Book Report: No Impact Man

Steady J's mom clipped an article from Time Magazine and mailed it to me some weeks ago. The article, titled "Cash Crunch: Why Extreme Thriftiness Stunts Are The Rage" discussed the recent emergence of projects publicized by blogs (resulting in book deals) concerning among other things, not riding in a car, not purchasing any new clothing other than underwear for one year, and spending $1 on food per person per day for one month. I found the article pretty amusing, especially when it explained how it is no longer fashionable to "flaunt bling", however, it is fashionable to flaunt a "monk-like existence". Well, I can't say that I'm flaunting anything with my blog other than the fact that I hate the U.S. energy policy, my pants are too small and I really like jars.

The idea that "deprivation experiments" are something new is fascinating. My guess is more that it is a trend to deliver report of the experiment via blog, and not the fact that people are trying to live differently than the norm. Back in the late 70s when my dad was a student at University of Alaska, Fairbanks, he and his roommates and friends (in the dorm) decided that grocery stores were overrated and they were only going to eat what they could catch. I should mention that they were all up there to study wildlife and biology and other such outdoorsy related subjects which meant that they had an idea of what was available for eating. I should also mention that most of them grew up in the paved valleys of southern California. Anyway, after a week of living off of voles and other small rodents caught by snares, they decided that grocery stores were actually ok. What's hilarious to me is that my dad didn't think his experiment was all that strange. I think my dad figured that college was the time when everyone was trying something new. And when he would tell that story, he would always end with a substory about the guy living down the hall who had covered his entire room and bed with moss. Moss guy was the real oddball!  Today, if a group of college students tried eating rodents or covering their rooms with moss, you bet they would have a blog about it, and they would end up on The Today Show and inevitably there would be a reality tv show about them after a few months. I guess what I'm saying is that these experiments are nothing new, it's just the way they are hyped that is new.

By some odd coincidence, the Time article made reference to, No Impact Man, a man named Colin Beaven who spent a year of his life NYC trying to have as little environmental impact as possible. He kept a blog about he and his wife and infant daughter's experience and wrote a book about it that came out last year. There was also a documentary made about the project. My friend Mary (of the lightning jar fame) had mention No Impact Man to me a few days before, and with two seemingly random references to the same work in a matter of days, I figured it was time to read his book!

Unlike my reading of Not Buying It, I could really relate to Colin Beavan, despite the fact that he lives in Manhattan and is married with a small child. He wrote about his reasons for wanting to live with the least amount of environmental impact as possible and made a logical plan to do so. He was honest to the fact that his lifestyle as a writer allowed him certain flexibility that would probably not be possible for many other people. He was also quite truthful in admitting the areas that he and his wife could not find to work around, such as how to find olive oil or coffee made within 100 miles of Manhattan. I found it highly amusing that Beavan wrote of reading Not Buying It, and had the same comments and criticisms I had. Despite the overwhelming title of No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet And the Discoveries He Makes About Himself And Our Way Of Life In The Process, which initially turned Steady J off, even he could relate when Beavan spoke of using an old peanut butter jar as his coffee mug; a look which Steady J has pioneered on the west coast.

Beavan made lots of great points and links in his book that I could explain here, but I won't because I'm hoping that a lot of you will go out and read his book, or check out his blog, or even watch the documentary (which I have not seen). I'm just going to close by highlighting a few of the main points from his book that made me stop and think.

       Number 1: Beavan theorizes that mechanical devices and technology have taken the rest periods our of our lives. Before cell phones, Ipads and travel coffee mugs, people were forced to sit for periods of time without distraction and constant connection, allowing them to rest their brains and bodies. There would be lapses between stressful times because you were not always tethered to work or other people. If you wanted a cup of coffee and you were out on the town, you sat quietly in a coffee shop and were able to rest your mind, and you were not interrupted by a phone call, text or email message. Beavan mentions research that reflects that people today are no happier than people several generations ago, in fact, they are less happy, and he wonders if we can really consider ourselves to be an advanced society if technological advances are not increasing our overall enjoyment of life.

      Number 2:  Products are designed to become obsolete (ie, break or be deemed out of style) in order to keep people buying. This makes me mad and I think it should be illegal since it causes so many unnecessary things to be created that end up in landfills after a few years. This started in the 1920s when things began to be commonly made by assembly line, as opposed to hand made, and really took off in the 1950s.

