10 Things to be Thankful For

I am thankful for:

1. Hugs, kisses, and time with my babies

2. A wonderful husband

3. A loving extended family (blood & in-laws--too many for a photo)

4.  Our dog Pepper, chickens and goats

5. Friends near and far (too many and too spread out for a photo)

6. Learning new skills & hobbies this year

7. People who are just as passionate and vocal about climate change as I am

Yes, the guy in the suit up front is Al Gore

8. Readers of my blog

(Picture of you!)

9. Productive gardens and orchards

10. A simple and happy life

A Local Thanksgiving

Local food is climate friendly food

Local food hasn't traveled hundreds or thousands of miles to get to your table

Local food is extra flavorful and delicious

Our turkey is from a farm down the road

One squash is from our neighbor's garden, the other is from a farm 10 minutes away

Our apples for apple pie are from our neighbor's tree

The potatoes we will mash were grown and dug by my husband in our own backyard

If I'm ambitious I will turn a real local pumpkin into pumpkin pie

There are other items in our feast that won't be locally sourced (unless Hannaford counts--ha, it doesn't), but maybe next year we get even more local food

Happy Thanksgiving!

School Struggles and Solutions

I missed my son's (preschool) parent-teacher conference. Really. It would have been last week but I just found out today.

How did this happen? "It was announced in an email, and there was a sign up sheet on the door," the teacher said. 

I didn't see that email or the sign up sheet.

I was pissed. Disappointed in myself for missing that email. Angry at the failure of the school to communicate better. I went home and searched my email. The only mention of parent-teacher conferences was one line in a list of things in an email sent at the end of October. Sign up sheets on "the door" are just white paper tacked with one thumbtack to a white door, they curl, they are indistinct. Drop off and pick up times are chaotic as the tiny and cluttered entryway fills up with kids, younger siblings and parents. We shuffle to get out of each others way while changing shoes, putting on winter gear, packing backpacks and admiring artwork.

I talk to the teacher almost every day. Didn't she notice I had not signed up and perhaps thought it was worth a check in?

Maybe I'm at fault here and being overbearing by expecting better communication from the school, except I know this stuff happens all the time. Just last month some parents showed up for pick up and were surprised that it was the Open House Luncheon.

But I'm a proactive person. Rather than stewing on the failure, I noticed that there is an underused bulletin board above the parent mailboxes already. I asked the teacher if she would post all the parent information there: announcements, sign up sheets, daily activities, and a list of upcoming important dates. This would just reinforce the emails and put all the info in one convenient spot.

She thought it was a good idea and said she would do it. Problem solved.

Blogging is Dead! Long Live Blogging!

One of the recent perks of being a BurlingtonVT Moms Blog contributing writer was getting to take a writing class with some of the other fabulous mom bloggers. I left my family on Saturday morning and headed, solo, to the Renegade Writers' Collective in Burlington for three hours of me-time.

image source

The course was taught by Kate Sykes and designed specifically for us. It explored how blogging as an art form has, perhaps, seen its peak. The original bloggers all wrote books already. (Blogging is dead!) Then again, maybe blogging is making a comeback in a new form. Blogs are trending more to long form (like this blog by yours truly) whereas short-form used to be more the way things went.

We got to do fun writing exercises. For example, writing a list post inspired by tarot card emotions and banana-gram letters to inspire topics. We then read our quickly written pieces with a group of supportive colleagues. Positive critiques were given, and tips for improving not only our writing, but connecting with a larger audience. It was really fun, and I felt like I was rediscovering a piece of myself. I began to think of myself as a writer who would potentially go on writer-type retreats.When was the last time I had taken a creative class like this? I honestly can't remember. But I know I would love to do more.

Blogging is a great creative outlet. That's why I have taken such a liking to it. It's also a way to share your message (hello climate change!) and connect with a community. Long live blogging!

image source

My Opposition to Hunting Culture

It didn't sound quite like a bang, more like a loud tear that echoed as the bullet sliced the air towards its target. I hoped for the deer's sake that the hunter missed his mark. There was barely any daylight yet so I closed my eyes and drifted back to sleep in my warm bed.

