Green Options

Since moving to Harrisonburg, Virginia in October, I have had the pleasure and privilege of patronizing The Little Grill Collective, a historic landmark right in the heart of “The Friendly City.” These have been unusual privileges, too, as I typically shun eating out for several reasons: nearly all restaurants are perilous places for vegans, do not serve organic foods, are egregiously wasteful in many ways, and are equally egregiously overpriced.

The Little Grill, however, is a remarkable exception nearly every one of these and the many other reasons you might prefer to cook at home and brown bag it to work. From its early days in the 1940s to the time it became an employee-owned collective in 2003, The Little Grill has offered a wide variety of fare to please every palette. Whether you are a carnivore, an omnivore, or an herbivore, you will definitely find something to fill your tummy and make you smile at this joint.

The unique dishes on the menu range from appetite-stoking appetizers like the Black Beans and Rice or hummus and a pita with fresh veggies for dippin’. The entrees are even more diverse, from the whopping Ron’s Mexi-Plate to “Go Ask Alyce,” a falafel wrap with hummus, tahini, and a salad. You can also get burgers and other sandwiches, plus interesting desserts (including a yummy vegan cookie!) or smoothies. Their breakfast menu is famously full of to-die-for delights, from tofu rancheros to vegan flaxjacks. Be sure to get a big tall stack of those!

When winter’s frigid weather rolls in (or “crashes down” might be more appropriate), we humans have the ability to head inside into comfy little dens stockpiled with plenty of food and kept snugly warm by various measures. Things are much harder on the various critters forced to endure the cold, the precipitation, and the widespread dearth of edibles in this “dead” season.

Winter is the perfect time, then, for you to practice a little cold-weather kindness by helping wildlife make it through these dark, grim days when survival is a constant challenge. With a little planning and effort, you can make your entire yard into an oasis in the icy desert, a shelter from the freezing storm, a larder filled with sustaining, tasty tidbits.

Here are some of the best methods for making your homeplace a wildlife-friendly winter habitat:

1. Keep your birdfeeders full and spread extra seed on the ground. Feeder birds are still plentiful in winter and will need the easily accessible, highly nourishing (and fattening) seeds available in birdfeeders. But if you spread some seed on the ground, too, you will ensure that birds and other critters (including squirrels, like it or not) get something to eat as well. Many winter birds will not venture up to the feeder itself; examples include sparrows of all sorts, juncos, and towhees, which are a joy to watch as they scratch and kick in snow or leaves to find little bits to eat.
2. Drop extra-special winter treats around your yard. For example, smear peanut butter in pine cones and hang them up or just throw them about. Dried corn cobs (with kernels, of course) will feed squirrels, deer, and some birds. Suet is a favorite of woodpeckers and other birds–and squirrels, if you let them get to it.

Just because I am an admitted “nature lover,” that does not mean I have an equal affection for everything in and about nature. Who does? I mean, does anyone really love mosquitoes? Cockroaches? Hurricanes?

Natural pests and disasters aside, there is one thing about nature in particular that is always hard to love or even appreciate–or even tolerate: COLD.

Being deficient in natural insulating layers, a lack that clothing can never quite make up for, I dread the coming of late autumn and then winter. I spend a good half of the year preparing for, enduring, and finding (sustainable) ways to avoid the cold in all its terrible forms: frost, snow, sleet, ice, drafts, chilly winds, numbing gales….

And yet even the cold weather is not entirely absent from the warm places in my heart, thanks only to one saving grace. Yes, even the depths of the wintry cold, when the sun seems to mock us shivering mammals in this sublunary world, can make me smile, wonder, and fall in love again. For when the weather outside turns frightful and the fire inside is so delightful, those of us in the eastern and southern parts of the United States can enjoy the return of “old Sam Peabody.” Open your ears on a cold day and you may hear his song:

Old Sam Peabody Peabody Peabody.

Ah, yes, cold weather means the return of old Sam Peabody, i.e., the song of the humbly magnificent white-throated sparrow. After spending spring and summer up north, mostly Canada, the white-throated sparrow heads south (though not all the way down to the tropics like many other birds) to enjoy a milder winter clime than that in the boreal regions. (Smart bird!)