     Number 3: TV is a bigger time suck than people realize! Over the course of his project, Beavan teaches himself to cook with ingredients he buys from the farmers market, learns to make yogurt, sauerkraut and bake bread. All his friends want to know where he finds time to do it. The answer is that the first day of the project his family gave away their big flat screen television. The average amount of tv that Americans watch is 4.5 hours per day. Without a television, he and his wife have 9 hours a day back in their lives to devote to cooking healthy food for their small family. It doesn't take 9 hours a day to cook food, so their excess time is spent playing with their daughter, or talking, or riding bikes or playing board games with their friends who stop by for some home cooked food! They become slender and healthy from their increased intake of great food, and decreased time spend sitting around watching tv. I may never have a tv again!

"No, You're Weird!!!!!"

Something new: A travel story!

I had to travel to Houston for a meeting and decided to fly out of Eugene for the first time ever since it would be way more convenient for Steady J to drop me off and pick me up. Eugene has quite a nice airport, with a little cafe, gift shops and even "USB charger ports in the chairs!" as the TSA agent who checked my ID and boarding pass exclaimed when I told him it was my first time using that airport. "What a gem", I thought, "I'm coming back here!" And then the other TSA Agent took my toothpaste and my excitement was crushed.

I probably pushed the envelope a bit by throwing my semi-new full size tube in my backpack when I was hurrying to get out the door. When I was packing the night before, I'd realized that my travel size tube was in my desk at work. And I had no idea where my travel size deodorant had disappeared to. "No sweat", I figured. The TSA Agent in Portland had previously allowed my almost finished full size tube through with no issue. Apparently, he was incompetent, but quite accommodating which is not the optimal mix for a TSA agent.

The woman running the x-ray scanner had my bag pulled for a hand search by some pimply string bean fresh out of school. This was extra entertaining considering that I was the only person in the security line and there were six TSA agents. I guess I beat the Monday morning rush. Anyway, the youngster pulled my toothpaste and said it was not the approved size. Toothpaste is apparently not allowed in quantities greater than four ounces, yet my full size deodorant caused no red flag, which seems odd since that stuff melts down to a vast melty goo. The agent went on to say that my bag would have to be rescanned and they would dispose of my toothpaste for me. All I could think of was the plastic tube and the mix of diatomaceous earth and fluoride going into the dump!  "Can I leave it and pick it up tomorrow?" I asked. "No, we don't have that capability" was the reply. The agent asked if I could check my bag, which was a good suggestion, but I was under strict orders that the files I was carrying had to be kept on my person and I was not going to schlep 10 pounds of scholarship applications and transcripts without a bag to keep them in.

My backpack was rescanned and right before the toothpaste was pitched I asked "Can I squeeze out most of the paste so I just have enough in that tube to use for the next two days?"  Ol' pimple faces response was, "we'd have no way to know how many ounces would be left in the tube." And then I excitedly said, "But if the tube is eight ounces and then I squeeze out half of it, that would leave four ounces, and then if I squeeze out three quarters of that, I'd have one ounce!" And I was smiling with my brilliant use of logical estimation! And the young one was going to let me do it! Until he looked at the female who had scanned my bags and she shook her head back and forth. She told me to go to the travel shop and see if they had any four ounce containers for sale. I replied, " I don't buy anything new." and both agents looked at me like they couldn't decide if I was an idiot or a really incompetent terrorist who was running out of stories.

In a last attempt to save my toothpaste I asked them to wait while I searched my bag for a container. I thought there might be a film canister with vitamins in it floating amidst my change of underwear and hair straightener. All I could locate was a plastic freezer bag that had previously housed my toothbrush and toothpaste. I held it up inquisitively to the TSA agent and he said, "that would be kind of weird" and threw my toothpaste away right in front of my eyes. I wanted to yell, "No, you're weird! You're a WASTER AMERICAN! A Person who thinks everything is disposable and gives no thought to the resources used to make products!" and then slap him. But I didn't. I figured an angry outburst a 7am would put me on the TSA crazy list, and I really needed to get to that meeting. I had to settle for sitting at one of those fancy USB chairs while I fumed about being called weird and tore into a package of peppermint gum to chomp out my frustration and cover my breakfast breath.
                        
                             "You're weird!"
                                            "You're weird!"
                             "You're weird!"

Those words flowed through my head with each chew, alternating between being directed internally and back at the TSA crowd. I was super miffed and then I noticed the TSA comment cards and decided that they deserved a piece of my mind. When I was almost done filling out the card, I realized I had written, "Your agents threw away my toothpaste and then said I was weird!" as my complaint and felt like a total 8th grade loser. I folded up the complaint card and put it in my pocket to use as future scratch paper.