Opening day of deer rifle hunting season.

Waking up to gunshots, hearing them throughout the day, seeing pickup trucks parked (creepily) along all the roads, and the sight of recreational walkers and their dogs wearing fluorescent orange vests while getting their daily exercise walking down our road. All these sites and sounds don't unnerve me quite as much as they did when I first moved to this rural Vermont county three years ago. Mostly I find the season annoying because I can't safely take my kids for a hike on local trails through the woods....and all those gunshots shattering the peaceful silence.

I am not opposed to hunting. Hunting wild game is the most sustainable and environmentally-friendly way to eat meat. Venison is delicious. The only time I had it was at a fancy restaurant in Los Angeles, but boy was it good. Hunting permits fund state conversation efforts and it's true that herd management is an important task done by hunters. Have you ever driven through states where suburban areas are common and deer populations are too high? Dead deer on the highway are ubiquitous. It's awful.

I am opposed to common hunting culture. I hate the pictures of hunters with their trophies--holding up the dead animal's head while the hunter mugs for the camera. Mounting heads, antlers and hooves on the wall just seems disgusting and disrespectful. Hunting should be for food, not sport or show.

Many Vermonters use deer meat to feed their families over the winter, and that's a good thing. My ideal hunter would be one who hunts because of their love of nature, and because they want to feed their family, and they really like venison. S/he would say a prayer for the animal once it was killed, thank it for the nourishment it would provide, forgo taxidermied trophies, and leave the camera at home.

What do you think?

Like Nails on a Chalkboard

Image from: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1072390

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The sound of my kids fighting and it's not even 7am.

Competitive screams. Longer. Louder. Higher and higher pitch.

"Noooo! I wouldn't!" is how my 3 year old protests.

"Mommy you carry ME!" said while clawing at my clothes or clasping my ankle while lying dead weight on the floor as I carry Lil Sis and a bag of groceries.

Endless tantrums over a missing trinket.

3 year old wanting to be a baby. 1 year old wanting to be a big kid.

In some ways parenting gets easier...in other ways it gets WAY harder.

But they're so angelic when they're sleeping...

Cloudy Bear

My son has struggled a bit with sleeping in his own bed at night for several weeks now. We hoped that moving his sister into his bedroom with him would solve our nighttime challenges, but he sometimes has bad dreams.

On our pediatrician's advice, I talked with my son about how everyone dreams. Sometimes we have bad dreams, but they are just pretend. If a bad dream wakes him, he can simply "change the channel" on his brain and go back to sleep for a new dream. As I explained this, I turned a pretend knob on my temple while making a clicking sound. My son thought this was hilarious. I told him he could do it too, and hoped this strategy just might work.

It didn't.

One night I was on solo duty putting the kids to bed. After I got Little Sister to sleep my son asked me, "Can you tell me a story about me being brave?" Oh my. What a mature request for a 3 year old boy to think of on his own. The only talk of bravery we had ever done was telling him he was brave for putting his face in the water when swimming. "Of course I can tell a story about you being brave, Sweetie!" I did, and it seemed to help.

That was several weeks ago. Then again other night my son was afraid during the bedtime routine. With some coaxing I got him to tell me why. "I'm afraid of that Cloudy Bear that is there when we're downstairs at nighttime!"

"Cloudy Bear? There's no Cloudy Bear, we don't go downstairs at nighttime. You are safe in your cozy bed in your cozy room." I assured him.

"How about I tell you a story about you being brave?" My husband suggested. It went something like this:

Big Brother and Little Sister were visiting in Candyland. Suddenly they heard some barking. They looked around and they saw Pepper was stuck in a hole that was guarded by Cloudy Bear. Cloudy Bear was not being nice, but Big Brother was brave and told Cloudy Bear that he wasn't being nice and he had to let Pepper go. Then, since Cloudy Bear is only made of clouds, Big Brother took a deep breath and blew Cloudy Bear away into the sky.