How many times have you gone to the store to grab a quick item or two and walked out with a receipt that is longer than you are tall? Do you then dump it in the trash? Or fold it up (many, many times) and stick it in your pocket? Or throw it somewhere in your car to let it “biodegrade” with all the other stuff in there? Or take it home and stick it in with your other paper recyclables?

Whatever your method of dealing with receipts, you may like me recognize that a great many of them are really unnecessary. As such, I have often told the cashiers in various stores that I did not need a receipt, thinking that this might avoid the printout and so save some paper (not to mention the bother for me of figuring out what to do with the bloody thing).

Sadly, I have discovered that my efforts were mostly in vain. After giving my habitual “just say no” line in a local natural foods store, I watched as the register printed out the receipt anyway and the cashier crumpled it up and threw it in the trashcan.

After recently going through and surviving (albeit not unscathed) the ordeal of moving from Harrisonburg to Charlottesville, Virginia, I have been reflecting a bit on the various ways I made this new place into my homeplace. In turn, making this place my home also entailed making it another sacred place for me. And, in turn, I find some strong parallels to how animals make some habitat their home in various ways–thus linking me and all humans to “wildlife” in every clime and time.

First and foremost, of course, was actually finding a home –a physical building to use for shelter. Now some of my fellow humans are pack animals and need many other warm bodies nearby. But I am a lone wolf, a forest solitaire, so this meant finding a place unto itself (rather than, say, a den in an apartment complex).

Like all animals, the surroundings helped determine my choice in this regard. Instead of settling in the hearty of the busy (ha ha) city, I settled down outside of town in a more rural, naturally stimulating locale. I had to have ample trees close by, along with views of the Blue Ridge Mountains; anything less simply would not do! And there just had to be thriving bird life, since my primary means of “planting my flag” and marking my territory is putting up at least one birdfeeder ASAP.

As the 2008 U.S. elections loom ever closer, the world’s many eyes are focused on who will become the next President and thus lead us into the nation (and world) after Bush. This election has garnered a tremendous, unprecedented amount of energy and activity amongst individuals of all demographics. As such, the next few weeks will bring only an increase in the electricity sizzling through our daily lives.

But even with this exceptional, and long overdue, participation in the political process by the general populous, you may still feel like your vote makes no difference in the long run, like you cannot really do anything to determine how the government runs–and runs your life. So you may feel like telling the politicians, pollsters, politicos, and button-toting supporters to “Go Fish!”

When it comes to real live fish, however, you now can have a genuine impact on making the fishing industry more sustainable. My friend and fellow blogger Mark Powell at the Ocean Conservancy is helping spearhead the organization’s FishVote08, which harnesses the power of democracy to help save different fish species.

Foam peanuts are the Devil. Evil incarnate. Darkness made visible. Senseless brutal waste embodied in a horde of impish, malevolent, noxious, toxic minions spilling out of boxes, bags, closets, basements, attics, trashcans, landfills. A wicked wind is blowing, and those infernal foam peanuts are riding it across the land, across the sea, across the Earth. They cannot die; they may be eternal.

Okay, so maybe foam peanuts and the other demons in the legion of packaging materials are not the creations of some sinister mad hatter, some oily oligarch, some short-sighted sorcerer’s apprentice, some wizard hiding in a city that is decidedly not emerald green. Nevertheless, the foam peanuts are steadily spreading with every package sent by air, sea, or ground. And this fact begs the question: Can they be stopped???

Take heart, my fellow Earthlings, for we do have an easy and eco-friendly way to say “YES!” to this question: Bubbla.

Although it may not have the name of a saving knight in shining green armor, Bubbla offers just about anyone–from large businesses shipping countless packages per day to the lone house dweller sending birthday gifts to family–a way to put a stop to the rampaging horde of foam peanuts. (Besides, how silly does “foam peanuts” sound?!)

Bubbla is an “on-demand” air-inflated packaging system produced for over 12 years now by Bubbla, Inc., a company in Canoga Park, California. (Believe it or not, the owner of Bubbla actually invented air-pillow packaging material, and the company owns four patents in this area. Obviously they know their stuff!)

