Real Truth, not just based on YOUR life

Do you know that about a third of Americans believe the slaughter of millions of innocent people in World War II is fiction.

Do you know that about half of all Americans believe climate change will not affect them?

Do you know two thirds of Americans think they have above average intelligence?

Do you know that most American households have the television on almost 8 hours a day? (And that does not include streaming over the internet!)

Do you know that just over half of voters in the United States actually voted in the 2016 election?

Do you know that almost 40% of adults refuse to make personal changes to help improve environmental problems?

 

Reading the comments posted on the Newberg Discussion group on Facebook indicates that people there have similar reactions to what people here in McMinnville have experienced: many say no problem and it’s about time, adapting easily if they were not already carrying their own bags into the stores. A vocal minority have a number of issues in protest ranging from “I use my plastic bags for other things” to “How am I going to pick up my dog poop with out these bags?” to “the government is too involved in our life”.  We know change is very hard for some people and they will use more energy fighting something that feels irksome than to just adjust. I personally think the funniest comment about not liking to have to pay for paper sacks is that they will drive 10 miles or more to go shopping in the next town. They obviously feel their personal decision is more important that the financial strain of paying for extra gas usage in their car.

Salem and Bend are considering the bag ban and, if passed, will join McMinnville, Portland, Corvallis and Eugene and several other cities in Oregon. The state of Hawaii has banned the bags, which makes sense since they are a series of islands and residents would be very aware of how plastic pollution is affecting their beaches.  Washington state also has at least 18 cities that have eliminated single use bags from the check-outs at stores.

Reluctance to change is strong in people who are not tuned into environmental concerns. Even though we live an hour from the Coast, many people never make that trip and so, never see any of the issues personally.  If people do not see plastic bags as roadside trash, they do not understand there are many places where roadside trash does not even occur because people are more aware they have a responsibility to be good mentors of the earth.

As stated above, many  people refuse to accept that things happen unless they experience it themselves.  Perhaps the Holocaust is too horrific for people to get their heads around, but it is that kind of lack of recognition that people can made to participate in horrific events that permit horrific events to happen again and again in human history.

How do we help those people understand?  When McMinnville was working towards the bag ban Zero Waste McMinnville provided a service to the community to educate them. This included making them aware there would be several public discussions at City Council meetings where people could listen and speak.  It also included working with store managers to set up a system to notify customers, including printing and disseminating information sheets in English and Spanish. Zero Waste McMinnville volunteers sat in front of stores before and during the implementation to answer questions and distribute reusable bags.

And yet there were many people who fought against it, even trying to get the ordinance changed. The energy spent in fighting was high, and yet easier for those people than making the very small change needed.

source: Workplace Psychology

Life experience is important to consider when speaking to someone about a change they need to make. If someone has never traveled, if that person has only had a high school education or perhaps even dropped out of school, if that person’s free-time focus is on entertainment and they never consider community involvement, they most likely do not recognize that they are part of a larger society.  There are many people who never give much thought beyond their own personal needs, so asking them to help clean up the environment is not a consideration.  Asking some people to consider how the earth will be when our children and grandchildren are adults often is met with “I don’t care, I won’t be here” as a response.

No man is an island, and for those who think they are, they might notice their shoreline is getting littered.

Trash collected by one volunteer at the SOLVE beach cleanup in Oregon on Earth Day.

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Local Food

Waking up to eating local food as much as possible happened when I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. She tells the story of a year in her family’s life when they moved from Arizona to a family farm that had long been abandoned in southern Appalachia.   The family decided they would eat only what they raised or what could be traded with another local farmer, with the exception of only a few things, coffee and French wine among them.

This got me thinking and I asked Graham to read the book also. The idea of eating locally, in season, was a brand new concept compared to the way we grew up with supermarkets stocking all kinds of foods all the year. Yes, we could buy strawberries in time for my sister’s January birthday cake. Yes, we could get a can of pumpkin to make a pie in the summer.  But might they be more appreciated when they came into season right near where we lived?

This book and then continued reading and discussing with others made us realize how our eating habits were adding to increased use of fuel for transporting food from the southern hemisphere to us, and more important, we realized we really had never thought about who was raising the food we were relying on for nutrition.

For the same reason we didn’t particularly eat seafood when living in landlocked West Virginia.  We very much enjoyed eating our fill of fresh fish and seafood when we traveled to either coast.  Some food just tastes so much better when it is fresh.  If you think about it, except for freshly caught trout and fresh water fish, almost all seafood served in the center of the country is fried, the better to mask a bit of age.  In fact, most people will swear they prefer fried fish, and again, that is because most of the ocean fish served in the landlocked states is NOT particularly fresh.

So, speaking of loving fresh fish, when we moved here the first thing I learned to can with a pressure canner was tuna and it is that time of year again! My sister lives on the coast and has a friend whose husband fishes for tuna and she was able to get them at a really good price. Today Graham started early, trimming 40 pounds of tuna.  After sterilizing all the jars we cut the tuna into chunks, packed the half pints and then topped them off with a bit of salt, a spoon of lemon juice and some olive oil.

We put my sister friend Linda to work too!

100 minutes later at 10 pounds of pressure we had our first 48 jars, and a second round brought us up to 99.  Canned outside thanks to my friend Jana who loaned us her propane stove and her much better pressure canner.My sister and one of her friends each took a quarter, with Graham and I keeping the rest.  We finished about six hours after we had started, but again, we had to process two batches, each taking 100 minutes. It was a full day and one we will enjoy all year long, when we savor our canned tuna.

So, you say, you can buy tuna fish. And so, back at you, I tell you that you would never eat your favorite, Bumble Bee or Chicken of the Sea ever again….not after you taste what fresh tuna canned at home tastes like!

Eat local is AMAZING!!!

 

Walk on the Beach

I think my posts about India are about done and I will be moving on to other topics now so I thought sharing some photos taken a couple of days ago when my sister Laura, my son Sam and I walked on a beach south of Newport, Oregon might be a nice switch.

Sam wanted to take a selfie of the two of us on his phone. Laura caught us with my camera.

Laura got into the spirit of hamming it up.

A friend of mine takes wonderful photos of waves and birds and other natural things. She lives further south in Oregon and heads to a nearby beach regularly for her shots. I visited her a couple of months ago and she showed me how she captures and then edits her photos and I try to replicate the process but still have a ways to go. Check out her blog to appreciate how her skill is so much better.

The seagulls were enjoying some peace and quiet

until Sam started to chase them

The Pacific Ocean in Oregon does not usually attract a lot of swimmers, even in the heat of summer, because the water is typically cooler than the Atlantic, which enjoys the benefit of the Gulf Stream. Still, I had to put my feet in and they acclimated quickly.  The patterns of the shallow water over the sand caught my eye.

Sam needed to climb, even though he was only wearing flipflops. He is a boy, after all.

 

The tide was really low, the lowest Laura had ever seen in all her walks on this beach. A lot more was uncovered than she usually sees.

So, an hour walking the beach, we headed to our favorite restaurant in Newport, Local Ocean, and then visited the resident sea lions basking on the old docks.

I live in a beautiful state where the Coast is only one of the many wonderful ecosystems available to explore.