diversity

I really believe in backyard bird feeders.  The sound of birds makes a place cheerful and our feeder is BUSY!  If you don't feed birds in your back yard, click on the link and get going.  Enviro Girl is big on promoting diversity.

Speaking of diversity, I don't care nor am I surprised to hear that Jodie Foster is a lesbian.  That's old news, really.  I do, however, think if you're going to receive an award for a lifetime of work you knew about it beforehand and had plenty of time to write a clear, organized and eloquent speech.  Jodie, you also had time to consult with a speechwriter.  Shame on you and every other lifetime achievement awards recipient who gets up on the stage and blathers incoherently.  It's insulting to your audience and reflects poorly on you as a professional.  There.  I said it.  I've read other people's views on her speech--how moving it was, how touched they were--but I am the straight-talking Midwestern gal saying "The emperor isn't wearing clothes!" 

You want to see diversity, step into a 4K classroom and watch the little nippers draw pictures.  It's adorable.  And it demonstrates a range of ability and interests.  One kid draws a picture, but it's really about the whole narrative around the picture and he starts giving me the whole back story--the drawing itself is a vehicle for storytelling.  I have 3 kids at home who do the same thing.  One girl draws a person, adds grass at the bottom of the page, sun at the top.  Classic.  Another girl uncaps a marker, scribbles a tiny bit, caps the marker, selects a new marker, uncaps the marker, scribbles a tiny bit, caps the marker...and so on.  She's not sure what to do, but she sure likes the smell of markers. One kid draws a football field, complete with goal posts and yardage lines.  Another kid draws a zombie, so the kid next to him tries to draw a zombie.   Each kid takes their own approach with the same tools in hand and it's fun to watch.  Parents, your kids don't need a Leapster or educational CDs or games.  They need TIME and PAPER and MARKERS OR CRAYONS.  That's where the magic really happens and their imagination and creativity and small motor skills develop. (And also where the marker sniffing starts--parents, if your kid comes home with a rainbow of colors between their nose and upper lip, you might want to stage an intervention.  KIDDING!  They were smelly markers.  Totally safe and nontoxic way to get your huff on, yo.)

My new smart phone is very different from my old flip phone.  The battery lasts a fraction as long, for one thing.  I've figured out how to answer calls (good) and tried using the phone camera at Mr. G's basketball game.  I was all Oooooh!  Video camera!  Let's do that!  Then I can show my bloggy friends how great he is with ball handling and stuff--give them photographic evidence of his athletic prowess.  You know what's coming.  I get it to work and start filming.  His buddy makes a basket a couple seconds later while Mr. G stands watching.  I say as much to his buddy's mother (sitting next to me) and she's all "Oh!  I missed it!" so I tell her she can watch the video feed of instant replay that I'm holding in my hand.  I wait a beat and set up the camera again.  Mr. G stands watching as his buddy makes another basket.  The third time, after the exact same thing happens again, I draw two conclusions:
1.  This is what I get for being proud and braggy--my intentions SMITED.
2.  If our basketball team's ever in a cold streak and we need to score, I should bring out the smart phone video camera and start filming.  Then Mr. G's buddy will start racking up points while he watches.

It's January and we're on the cusp of shutting down one freezer.   As part of our whole "grow our own food" and "eat local" and "save money" regimen here at Chez Green Girl, our two basement freezers are chock-full in the fall.  We have a quarter beef, bags and bags of tomatoes and stuff from our garden, and various containers of frozen soups and casseroles.  Once a month I try to get by with a minimal shopping list and really hit the freezer hard so food doesn't get lost, forgotten and (inevitably) wasted.  A few years of practice have made me better at managing this.  I know by January we should be down to about 7 jars of jam, 10 jars of applesauce, 7 bags of tomatoes and so forth.  If we aren't, then we haven't been making the most of our resources and we're also not eating as healthy.  In another week I should be able to go down and consolidate food into one freezer and unplug the other.  I should see more clean, empty canning jars than jars full of preserved fruit.  We'll from one "meat" freezer" and one "produce" freezer to one freezer for all the food, tenderloins to blueberries and everything in between.  No more segregation of the food groups, one freezer to rule them all and encase their nutritional diversity at zero degrees Fahrenheit.

Spill it, reader.  Any kind of commentary on wild birds, frozen food, braggy moms, poor speechifyin'.  We're open to all kind of comments here at Green Girl in Wisconsin, Inc.

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eco-holiday

Three years ago this week Jen on the Edge and I started a little eco-blog called Eco Women: Protectors of the Planet. We shared a vision of a website that could teach people how to behave friendlier to the environment. We aren't super-crunchy-granola (what with liking to shave our armpits and eat the occasional Hostess Twinkie), but we aren't greenwashing the topic by encouraging people to buy more stuff or do nothing and feel good about it. We're those environmental activists in the middle, teaching people how to do right by Earth without spending money or totally uprooting their lifestyles. Since then we've added to the legions of Eco Women (and a couple Eco Men), steering people away from single-use plastic products like shopping bags and water bottles, encouraging people to dig deep and plant their own food, calling out the polluting industries and applauding the companies committed to shrinking their carbon footprints. We've covered "green sex" and "eco-friendly tourism." We've addressed what to eat, wear, buy (or, more likely, NOT buy), smear, spray, unplug and pour--all in the name of saving the environment from pollution.