Whenever you need some packaging material, you just make it using either the tabletop or freestanding Bubbla machine, both of which are easy to operate (with touch-screen controls), small (about 25” tall by 15” deep), and can be plugged in to a good old electric wall outlet. The machine quickly cranks out a supply of air-inflated packaging in one design or another (e.g., diamond wrap or long cells) to meet your demand. Make as much as you need, when you need. No fuss, no muss.

When autumn, lovely autumn, swings round these here parts once again, so many things start to fall: leaves, acorns, pine cones, temperatures, humidity levels… Although spring and summer get the most credit as seasons for bountiful harvests, autumn has its bounty, too.

Amongst nature’s many freely offered wild edibles, we finicky humans have overlooked a vast number of scrumptious delicacies as we have evolved (or devolved) from wilderness gatherers to grocery-store, fast-food drive-thru, vending-machine gatherers. To our own detriment.

Now, summertime may be regaled as the season for sweet foraging, for then the many berries are bursting with sugary savory sweetness in bite-size bits. But autumn has its sweetness, too, in particular thanks to one oft-ignored tidbit: the persimmon.

Let me clarify: The wild persimmon of which I speak is the American persimmon, Disopyros virginiana. This is not the baseball-size, bright yellow, imported Japanese/Chinese kaki persimmon (Diospyros kaki you can find in grocery stores. No, D. virginiana is native to the American Southeast, though it has found its way out to the Midwest and even up towards the Northeast of these United States as well. Its fruit is much more humble in size, like a little ping pong ball, and much subtler in color, a sort of pale orange blending into rosy pink and purple depending on its ripeness. It is more sensitive as well, hence its absence from grocery store produce sections.

So to experience the wild persimmon, you must head out into the autumn woods and keep your eye up in the canopy or, alternatively, down on the ground for fallen edible offerings. Then you may discover the lovely American persimmon in all its autumn fecundity.

A few days ago, I went to the 12th annual Charlottesville Vegetarian Festival with a good friend (who is also the founder and Executive Director of GreenRight, a new environmental/social-justice nonprofit). Coordinated by the group Voices for Animals and run entirely by volunteers, the event brings together people of all stripes and shades from throughout central Virginia for a smorgasbord of green goodies.

After just a few moments at the Festival, you will be able to understand why it usually draws in about 6,000 visitors, making it one of the largest vegetarian festivals in the United States. In modest Lee Park in downtown Charlottesville, and spilling over into surrounding parking lots, local natural foods stores, organizations of all sorts, restaurants, and other vendors provide an unbelievable variety of goods, information, and entertainment. Add to that live music and animal adoptions, plus free samples and fun activities like face painting, and you can easily spend the entire day with other folks who are interested in livingly compassionately towards animals and the planet.

Just to give you a snapshot: Walk up to the table of the Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation and take part in a poll of transportation methods used by attendees. Depending on your mode of locomotion (biking, driving alone, carpooling, etc.), you will get a colored rock that you then put in a clear tube. As the piles grow and the tubes fill, everyone can see which transportation methods are most popular–though the most popular may not be the most sustainable as well.

Sure, the American (and so the global) financial market is an absolute mess right now, largely because of dodgy credit and lending practices by major financial institutions. Sure, millions of Americans (and people across the globe) are buried in debt, be it a mortgage or a maxed-out credit card.

Despite these ominous signs of an economic storm on the horizon, credit card companies are more than ready to give you outrageously generous credit and a nice, shiny new plastic card. But wait, it gets better! Just sign up now, financial crisis or not, and you can get a year without interest, a new appliance or electronic gizmo, a trip to Cancun!

OK, maybe not those last two.

This scenario may well sound familiar for any of you who 1) have applied for or opened up a new credit card account at any point in your natural life and 2) receive postal mail in some manner. Despite the environmental crisis facing planet Earth, junk mail is far from being an endangered species of tree-killing pest. Along with catalogues, bills, advertisements, and other snail-mail SPAM you likely do not want, credit card offers contribute significantly to the paper used for junk (unsolicited) mail.

Fortunately for consumers and postal carriers, there is a way to free yourself from the avalanche of credit card offers and so help reduce the number of trees used for paper.