That Green Blob Is Just A Critical Mass

It’s coming.  The tidal wave of green design, energy generation and lifestyle choices seems unstoppable at this point.  According to iSuppli, for instance:

Worldwide investments in the production of Photovoltaic (PV) cells will rise to the same level as those for semiconductor manufacturing by 2010, due to booming demand for solar energy, according to iSuppli Corp.

Meanwhile, in Europe engineers are re-designing their power grids into Smart Grids (though admittedly they won’t be on line until 2050).

One of my favorite out-of-the-box design ideas is the Nano Vent-Skin designed by Agustin Otegui. His idea is to wrap existing and new buildings in a “skin” that is made of thousands of tiny wind turbines. Um, wow!

And then there are the smaller-scale changes, like those made by the Redmond family in Virginia. Those might still be the hardest to implement on a wider scale. When environmental activists shake their collective heads and wonder why more people aren’t making lifestyle changes and rallying in the streets for more alternative energy, I don’t share their bewilderment. Although we work hard to live simply in our own home, I am one of those who will admit to often being overwhelmed and paralyzed by the vastness of the problem. Still, the surge in stories like these have left me feeling much more hopeful lately.

Last fall, Miles and I attended an event in NYC featuring two of our favorite scientists — Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye (yes, that wacky Science Guy). During their presentation, there were a few main strands of discussion — the shocking decline in science education in the United States, the possibility of the existence of life on Mars (everyone should hear Dr. Tyson riff on this once in their lives), and climate change.

Nye is a passionate environmental activist, and you might expect him to wiggle an accusatory finger and admonish us all to radically alter our lives to save the planet, but you’d be wrong. First off, Nye reminded us that this is not even about saving the planet. “Earth will be just fine,” he reminded us, there just might not be any humans on it. So, he concluded, what we’re really talking about is saving our species.

But Nye is a realist, he understands American culture. He is sympathetic to the soccer mom with the minivan — after all, she might have once been one of the excited kids watching his show who proclaimed that “Science Rules!” back in the day. Instead, he scolded the scolders, noting that Americans don’t want to be told to “do less with less.” His mantra? “Do MORE with LESS.” He loves watching his electric meter run backwards as his house generates power, eating great food from his own garden. When you hear Nye talk about this stuff, it’s evident that doing more with less can leave one practically giddy, and really, is that a bad thing? It sure beats lying awake in bed at night imagining you can hear the latest unimaginably huge chunk of the Antarctic ice shelf break off.

Not that I’ve ever done that.

We’re still in the baby steps stage at our house, but we’re getting there.  We’ll keep on recycling every single thing we can because it’s fun to see how few garbage bags we can put out each week. I’ll keep dragging my reusable bags to the store and having the same conversation over and over with the cashiers (yeah, I know, they’re bigger, so they get heavier — it’s okay!) because the house feels lighter and cleaner when I’m not surrounded by crinkly plastic sacks after putting everything away.  And you’ll pardon me if you see me sneaking yet another prideful peek at the blue glow of my new solar powered LED porch lights.

What Dreams May Come

I’ve just awoken from a bizarre dream.  In this dream, my husband’s best friend shot and killed a boy nobody liked.  He shot him with his cellphone.  

His cellphone?

 

In the dream, I was at the scene of the “crime” begging the friend to just leave the boy alone.  I was filled with the dread of knowing what was going to happen before it happens.  I was everywhere at once.  I was watching from behind a bathroom door, I was struggling with the friend in the kitchen, I was looking at the screen of the cellphone.  I was fretting over how this would ruin his career as a teacher.

Then, suddenly, I was in a room full of kids — my kids, the friend’s kids, all the kids in our social circle.  I was putting laundry away and one of the kids started asking me the whereabouts of the boy nobody liked.  I knew he was dead, but said nothing.

I woke myself up.

 

At the end of the Kings Cross chapter of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry asks Dumbledore one final question: “Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”

Dumbledore replies: “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” 

When I read that aloud to my kids a few weeks ago, they were immediately struck by Dumbledore’s response.  They asked me to repeat it, and then both of them slowly repeated it until they’d memorized it and they repeated it yet again.  

 

When Miles suggests that he and Eli climb Mt. Everest, they turn immediately to the task of packing their rucksacks with plastic blocks that are “really” food.  Eli’s blue elephant Joopy is a Yogi, a Shaman, a Guru.  He has been everywhere, done everything.  Nevermind that he’s “actually” only a plush rug with an oversized stuffed head.  The wall between fantasy and reality remains permeable for them.

There are days that I long to live in the reality that exists only in my head.  But it seems that one of the things we lose as we become adults is the unshakeable confidence that our fantasy world is as real as the cup of iced coffee resting beside my keyboard.  Of course, our own certainty in the demarcation between imagined and real exists on a shifting foundation.  A friend of a friend is grappling with paranoia lately and it has reminded me how fragile our grasp on the world can be.

So, this morning, awakening from a dream of murder by cellphone, I’m thankful for the moist, cool sensation of touching a plastic cup.

Fresh Snow

I’ve been struggling with how to start this thing.  The blank page can be so intimidating. Then I remembered that when I was a kid and we lived in the mountains, there was nothing more thrilling than discovering fresh untrammeled snow to dash through and make your mark upon.  So, here I go. Wheeeee!

 

Elias starts kindergarten in the fall.  That means he’s eligible for the half-day summer camps at the community college where my husband works.  He started his first camp this week, and since his brother Miles is still in classes for another week, we have an opportunity for one-on-one time that is all too rare.

 

 We drop Miles at school and head to the college, but we’re early, so we go to the cafeteria and I grab a coffee.  Eli grabs some Frosted Flakes and milk, and we find a table.  We’re chatting about the first week’s theme — space — about bats (deciding it’s cool that they are nothing like birds except that they fly) and about the flags of dozens of nations lining the walls of the dining room.  We try to guess which country each represents, and we agree we need to get a book out of the library so we can know for sure.  Then Eli gives me one of his thoughtful gazes.

 

“Mommy?”

“Yes.”

“What did you want to be when you grew up when you were little?  Daddy wanted to be a bass player.  What did you want to be?”

 ”Well, I guess I wanted to be a singer.”

 A moment goes by.  Eli looks at me quizzically.  I’ve never told him this before.  

 ”But Mommy, you’re not a singer. You work at a museum.  You said you wanted to be a singer but you’re not.  Why didn’t you get to be what you wanted to be when you grew up?”

 Ugh.  There it is.  The moment where I might explain to my five-year old that people don’t always get to be what they want to be when they grow up.

 ”So,” I say, “Which country do you think that one with the big blue star in the middle comes from?”