Greenish

I am a greenie in pretty much the same way some people are Christians: I am green when it is convenient, doesn't cost me anything and I feel like it. I'm greenish. I want to be green. I agree with the idea that we should be good stewards of the earth God gave us. I just want to have an Easy Button for it. A big, red, plastic Easy Button.

In Alaska, it was easy for me to feel very green. Green is not a popular concept there. Alaska has no weekly pickup of recyclables, no bin to toss your stuff in. Many people don't even bother with garbage service. They use burn barrels and a trash pile out on the back of the property. Businesses don't bother with recycling paper, even. You can have all the plastic Fred Meyer bags you want, no one talks about banning them, and no shop I saw posted that their coffee is served in compostable cups and lids. They wouldn't dare.

Rick and I found the recycling center, which is run by nice, graying volunteers who looked to me like they might have been hippies since it first became hip to be one. They were only able to accept certain items for recycling (no glass, for instance). It was kind of like going back in time for us, to about twenty years ago when our kids were little and we'd take our recycling down to the center on Denney Road and toss it all into the labeled dumpsters.

Last year, we quickly found it prudent not to talk much about recycling and such to our huntin', fishin', truck drivin' friends and neighbors. Alaskans blame greenies for ruining everything from the local fishing to the economy. In fact, I found that making a statement like, "Look at how much garbage we created from this one fast food lunch," after church on Sunday would get my friends, people I love and who love me, asking me if I am a greenie, in a carefully neutral tone that didn't fool me one bit. I figured it prudent to say with perfect honesty, "Not very." I didn't have to explain that I'm ashamed of my green failures. It's perfectly legal for Alaskans to carry concealed weapons. In fact, several times over the year we lived there someone would point out to me in church on Sunday morning that in a crowd this size he/she could guarantee me that at least five people had guns on them at that very moment. This was in the way of reassuring me that we were safe in case a crazed gunman rushed in, threatening people. Hmm.

As we were leaving the great state of Alaska (which really is a great state and I do miss it a lot, guns, trucks and all), I heard on NPR that San Francisco has passed a law making it illegal to throw compostable materials in the trash. No more eggshells, coffee grounds or carrot tops in the garbage cans, folks. I was intrigued. Both my grandmothers lived in The City (that's what you call San Francisco if you live in the Bay Area) and I know one of them definitely would have taken to this law easily because she never threw anything away if it could possibly have some use. She saved everything, and I mean everything. If someone had shown her that you can turn lettuce leaves and old wet paper into good soil for the garden, she would have taken to it. I think. As long as you made it clear it had nothing to do with hippies. Anyway, kind of in honor of San Francisco's new law, when we got to Beaverton I made a worm bin for our kitchen scraps. And then the Big Hot came and made us all miserable for a week and probably killed the worms. I still have to check to see if I need to start over or if the little guys were able to hibernate or something until the weather cooled off. I fear they're cooked, though, so I haven't looked yet. Do you do that, put off finding out if the worst has happened? I do it all the time.

Anyway, the picture I've attached demonstrates my current state of green: my first garden salad! It was a three-bite salad and it was delicious and beautiful in a bowl my daughter made. The lettuce will grow along with my greenie-ness. 'Cause in Portland, man, you had BETTER be green. Thankfully guns aren't legal here. No way Portlanders have the restraint of Alaskans when it comes to strong convictions.

love,

cat