Solarious - stumbling away from the grid

So I just finished doing a few days of community service around Los Angeles. Out here, you can end up doing community service for almost anything. Jaywalk? Community service. Broken headlight? Community service. Forget your seatbelt…? You guessed it. Specifically, I was in Macarthur Park, made nationally famous by Donna Summer in 1979, but integral to the history of LA much longer than that. Back in the early days, it was owned by the governor’s family, and became a garbage heap, then a huge park at the turn of the twentieth century. In the eighties and early nineties, it was famous more as a place to find drugs (and bodies floating in the lake), but these days, it’s settled back into a respectable place, albeit one where the shop keepers don’t speak English as often as they do.

So as I picked up trash off the grounds and skimmed the lake with a long skimmer, clearing more trash and several varieties of dead animals, I started thinking about trash. What else, it’s all I’d been looking at all week! Even as a kid, my family and I used to go a few times a year and volunteer at the local park cleaning trash, mostly stuff that had floated downriver in a flood and somehow ended up on the banks. It’s not that people didn’t use the park. Sometimes it was downright crowded in the picnic areas. But I don’t remember people leaving a lot of litter behind. And I’m not that old yet, so this isn’t a “I remember when…” story!

Now Macarthur Park is a different story. It’s almost all human trash, and people just have a picnic on the lawn and leave everything there when they leave, like the lawn is some plastic dinner tray that can just be picked up taken to the dishwasher at the end of the day. If I’d melted down the plastic bottle caps I swept up those few days, I’d easily have gotten a chunk the size of myself. And as all you greenies know a plastic cap on the ground isn’t going anywhere anytime soon from biodegradation. At several points, the park director said not to worry about little trash, just newspapers and boxes, and plastic cups… big things you can see from across the park.

This illustrated to me the national situation we find ourselves in with our waste systems. We produce SO much trash that we end up only trying to clean up “the big things”, because we think we don’t have time to concentrate on all the little things. Well, I disagree. You see, if you’re going to do a job, do it right. That’s the motto of 90% of successful people, rich or otherwise. After a day of doing what was asked (and watching people throw things right back onto the half-cleaned areas), when skimming the lake I thought, why do this halfway? A lake that looks sort of trashy will quickly invite people to think of it as a place for more trash. A pristine lake is a scene for enjoyment. So I started skimming, and then when I finished, I went and did it again, checking my work. In the end, the whole lake was clear, and I was feeling pretty good watching the ducks feed their ducklings in an area free of plastic bags and soda bottles. And to prove my theory, I saw a man take out his camera and take a few lovely pictures of the now clean park, and several patrons even stopped and thanked me for cleaning up their lake, asking questions about the wildlife and the lake itself.  All that positivity for a few hours work!

Another thing that I see so often in our current societal system is that we work at odds with ourselves. After three days of cleaning the park, the park managers received word that, in response to anticipated large turnouts at the immigration rallies planned for this year’s May Day celebration, all trash cans must be removed from the park, so they couldn’t be used as weapons against the police (never mind that every barrel was chained down). No plastic bags or paper receptacles either, as they could be torched. What about the trash of the ten thousand or so people supposed to show up? The police’s answer… throw it on the ground. Having just been that person picking up trash for three days, I felt the frustration of someone who watches their sandcastle washed away by the tide. True, picking up trash once won’t cure everything, but couldn’t we as a society learn to coordinate everything a little better so that we don’t expend our resources repeatedly attacking the same problems when we know that by not changing the underlying patterns of consumption we won’t stem the problems themselves?

So community service wasn’t so bad after all. I’m glad not to be getting up at 5 am, but I kind of enjoyed being in the park all day. And when I walked away from the last day’s work, I felt good seeing the green expanses trash-free because of me. It looked like I imagined it in the old days. So here goes, I’m going to make another COMMITMENT. I will find a place, somewhere in LA, and adopt it as my own. It will stay trash free and maybe even sprout a few more plants. People may or may not notice, but hopefully the birds will. Will you do the same? If everyone just adopted a tiny little spot, we could create communities and scenes for enjoyment rather than half-cleaned vistas, waiting to accept another gift of trash.

A Whole Neighborhood goes Solar

Here’s an inspiring story: up in San Jose, these neighbors got together to install solar systems at their houses. By working together, they were able to bulk-bid solar installation companies for the lowest possible prices. Using this approach, they were able to get 26 houses wired and ready for a fraction of the cost. Read the full story above, and get ready to go knocking on a few doors. After all, it could save you thousands toward your solar living dreams! Now that’s a good reason for a block party!

