Number Ten.

I'm out of project updates and I have no more antics, bus-related or otherwise, to tell about. So just a few closing thoughts...
I'm not the sentimental hallmark card type, but I just want to say that I am so happy I had the opportunity to take the Global Environment cluster, and spend my entire first year with an awesome group of people. All of the professors and TA's and everyone else who worked on this cluster are so passionate, and I think it's a really lucky and rare thing to encounter that. And it was really cool to have the same classmates for a year as well. Even though I didn't get to know everyone, I have made a lot of really great friends through this class, which isn't something that people can say of a lot of other classes.
Environment and I for sure had a love hate relationship. I was definitely convinced for the majority of the class that global warming is a conspiracy. (Secretly, I still don't know how much of a big deal it is. Shhh.) And when I picked my seminar for the spring, my choice was based on the fact that Brian was a cool guy and his time slot was convenient for me. Little did I know. I can't believe how much I have taken from this seminar. I always recycled and whatnot, but I never fathomed the impact that our lifestyles have on the environment. Warming or no warming, people are shaping the earth, and not really in a positive way. Brian inspired me to do my part to make a difference, and also to do what I can to share with others the information that I now have. I always thought that one person would never make a difference, so why try, but now I know that it only takes one person. The difference might not be huge or immediately noticed, but with time and effort that one person can turn into a million people working to make a difference.
Great. Now I've gone all peace love and granola. I better go kill some trees before I turn into Merkel.
Hehe...just kidding.
But really, this has been an amazing experience, and thank you to everyone who has been a part of it. Especially you, Brian.

Project Update! Number 2!

My cookbook is officially done!!! It's not all super cute looking (I read your blog about yours Dana...I'm jealous of your crafting skills) but it's full of yummy recipes. I'm really excited to present it and feed you guys my secret creation : ) I thought about printing out a copy for everyone to have, but realized that's super expensive and a huge waste of paper, which makes the wallet and the earth sad. So instead I plan on e-mailing it as an attachment to all of you so you guys. Get stoked.

OD'ing on OD.

My roommates were becoming thoroughly sick of me sitting in my room, reading Omnivore's Dilemma, and looking up from my book every two minutes to announce some food fact, so they are quite happy that that is all over with. What I have taken from that book will continue to play a role in my life though. Here is my eating transition: omnivore-->unwilling vegetarian planning on returning to meat eating soon-->willing vegetarian completely freaked out by meat and not planning on going back to it-->open-minded eater, still vegetarian for the quarter, but planning on eating meat sustainably. Quite a journey. I'll admit, some parts of Pollan's narrative were pretty dull to me, and there was just a little too much information that I didn't really care to know. But for the most part, I loved the book. I really appreciated Pollan's point of view. It wasn't preachy, just informative. He wasn't all crazy radical...ahem...Merkel...cough cough...he was just a realistic guy that wanted to learn more about our food and he presented the facts in a way that was un-biased but still convincing enough to make me really want to make an effort to be more sustainable. I'm really glad Brian had us read this book, because I know if it weren't for him, I most likely would never have picked it up. Thanks for everything Brian! We miss you.

Saving the World, One Towel at a Time

Unfortunately I don’t have any epic adventures to blog about this week. Just some random musings…
I gave the bus another chance! I took it to Santa Monica to get a little nature time in at the beach. I knew what bus to take and where to get off, so it wasn’t a ridiculous debacle like last week, and all in all it was a very enjoyable trip. I still get annoyed with the amount of time it takes to get form point A to point B, but that’s mostly because patience is not one of my strong points.
I’m still vegetarian, and I had been planning on integrating meat back into my diet at the end of the quarter, but after watching Our Daily Bread and Food Inc. and reading Omnivore’s Dilemma, I’m not so inclined to be carnivorous at all anymore. Actually, I don’t feel like any food is safe anymore! I’m really freaked out by the volume of corn we eat on a daily basis. You can’t avoid it. I suppose if I really wanted to escape the world of corn, I could try to live solely off of fruits and veggies, and maybe get the rest of my food from the wild, but I’m not exactly Bear Grylls and I really don’t see hunting and gathering in my future. Joel Salatin and the McGrath farm have me conflicted about organics and sustainability as well. I don’t know what criteria to include in my cookbook anymore, because it seems like everyone has a different idea on the criteria our foods should meet. Imported organics? Locally grown but with pesticides? Grass fed beef or no beef at all? What is a girl to eat?! Fortunately, or unfortunately, I don’t really know which anymore, I don’t have too much room to make decisions while I’m on a meal plan and more or less confined to dining hall fare. I have no idea where my food comes from or what processes it went through to get to me. Sometimes things are marked as organic, but I have no idea what benefit that brings anymore. I suppose ignorance is bliss, because if I knew the biographies of all of the foods I eat at school, I would probably starve to death. Thank you Brian for exposing me to the ugly truth about food and ruining my life. Hehe I’m kidding. Mostly…
On a side note, I really enjoyed the Big Organics chapter of Omnivore’s Dilemma. They talk about Earthbound Farms and the Salinas Valley, which is where I’m from! Agriculture is life here. Salinas is the Salad Bowl capital of the world. Woot woot…Just about everyone is involved in some part of the process of growing or selling it. Right across the street from my house are fields. I’ve been on tons of school fieldtrips to farms, so the trip last weekend to the organic farm was no novelty for me.
Speaking of home, I’m currently home for the weekend and I am enlightening my family about all the things I’ve been learning about sustainability. I’m probably getting on their nerves by now, but I’ve convinced my mom to make a few changes. I was telling her about how I don’t like to do laundry so I use two towels each week. She says, “If I had a bigger bathroom to hang our towels I would do that.” I look at her and say, “Mom, I share a shoebox of a bathroom with two other girls, and we all hang and reuse our towels all week. Your bathroom is the size of my dorm.” My family uses a new towel each time they shower, and if they shower every day (which I hope they all do) that’s 21 towels a week. She realized how much less laundry she could be doing and was convinced. Success! Saving water, energy, laundry soap, and time! And I talked her into using reusable shopping bags, mainly because they can be pretty cute, but another success nonetheless. And now I’m trying to get her to warm up to the idea of using reusable water bottles. They go through a ridiculous amount of bottled water here, but baby steps…
Tune in next week to find out what else I’ve talked my family into doing : )

