15 Oct 2009
Posted in Communities
T
oday (Thursday) is Blog Action Day, and the theme today is Climate Change.
Here in Australia we’ve had almost weekly reminders that the weather is changing, and although we are often told that the changes we are seeing are not due to global warming, we have our suspicions. Where I live in Hornsby, in northern Sydney, we’ve had a dust storm, blown in off the farms and desert of inland Australia, and a hailstorm that caught me on the way home from my sister’s, all within a couple of weeks.
But it’s much more serious than this. It doesn’t matter so much that I have to hose the dust off my pot plants with water from my rainwater tank, or that my car has a few dents from the hail.
Whole nations such as Tuvalu are being swamped by normal tides. The ice caps are melting. There are twice the number of hurricanes than 30 years ago.
Even if the weather we’re seeing can’t be proven to be the result of global warming, and the evidence seems to me overwhelming that it is, is it worth the risk? Once it’s too late it will be no use to say, “oh, we thought they were over-reacting”. The planet will have changed, and there’ll be no going back.
The time to change is NOW and there are many things you can do:
Find out more:
An Inconvenient Truth
United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen
Climate Change presentation on Google Earth
TckTckTck Explore the Orb
Facts and Figures
Top 100 effects of global warming
Do something to make a difference:
10 Solutions for climate change
Sign a pledge
Take Action to stop global warming
Get involved on a local level
2 Apr 2009
Posted in Communities, Family
In my previous post I mentioned the concept of the “good ancestor” and I think it deserves a bit more explanation.
When I first saw the term I was thinking, as a genealogist, about all the things we wish our ancestors had done, for example:
- saved all the documents – birth, marriage and death certificates, baptismal certificates, electricity bills…
- taken lots of photographs of family members and saved them all and labelled each person in them with the date and place in a non-damaging way
- written a diary or journal and kept them all
- writtten down the stories their grandparents told them
But that’s not what it means. It’s a more general, community type of saving. It’s being wise with the resources we all have and making sure we use them in a sustainable way so that they are still around for our children’s children. It’s being mindful of how our descendants will talk about the previous generations in the future. Watch the videos on Good Ancestor Workshops for more information.
Looking around us now I would say that our descendants will have cause to curse us. Global warming, financial crises caused by greed, reliance on fossil fuels… There is a long list of things that are wrong with the world today that we blame our ancestors for, and our descendants will blame us for.
There are many ways to be a good ancestor. We can start at home by using less power. Turn off the lights. Switch off the elctrical appliances. Use less hot water. Drive less. Pump up the tyres. Recycle. Buy products with less packaging. Take fewer plane trips. Adjust the thermostat. Plant trees.
The recent Earth Hour shows that people are interested in changing the way we use our resources, although I think it will take something more to make us change our day-to-day habits. People who were careful to turn the lights off at the appropriate time on the Saturday night were leaving them on when they left the room the next evening, at least in my household.
I don’t have the answers, I’m just posing the questions.
Sources
An Inconvenient Truth. Website. http://www.climatecrisis.net.
Earth Hour. Website. http://www.earthhour.org/home
Tom Munnecke’s Eclectica. Website. http://munnecke.com/blog/?cat=76
2 Apr 2009
Posted in Communities, Family
I’ve been reading about how people are coping with the Great Recession. Here in Australia things are not as bad – so far the fear is worse than the reality. In the United States and other countries things are much worse – house values have dropped by 30% in some areas, banks are foreclosing, unemployment is rising and shop shelves are empty.
My friend Erin, who lives in Florida, told me about her optometrist who is only working two days per week because people are putting off getting their eyes checked. At the time that she told me this a couple of months ago this seemed outrageous to me, a wearer of spectacles since I was 10, but it makes sense. You put off going to the optometrist, the dentist, the doctor, the pharmacy, if you have to pay for it yourself and you can’t.
What can we do in such times as these? When the government can’t (or doesn’t) help us we have to help ourselves, and each other. Here are some ideas for how we can do that. I was reading messages from a mailing list on Positive Psychology recently and was led to a blog written by Tom Munnecke, who lives near San Diego in California. I’d read it before, and I am now even more struck by how relevant it is, and how useful it could be.
Some of the suggestions are:
Create a neighborhood bulletin board where folks can list reminders, and needs and offers (one retiree offers homemade cookies for lunches in exchange for dog walking; college students might swap auto-detailing for home cooked meals).
Map the resources of skills and offers (science tutoring by a neighborhood retiree, revolving cooking classes, transportation pooling) and keep it circulating in the neighborhood using flyers, emails and bulletin boards. Amateur Photographers in one neighborhood might supply family sittings & portraits; in return they gain both recognition and remarkably creative portfolios and scrapbooks.
Put up a bookcase in a shared community space (Laundromat, Church hall, Doctor’s office) for a Bring One/Take One of books, magazines and videos.
Closet Shopping Sprees require that everyone bring five or more clean garments, and then take away the equivalent, or simply enjoy passing them on.
If every family begins to list what truly nourishes their family and nurtures their sense of identity, of belonging, of hope and of contribution, we can then share our lists and weave together a web of support based on these things.
There are many others, and I recommend reading the post here. It is interesting that the ideas came about from a conversation – not from one person alone.
I also like his Top 10 Ideas for making the world a better place. Some of them are specific to the United States – we have already removed “pennies” (one cent pieces) from circulation and changed to metric measuring here in Australia. Vote-counting is not the issue here that it is in the States either. Positive language, including the cost of disposing of excessive packaging in the pricing, and seeing ourselves as “good ancestors” being observed from the future; these are all ideas that can be useful everywhere.
31 Dec 2008
Posted in Communities, Family
Here is a link to a remarkable story in the New York Times a few days ago about a suitcase found in the attic of the writer’s mother and the story it contained.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/opinion/22gup.html?_r=1
It reminds us all how fragile the well-being of a family is, and how we all love to hear stories about the kindness of others.
13 Sep 2007
Posted in Communities, Family
I’ve just received my weekly newsletter from Graham Long, the wonderful pastor at the Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross here in Sydney, which has cheered me up immensely, as it always does. A few years ago I used to be a volunteer crisis counsellor at the Wayside and even though I don’t go there any more I love getting the weekly update on how things are going there.
Graham is a warm and generous human being who always has a good word to say about the sort of people that most of us would avert our eyes from. He can see past the drug-taking and mental illness to the humanity within and sees his place as that of walking with the person for a while and witnessing their pain. He is a great comfort to the people who use the Wayside as a refuge from all the truly terrible things that have happened to them, and are still happening to them right now.
I recommend his newsletter to you, you can sign up at www.thewaysidechapel.com.
