Weekend Update
Hermes. Last year, on my way to a baronial business meeting, the Suzuki Vitara I'd traded with my parents for died dramatically at the top of I-795. It turns out it was a pretty serious engine problem (don't ask me what) that would cost a minimum of $2000 to fix and wouldn't even be guaranteed to work. So my Vitara has been sitting in the driveway since, accumulating an impressive pile of pine needles on the windshield, waiting for Uncle Jim to take it away so that he can fix it up for himself.
Because Bobby and I have very little extra money these days (and had even less in those days), I went without a car for some time and then bought a car from auction from the auto shop teacher at Bobby's school: Hermes. Hermes is a '93 Mercury Topaz. His color is '90s teal--remember that time in the '90s when everything was teal? I remember The Piece even had a teal decor then. He's currently missing a tail light but, otherwise, is in pretty good shape. Hermes is one sexy car.
Then I was driving back from Salsarita's last Wednesday, and he started to really hesitate, to where I wasn't sure I'd make it home. I did ... barely. The Low Fuel light had just come on, but the gauge showed 1/8th tank. Well, turns out the gauge is wrong. Hermes was empty. We put gas in him today, and he was fine. As we sat at the service station this afternoon, Bobby turned to me, pie-eyed, and said, "He was just hungry." But it is very good news that he's fine. My classroom observations this semester are in Westminster, which is a pretty long walk!
DS. Then, on Friday, I got an email from DS. "You've Been Approved," said the subject line. I have? For what?? I hadn't applied for anything; I am quite content writing gardening articles for GardenGuides and eHow Home & Garden. I opened the email, and it said, "As one of our top health and wellness writers ..."
Okay? Maybe I wrote an article on herbs once? I know I wrote an article on New Jersey state parks once for LiveSTRONG Lifestyle, though I don't know that that counts as health and wellness. Anyway.
I had been approved to write for a special project DS is working on. When I looked up the titles for the project, I nearly fell out of my chair. They pay $10 more per article than my gardening articles. I seriously thought they made a mistake and that I'd get an email the next day, apologizing for giving me access to articles I wasn't actually qualified to write, but nothing has come, and here it is Monday. I don't know that I'm going to claim any of the special articles; health and fitness really isn't my niche, no matter what DS says, and the time I spend doing the extra research might well mean that I make less writing them than cranking out a gardening article in 30 to 45 minutes. But dang. It was nice to be recognized! Again!! It's nice to work for someone who says, "You know what? You're doing a good job for us, so we'd like you to help us with this; we'll even pay you extra if you do." I might scan the list of articles tomorrow and claim one just so I can have another publication on my resume and can say that I was paid an astronomical amount (by my rather modest standards) for a 400-word article.
Erin. We moved Erin out of her apartment on Saturday. Some of my former coworkers were there to help (because my father-in-law is a unit commander for the agency I used to work for and supervises a number of my former coworkers). It was good to see them again. Nothing there has changed. Management is still a bunch of asshats. On the tail of getting my DS news, it made me very glad to be gone from there.
Mother Earth Harvest Festival. Yesterday, Bobby and I went to the Mother Earth Harvest Festival up Spoutwood Farm in Glen Rock, about 20 minutes from home. We had a great time. We heard two bands: Cultivator, and Hoots and Hellmouth. I was somewhat familiar with Hoots, since Bobby played some songs for me since they would be at the MEHF. They did not disappoint. They played with an incredible amount of energy, and some of the songs were more than fit for dancing to.
The festival's keynote speaker was Mike Tidwell of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. I read my CCAN newsletter every week and was eager to hear him speak. Right on the heels of that, we attended a talk by John Michael Greer, the fearless leader of AODA and a peak oil blogger, on the "ecotechnic future"--basically, the appropriate tech movement of the '60s and '70s in a new context, or how to ramp down our energy usage versus converting the same amount of energy usage to new forms. We sat with JMG for Tidwell's speech. Tidwell's speech was good in a lot of regards; it was very passionate and definitely highlighted the need for action.