Project Update!

I plan on doing a cookbook for my project. I am a major food enthusiast and love cooking, so I'm really excited about this. My goal for it is to contain recipes that are sustainable, affordable, simple, and delicious. I'll also include info about where to buy groceries, what to buy, and when to buy them. Right now my project is in the research phase. I've been gathering information on how to cook and eat sustainably, and I went to the Farmer's Market on Broxton to check out what kinds of things they sell that I can work with. It was a pretty disappointing selection, and that fact along with Whole Foods and Trader Joes really being the only other sources of organic ingredients, this cookbook could be a challenge. But I will be resourceful and hopefully come up with something great : )
Also, I have chosen to go vegetarian for the quarter, mostly as a personal challenge, but I will probably include some of my experience in my cookbook, and it will definitely influence the recipes I include.

The Epic Chronicle of Two Girls, Five Buses, and the Quest for Togas.

Once upon a time, my roommate Val and I went into Westwood to buy sheets to make togas. Westwood's shopping is very limited however, and there did not seem to be an establishment that offered linens. I experience much frustration over the absence of a store such as Target that sells many basic necessities. As we were very determined to procure sheets, Val and I decided to embark on a journey to find a Target. Our means of transportation are even more limited than Westwood's shopping, so we had no choice but to take the bus. We called the Big Blue Bus company to inquire as to what buses we should take in order to reach Target. The woman on the phone was incredibly rude and impatient and told us there was no Blue Bus that went to Target. She then referred us to the Metro system. The Metro representative was quite rude as well, but she did give us instructions on how to make our trek to Target. After deciphering a series of bus line numbers and street names, we charted our route and headed to the nearest bus stop. Only after waiting there for foolishly for about 10 minutes did we realize that our bus would not be coming to this stop. We moved on to the correct stop, and after waiting nearly half an hour, we finally boarded the bus and began the first leg of our voyage, which cost a frustrating fee of $1.25. We inquired with the bus driver as to how much a transfer cost, as we would have to take a second bus. She informed us with an irritated and condescending tone that it would cost another $1.25. Fantastic. Finally, we reached the point where we would have to transfer buses. However, the bus system was created for people with far more geographical and urban awareness than either Val or myself possessed, and it took us a great deal of time to figure out where to get on our next bus. Alas, we found the stop. However, we made this discovery at about the same time as the bus arrived, so we had to race frantically down the street to catch it. Luckily, this bus driver was considerably more sympathetic toward us than the last, and he kindly waited for us as we got onto this second bus, flustered and out of breath. This next leg of the journey took an absurd amount of time. We traveled for nearly an hour until we reached the Promised Land. I had never before been so elated to cross the threshold of a Target. We procured our long sought after sheets, as well as a few various sundry items, and realized that we were absolutely famished. The nearest sustenance was McDonald's. It is typically against either of our principles to patronize such a questionable establishment, but desperate times call for desperate measures. We ordered our food and sat down to enjoy it, and thanks to Omnivore's Dilemma, all I could think about was how much corn went into my french fries and milkshake. Nonetheless, it was a delicious feast. When we concluded our meal, we went back to the bus stop to begin our return trip home. There we sat for an immeasurably long amount of time, on that cold, windy evening in an unfamiliar part of town, vulnerable and exposed to debris blowing at as, as well and the stares and whistles of strangers as they drove by. Finally, a beacon of hope appeared in the distance in the form a red Metro bus. Much to our dismay, it was not our line, and the driver apparently had no intention of stopping there to pick up two young, cold, tired travelers. We waited still longer, and eventually our bus arrived and we were offered a respite from the wind and creepers. The trip from Westwood to Target took about an hour and a half. We decided that there must be a more direct route back to campus, and that the oh-so-accommodating woman we spoke to on the phone did not give us the best travel itinerary. We chose to get off at a different stop, and found that we could indeed ride a Blue Bus instead of the Metro, which is very fortunate because the fare is much less, at 25 cents. So again we waited at another bus stop. At this point, it was darker and even colder, and we were losing our senses of humor. Wearily, we boarded the Blue Bus when it came. This was not, however, the last leg of our journey. We would have to take yet another Blue Bus to get the rest of the way into Westwood. At last, five bus rides and seven hours later, we were home. Almost. There was still a short walk back to the dorms, as the buses do not always go all the way to the Ackerman terminal. This fickle schedule I will never understand. On our walk, we encountered a man stumbling out of Burger King in a highly inebriated state. The light to cross the street was red at the time, so we were forced to stand there with the man, who approached us by saying, "Hey, you're pretty. Wanna go on a date?" He then offered to take me to a car dealership to buy a Lamborghini. My weakness for fancy cars and my irritation with Los Angeles's less than expedient and friendly public transportation system could almost have led me to accept his offer. I did not go all the way to Target for nothing though. I had a toga party to attend that very eve! So in the interest of preserving my life and attending the gala toga-clad, Val and I rushed back to our dorm to craft our Greek costumes, which we worked so very hard to obtain. The rest of the night is irrelevant to this story, however, so at this point I will have to wrap up my saga with this conclusion: public transportation, at least in the Los Angeles area, is not widely used as of yet for good reason. It is a gross time inefficiency, it is not incredibly cheap (many other students have access to buses free of charge), and the majority of the people employed by the bus companies are not of a pleasant disposition. Never mind the strange characters that typically ride the bus. I enjoy people watching and can be thoroughly entertained by observing my fellow travelers. But I simply cannot afford the time and patience it takes to make bus expeditions outside of Westwood. Because of this, and my determination never to be stranded and sheetless again, I will most likely take my car to school with me at some point next year. Sorry Earth. Global Warming: 1, Sustainability: 0.

