Part time Vegan

Well, our energy audit was interesting.  We have a list a mile along to accomplish. Quite overwhelming for sure. Gonna take one task at at time.

This month I’m gonna try VEGANISM at home.  It’s really hard to be vegan when we are touring, but easier at home. For this month of April I am not going to buy cheese, milk, dairy products.  I admit…I am a cheese-a-holic!!!!!  And a cream-o-holic!  Not having 1/2 & 1/2 in my coffee is horrible, in fact I would rather drink herbal tea…yikes.  I have been vegetarians for 19 years now and have threatened to become Vegan. Love the concept but have not taken the plunge. Well, since I am trying to do one good thing to lower my carbon footprint every week….this is my task for April and will cover me for 4 weeks….I’ll let ya know how I do in the next post.  Scary…but I can do it!

Energy Audit

Hi Greenies,

Well…we finally bought a clothes drying rack for our pantry, don’t have the outside one up yet…still lots o snow. Yes, someone told me you can hang the laundry out and it will dry even when it’s frozen! Yikes….I think I’ll do my first several loads INSIDE.

Today Gary Kahanak is coming over to do a FULL blown energy audit on our home.  We are going to learn where all the leaks are and then set about fixin’ em one at a time.

Last year we put a ICE HOUSE metal roof on and it really helped keep it cooler here, still lots to do.  Lots to learn.

Sunday we’re going to a SEED EXCHANGE at our public library.  Kelly got the garden all put to rest. That is another WHOLE separate BLOG…our fledgling garden.

Oh my…gotta put the kettle on, not only is Gary doing the audit but we are having it FILMED and aired on our local public television. Gonna point the finger at OURSELVES and show everyone what we learn.

WHEEEEEEE!

Donna

Blog #3 To Car or Not to Car….

Hi Greenies,

This is fun…I don’t mind that I don’t have an audience yet…makes me more confident to write what ever I want with no worries.  Speaking of ‘worries’ I want to say up front that I am not one who concerns herself with spelling,  typos or grammar,  I just want to get it out and so be it, so I hope you are OK with that because this BLOG will be fraught with errors! Tah Dah…I said it.

One of our GREEN decisions for this week was to look a gift horse in the mouth.  Kelly’s folks are getting a brand new car and have generously offered us their PERFECTLY good 4 wheel drive Suburoo .   Notice the photo on this BLOG…it is a pic of me in my PAISLEY PEACE MOBILE.  Several years ago I got a bunch of artist friend to paint it up for me. It has been my scoot around town car and community vehicle. When ever anyone was without a car they knew that there was a key in the ashtray and they could use it. World Peace hedged on whether or not the PEACE MOBILE was in action, so we did just enough maintenance to keep it running.

Long story short,  we decided to take the offer and give the PeaceMobile to a teen we know who LOVES that car. Pass on the torch so to speak.  SO we gave it to her and it was a JOY to watch her expression as she opened the box containing the key to COOL! But as we awaited the title in the mail and did not have access to 2 cars we realized…do we really NEED 2 cars?  We work the SAME job and I have an electric bike….hmmmmmm.

SO we have decided to decline the offer and become a one car family. We are gonna take the $900 a year we save on insurance alone and get Kelly’s bike retrofitted ELECTRIC so we have MORE transportation options.  (We have a great Electric Bike Shop in town called GREEN WHEEL…check it out, tell Edward that we sent you)

Bye bye for now

Donna

Blog #3 Towels!

Hi Greenies,

Well well well….our first Sustainability Salon was amazing.  Now I know many of you are thinking that we are creating a Beauty Palor that uses non-toxic dies and hennas….WRONG.  A salon is a fancy word for a REAL chat room!  We want to share ideas about making our personal lives GREENER and do ‘projects’ together.  We chose a handful of folks who are already ‘walking the talk’…learn from the best.  So we brainstormed on how we could bring this to a larger audience and get the whole community involved.  The city of Fayetteville has a Sustainability group and there is a great Permaculture group as well, we don’t need to re-invent the wheel, so we are having another SALON on the 1st of Feb. and we have invited the ‘head’ of both groups to come join us.