But ... we already knew those things. It serves to reckon that if you're attending something called the Mother Earth Harvest Festival, held at an organic educational farm in the middle of nowhere, that you've probably got a pretty strong leaning toward wanting to protect and preserve the environment. During questions, a young man seated behind us asked, "All of us here agree with you. We're of the same mind. But what do we do about it?"
And this is where Bobby and I (and JMG, in the next hour-long block) disagree with Tidwell. His answer? Join an email list. Sign up for the CCAN newsletter or the Pennsylvania equivalent and stay informed and connected to an active community. I didn't have a desk, so I had to suffice with *headknees*. Yes, staying informed and connected is a good thing, but it doesn't do much good at the end of the day if you don't change your actions to reflect your purported values. Bobby put it best when he said it's like the people you'll see driving around in a giant SUV ... with a Chesapeake Bay Foundation bumpersticker. Values and actions have to align a little bit more, folks, and joining an email list doesn't cut it.
I've always believed in the power of personal action and the power, also, of living your values. This was a contention between a vegetarian friend of mine and I as far back as high school, where she was very much the soapbox preacher and I just ... did my thing. Guess who made more people think about animal welfare and environmental issues? I've been to marches, and I belong to a lot of email lists for various issues important to me, and those things can be very good for energizing a community or sharing information. But, at the end of the day, you're not saving the Bay in a giant SUV, even if you slap a CBF sticker on it and read your CCAN newsletter every week. I think that people too often think that donations and club memberships and signing petitions absolves them of any personal responsibility.
JMG's talk was very good. It was also a very different climate: a speaker on a stage versus a circle of people inside of a tent. Many of us knew each other already through email groups and such, so it was more a conversation than a speech, and the farm owner had to kick us out of the tent because we lost track of time and ran into the next time slot! (Then the next speaker never showed up, but we kept up our conversation for another 15 minutes outside of the tent.)
This post was originally posted on Dreamwidth and, using my Felagundish Elf magic, crossposted to LiveJournal. You can comment here or there!
http://dawn-felagund.dreamwidth.org/255030.html
Because Bobby and I have very little extra money these days (and had even less in those days), I went without a car for some time and then bought a car from auction from the auto shop teacher at Bobby's school: Hermes. Hermes is a '93 Mercury Topaz. His color is '90s teal--remember that time in the '90s when everything was teal? I remember The Piece even had a teal decor then. He's currently missing a tail light but, otherwise, is in pretty good shape. Hermes is one sexy car.
Then I was driving back from Salsarita's last Wednesday, and he started to really hesitate, to where I wasn't sure I'd make it home. I did ... barely. The Low Fuel light had just come on, but the gauge showed 1/8th tank. Well, turns out the gauge is wrong. Hermes was empty. We put gas in him today, and he was fine. As we sat at the service station this afternoon, Bobby turned to me, pie-eyed, and said, "He was just hungry." But it is very good news that he's fine. My classroom observations this semester are in Westminster, which is a pretty long walk!
DS. Then, on Friday, I got an email from DS. "You've Been Approved," said the subject line. I have? For what?? I hadn't applied for anything; I am quite content writing gardening articles for GardenGuides and eHow Home & Garden. I opened the email, and it said, "As one of our top health and wellness writers ..."
Okay? Maybe I wrote an article on herbs once? I know I wrote an article on New Jersey state parks once for LiveSTRONG Lifestyle, though I don't know that that counts as health and wellness. Anyway.