To celebrate our three year blogiversary over at Eco Women, we're giving away THREE Eco Women canvas shopping bags. To enter to win, you've only got to visit the site and leave a comment.
I do hope none of my readers need this shopping bag--y'all already gave up plastic shopping bags eons ago, right? RIGHT?

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stick this!

Give a hoot, don't pollute! Help Woodsy Owl.

This weekend Enviro-Girl rallied the troops (AKA Team Testosterone) to perform the annual ditch cleaning. Living in the country on nearly 60 acres alongside a county highway, Enviro-Girl constantly battles invasive species--including litter. Plastic shopping bags, newspapers, styrofoam packaging, fast food wrappers, soda bottles, beer cans and cigarettes get tossed, blown and dropped. Clad in grubby clothes (this is a disgusting job) and gloves and armed with two huge garbage bags, they headed out.

Enviro-Girl took one side of the driveway, Team Testosterone took the other. They stooped and grabbed. The bags slowly filled. A waterlogged pizza container. A milk carton. They got to the road and started picking up the ditch.

The road is where Enviro-Girl gets really pissed off. It's all Tavern Trash--beer bottles, beer cans, cigarette cartons and the occasional bottle of soda. There's no house or business for miles and the road runs across a creek--this stuff doesn't blow in naturally--it's not the result of someone's trash barrel accidentally blowing over and spilling out. It's the result of bar hoppers and underage drinkers who are rude and evil. Enviro-Girl pictures them driving through at 2 a.m., taking aim at the bridge with their beer bottles as they pass. Yee-haw! Team Testosterone has gotten really good at gathering other people's garbage over the years--the system is two people carry the bags while everybody swarms out and picks up what they can find. But Enviro-Girl gets crabby and grumpy and starts grousing not only about the G.D. Litterbugs, she starts ragging on her kids to pick up the slack. Come on! You walked right past that bottle, Mr. B! You see something, pick it up! I don't want to be out here all day!

The kids are ornery because Hey! It's Saturday afternoon and instead of playing we're in a ditch picking up people's garbage so lay off! Mr. T informed Enviro-Girl that he hates Ditch Day because she yells too much. In other words, Enviro-Girl has morphed into Ditch Bitch.

Humbled by his remark, Enviro-Girl changed her tune. She knows that if the management is mean to the workers, they rebel. She enocuraged her troops and suggested a game to keep things interesting. What's the weirdest thing they could find? The grossest? Spirits revived, they worked their way towards the creek.

"It's a dinosaur fossil!" Mr. G shrieked, running down towards a pile of bones. His brothers chased after him to see the carcass of a deer--the spinal column, rib cage and skull all intact. "Cool!"

"Hey, Mr. T! You're stepping on it's leg bones!" Enviro-Girl called. He jumped and looked down at his feet atop the knee joint. Roadkill wins for being the Coolest Thing they discovered. All agreed to let it be--anything that comes from nature, banana peels, leaves, dead mammals will biodegrade naturally.

Several paces later they found the Weirdest Thing: A toothbrush. But they all agreed half-drunk bottles of water was pretty strange too. "I mean, you buy water, then you don't even drink it. You cap the bottle and you throw it by the creek. Which is water. So like you're trying to give water back to the Earth, but really you're not," Mr. T ruminated.

The half-empty soda and beer cans/bottles had to get poured out or the bags would be too heavy to drag, so Enviro-Girl spent a lot of time twisting off caps. Glug glug glug. One particular bottle was half spilled on the ground (and splattering her Wellies) when the smell hit her and she retched and nearly barfed alongside the road. Yep, it was a bottle full of spit. (For readers unfamiliar with rednecks, guys who chew tobacco usually spit into a container--a can or bottle resulting in a nasty mix of saliva and chewed Kodiak.) She still gags to think about it--and the smell followed her around all day long. Definitely the Grossest.

Weary and filthy, Enviro-Girl and her sidekicks trudged back to the homefront. She'd toss the full garbage sacks into the ditch and put them in the dumpster Monday night when she dragged it out by the road. No point in dragging the weight all the way down to the house and back again for the garbage pick-up. She yelled at Team Testosterone to run ahead, wash up and have a snack. They had earned their break. And then it happened.

In the stand of willows near the end of her driveway, Enviro-Girl spotted a plastic soda bottle she'd missed when they'd come through earlier. She dropped the bags and climbed through the ditch after it. Crawling through the branches, she leaned in to grab the bottle and a twig jammed into her eye. Yow! Today her left eye is still sore and irritated. It's true, people. Enviro-Girl's commitment to Planet Earth is so great that she'll even endure physical pain.

Yes, Woodsy, Enviro-Girl will harken your cry.

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