Simplifying the Simple Life

Water freak: a rant, then a preview of the giveaway!

-By Lisa

I think the most valuable aspect of traveling is the opportunity to put my own life in perspective. I can experience a foreign culture and then look back at my homeland. I realize things that I am incredibly fortunate to have and (gasp) I see areas in which my own society is lacking.

One thing that I gained a much greater appreciation for when traveling is water. One billion (yeah-that’s a b) residents of our planet do not have access to clean water. While you can survive without food for a month, you are a goner in a few days with no water. It is precious and imperative for life.

Here in North America, we tend to be nonchalant about water and only notice it when it is not coming out of the tap hot enough, fast enough. Upon my return from some far flung travels, I became a water freak. There is really no other logical reaction to chatting with young girls who are unable to attend school because they must walk three miles daily to get to the nearest water borehole or watching people drinking directly from the murky brook which is shared with baboons and elephants. 

I found this water obesession translated to my daily life. I save even the littlest bits of water; if there is a half glass of lukewarm water abandoned on the kitchen counter, it goes in the watering can next to the sink for the houseplants and herbs. Leftover pasta water goes on my garden – plants love starch! If you are in a public bathroom and leave the tap running on while you go get a paper towel, I am likely that lunatic who turned it off for you.  

Progressive and forward thinking places like Europe and the Portland Airport have had the dual flush toilets for some time now. Dual flush means that the handle has two options, a half flush for “liquids” and a full flush for “solids” as the signage so delicately puts it. This is great for a household like mine, where the “if it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown flush it down” approach is not acceptable to Husband’s sensibilities. He finds it unromantic.

I used to think that I needed to go out and buy a whole new dual flush equipped toilet. That wasn’t likely, due to the expense of such a purchase and the needless relegation of a perfectly good toilet to a landfill. But then I learned about a kit that can be added to a regular toilet to make it dual flush. It’s the One2flush Dual Flush Kit - which can apparently save me an awe inspiring 10,000 gallons of water per year.

So, here lies your teaser, right at the end of my rant, where it belongs. Check back in next week, for the full product review because we are going to be having our first GIVEAWAY!! The folks over at One2products are just as water crazy as I am, and so they were kind enough to send us a product or two to giveaway to STSL readers. There might just be a coupon too, for those people like myself, who never seem to win anything… tantalizing, isn’t it??

So c’mon back next week, so you can enter to win!

For more from Lisa, check out www.justherejustnow.com

What we're reading: Half the Sky - turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide

“I shall pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any other human being, let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

- Stephen Grellet

-By Lisa

If we get up on our high horse about using recycled toilet paper to save the planet, it’s only fair that we educate ourselves about the other inhabitants who share this planet.

It’s easy to block out the rest of the world and just keep our heads down, contemplating our organic naval oranges. But through a web of global interconnectivity and reciprocity, our actions have a profound effect on the rest of the world. We talk about sustainability and environmental impact, not just because we care about the local watershed, but because we care about the availability of potable water worldwide. Consider the implications of the fact that our number one and fastest growing export to China is scrap and trash. Or that the significant rise of Americans foreclosing on their homes has caused global copper prices to fall dramatically, leading to a currency crisis in Zambia.

While not quite a cheery beach read, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide offers important information about the social status of our global neighbors. I believe it is our responsibility to be informed citizens of the world. For me, that has led to a desire to share that information and get out there and raise awareness (and a little hell) and I've found it to be an amazingly satisfying pursuit.

This book relays such horrific stories that you need to put it down once in a while to catch your breath and wrap your head around the implications. It disturbs, it haunts, but then it tells you what you can do about it. This book becomes great in that moment of empowerment when you realize that you needn’t stand idly by and silently condone injustice just because you don’t happen to be a member of the UN. It’s easy to point fingers and condemn atrocities but it’s much harder to propose how to change it.

First, we have to understand what we are dealing with when we talk about gender inequality. The authors argue that mass rape and sex trafficking must not be categorized as merely women’s issues; after all, we do not view the Holocaust as a “Jewish issue”. These violations involving females have been traditionally been marginalized by being defined as a women's problem, when they should all be considered broader human rights issues. The authors take us around the world and introduce us to women who are given a space to tell their life stories. The reoccurring resolution (which they acknowledge as having become cliché, but is valid nonetheless) is one of women’s empowerment. If women are informed of their choices and their right be heard, many of these practices would be severely threatened.

The African proverb, “Educate a boy, and you’re educating an individual. Educate a girl and you are educating an entire village” is a remarkable realization. Girls are often not given access to the schooling their brothers attain, but an educated woman not only brings empowerment to herself, but to her children as well. Women teach others and pass on the knowledge they posses; the return on investment is immeasurable. The authors believe that educating girls is truly the way to change the world. And there is plenty of evidence to back them up.

