Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Baby steps

Last night, while grocery shopping, I found relatively inexpensive recycled napkins and chose to get organic ketchup. Little things, but they make me smile & feel good, just like discovering a new plant in the garden would. I hadn't realized before how full of corn syrup normal ketchup is. Now I'm doing that little bit extra for the environment and for our health.

If people responded to positive health/ green decisions the way they do to a favorite fried meal or other indulgence - the cascade of better choices would grow a thousand times over. We need to milk, talk up, promote the endorphins that this can bring. Successful community gardening efforts are a good example - people get really jazzed, involved, and it spreads to others & other choices.

I think I'll add community gardening to literacy programs in my list of "when I give my time"....

BTW - book #5 - Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Wow. Good book. As it opened with life in Kabul in the early 70s, the contrast vs the National Geographic article I had recently read on the 2004 situation was so vivid. And it coincided nicely with Mummies of Urumchi's details of some of the earliest migrations into and through the region. Kite Runner soon became about so much more. Powerful in a not pleasant way that makes you want to run in and help. Somehow. Add Afghanistan kids to "when I have $ and can give both time and...". It could have ended earlier, but then it might have been less "real".