Then Big Brother and Little Sister fetched some sticks from the Peppermint forest to put in the hole so Pepper could climb out. Then they went to the Giant Ice Cream Cone to eat ice cream.

"Are the goats stuck on the Ice Cream Cone again?" My son asked.

Apparently Big Brother and Little Sister have been to Candyland in Daddy's stories before. They always rescue Pepper, and once they did rescue the goats from the top of the Giant Ice Cream Cone.

The story worked, and my son fell happily asleep.

Big Bro & Lil Sis in Candyland drawn by Mama of Ma'at

Inspiration from a Storybook Moose

Children's books are great. They expose kids to new places and ideas, increase their vocabulary and inspire creativity. They can also inspire great activities to do with your kids on a cold, November afternoon. Recently my kids and I went to the library for story time and to to pick out some new books. One of the several books we picked out was:

In it, the moose (as one of his many activities in the story) wants to make sock puppets and then paint scenery so he can put on a puppet show.

"Let's do that, right now!" My son said.

"Sure," I said, "great idea!"

Luckily I had a large cardboard box in my recycling and plenty of acrylic paints. After donning each child in their art smocks, and placing a drop cloth on the floor, they went at it. They used regular brushes and used packaging styrofoam to apply the paint. My son described it as "a beautiful sunset." My daughter loved painting, it was actually her first time doing it.

Next came the sock puppets. I found mismatched socks in my own drawer. My son said he wanted a dog, cat, and mouse. He drew the faces in permanent marker and I sewed appropriate ears on each one using pieces I cut from the bottom of each sock. I think they look pretty awesome....though the mouse looks a bit more like a monkey or an alien due to the weird shape and placement.

The kids love the puppets. My son's favorite is the dog, my daughter's favorite is the cat, leaving mommy to play the mouse/monkey/alien.

It was fun watching my son try to learn the art of puppetry in our makeshift theater (a wicker ottoman), and I did my best to keep little sister from climbing on the stage during each performance. Here is the show they put on with their dad when he got home:

                                    

A Dumbledore's Army, of sorts

My passion about climate change comes from a desire to protect my children's future. I have always been a green-minded person, but after my babies were born I would lay awake at night worrying about climate change and how it would negatively affect their future. Will their world as adults resemble the world I have known? What can I do now to help them have a safer future?

My first answer was to become a Climate Leader.  I attended The Climate Reality Project's Leadership Training in Chicago and it was empowering. Suddenly I felt like I had permission to go out and do what I already wanted to do: be a leader in the fight against climate change. By giving me access to Al Gore's slideshow and asking me to do a minimum of 10 community presentations over the course of a year I felt powerful, like suddenly I was a member of Dumbledore's Army, except it was a Climate Army. 

The Climate Reality Project aims to restart the grassroots conversation about the threat of climate change so we can win the conversation and get moving in the right direction despite the recalcitrance of our world leaders and the fossil fuel industry. The Climate Reality Project is strong on climate change science, challenging climate change deniers, and offers broad solutions (wind and solar).

Then I saw a quote from Jim Hansen, a top climatologist and former head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies who has now devoted his time to being an activist for the cause of global climate change. His recommendation is for concerned citizens to join the Citizens Climate Lobby.

Citizens Climate Lobby strives to help people to feel powerful on the issue of climate change, instead of fearful. Turns out, Marshall Saunders, the Founder of Citizens Climate Lobby, was also trained as a Climate Leader by the Climate Reality Project. He came to the same conclusion I did, and started a non-profit organization that is growing in size and influence to speak with community, state, national, and even international leaders about climate change and its solutions. Current Citizens Climate Lobby members have talked to leaders at the World Bank convincing them to stop funding new coal projects; talked to Mayor Bloomberg in NYC about climate legislation, and is even in contact with the Pope.