If you are planning a garden, I can’t recommend enough that you go organic in your approach. After all, since 50% of all pesticides used in America are sprayed on cotton (and therefore your clothes!), you’ve likely already got a lot of toxins to offset in your life! However, the topic of organic gardening can be a little intimidating at first, as it is so large.

If you want to get your feet wet, while learning from experts in their field, why not volunteer at a working organic farm in your area? The originator of all organic exchange websites, WWOOF.org has many such opportunities to do just that. And it’s sorted by area, so you’ll be able to find something local. Also, try OrganicVolunteers.com for similar invitations. Most of the opportunities listed allow for you to sample or take home some of the produce you help to tend for a taste test. It’s like a free grad school education with an excellent cafeteria!

Do you know of any other great sites? Post them here!

If you’re into off-grid living, then it’s quite possible you also like to escape to the great outdoors every once in a while. And though you’re super smart and careful, you may find yourself in a position one day when you need to literally go back to nature for some food. Even if you don’t find yourself in this unenviable position, it’s valuable to know what in your environment is toxic, and what plants are edible. It makes for great conversation when you can pick up a plant off the side of the trail and offer it to a friend! Read this survival tip from simplesurvival.net to help you understand the risks and processes for testing the flora of your area for edibility.

You can also learn a lot by reading books on Native American traditional cooking from tribes local to you. Though there are not always a wealth of cookbooks out there, several websites catalog user contributions on the topic. Here’s an interesting example with a few recipes and a different interface from most. NativeTech.org is another good site. Look out for salad recipes and vegetable side dishes. They often include native plants that are uniquely well-suited to grow in your area. These would be excellent candidates for planting in your own home garden. Finally, when you do have a crop of something native, experiment often with cooking it different ways (bonus points for cooking with solar or alternative energy sources!), and share that knowledge with others. You can do it here if you like! That way, the wondrous internet can do its job in spreading the word about native plants. And we can all enjoy an exotic meal together without ever hitting the supermarket. Yum!

Earth Hour 2008

Visit this site, then join millions of people around the world in shutting off the lights for one hour on March 29, 2008. Really, this site doesn’t need too much explanation. If you’re an armchair off-grid enthusiast, this could be the event you’ve been waiting for. Easy, painless, lots of other people doing it with you. Do you need another reason? Okay, they’ll even put your picture on their web-page when you sign up. If none of the above appeals, then why are you reading this anyway? So remember: March 29, 2008, 8pm. See you on the dark side of the planet!

Oh, how I love Freecycle. It might be the best site on earth for getting people to reuse the things sitting in their garage gathering “don’t need it, but can’t toss it” dust. I’ve been able to find a lot of the materials necessary for solar projects just by asking. Maybe that has something to do with living in Sunny CA, the mecca of earth-friendly solar enthusiasts, but I’m pretty sure with a little ingenuity, you can get started on your solar projects with little more than a bit of gas money. Just remember to return the love when someone asks for that one-of-a-kind thingamajig you have rotting in the basement.

Here’s an excerpt from an interview with Bill McKibben, a local energy production advocate. He has just released a book called Deep Economy on the topic. Read more at Gaiam.com:

“We can get off our power grids
For decades, our model for generating power has been highly centralized: We produce electricity in a few huge centralized power plants and then ship it around the country via a network of wires. As long as you don’t worry about the side effects, such as carbon emissions, and as long as you have abundant fuel to run it on, then you can provide relatively cheap electricity, and the few people who own the plants can make a great deal of money.

And — partly because of the lobbying power of these big players — most attempts to “fix” the energy sector to deal with global warming or peak oil involve marginally improving these giant, centralized plants: For instance, subsidizing utilities to explore “clean coal” plants that might someday capture carbon emissions and pump them into old mines for storage. The federal government also underwrites loads of research on nuclear power, because reactors, despite their ruinous expense, fit neatly into the familiar centralized scheme.

We may need some such technologies in the years ahead; the fight to slow carbon emissions is so desperate that it’s wrong to rule anything out, especially as a bridge toward some better future.

But that future’s more exciting possibilities lie elsewhere, in smaller community-scale power systems.”

Chock full of good reasons for you to go solar today!