and nonviolence today, and I truly believe that we need someone whose words can move both hearts and minds to speak to the impending environmental crisis that we, as a global community, are facing.

It is a crisis that we still don't really see, just as we didn't really see the stark face of racism in our country until it was broadcast on the national nightly news. Those who suffered the effects of racism were all too aware of it. It was a fact of life that they could not escape. But, it was easy for the majority of Americans to live in denial of the reality of racial injustice.

Dr. King made us see it and, more importantly, he made us care. He spoke to our consciences at the same time that he spoke to our hearts and minds.  He appealed to our better angels; to our sense of justice; to our ideals as Americans.

It is true that he was reviled by many who felt that he was asking too much of us - hated and feared by those who felt American society would not survive if it made the changes for which he marched and protested. He was called a communist, an agitator, a trouble-maker and worse by some. Yet, he prevailed and so did his message.

At the heart of that message was love. A special kind of love- love combined with the courage to do what was right. No matter how hard it was. He said, "I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”

I want to hear these same words spoken about the environment. It seems that the vast majority of people still do not realize how serious the impending environmental crisis will be, unless we take serious action now. People, for some reason, are not moved by scientific evidence.

So, I think the environmental movement needs a voice of love.  A voice that reminds us that it is our duty and our privilege to save what we love.  A voice that reminds us of the power of working for change with love in our hearts.

I know that I sound hopelessly idealistic, unrealistic, naive and foolish to many who read this. But those same words were applied to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s.

Dr. King said that he refused to "accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events, which surround him."  I agree with him. We don't have to watch helplessly as decisions are made that further endanger a sustainable future. We don't have to mindlessly use water, fuel, and electricity as if they are limitless. We have influence and we must learn to use it.

Dr. King said, "On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right."  He was talking about war and I totally agree with him.

But I also believe that many politicians and leaders are cowardly about the environment. They don't want to ask the public to make changes in the way we live, because they don't want to lose votes. They don't want to make necessary environmental regulations for businesses because they might lose contributions. I don't really blame them for feeling this way. After all, look at what happened to Jimmy Carter when he advised people to wear sweaters instead of turning up their thermostats!

But, if we had a voice like Dr. King, we would not give in to cowardice, politics or vanity. We would listen to our consciences telling us that we owe future generations a sustainable future. And, if a "sustainable future" sounds too abstract, the voice of the environmental leader would help us to realize that our children and grandchildren are part of that future. Will they have access to clean water? Not unless we make sure they do now. If that sounds far-fetched, check out the drought in California.

Maybe the words of Dr. King that most directly apply to the environment are found in this quote: “It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.” This is so true when it comes to the environment. The way we live; the choices we make; what we use and what we conserve - all of it affects everyone, now and in the future.

Fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act our nation - the whole world, actually - faces an enormous challenge. We can act with courage, with love for our families, with love for humanity, with love for the earth that nurtures us. I hope we find the voice that inspires us to do so.

What Happens Next?

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to live through a transition of enormous significance? Would you be aware every day that radical transformation is taking place?

Logic tells me that we would notice changes all around us. Yet, my experience is telling me this is not true. Right now, the earth we inhabit is undergoing rapid climate change and, although, we hear the term everyday, most of us do not notice much of a difference.  But a few people are taking notice and trying to get the rest of us to pay attention.

Roy Scranton is one of these people. Those who scoff at climate change as something that only hippy-dippy tree-huggers care about might be surprised to learn that Scranton is a veteran who served a tour in Iraq during the early years of the Invasion. In his recent opinion piece for The Stone, he tries to wake us up to what is happening right before our eyes.

He does not quote spokespersons for environmental organizations. Instead, he repeats the dire warnings of  military and civilian leaders who are concerned about how national security is compromised by climate change and the resulting extreme weather events.

"This chorus of Jeremiahs predicts a radically transformed global climate forcing widespread upheaval — not possibly, not potentially, but inevitably. We have passed the point of no return. From the point of view of policy experts, climate scientists and national security officials, the question is no longer whether global warming exists or how we might stop it, but how we are going to deal with it."

In other words, it is happening now. We are already living through a transition of enormous significance whether we choose to pay attention or not. So significant, in fact, that geologists are considering the addition of an new epoch to the Geological Time Scale. It would be called the Anthropocene and it is NOW. As the name suggests, this epoch is characterized by the effect the human species has on the earth's geology.

So what does all this mean for us right now? Scranton suggests that we have to learn how to die "as a civilization." In other words, during this epoch, the big philosophical questions about the meaning of individual lives and individual deaths will be overshadowed by the death of our civilization as we know it.

Sounds extreme, doesn't it? Sounds like something that would pretty hard to ignore, right?

Apparently not, because most of us are pretty good at ignoring what is happening to our only real home, the earth. It is as if we have all agreed upon an unspoken pact of ignorance; believing somehow that if we don't pay attention to it, it won't really happen. Sure the climate is getting warmer, droughts are more severe and longer lasting, storms of all types are more extreme, but if we pretend it doesn't matter, it won't matter.

Why have so many of us decided to just ignore what is happening?

Maybe it is because noticing it and thinking about it means we have to do something. If we don't want the world - not just the earth itself, but also civilization- to be radically different within 100 years, then we have to find solutions. Those solutions require extensive shifts in the way we live, the way we grow and produce food, the way we raise animals and crops, the way we travel, the homes we live in, even the clothes we wear.

How can we make those radical shifts if we don't first have a massive shift of consciousness? A shift that starts with recognizing that we are all now, at this very minute, living through a transition of enormous significance.  Yes, you and I and the little kid down the street and the old lady next door, all of us are living at a time of great consequence. We have been chosen by God, or the universe, the spirit world or random chance to guide ourselves and this planet on which we live through a period of vast change. How we live through that change and what kind of future we pass on to the generations that follow after us depends on how we respond now.

What happens next is up to all of us!                   

Roy Scranton article

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/learning-how-to-die-in-the-anthropocene/?emc=eta1&_r=0

Some books to read on the topic

Tropic of Chaos  by Christian Parenti - a description of the chaos caused by climate change, serious and bleak, but not without hope that humans can change the path we are now on.

Cows Save the Planet  by Judith D. Schwartz - this book is a call to action with actual things we can do to heal the earth. This book gives me hope. I urge everyone to read it.

I Call Myself Earth Girl by Jan Krause Greene - visionary fiction with an   environmental and spiritual message about the times we live in and the future that we create. (Yes, it is my novel.)