The Climate Reality Project gave me the power to start the conversation with the community, Citizens Climate Lobby will give me, and You, the power to talk with our leaders, at all levels, and win them over on this paramount issue.

So my next project, dear readers, is that while I am going out in the community to give my Climate Reality Project inspired climate talks, I am also going to recruit concerned citizens like me and you to start a Burlington VT Citizens Climate Lobby (VT doesn't yet have one). But I can't do it alone. Will you please join me? Please 'Like' this post, comment, or message me if you are interested in joining the Burlington VT Citizens Climate Lobby! 

The Time, She Flies

"Enjoy your kids, the time goes so fast!" this is a phrase that any parent of young children is sure to hear often. Kids grow and change quickly and so are amazing time markers.Here is a series of pictures showing how much our lives have changed since 2012.

Sibling hug 2012 & 2013

Halloween 2012 & 2013

Dinosaur ride 2012 & 2013

Reading with Daddy 2012 & 2013

Toddler bed 2012 & 2013

Places Ruined: Spills, Fires, Explosions

I follow a lot of environmental news networks so I see a lot of news that doesn't always get much mainstream coverage. I can't help think that if people heard about how frequently there are oil and oil related disasters more frequently they would be more fired up to get off of fossil fuels. Your energy source shouldn't kill you or the world around it. This list doesn't even include the evils of fracking.

How many of these disasters have you heard of? Almost all of them occurred in North America this year:

1. Canada's largest coal wastewater spill (264 million gallons) in Alberta, Canada on Halloween 2013. Downstream municipalities were told not to withdraw drinking water until it was deemed "safe."
2. Nearly 300 pipeline spills in North Dakota went unreported until the story broke in October 2013.     
   
3. Petroleum coke is now fouling Chicago and areas around Midwest refineries. "Petcoke" is a byproduct of tar sands mining. The Koch Brothers have been storing petcoke on Chicago's South Side as it waits export to countries with poor environmental laws that will burn this cheap and dirty form of energy (dirtier than coal!). It is blowing in the wind and fouling the air of middle and working class communities.                                                 
4. Exxon's Pegasus pipeline spill in Mayflower, AK, Mark 2013. At least 12,000 barrels of crude were spilled. This pipeline carries tar sands oil and made homes uninhabitable around the spill and left residents with health problems. 
   
5. A Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd train derailed in March 2013 (one week prior to the Pegagsus pipeline spill) and spilled 30,000 gallons of Canadian tar sands oil.
6. July 2013, a train carrying 7.6 million liters of crude derailed and ignited in Lac-Megantic in Quebec. The town was devasted by the resulting fire and 47 people were killed.
   
7. October 2013, Gainford, Alberta (Canada) Train Derailment. A  Canadian National tanker train transporting 13 cars of oil and gas derailed and caught on fire forcing 100 people from their homes.
8. Also in October 2013, another Canadian National train carrying propane derailed, exploded and caught fire near Edmonton, Alberta (Canada). Firefighters did not even bother to battle the blaze, they just let it burn itself out. No people were injured.
9. Just LAST WEEK (Nov 8) a 90-car train carrying 2.7 million gallons of crude oil derailed and spilled its contents into a wetland near Aliceville, Alabama. The fire is being allowed to burn itself out.                                                    

Though it occurred in 2010, I also want to mention BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which was not contained for 5 months and dumped 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf. There are reports that it may still be leaking. The oil, combined with deadly dispersants that were supposed to help with clean up, left an ecosystem in crisis: fisheries decimated, cancerous shellfish, dead dolphins, tarballs still washing up on beaches that contain high concentrations of bacteria flesh eating. It will take decades for the Gulf to recover.

If you want to see a more comprehensive list of spills that goes back even further in time see this Wikipedia entry. It contains spills since 2012 that I wasn't even aware of.