The section entitled “Four Steps You Can Take In The Next Ten Minutes” looks at the impact of a single individual on inequality worldwide. The practically endless list of resources for information indicates one clear message of the authors; knowledge is power. It is almost inevitable to feel overwhelmed and impotent in the face of such alarming and widespread abuses. However, after bombarding us with horrors, Kristof and WuDunn empower us to take action. A $25 dollar micro-loan to a woman in Uganda to start a mending business (kiva.org) might feel insignificant when looking at the issues broadly, but the book returns time and time again to this philosophy;

“A man goes out on the beach and sees that it is covered with starfish that have washed up in the tide. A little boy is walking along and throwing them back in the water. ‘What are you doing, son? You see how many starfish there are? You’ll never make a difference.’ The boy paused thoughtfully and picked up another starfish and threw it into the ocean. ‘It sure made a difference to that one,’ he said.”

 For more from Lisa, check out www.justherejustnow.com

 

 

Simply Stupid Award: Target’s back-to-school advertising

By Katherine

I had a root canal last week.

That’s apropos of nothing related to this post or Simplifying the Simple Life, really.

I could make a tortured connection.  At first when I woke up with unbelievable pain and a gray tooth, I thought, this must be from the overnight grinding and clenching I’ve suffered since I was a stressed-out law student and then a stressed out-lawyer. But no. The dentist tells me my dead tooth likely was due to a decades-old traumatic tooth injury—a school bus accident when I was a six.

Oh, I definitely have dental work to blame on my old lifestyle: prematurely receding gums from all that stress-induced grinding that will require me to have grafts done in the next year.

But the root canal just put me in a cranky mood. I feel capable only of complaining, which is why I’m giving out STSL’s second Simply Stupid Award. This time it’s to mega discount department store chain Target for shameless coopting of a really great song children’s song for a really obnoxious back-to-school marketing blitz.

The TV commercial to which I’m referring shows three androgynous kids, first drab in parochial-school-like uniforms and then transformed into jubilant, excited students as they slowly don more colorful, new clothes and accessories presumably purchased at Target. All the while, the song “Free to Be You and Me” is playing in the background.

Particularly if you grew up in the 1970s or 1980s (and especially if you’re a former theater camp kid, like me), you know this song and Marlo Thomas’ cultish show and album of the same name. It features famous folks such as Mel Brooks and Harry Belafonte writing and performing various songs, skits and comedy sketches with the purpose of empowering children to reject socially-constructed gender stereotypes and achieve self-esteem and self-determination.

Free to Be You and Me recently celebrated its 35th anniversary with a newly illustrated storybook and songbook. It makes a great gift for the children (and 30-something former theater camp kids) in your life.

But boo on whomever owns the rights to this stuff and sold out Thomas' original message of tolerance and individuality to a corporate behemoth not only bent on selling us and our kids a bunch of ubiquitous, branded clothing made in China, but also having us believe it’s somehow liberating.

Not since Nike exploited The Beatles’ peaceful, countercultural anthem “Revolution” in 1987 to sell Air Jordans has corporate misappropriation of artful, meaningful music for a marketing campaign seemed so, well, inappropriate.  (Incidentally, Michael Jackson, who owned the rights to "Revolution" and much of The Beatles songbook at the time and made the deal with Nike, performed as a young man on the original "Free to Be You and Me" album.)

I know this stuff is par for the course these days. Every time I turn around, there’s some great rock song from the 1970s helping to hawk new gas-guzzling SUVs on TV. The irony of this music having been composed during the decade of the last major oil crisis—a time when the United States should have started nipping its unsustainable consumption of oil in the bud—can not be lost on everyone.

But this blatantly hypocritical marketing to kids is really hard to swallow, root canal or not.

Shame on you Target.

 

Frugal(er) Fanciness: C'ville Restaurant Week

-By Lisa

So, it doesn’t really count as “frugal” but it’s pretty great for those of us who adore an occasional evening of culinary delight, but choke on a triple-digit dinner bill.   

July 12 – 18th is Charlottesville Restaurant Week. The finest restaurants in town are presenting a three course fixed price menu for $26 per person, offering a chance to taste the good life without totally breaking the bank. 

Twenty places are participating and have their Restaurant Week menus posted, which is handy for those of us vegetarian people who find prix fixe to be pretty limiting.   

It's great to support local restaurants during their leaner summer months, and if you need yet an another reason to feel good about it, a portion of the proceeds from Restaurant Week will go to the PB&J Fund. They work with local schools and organizations to encourage healthy eating habits, such as the Boys and Girls Club of Charlottesville/Albemarle where they host cooking classes to teach basic skills and knowledge that the kids can take home to their families.   