As I sat there waiting for my plane to board I started to wonder if this project is making me become a fundamentalist in my crusade against waste. I came to the conclusion that if I am worked up to the point of wanting to berate a TSA agent for being vigilant in their job, I am probably well on my way to being a "fundo" for my cause. And that doesn't actually trouble me that much. What does trouble me is the fact that I stand out so much in the general public for being conscious of waste. I am definitely not the norm. More people should be this weird.

The Fizzle Bizzle

Facebook today announced that they've extended a new application, the Gross National Happiness app, to users in countries around the world. This "app", which I had never heard about until this article, identifies status updates of users and uses the information to classify the "emotional state of users" by country. Apparently in the trials in the US and a few other countries, it was found that Gross National Happiness increases when people are enjoying  holidays, but decreases when we're all sad over celebrity deaths, like Michael Jackson or when our favorite team loses the Super Bowl. This Facebook, or Fizzle Bizzle (as my friends and I like to call it) article made me think more about Facebook and its purpose. 

Facebook to me, has gone from a seemingly organic way to connect with friends and acquaintances, to a way for companies and corporations to collect data on potential customers. Ever wonder where that fun quiz about your likes and dislikes came from? No, not some creative college student's basement. Try a market research company. It's much easier to collect data from consumers when you don't have to survey them in a grocery store or by cold calling. I'm often surprised the detail of information people will provide online surveys that seem to have no creator and are floating freely around Facebook. People will answer questions about their living arrangement (alone or with people), their income, education level, work place, hours of work, pets, names of family members, favorite foods, music, movies, books, etc, all because some quiz is supposedly going to provide insight into their personality as a result of their painstaking answer to the question, "Do you prefer Cheetos or Doritos?"

Cheetos.

And now Facebook is publicly going beyond the quiz for market research. It is mining our comments to determine our emotional well being. (How does FB get around obtaining Informed Consent from users?). Interestingly, I foresee targeted advertisements to citizens of certain countries based on the average emotional state of its users. This is where I think the process is flawed (and I'm kind of happy about it). If Facebook is going to use a text reader to look for words indicating emotional state, such as "awesome" or "tragic", how will it take sarcasm into consideration? What if my status is,  "It is so awesome that my cat took a shit on my jeans!" (That is pretty much a real status update from my friend B.A.) Or, even more fascinating is the fact that sometimes people write status updates that are more a reflection of what they think other people want to see, and less about what they are feeling. People write, "Happy Thanksgiving! It's going to be a great day with family!" when they really mean "I don't feel like cooking for these ingrates."  How does this app taking lying into consideration? Or people just reflect on things that they don't care about, or don't really mean anything. "Happy Friday!". Does that mean I'm having a Happy Friday or does that mean that I hope to have one or I hope other people have them? Or does it mean that I just can't think of anything to say?

How is the Fizzle Bizzle going to handle magic like that? I like to think they won't be able to since I am not a fan of this data collection, but something tells me that they are probably working on some program to identify sarcasm. This Facebook app is actually based on the research of a person at the University of Oregon (small world!) looking into Computer-Human interaction. And now I have a new mission for my lunch break - track down the author and ask him about sarcasm since his article does not mention it! See for yourself: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1753326.1753369.

Idiocy for Convenience

Gulf coast, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that your water is polluted with oil, your sea life will probably die and obliterate your fishing jobs and tourism industry for many, many years, and your environment will be forever altered. I'm sorry that you are screwed.

The Feds say they will reprimand the parties responsible. But how do you reprimand a whole country? It was not British Petroleum that was the root of this disaster. It was us. Fuel companies like BP will continue drilling for oil and ignore the potential for disaster as long as we still line up like fools to buy oil and gasoline and plastics to feed our lifestyles. It was us. We have destroyed an ecosystem and economy because of convenience and inability to consider change. It was us. Oil is rising from the earth at a rate that no one can manage to estimate correctly and it appears that it will keep a flowing for an undetermined amount of time. It was us. Eleven people died because of our thirst for oil. We all contributed to their deaths by giving a company no reason to slow down and ensure their workers safety and structural integrity of their equipment. We demand crude oil, ignoring the ever increasing price, and who cares if it is risky. It was us. And I feel guilty. And I feel sad. And every time I listen to the news or read an article about the oil spill I get so angry I begin to cry because I have no power to help the wild creatures in the path of the spill, or the people whose livelihood is dependent on a stable gulf.

And then I speak to a person from my Vanpool who works for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and she mentions the highly toxic hydrocarbon Benzene, which is found in gasoline and can easily leech into your skin, and how it seems strange that gasoline attendants don't wear gloves or face masks. And I think about all the people outside of Oregon who actually have to pump their own gas and I wonder if they ever realize the risk of cancer they face when standing in their business casual with their hands on the nozzle. And I remember a few weeks ago when Steady J suggested using a little gasoline as a cleaning solvent, the same way that I've heard other people suggest it over the years. Scanning the 12 pump gas station by my house the next day I see one tiny little posting above a sign regarding wheelchair accessibility that reports that gasoline is found to cause cancer in laboratory animals. And I realize the full extent of the idiocy of our fossil fuel system, which destroys our environment, sucks our piggy banks dry and in the end kills us.

