A BICYCLE BUILT FOR TWO

This week, the carbon fast is all about transportation, something prized by North Americans as an inalienable right. When I say ‘right’ I mean the ability to travel anywhere, anytime usually at high speeds and without any restrictions.

Cars and trucks are marketed ad-nauseaum as more comfortable, more fuel efficient (not a bad thing), more agile and capable of going anywhere, to the tops of mountains, into the dessert, and here in Canada through any and all kinds of weather. Overcoming the struggle in travel is so . . . Canadian.

The idea of staying home contributes little if nothing to our economy, and let’s just say that you see precious few advertisements with people sitting on the couch reading books. Mobility is where it’s at.

All this has been denied to me personally, as one born legally blind I have never driven a car, flown a plane or even piloted a boat. For some eye conditions technology makes driving possible but not for me. I must wait for the trillion dollar Google Driverless Car http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car (I will start saving now).

I have always felt like an outsider, especially on the occasion of my sixteenth birthday when all my friends processed down to the drivers license office for their adolescent rite of passage. Growing up in the mid seventies in Western Canada, the world of the bicycle was remote. I got the bike, they got the girls. Sigh!

Things have certainly changed, as my own city of 300,000 or so persons is replete with bike lanes and biking is now cool. A new consciousness of slower speeds, and a renewed interest in travelling less has taken hold of at least middle class life in the residential sections of our city. The suburbs are another matter. To arrive at one’s destination sweaty and carrying pannier bags no longer elicits puzzled looks. Folks say ‘good for you.’

What I describe above is only a small shift in culture, but the carbon fast is all about small shifts adding up to significant changes. if you and I can change our patterns, others can also, and eventually a huge consumer group can drive cars longer because they use them less. manufacturers and governments will notice. Urban designers can re-discover the role of corner stores and small community centres as places we can walk to and from instead of depending on large shopping malls and office blocks distant from where we live and work.

Schumacher said in the seventies that Small is Beautiful, and you know what, it still is. We don’t need to travel half as much as we presently do, and if I can build my life around a bike, so can you, hence a bicycle ‘built for two.’

Happy riding, Ken Gray+

BUY SIMPLE FOOD – EAT WITH GRATITUDE

So if buying simple food was easy folks would do it all the time, right? Maybe not: Let’s think about what ‘simple food’ really is and consider some tips.

Tip #1   Eat as far down the food chain as possible. Avoid products which are highly processed. Read the list of ingredients and if the list looks like a high school chemistry experiment, look further.

Tip #2   Obviously include in your diet lots of vegetables and fruit, harvested locally where possible. Ideal sources are local markets, now hugely popular in North America.

Tip #3   Try to avoid ‘the foodies.’ An obsession with technique here in North America means that many distributors cater to an affluent consumer who wants all ingredients to possess special qualities other than nutrition. While this may mean organic and local sourcing, it does not guarantee it. Think ‘simple’ and do your homework.

Tip #4   Ask the kids, especially young adults, for if your kids are like my kids, they are much more aware of different styles of eating than I have ever been.

Tip #5   Plan, plan, plan. It’s funny how ‘simple’ involves planning. Food, with other environmentally transformative practices means getting organized.

Final Tip              Plant a garden where you live. Start simply and increase the size and complexity of your ‘farm’ each year.

Finally, a thought from Wendell Berry.

The pleasure of eating should be an extensive pleasure, not that of the mere gourmet. People who know the garden in which their vegetables have grown and know that the garden is healthy and remember the beauty of the growing plants, perhaps in the dewy first light of morning when gardens are at their best. Such a memory involves itself with the food and is one of the pleasures of eating. The knowledge of the good health of the garden relieves and frees and comforts the eater. The same goes for eating meat. The thought of the good pasture and of the calf contentedly grazing flavors the steak. Some, I know, will think of it as bloodthirsty or worse to eat a fellow creature you have known all its life. On the contrary, I think it means that you eat with understanding and with gratitude. A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one’s accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes. The pleasure of eating, then, may be the best available standard of our health. And this pleasure, I think, is pretty fully available to the urban consumer who will make the necessary effort.

The full quote (well worth a careful study) is at http://www.ecoliteracy.org/essays/pleasures-eating

Bon appetit, Ken Gray

 

 

 

LIVING SIMPLY – SIMPLY LIVING

Do you often feel that you are racing around like a chicken with its head cut off? – going round and round and round but never getting there? Our lives are so busy with work, family commitments, church, email… and if there is a space in your life you fill it with ….answering email.

Lent is a good time for self-reflection, re-looking at what is important to you, are you making time for those things?

Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Here are a few questions for inner reflection:

First – ask yourself what you really love doing. What gives you energy, what reduces your stress? Is it spending time with the kids, hiking, reading, whatever it is, write it down.

Second – ask yourself how you are spending your time. Write down the hours you spend working, shopping, surfing the internet, whatever it is. How much time are you spending on what you really love?

Thirdly – look at what you can give up – what commitments are not really so important, what can you do to reorganise your life to free up time . Can you give up some of your commitments ? Will that organisation really fold if you are not still on the committee? Just how much time do you really spend on the internet??

And fourthly – ask yourself: are you so busy with the work of the Lord , that you are forgetting the Lord of the work?

Rachel Mash

CONFESSION TIME (ON CLOTHING)

Confession is sometimes linked with Lent, and rightly so. In Anglican tradition, all may, some should, but none must, go to confession. With those options in mind, I shall now confess . . . that I am a big man. I like my food, I eat for stress relief, and I am not wild about exercise. Every time I leave the hospital after visiting parishioners in need, I re-covenant with myself and various higher powers, to be better in my personal stewardship of body and health, to eat less, to make better decisions about food, and to embody wellness. I berate myself for poor democratic intentions (what a waste of health care dollars if I end up costing the taxpayer for health care).

On the positive side, I had Nor-walk flu a few weeks ago and was thus purged (very Lenten). So I took the opportunity for a ‘fresh start’ and have given up night time eating. It’s not much, but it’s a start. Now I push towards less meat and more vegetables, and generally, less of everything.

Most positively, I have a cupboard quite full of clothes which are, err, rather tight. So I pass them on intentionally to places which can re-cycle clothes, passing them on at no cost to others, as suggested by the carbon fast for February the 20^th. And what a valuable collection of clothes I own, as I suspect we all do.

To think that in other times, we threw such goods away, at least in North America. More difficult for us here in Western Canada is what to do with fabric no longer useful to other owners. I am reminded of SOMETHING FROM NOTHING http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/887573.Something_From_Nothing a children’s story we used to read to our young children. Everything has a use, and it’s worth the effort thinking about how to re-use, everything. It’s a lot of work sometimes, but worth the effort.

Ken Gray

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