Call the restaurant of your choosing for reservations, as places are booking up quickly, and make sure you tell them you are coming in for Restaurant Week. Cheers!

Cheater, cheater, non-organic pumpkin eater

-By Lisa 

 

Eat it, Safeway. 

A Safeway in Kirkland, Washington set up a farmers market outside their grocery store a few weeks ago, with a big tent and yellow banner. However, it was not actually a farmers market at all, it was Safeway employees selling traditionally grown Safeway produce “farmers market style.”

Now, I can’t even begin to express how gross I think that is. It’s wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s slimy green-washing. It’s lying. 

But I do revel in the pure desperation displayed here; the Fortune 500 Safeway corporation is feeling threatened by the pick-up-truck-and-overalls crowd. 

And that means things are changing.

For more from Lisa, check out www.justherejustnow.com

This sh!t is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S

-By Lisa 

As it turns out, bananas are pretty evil. 

Which is sad, because my smoothies are no good without them and cartoon characters have nothing funnier to slip on. 

But the banana industry is no laughing matter. Banana production in Latin America has a long and nasty history that has seen little improvement in recent years. 

 

• Workers are often mistreated and exposed to hazardous chemicals; fungicides and insecticides are applied to crops up to forty times a year. 
• Child labor is disturbingly common, in an attempt to drive low consumer prices. 
• Gender discrimination runs rampant due to low levels of unionization; in Ecuador female workers earn 3-4 times less than males in the same jobs. 
• Environmental issues abound, as rainforests are clear-cut to plant bananas on monoculture plantations, which severely diminishes soil fertility.

The "Banana republic" isn’t just a place to get khakis and matching sweater sets, rather, it is an oppressive empire of instability, corruption and agricultural exploitation. If you want more info about the impact of bananas, check out Banana Link, a non-profit out of the UK that works towards a more fair and sustainable banana trade. 

I love bananas but for all the depressing reasons above, I have been trying to curb my intake. Until now. I was at Whole Foods the other day and noticed the Fair Trade bananas. Concerned it might be an “Ethical Because I Say So” self-certification, I investigated. It actually seems pretty legit; Whole Foods works with outside organizations, Fair Trade Certified, TransFair USA and Rainforest Alliance. Those organizations check for the key criteria required by Whole Trade Guarantee including quality of the product, premium price to the producer, improved wages and conditions for workers and the environmental responsibility. 

Guilt-free bananas? Sweet.

For more from Lisa, check out www.justherejustnow.com

Get your cancer off my plate

By Katherine

I'm angry today. 

This is not a healthy state of mind for someone striving for a simpler, more peaceful life. But it’s true.

I’m angry that “approximately 41 percent of people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, and about 21 percent of Americans will die from cancer.”  That’s according to the recently published Annual Report of President Obama’s Cancer Panel called Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now. 

I’m angry because I personally know more and more people falling victim to this epidemic, and I’m angry because many if not all of these cancer cases are preventable.

According to the report, a growing body of evidence links environmental exposures from our modern industrial lifestyles to the unacceptably high rates of cancer diagnoses. Some of these risks we can try to address ourselves by learning about nitrates from fertilizer contaminating our drinking water and bisphenol A (BPA) in our kitchens, but it’s not enough. There are 80,000 chemicals on the market in the United States today and many of the products in which they're used are unregulated and their human health impact untested.  According to the report, we need a national movement and more aggressive regulation to combat these figures.

While I’m staring down the due date of my second child, the stats regarding children’s exposure to cancer-causing junk are particularly frightening. The rates of cancer among children under the age of 20 have been rising steadily since 1975, and that increase can not be explained by genetics or better diagnostic techniques. There’s just more and more crap out there in the environment, and children are at a special exposure risk because of their smaller body mass and rapid physical development.

Plus, environmental pollution starts even before birth!  According to the Cancel Panel report: “Tests of umbilical cord blood found traces of nearly 300 pollutants in newborns’ bodies, such as chemicals used in fast-food packaging, flame retardants present in household dust, and pesticides.”

Some days, like yesterday, I feel ready to do battle. I throw out my first child’s old pacifiers and flame-retardant-laden onesies with aplomb and shell out cash for new BPA-free binkies and organic sleepers at the Blue Ridge Eco Shop. I walk around feeling smug with my Sigg bottle.

Other days, like today, when a good friend my exact age with two small children is headed to the hospital for an aggressive round of chemo to treat non-Hodgkin lymphoma, I feel defeated and want to bury my head under my organic wool blanket and hide. Like genocide or human trafficking, the problem seems too big and too debilitating for little old me to deliberate for long. But I know that’s not good enough. I fully advocate tuning out much of the noise of pop culture if you want a simpler and healthier life, but tuning out the cancer culture we’ve cultivated isn’t an answer.