Waste Not, Want Not

For some reason since I began this project my attention has really focused on food. This might be because the only "new" items that I am allowed to buy are things that I eat so I devote a lot of attention to the wide variety of options. Naturally I have become much more observant of the role that food plays in culture and the waste that can accompany our consumption of edible items. Just this morning, Steady J took a bike ride to the Co-op to get a cup of coffee and while there he ran into a friend of his that delivers artisan bread for a local bakery. This friend said that the bakery always produces more than the stores can sell and gave Steady J two loaves of sliced wheat bread,  two packages of European style panini rolls and a loaf of kalamata olive bread, which were probably worth about $30 total. It was a super score! Apparently any unsold bread the bakery ends up with is given to birds (I don't know if this means it is fed to chickens or used to rehab birds at the Audubon society). We're supposed to call this magical bakery delivery man (A.K.A. The Muffin Man) when we want more free bread. Sounds good to me!

Fueled by a few slices of olive bread, I headed down to the Corvallis farmers market to load up my bike basket with produce. While I perused the stalls I noticed that the Oregon State University Master Gardener organization was advertising free vegetable starts if you participated in something called Plant a Row for the Hungry. Plant a Row for the Hungry is a national program in which community members commit to planting an extra row of food crops in their garden to donate to local food banks. Some people don't plant an extra row and instead commit to sharing their bumper crops! What gardener doesn't end up with extra garden produce? Instead of hoisting it on your neighbors or co-workers, you can drop off your produce so that it can be included in the food packages for hungry families. Low income families and individuals often have to chose between buying cheap food or buying healthy food. This program is a great way to bridge the gap and get more nourishing foods to the people who would not generally have access to them. Anyone who signed up at the market to donate produce was given free vegetable starts and I received two baby winter squash to plant. I think this is a great idea! But it made me wonder why that lovely local bakery who gives their extra bread to birds is not giving their bread to hungry humans in the community.

Kleenex: Disposable weakness in a Pop-up box

On of my BFFFGS (Best Friends Forever From Grad School) sent me the link to a new product that is supposed to revolutionize the way you dry your hands at home. The Kleenex Disposable Hand Towel is a one use "cottony soft" hand towel, packaged in a decorative cardboard "Pop-Up" box that can either sit on your counter, or be wedged in your towel rack. Kleenex explains the need for a disposable hand towel on the product page,

"People in the U.S. dry their hands on cloth bathroom towels approximately 200 billion times a year. The CDC guidelines for hand washing recommends hand drying with a single-use towel. Families have not had a practical alternative to traditional cloth hand towels in their home bathrooms… until now."

200 billion is a lot of hand drying and that number probably does not take into account the alternative drying methods of "wiping your hands on you pants" or "shaking them dry". Apparently, Kleenex also seems to forget that rolls of paper towels have existed for decades and have proved to be practical, albeit environmentally unfriendly, alternatives to cloth towels on many occasions.

Delving further into the product descriptions you learn that Kleenex is in fact doing the public a great service by providing us with these disposable options. You see, "hands are only as clean as the towel used to dry them". If that cloth towel is not perfectly clean, we might be exposed to the dreaded "germs!" and apparently humans just don't know how to handle those sorts of things. What's funny is that we used to know how to handle lots of germs. Our immune systems were strong because we grew up fighting germs and building a resistance. Now we as a society spend billions of dollars each year to destroy anything we think might make us sick and that is not necessarily a good way to operate.

A few weeks ago I listened to an episode of This American Life on NPR and it was about a man who suffered from horrendous allergies. He was pretty much allergic to everything: grass, tree pollen, cats, dust, etc. and to make things worse, he was a professional landscaper which meant that his days outside were torture. The man spoke of looking like death, with dark circles under his eyes and lethargy on a permanent basis. One day this gent heard something interesting - people in developing countries do not suffer from allergies the way that people living in developed countries do, yet they are exposed to many of the same allergens. What these developing countries do have are parasites - like hookworm. Apparently, these hookworms, which live in your gut, are able to shut off the immune response to them in order to stay living in the host with little issue (it is believed that humans and hookworms evolved together and had a symbiotic relationship for thousands of years). When hookworms shut down the immune response, your body is also unresponsive to allergens, meaning that you still might be allergic, but you won't have the symptoms. This man was so miserable that he went to Senegal and infected himself with hookworm and low and behold, has not had allergy symptoms since. This really isn't as bizarro as it sounds - Treatment of autoimmune disorders with parasites is referred to as "Helminthic Therapy" and it is being researched in the UK for allergy treatment and also Crohns Disease and Celiac Disease. 