Moderate Simplicity

Before I start with my Radical Simplicity response, I wanted to put in a plug for my roommate’s awesome blog. She started this blog project for Earth Day and she is going to blog about something green or sustainable every day until Earth Day 2011. I thought it would be extremely fitting for this class so if you guys followed it that would be great! Here’s her link:
http://everydayearthday.blogspot.com/
Now it’s time to get down to business…
I was not expecting to enjoy Radical Simplicity as much as I did, and I definitely didn’t think I would take much from it. Before reading this book, I didn’t put a ton of thought into my lifestyle and how it affects the earth. I knew recycling was good and that I should conserve water and electricity whenever possible, but I always just kind of figured I would leave the tree hugging to other people. I also thought the green movement was primarily to curb global warming. I never thought of it in the terms of ecological footprint and resource preservation, so Radical Simplicity gave me a new perspective on going green.
The first time I sat down to read it, I decided to try being vegetarian. My diet has been meat free for almost a month, and I’m going to do it for the rest of the quarter. It won’t be a lifetime deal, but I will be more aware of what I eat and try to make more sustainable choices.
The more I read, the more I started to feel like a horrible person for consuming as much resources as I do. I felt pretty lame compared to the people of Kerala who have nothing, are totally happy, and have so few needs.
Before I read this book, I envisioned myself in the future as having made tons of money, living in a fatty house, and driving a cute little Maserati. I won’t lie, I still want my sick car, but I do realize that an enormous house is completely unnecessary, impractical, and totally eco-unfriendly. I’m more aware now that extravagance does not equal happiness, and that I can be very fulfilled by appreciating simpler things. This doesn’t mean I’m going to drop everything and live in a hut in the forest. I’m not exactly the nature type. But I will implement some things into my lifestyle to scale down my footprint.
In comparison to the American mind set, Merkel is basically an insane hippy. Who lives like that voluntarily? Talking sticks? Vision quests? I think the Amish live more extravagantly than he does. Having said that, I think it’s great that he is increasing awareness about sustainable living, and I really appreciate that he truly practices what he preaches. His lifestyle might seem radical to us, but in other parts of the world, it is perfectly acceptable. Merkel put things in perspective for me. I think I “need” so much, when in fact a lot of it is really unnecessary. I’m not willing to make the sacrifices needed to live on 1,3, or 6 acres, but I am willing to be more aware of what I use and try to make that reflect what I really need. I’m not going to adopt full radical simplicity, but moderate simplicity couldn’t hurt.