Unpacked

Five States, Three Days, Two Bags

I spent last week living out of a suitcase. Traveled through Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and finally landed in Colorado. I spent the week sleeping in beds somebody else made, rooms with small coffe-pots and lobbies filled with continental breakfast fixins of one sort or another. 


N accompanied me on the first leg of the trip. We finished three books, started a fourth. We sang loudly, like rockstars, in the car. She swam, played viola and ukulele (not at the same time) while I was working in the Twin Cities. We got hair cuts, rode roller coasters, and visited M in the north woods of Wisconsin. We stayed up late with a giggling fit and a plate of nachos at M's kitchen table.

The final leg of the trip was a whim I had, at the last possible minute, to run the Bolder Boulder. N begged off and stayed with her grandparents in Lincoln. I traveled west, with the sun. Set up coffee dates, rode bikes, hiked the flat irons, lounged around park benches with my book, and finally ran a 10K race with 55,000 other people on Monday. 


I was glad to throw the front door of my own house open late Monday night. I love that clattering noise the weight, the wheels of my luggage makes against the hardwood floor. Walking across the threshold feeling spent, and a little road weary. The buzz of caffeine or adrenaline from new places mixed with a wave of comfort and familiarity of being home. It's like putting on my favorite slippers after wearing something snazzy and exciting. The sight of my own bed was enough to make me squeal with joy.

Willingness To Pay (A Little) For Green Energy

Ivy League researchers recently asked people whether they’re willing pay more for electricity that reduces the amount of greenhouses gases by relying on renewable sources such as wind, solar and hydropower and if so...if a person is willing to pay more... ahem...how much? 

To cut to the chase the Ivy Leaguers found that yes consumers would be willing to pay more for green energy. Not a lot more – but some. The annual green energy premium per household was somewhere around $162 in order to support a national energy policy requiring 80% green energy by 2035. The acceptable price tag for green energy is a little underwhelming, I suppose. 

But I’m not particularly concerned about the size of the price tag. I’m just grateful it exists at all. Sure, it’s a modest upward bump. But it flies in the face of assumptions we’ve made for decades that, when it comes to energy, Americans are driven by two, and only two, motives: price and reliability. 

Don't worry. The American consumer hasn’t suddenly transformed into a group of granola-loving-greenies. The data suggests something more subtle than that. If the survey was stuffed full of die-hard green consumers you would see a much larger dollar value, much more radical energy futures. My supposing is that the study reflects a significant, and fast growing, consumer group is conflicted, rather deeply, about what they want. 

It’s a market group, we’ll call the conflicted-consumer, that has some money to spend, willingly arrives at the marketplace to spend it and, sort of, wants it all. The chunk of change in this person’s pocket is limited. The electricity bill can only be so high because they’ve got other bills to pay, other needs to meet. But the person also has a clear sense of the climate implications of using certain energy sources. 

So this conflicted-consumer makes a transaction. One that simultaneously meets their energy needs and avoids the sense they’re trashing the planet in the process. It’s a nebulous process that arrives at the transaction. Variables like how much money is in their pocket? what other bills are kicking around? what are the tax incentives and off-sets available? how urgent does the climate change problem feel? are constantly at play. So the transaction is more of a temporary solution. An expression of how the variables played out this time. My guess is that a conflicted-consumer shops around constantly. They’re constantly on the lookout for better solutions. 

In an energy market the solutions available fall into electrical generating sources: fossil fuels, wind, solar, etc. Some cost more than others. Some pollute more than others. The break-even point between the average American's pocketbook and green energy appears to be that $162 figure floating around this Ivy League study. By the way however modest $162 a year sounds it is, evidently, more than Congress would be willing to pay. 

With some number-crunching and assumptions about how green energy preferences back home would influence Congress, the Ivy League researchers found that the annual added cost per household of a green energy policy would have to drop below $59 a year to pass the current Senate and below $48 a year to pass the current House.

When you get caught up in the numbers game it's easy to get discouraged. Nobody would argue that $48, $59, or $162 a year is much money to a household's annual income and bottomline. But step back from the numbers for a minute and observe that the green  energy agenda is on the mind of an average American consumer rather than a small but vocal group standing at the fringe of the customer base. What I like is seeing a large voting block, a large consumer base, taking notice that our lives, our choices, our energy future have some grappling to do with the environment. It's subtle and it's a small shift but comes from a massive group of people.

For The Picking

First Ripe Strawberry, 2012

With the mild weather the garden seems to have burst open with ripe fruit and vegetables. This was the first ripe strawberry the urban wildlife left behind for small human consumption. N was thrilled. Thrilled, I tell you. Thrilled.