Surprise Contact From My Grad School Professor

On Friday evening I got an email from one of the Town Selectmen. He was forwarding an email that was received via the Town's website contact form. The email was from one of my graduate school professors. He had Googled me and found that I serve on my Town Planning Commission. The professor was looking for me because he had "some questions about our past work." He included his email and phone number and requested I contact him.

I was surprised, and a bit flattered. But then I started to panic a bit. What did he want to ask me about? Would I remember anything about it? Could I sound intelligent on the phone even though it's been 6 years since I graduated, and 5 since I worked in transportation planning? I would have to fess up that I, a former "transportation scholar" who received funding from my university to study transportation, was now a stay at home mom in a tiny town and not doing anything transportation related.

"Did he find you on LinkedIn?" my husband asked. LinkedIn is another thing that makes me panic a little. Yes, I joined years ago when I had a professional job, but LinkedIn doesn't serve much purpose for people who don't work for an income. It's a point of embarrassment to think that old colleagues might find me on there and see that I have become irrelevant in my field. Or so my panicked brain told me.

So I emailed him, the phone would be too nerve-wracking, plus it was dinner time here on the East Coast and not far from the kids bedtime either. It was a very congenial email exchange. Turns out my old professor just was looking for a file from that project I had helped him with. Thanks to the never ending storage provided by my gmail account, I still had our original correspondence on the project which included the original database he was desperately seeking. He was grateful to find the database file, and told me about how much his kids had grown and made the usual "it goes by so fast!" kind of remarks. He was glad to see I was still involved in planning. He also mentioned that thanks to a generous donation my school had been renovated from a dumpy little building into something quite nice, and they had a full time staff person to help students and alumni find internships and jobs.

Thanks for the tip, Professor! I just may do that sometime in the next few years. But for now I'm good where I am, despite any insecurities I may have about not having a position in our economic system at this point in time.

 

Me in grad school, wrapping up a conference I organized.

Me in my current job

Still Adjusting to the End of Daylight Savings Time

On Sunday my FB newsfeed was flooded with witty status updates and memes about how much the end of Daylight Saving (aka "fall back") stinks when you have little kids. I, like many people, used to love gaining that extra hour of sleep. But as mommies and daddies know, kids don't know what time it is and they don't care if the clocks were changed.
 

 
We have been working all week to get the kids adjusted to the new time. After a busy Sunday, the kids were ready to go to bed at 5:00pm (old 6:00pm). It took a lot of effort to keep them up an extra hour so they wouldn't wake up well before dawn. We have been successful at slowly pushing back bedtime so they are asleep by their normal 7:30. Wake up isn't terrible...my daughter sleeps at least until 6:15 (old 7:15), and my son has generally been sleeping until he hears her stirring if not later.

The kids are not the only ones having a hard time adjusting. I am too. I am thoroughly on the kids' schedule which is set with the sun, not the clock. At 2:00 (old 3:00) the afternoon slump kicks in and I think "it's only 2? It feels like 3." Well, that, of course, is because it was 3:00 when the sun was an this approximate angle just last week. The "when will daddy be home" feeling kicks in for me at 4:00 now (formerly 5:00pm) which means 2 hours that pass very slowly until the new 6:00.

But it's not all bad. On Monday my son woke up to sunshine which made it much easier to motivate him, and the whole family, to get up and have more time together before school and work. In the evening after the kids are asleep my husband and I normally stay up way too late. But the dark and the cold and the transition have enticed me to crawl under the covers much earlier than I normally would, so I am getting some extra sleep after all.

Grape Jelly

I remember my first year of college in Maine at a tiny college full of earth conscious individuals. My housemates were way ahead of me in terms of wanting to be self-sufficient and depending directly on the earth. I remember them making lots of rather disgusting recipes, but at least they were trying. They collected acorns to make flour that they then baked into bread. It was bitter and awful, but resourceful. They collected wild edibles for teas and berries for jam. I remember the jam was also a disaster and they added more and more pectin and were confused why it still wouldn't set.

