We’ve decided to be more environmentally responsible this year. So starting early on, we’ve been buying green produces, reusable bags, I stopped shopping for leather handbags (still allowing leather shoes). The most significant change has been trying to live with only one car.
The result of this decision is that it is costing us more money right now to be green. In a sense that I feel to be environmentally conscious may not be an affordable option for everyone. After a couple months of trying, here are the reasons why:
1. Carbon emission. For a hard working family with each person working at least 10-12 hours a day, it is nearly impossible to combine their car usage into sharing one car. (I have many such clients with marginal income and 3 household cars as a result.) The ride sharing, public transportation dependent scenario will work for a regular one job person, not for people have 2-3 jobs a day. They have very little time to waste on travelling.
2. The reusable bag. It is a good idea to eliminate the plastic bags, but I have found a reusable outlet for my plastic bags by using them as my trash bags in various rooms of my house. Now that the trash bags are gone, I have to buy for trash bags - an additional expense. For the underprivileged, hardworking people, they wouldn’t want to spend extra $$ from their already tight monthly budget.
3. Green produce. To support the green business, we’ve been buying the produce and other daily needs from the whole foods. In short, these items are significantly more costly than the average products. Looking at the faces shopping at the Whole Foods, I think these are mostly middle class (at the least) people. My 3-car per house hold clients will shop only at Shaws and stop and shop. What they usually buy are frozen foods and canned foods with a little fresh veggies because they lacked time to prepare and shop food.
This way, being green is not really an option for the American working class. It may take some time before the costs of things get down (will it? now that all over the world we see the $$ value plunge?).
Several years ago I got BeBe’s CD Pafuera Telarañas and was instantly attracted by her songs (albeit the lack of understandings of the lyrics). Recently when searching things on youtub, (I am liking this video idea more and more), I came across BeBe’s songs. I then found out that Pafuera Telarañas is her only CD to the world. She’s moving onto other things since 2006. Viewing her MTVs, I got a sense that she has a very strong personality as a woman. At times, I thought she really looked like a man. I am wondering what is she doing now… at the age of 30.
A lot of people think artists are cool. But I actually think only cool artist is cool. There are quite some uninteresting “artists” which muddled the soup a bit. Lori McKenna, as a Boston local musician, as a mother of 5, is very cool.
Here is a sample of her song written and sang by herself. The title is called “unglamorous”. At age 39, she’s just been “discovered” about two years ago. All this time before, she was doing her music as a side thing while raising 5 kids (from 18 to 2), working at a glue factory, married to a plumber. But her talent was discovered. The music video was shot at her home in Stoughton MA. Her coolness shows when she achieved something that’s not easily reachable at that age and when she is very much buried by the burdens of life.
I am not a country music fan, but I am still touched by Lori McKenna’s talent.
When I was studying German, I was given a very cute German’s children’s book talking about a little Tiger and a little Bear, their little adventure to find Banana in Panama. The fact how it also rhymes in German makes the book very fun to read. From the one item of Banana, they further derived that “Oh, wie schoen ist Panama”! (How beautiful is Panama). It became the title of the book. They went about looking for their dreamland- Panama.
Today, I heard differently on the news. The Panama disease is THE deadly disease for all bananas. 50 years ago, it already wiped out many better grade bananas due to the Panama disease. Our current banana from the super market is the most inferior kind of all bananas. (No wonder I do not care for it at all). 50 years ago, the growers had to choose our current brand due to its hardiness and the fact that it can survive the Panama disease. We now are faced with a mutated strand of the disease which will wipe out our current bananas in a matter of 10-30 years!
Since I am not very much a fan of the current inferior kind anyways, it didn’t really bother me much. The part really interested me is the fact that the most popular and profitable banana was not the best kind. (With the current surviving variations, the ones in the Philippines are suppose to be the best among banana aficionados.) That further supported my theory - the most popular choice may very likely to be not the best choice one can possibly get.
Banana may be extinct in Panama soon. For the little bear and the little tiger, that will be such a dream crusher!
This year, I am given a lively bunch of high school girls to teach. Often times, they ask me marginally related questions during class. I remember one time, out of the blue, one girl asked me how would she know she had this much money in the bank. Does that mean the bank can bring out this much money at all times? They are just getting curious with many worldly concepts. However, many still are quite abstract to them. Although we are not in an economic class, I decided to spend 10 minutes to talk to them about the history of money and the current monetary system. In this sense, I like their free style questions very much. On the other hand, they are much harder to manage for me to keep a fast pace for the teaching.
This week, our usual side-tracked questions are related to food. After the usual questions such as “do Chinese people really eat dogs”. (well, the answer is certainly affirmative.) I added that we don’t really like to eat cats. I saw the signs of relief showing on their little faces. I decided to add the comment that it was because cat meat was not very tasty. This started another round of Ews, Yuks… To shock them further (I like to use the shocking method in class to enhance their Chinese impression. It’s been working very well so far.), I told them how in some places people would eat live monkey brains at the table. I went further to describe the setting and the details. The girls were totally appalled. At last, they asked me how would Chinese people feel about American’s eating habits. This is very interesting to me because this means that they are quite open to view things in different perspectives. I would certainly utilize it to the max and therefore, I chose the more extreme answer. I told them that to some Chinese people, they felt sad about the American’s eating habits. Because the world is so large with many resources, but the American people are extremely limited with their food choices. Some girls left the classroom with a thoughtful look, others simply stated that they would rather be limited in food selection than being cruel.
