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["Lynda" <lurine AT com-pair.net>]

We started working on just exactly that challenge over 20 years ago.  When 
we moved to the house on the coast, the prior owners paid, on average, 
$200/mo in utilities and that was for two people.  We moved in and even with 
a 150 gallon fish tank, one 75 gallon turtle tank, one 75 gallon gold fish 
tank, 6 to 10 people (we had foster kids in and out) and all their 
computers, etc., and all the usual appliances I got the bill down to around 
$60/mo.

On this house we've gone in and doubled on insulation including special 
screens for the windows and sun shade screening for the deck pergola.  We 
only drive once a week (youngest has 4-H) and sometimes not even that.  Once 
a month we do a big grocery shopping and anything else we might need.  To 
get to her friend's house, youngest takes a bicycle or walks (1 mile).

We recycle everything.  Clothes get old and I make quilts out of them.  If 
youngest doesn't want a piece of clothing that is still good, then she heads 
for the local thrift store to see if she can do an exchange for something 
they have they she might like.  She got a $150 pair of cowboy boots from 
their throw away pile.  No one wanted to be bothered saddle soaping them to 
clean them up.  She got a cashmere and two silk shirts from the same place. 
Heaven forbid that someone replace a button or mend a seam.

If we've accomplished nothing else, we've made a recyler out of her <g> 
Can't drive down a street with a thrift store without her flapping and 
waving and if I don't stop, she writes down the address for next time <g>

However, that is folks like you and I.  Nothing is going to pierce the 
ability of the DC Whorehouse to see what they want to see.  They have 
narcistic personality disorder of the nth degree AND suffer from the same 
thing teenagers generally suffer from -- not me, I'm immortal.

Lynda
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gene GeRue" <genegerue AT ruralize.com>


DO WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL RIGHT

The British Petroleum oil well drilling catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico 
could turn out to be for the good. That possibility depends on several giant 
IFs. IF the enormity of our continued reliance on oil for our energy needs 
sinks into the collective consciousness and causes many of us to make 
serious changes, and IF the oil industry finds that there is diminishing 
profit and increasing liability in drilling deep-water oil wells, and IF the 
members of the DC Whorehouse and their corporate customers understand that 
the present course is a calamity, then through seeing the horrendous 
environmental, economic and social damage we may find the will to do the 
right thing.

Which in this case is reducing our reliance on oil and increasing our use of 
renewable resources.

What will that require from each of us? Well, how about pledging to drive 
twenty fewer miles each month for the rest of this year? And then how about 
raising the number next year and in each subsequent year? How about making a 
survey of all our energy usage and pledging to reduce that usage by, say, 
ten percent the rest of this year, and more next year? How about replacing 
just one night of television each week with reading and discussing these 
issues with family?

In the end, as with recycling, bicycling, turning down the thermostat in the 
winter and up in the summer, our actions will be predicated on what makes us 
feel right. If we don’t take the energy issue seriously on a personal level, 
if we don’t do these things because if makes us feel right about ourselves, 
then energy improvement won’t happen and we will end our lives with our 
grandchildren dealing with the issues that we blamed on others and to which 
we paid only lip service.

Whether the issue is voting, recycling, bicycling or learning how to do more 
with less, we must do what feels right, what makes us feel good about 
ourselves. If we reach deep we can find that contentment.

It starts with us, that unblinking, noble person in the mirror. 
Individually. If we wait until everybody is doing the right things we will 
die with those things undone.

This is our time.
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