Getting back to disposable hand towels, I feel like Kleenex and every other company that makes products meant to shield us from common germs and parasites and bacteria are doing us a great disservice. While improved sanitation practices, such as hand washing with soap, has saved countless lives, the extent to which we now go to destroy all germs and bacteria is actually weakening us. The Hygiene Hypothesis is an idea that lack of childhood exposure to germs sets us up to have weak immune systems and I completely believe it as there is now an entire generation of youth in this country that thinks that hand sanitizer is a necessary as soap, yet they are hacking and wheezing in my office on a weekly basis. The other thing that Kleenex is doing that I find infuriating, is provide us with more things to throw away. This world does not need another paper product created to throw away after one use. I for one will keep facing the germs on my cloth towels if it means that I can see a few more trees and a smaller landfill.

You Can't Eat Flowers.

Driving home from Easter dinner at my mom's house my RockSteady and I listened to The Splendid Table radio show. The Splendid Table is a program all about food - part cooking, part cultural exploration, part restaurant review and part interview with assorted foodies. It is billed as "the show for people who love to eat". That would be me. One of the guests on the show was Rosalind Creasy, a woman who is best known for promoting "edible landscaping".  In fact, she just had a new book come out with that as the title - isn't that a beautiful cover?

Edible landscaping is exactly what it sounds like - planting edible plants in your yard instead of purely decorative plants. In introducing the topic she mentioned that long ago, common folk only planted edible foods on their property. It was the aristocracy that had elaborate flower gardens and big lawns to be enjoyed visually - It was a way to show off how well-to-do you were.  After various revolutions, the idea of planting flowers and shrubs purely for visual interest became pretty common for every day people who could now flex their improving social status and depend on buying produce at the market. I would go on to say that the creation of post WWII suburbia got the front yard, particularly the grass lawn, to be seen as an ideal of prosperity. When I was teaching English in China a few years back my students told me about the "Chinese Dream" which was to find a good job, buy a car, own a house with a lawn, and be "lucky in love". Given the population of China, I don't know that it would be possible for everyone to have a house with a lawn, but it was interesting that having a yard with a lawn was seen as something to aspire to.

Despite the fact that people bring their own bags to the store, re-use water vessels instead of buying bottled water and fill their cars with bio-fuel, why are people so hesitant to get rid of their front lawns? If you watch a new house being built, you always see grass seed or turf put down in the front yard as if no one would ever consider not having a sea of green leading to their door. This is funny when you start to think about what a major drag it can be to mow the lawn when there are other things to do. Not to mention the fuel that lawn mowers need and the noise pollution they create. Why is our society so lawn-centric? Are we still trapped in the 18th century mindset that your front yard should reflect your social status? If we were to grow food in front of our houses, would it throw people into a tizzy because they wouldn't have a highly visible indicator of where we are in the social hierarchy?

I think of my Grandpa Muetzenberg when I think about edible landscaping. When I was growing up my parents would plant a vegetable garden in the back yard each year. The front yard was reserved for the decorative flowers and shrubs, purely for aesthetics. I would always be so excited about the flowering plants like snapdragons and Shasta daisies, but I distinctly remember my Grandpa replying, "You can't eat flowers." when we would tell him about our plantings. I used to think that was so harsh! Why couldn't he appreciate the beauty of bright cheerful colors making your home look inviting? What a grump! But now I think I understand. He was ten years old when the Great Depression started and grew up thinking about where his meals would come from. What Grandpa did get excited about were home grown vegetables, berries and fruit. When he would visit in the summer we would pick blackberries, blueberries and cherries and make pies. With a Beefeater martini in hand, he would take a tour of the garden and admire the size of the plants. He saw the beauty in knowing exactly where your dinner was coming from.

My interest in knowing where my food is coming from (Thanks Family!) and avoiding the waste that accompanies packaged foods is what draws me to edible landscaping. To me, it just makes sense to maximize what you can grow for your own use and share with others. And most edible plants are gorgeous! Blueberries have beautiful leaves that change color in the fall. Sunflowers and tomatoes can add the color that I crave around a home. Swiss chard has those great bright yellow, orange, red veins that makes it look festive next to other plants. Some day when I'm a grown up and own a house, I'll have a fully edible yard. And I'll have you all over for dinner.