Here I am, 15 years later. I finally am feeling domesticated enough where this all makes sense to me enough to want to do it. At least the jelly part anyway, I will skip the acorn bread. I set out to make grape jelly with just my Ball Canning Book by my side.

First I boiled the grapes my friend gave me to break them down.

Then I let the liquid filter through some cheesecloth for several hours to separate the juice from the pulp.

I even used the food mill to turn the pulp into a smooth grape sauce. I have been reluctant to use it because of mess, but after finally trying it I see the appeal.

A couple days later I boiled the grape juice with sugar, then said a little prayer as I poured in the pectin and boiled it for one minute more. The jelly looked really soupy and I was afraid I had somehow repeated the mistakes of my Maine college housemates. But lo and behold, after a couple hours of cooling the jelly set! Now I can add jelly to my no-need-to-purchase-at-the-grocery-store list.

Is All Wind Power Equal?

Like solar power, wind power generation is a growing industry that hopes to provide clean, renewable energy to replace fossil fuels and fight global warming. So far the conventional wisdom in the wind power world is the larger the wind turbine, the more power you get. This means that windmills are growing increasingly large and tall. See the picture below that was generated by the US Department of Energy to promote a particularly large wind turbine project called the Lincoln Wind Tower in Euclid, Ohio.

The average wind tower is 150 feet. Almost as tall as the leaning tower of Pisa. The Lincoln Wind Tower in Ohio would be 443 feet tall, which is taller than the Statue of Liberty. Click here for some of the tallest wind turbines in the world at heights comparable to the Lincoln Wind Tower.

John Dabiri, a CalTech professor of aeronaturical and bioengineering, has a new idea for wind turbines that was inspired by observing the "pattern of spinning vortices that trail fish as they swim." He proposes making the blades vertical like poles on a carousel, and the towers much shorter. Then, positioning the vertical turbines in specific relation to each other they can generate more power by using air currents generated by other vertical turbines around them, just like the "fish vortices." Dabiri says the wind farms built in this fashion would be cheaper to build, quieter, and easier to maintain since they are only about 30 feet tall. They also don't need to be rotated to face the wind.

Prof Dabiri with Vertical axis wind turbines

However, many vertical turbines are still necessary to generate the power produced by just one large, traditional (aka horizontal) wind turbine. The industry still believes that bigger is better, but these smaller, verticle turbines are intriguing. Perhaps the vertical turbines would be more acceptable in areas where the largest objections to wind power generation are noise and aesthetics, or in remote communities where ease of maintenance is important. The US Military is also very interested in Professor Dabiri's idea because traditional horizontal wind turbines can interfere with helicopter operations and radar signatures.

It's nice to think that communities could have options on what is the right way for them to pursue wind power. Way to go Professor Dabiri!

Pumpkins, Prizes, Smashes, Smiles

We carved the pumpkins a couple days before Halloween. I thought it would be a fun activity for my son and I but he was less impressed. He didn't want to touch the goop inside the pumpkin, but he did love pulling out the cutout shapes after I had carved them. As he did at the Pumpkin Party, he gave creative direction on what the pumpkin should look like.

 

We did make roasted pumpkin seeds, and those were a hit at least for one snack. I ended up eating most of the seeds.

As you may have already seen, I did win the Trunk or Treat prize for "most environmentally friendly." All I did was carve "Compost Me" into the back of the largest pumpkin.The judges from the fire department were going to give me the prize based solely on the fact that I had real, live pumpkins--that's how slim the competition was. So when they saw "Compost Me" I think it was a nice bonus that there actually was an environmental message. But hey! I won! The shiny new numbers on my mailbox will be courtesy of the fire department Trunk or Treat contest.

And then perhaps the most fun we had with our pumpkins came after Halloween when we smashed them. This was of course necessary so they would break down faster in our compost pile. My son definitely enjoyed it, and I did too. I smashed the biggest one before letting him to the smaller 3. Here is a video showcasing his efforts. He is a good pumpkin smasher!