I had been approved to write for a special project DS is working on. When I looked up the titles for the project, I nearly fell out of my chair. They pay $10 more per article than my gardening articles. I seriously thought they made a mistake and that I'd get an email the next day, apologizing for giving me access to articles I wasn't actually qualified to write, but nothing has come, and here it is Monday. I don't know that I'm going to claim any of the special articles; health and fitness really isn't my niche, no matter what DS says, and the time I spend doing the extra research might well mean that I make less writing them than cranking out a gardening article in 30 to 45 minutes. But dang. It was nice to be recognized! Again!! It's nice to work for someone who says, "You know what? You're doing a good job for us, so we'd like you to help us with this; we'll even pay you extra if you do." I might scan the list of articles tomorrow and claim one just so I can have another publication on my resume and can say that I was paid an astronomical amount (by my rather modest standards) for a 400-word article.
Erin. We moved Erin out of her apartment on Saturday. Some of my former coworkers were there to help (because my father-in-law is a unit commander for the agency I used to work for and supervises a number of my former coworkers). It was good to see them again. Nothing there has changed. Management is still a bunch of asshats. On the tail of getting my DS news, it made me very glad to be gone from there.
Mother Earth Harvest Festival. Yesterday, Bobby and I went to the Mother Earth Harvest Festival up Spoutwood Farm in Glen Rock, about 20 minutes from home. We had a great time. We heard two bands: Cultivator, and Hoots and Hellmouth. I was somewhat familiar with Hoots, since Bobby played some songs for me since they would be at the MEHF. They did not disappoint. They played with an incredible amount of energy, and some of the songs were more than fit for dancing to.
The festival's keynote speaker was Mike Tidwell of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. I read my CCAN newsletter every week and was eager to hear him speak. Right on the heels of that, we attended a talk by John Michael Greer, the fearless leader of AODA and a peak oil blogger, on the "ecotechnic future"--basically, the appropriate tech movement of the '60s and '70s in a new context, or how to ramp down our energy usage versus converting the same amount of energy usage to new forms. We sat with JMG for Tidwell's speech. Tidwell's speech was good in a lot of regards; it was very passionate and definitely highlighted the need for action.
But ... we already knew those things. It serves to reckon that if you're attending something called the Mother Earth Harvest Festival, held at an organic educational farm in the middle of nowhere, that you've probably got a pretty strong leaning toward wanting to protect and preserve the environment. During questions, a young man seated behind us asked, "All of us here agree with you. We're of the same mind. But what do we do about it?"
And this is where Bobby and I (and JMG, in the next hour-long block) disagree with Tidwell. His answer? Join an email list. Sign up for the CCAN newsletter or the Pennsylvania equivalent and stay informed and connected to an active community. I didn't have a desk, so I had to suffice with *headknees*. Yes, staying informed and connected is a good thing, but it doesn't do much good at the end of the day if you don't change your actions to reflect your purported values. Bobby put it best when he said it's like the people you'll see driving around in a giant SUV ... with a Chesapeake Bay Foundation bumpersticker. Values and actions have to align a little bit more, folks, and joining an email list doesn't cut it.
I've always believed in the power of personal action and the power, also, of living your values. This was a contention between a vegetarian friend of mine and I as far back as high school, where she was very much the soapbox preacher and I just ... did my thing. Guess who made more people think about animal welfare and environmental issues? I've been to marches, and I belong to a lot of email lists for various issues important to me, and those things can be very good for energizing a community or sharing information. But, at the end of the day, you're not saving the Bay in a giant SUV, even if you slap a CBF sticker on it and read your CCAN newsletter every week. I think that people too often think that donations and club memberships and signing petitions absolves them of any personal responsibility.
JMG's talk was very good. It was also a very different climate: a speaker on a stage versus a circle of people inside of a tent. Many of us knew each other already through email groups and such, so it was more a conversation than a speech, and the farm owner had to kick us out of the tent because we lost track of time and ran into the next time slot! (Then the next speaker never showed up, but we kept up our conversation for another 15 minutes outside of the tent.)
This post was originally posted on Dreamwidth and, using my Felagundish Elf magic, crossposted to LiveJournal. You can comment here or there!
http://dawn-felagund.dreamwidth.org/255030.html