The Potluck was AMAZING…Shitake/Tofu cutlets with pesto sauce, Veggie Nori Rolls with Wasabi and Ginger on the side,  homemade bread, glazed carrots,  local, fresh salad greens,  and Kelly’s Mom’s walnut chocolate for dessert. WOW…can we do this every night?

I need to confess one thing before I leave this blog.  My partner, Kelly called me on my towel useage.  I suppose I use to and wash way too many towels.  I have been largely unaware of this bad habit and am working hard to change this behavior.  There…I feel better just voicing this.  (And ditto with dishes…so I have chosen a glass to drink my water from and put my name on it in black sharpie pen, I have a spot on the window sill in the kitchen and that is the ONLY glass I will use! Yippee)

Bye bye

Donna

Blog #2-11th Hour

Greetings fellow Greenies,

Just want to blather a bit.  The reason I am so fired up about this blog is because a couple of weeks ago I watched The 11th Hour by Leonardo De Caprio and it blew my mind.   Gore’s Inconvienient Truth was one of those movies that spurred many us to action but I seem to need regular ‘spurring’  to keep my momentum going and this movie has got me moving again. Then a couple days later I went and watched Avatar.  I have been so SAD since seeing both of those movies.  Profoundly sad for this fragile planet we share.   The overall message in Avatar was important and s howed how we are damaging our eco systems but I couldn’t handle all the violence at the end.

I was hoping that the movie would have chosen a different ending rather than ‘violence begets violence’  one, but my son reminded me that it would not have made it to #1 in the country if it didn’t have all that action packed stuff at the end.  He said that a ‘new agey-Ghandi-ish’ message would not have brought the masses in to see it and the movie would have been preaching to the choir instead of reaching out to folks that need to be reminded of what we re doing to our planet..or rather to ourselves!

SO I want to invite anyone who reads this BLOG to go out and rent 11th Hour or I think you can even watch it on-line somehow.  It is a good wake up call.  I have written two songs that deal with the profound sadness I’m feeling after watching these two films!  Maybe I’ll post the lyrics next time…I’m pretty tired right now.

Tomorrow eve Kelly and I are starting a Sustainability SALON…we have invited about 20 folks in town that we feel are striving to have a low carbon footprint and we are going to brainstorm on ways to do this group on a regular basis. Set up some guide lines…how often we’ll meet?…where we’ll meet?…will we have group projects to work on?…how do we decide topics to discuss?…etc.  SO next post I will talk about what we learned!  Yippeeee.

By for now

Donna

OK…here goes…BLOG #1

Greetings,

I am going to attempt to do a weekly BLOG about the process of learning to GREEN our world.  We are folkduo called Still on the Hill.  (Visit our website at www.stillonthehill.com)

We are on the steering committee of our local OMNI Peace, Justice and Ecology center and have been active with them for 10 years.  We spend much of the time when we are not touring working for OMNI and our community!

It’s funny though…a couple years ago we created a Global Warming Maze for our big Springfest and gave away 700 CFL bulbs to every family that went through the educational maze and answered 3 questions. We try to walk lightly on the planet but often fall short. After the Global Warming Maze event, we went right out and bought a clothes line with plans to ‘walk our talk’ and hang out our wash to dry, the line is still on the shelf in the laundry room, I’m embarrassed to say.

So by committing to this blog and deciding on a weekly project (household, personal or community based) and discussing it with the cyberworld…maybe we will learn a better way of living?

We invite comments and advice.  This is going to be a journey. I want to add that I am ‘GREEN’ when it comes to blogging, Facebook and all that jazz. Not very good at computer stuff. I want to thank our webgal, Kelley for setting this up for us and her encouragement!  YEAH!

So here goes…YIKES.

Donna and Kelly