Earth Day

The chick and I received a lovely gift of a Dietz Lil' Wizard Lantern recently and what I had thought was going to be a for-emergency-when-zombies-attack device has now become a lovely little way to light our home and hang out peacefully for a short bit.

It started with our participating in Earth Hour one Saturday night, and since then, we occasionally turn off most of the electrical stuff in our urban apartment and light the lantern (with Klean-Heat). Everything goes quiet and the flicker of small fire casts an interesting range of emotions in us, from silly, to serious, to thoughtful, to happy.

This is what respecting our place on Earth means to me. And Earth Day is my religious holiday where I spend a little extra time thinking about this respect and how I can improve and do better in The Green Age.

People often ask me about 'living green' and how to do it-- is it recycling, buying local, changing to CF light-bulbs or what? It's all of those thing, of course, but in my opinion, living green is just trying to live sustainably, in balance, with our natural resources.

It also doesn't mean going back to the stone age, it's merely adjusting, altering, and looking for alternatives to the oil-based status quo by asking curious questions about what we consume, from the essentials to the frivolous, about our food, playthings, trash: what is it? where did it come from? where is it going to go?

We have an abundance of knowledge and resources to meet the demands of our culture, to simply help our planet, it all just takes silly, serious, thoughtful, and happy minds and hands.

Love and Peace,

--christine