When I lived in Colorado the soil was too sandy, my life too chaotic to grow things. I remember turning to M and supposing out loud that most good people have gardens. If you look at the people I know, fifteen years later, I'd say it's confirmed. Most good people have gardens, or wish they did.

We dropped the last of the seeds in the ground this weekend. Dill, cilantro, basil, carrots, cucumbers. The tomatoes get starts rather than seeds. We like tomatoes. We like tomatoes a lot.

Rolling Drop Off

Prescott Family Bike To School Day, 2012

Adaptation

I wake sometimes before my alarm and lay in bed. This time of year the mornings are cold and the day warms gently. We sleep with the windows open. I lay there with cold bedsheets on all sides and the pungent smell of wet grass hanging in the air. I stare at the ceiling and listen to the harsh, clattering noise from the birds outside. The squawks and calls drown out any street traffic. 

The noise is deliberate. A complicated language. One I don't speak. I like to lay in bed just to listen. Each conversation with its distinct tones. I'll venture a guess occasionally that they're cooing over babies, arguing over position, or just moaning with loneliness out there. 

My niece spoke bullfrog once. She was an infant, swaddled in her parent's arms, on the dock outside their cabin. The tall grass along the lake shore full of croaking bullfrogs. She heard the bullfrog conversation taking place and didn't hesitate before joining in. Her parents tuned their ears to the shoreline and followed suit. 

I woke up this morning before the alarm and I fell in love with this peculiar, and expansive world. The complicated way we reach out to each other, the ways express ourselves. Even the empty spaces, the quiet morning, filled with chatter of one sort or another. A noisy, sometimes harsh, conversation about our living.

Morning Pose

"The heart does not age, it is the flesh that wrinkles."    
- Carla Zarebska

Birdwalk

Mayor's Run, 2012



 N participated in this morning's 1-mile road race, the Mayor's Run, around the State Capitol Building. She arrived in running shorts, cheered on her classmates from the sidelines, stretched out her hamstrings, assembled at the starting line and sort of bubbled with anticipation.

She, then, proceeded to propel herself forward at the slowest pace humanly possible. Finished dead last in her heat, I think. 

I met her at the finish line, camera in hand, with a loud raucous cheer. Everyone else had cleared out. They were at the Gatorade stand. I tried to make up for the empty street by being the vocal equivalent to a small crowd. 

She gave me a big grin and bubbly wave as she shuffled with a short stride past me. One of her hands cupped in front of her torso. I have pictures from the race. Lots of posed shots where she's simulating action in super, super slow-motion. 

But it's this robin's egg, evidently, that stole the show. She found it along the path. Carried it safely to the finish line and had that excited whisper when she showed me the empty shell.

Wait! Wait!

 Tonight's Lied Center Stage in Lincoln, Nebraska

I spent the evening, perched in a front row seat, among a crush of Nebraska Public Radio listeners in attendance for the Live Recording of Wait Wait...don't tell me! 


The evening started with a dark stage and a luminescent disco ball, and it only got better. My personal high point of the evening was Carl Kassell's off-air impersonation of Darth Vader. 

So listen for the Lincoln show this weekend. And if you hear a familiar guffaw from the front row it's because I was in the zone with Roy Blundt Jr. He referenced this soon-to-be released video game that I had been poking around for details about all week. 

Green Guilt

The number of Americans suffering from “green guilt” has doubled over the past three years, evidently. The phrase green guilt pops up around me like blips on a radar screen. The radar-blip noise grew to a crescendo, this year, which makes me think green guilt has evidently become a "thing."

 

I'm not opposed to the idea, actually. The feverish pace at which Americans want, purchase, consume and throw away objects only to want, purchase, and consume more is due for a pang on behalf of the planet.  If we could be convinced take better care of or generally tidy up the world around us I'm all for it.

So I couldn’t figure out why I’d wince every time I heard the term green guilt. The nearest I can figure is it’s the guilt factor. It's just not so copacetic with me. Guilt can reflect a heightened awareness  but rather than inspiring action it commonly dwells in a world of anxiety. Guilt is one of those feelings that I find debilitating. I get bombarded when I feel guilty and overwhelmed or hopeless.

We all fall short of leading fully sustainable lives. I don't know anyone, myself included, who doesn't have room for improvement on this score. Environmental problems loom so large, the consequences so far reaching that even the best of us could feel like we aren't doing enough. But guilt isn't the goal. Not mine, anyway.  Focusing on the ways we fall short of the mark does nothing to inspire a person to do something.

There are a million little ways to true up your life to the environment. Each of them important, each of them makes a difference. I think green-progress inspires green-progress and that's what I want much more than a rise in green guilt. The sense that we have a shared responsibility to the planet we occupy isn't so overwhelming when we stop feeling guilty and start feeling connected to the remedy.