What Is The Carbon Footprint Of Your Dog?

Have you ever thought about the carbon footprint of your dog, cat, turtle, or lizard? I did this morning during an encounter with two growling off-leash bulldogs in an on-leash area of Mt. Tabor Park. When I pointed out the leash infraction to the owner who was laughing at the aggressiveness of her "cute" pets, she growled at me as well.

The experience reminded me of an interest in statistics on the carbon footprint of pets. When I returned home from my walk, Google as usual served me well. I found several articles about a study done by two New Zealand scientists in 2009. Here is a link to one of the articles: ABC Article

I wasn't surprised when I read that dogs have a bigger footprint than an SUV. More than twice as much in fact. The footprint of a cat equals a Volkswagen. There were no statistics for our gecko. Enrique's eight crickets a month might equal a matchbox car.

This got me to thinking about my own carbon footprint. Google sent me to a calculator at The Nature Conservancy. My carbon use at 13 tons of CO2 per year, half the U.S. average per person, made me feel great until I noticed that my usage is more than twice the world average per person.

Don't ask me how to compare "acres" in the pet article to "tons" in the calculator. My Google search for this info failed. The closest I can figure is a medium sized dog would be around 5 tons per year.

So where am I going with this? Since we Americans without a pet average almost five times the world tons of CO2 per year, maybe we should think twice about adding a pet . . . and if you walk Fido in Mt. Tabor Park PLEASE keep him on a leash.

Yellow with a Touch of Pink and Elephant Legs

The Last Stitch

Two days ago I finished the last stitch on the last block of the first wedding quilt. Sixty-three blocks, three thousand seven hundred and eighty inches of hand stitching give or take an inch or two. Yippee!

All I need to do now is sew on the binding and it will be ready to fly away to the happy couple in Los Angeles. Then I can mount the second wedding quilt on the frame and start all over again. I hope our third child doesn't plan to marry any time soon.

The Grand Tour - Part One

When you travel to Europe for ten weeks

with nothing more than a rucksack, you need to pack light. 

The reality of that warning is hanging heavy on my back. A gray canvas sack with a flap and string tie at the top filled with thirty pounds of the most essential items in a seventeen-year-old girl’s life.

The contents of the rucksack are the least of my worries at the moment. I have no idea what day it is or what time and I haven’t been in bed for more than twenty-four hours. The only thing I know for sure is that it is a cool nearly summer day and I’m standing by myself with a handful of unfamiliar money on Waterloo Bridge over the River Thames waiting for a bus to Beulah Spa in South London. I’m tired, anxious, and homesick.

The journey to this place started yesterday, at least I think it was yesterday, at 4:30 in the morning when my rucksack and I boarded a bus in Portland for a three hour ride to the Seattle/Tacoma airport. At the airport, I joined thirty-nine high school kids and four adult chaperons on a United Airlines jet for the start of our seventy-two day American Heritage Association study tour of Europe. Because my first ever experience on a jet airplane ended with losing lunch as we landed in New York, worried chaperons spent the six-hour layover suggesting various remedies for my dizziness and my fear of getting sick on the next flight. Thankfully the overnight Pan American flight to Heathrow Airport ended without further incident.

The first indication of arrival in a foreign country was an accent I remembered from an Ed Sullivan show four years ago. As we walked through the airport I heard the distinctive Liverpool accent again. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were standing a few feet away from me. I could claim they were waiting for me, but the truth is they were just hanging around waiting. Although a swell of rock star magic rippled through our group, no one else at the airport paid much attention. I wasn’t impressed. They looked mangy.

The second indication of arrival in a foreign country was a bus ride on the wrong side of the road. At least is would be wrong in Oregon. Although our bus trip into the heart of London past Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square was thrilling, the cars and buses darting in and out of traffic circles made me dizzy again.

Dozens of people and a gray mound of rucksacks filled the room we spilled into from our chartered bus. One of the chaperons stood on a chair so he could be seen and heard above the crowd, “You can leave after you connect with your home stay family. As we announced earlier, you are on your own until tomorrow morning at ten when we meet at the Africa Center near Covent Garden.”

Another chaperon read the names of students matching them in twos or threes to names of home stay hosts. One at a time groups of students retrieved their rucksacks and left. Thirty-nine Americans were matched with British hosts while I stood waiting. A chaperon approached, “We just found out that your home stay family was given the wrong information about the date of our arrival. They told us you should take the Crystal Palace bus. Your host, Alan Kingston-Jones, will meet you at the Beulah Spa stop.”

This is the reason I stand here alone on a bridge in London with the weight of my rucksack and my fears on my back.

A tall, red, double-decker bus stops in front of me, “Does this bus go to Beulah Spa?”

A young man in a blue uniform looks me over and grins, “Yes that’s right duck, we’ll get you there.”

Although “duck” takes me by surprise, the conductor appears trustworthy. Besides what other option do I have? I mount the steps at the back and show the conductor my handful of money. He picks what he needs and assures me he will remember to announce my stop.

At least forty-five minutes later the bus is almost empty when I step down to the sidewalk across from the Beulah Spa Pub. A tall, husky, balding man with eyes full of good humor and a reassuring smile approaches. He offers a hearty handshake.

“You must be Mary. I’m Alan Kingston-Jones. My wife Evelyn and our two little girls are eager to meet you. Here, let me take the weight of that rucksack off your shoulders.”

Eat, Drink, And Be Merry

Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you may die . . . or should we say eat, drink, be merry and it will kill you. Yes you, you with the potato chip half way between the herbed cream cheese and your mouth. Don’t you know that all the fine things in life are hazardous to your health? Those two tablespoons of luscious cheese you just consumed represent thirty-four percent of your daily fat value allowed by the nutrition police. Add another twelve percent from the chips and you’re halfway to the morgue. Eat broccoli instead. You’ll live longer. Why is no one cheering?

Fat is just the beginning. What about calories, sodium, high fructose corn syrup, and cholesterol? Was that butter we saw on your English muffin? STOP - don’t peal the banana. It will lead to obesity. What about the stash of chocolate chips in the cupboard behind the extra virgin olive oil? Oh, that’s right, dark chocolate is good for you. It reduces the risk of heart attack and cancer. It helps with math. Math? Wow! Get this, chocolate no longer causes zits. We found this on the Internet. It must be true.

Then there is the issue of food allergies. The top eight are: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, and wheat. What’s left to eat? WARNING: there is peanut butter in those cookies you’re eating. It may be over in minutes if you can’t find your EpiPen.

We won’t weigh in on whether or not you should eat your pet chicken. White rice or brown, whole-wheat or gluten free, vegetarian, vegan, raw – pick your own poison.

There are risks you may not have considered. For example, don’t eat your toothpaste. The warning is right there on the label, “If more than used for brushing is swallowed, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away.”

Enough with “eat” on to “drink.” Calories are still a factor here with any liquid you sip, but the bigger issue is how much alcohol can you drink before you get stupid or fall asleep. The real police care about the percentage of alcohol in your blood and you should too. Moderation equals a glass of wine or a pint of beer. Don’t even think about a whole bottle or six-pack.

One day the newspaper says alcohol is good for your heart. The next day the newspaper says it causes cancer. One day the newspaper says drink six mochas a day. The next day the newspaper says it will make you fat. If you decide to drink, stop reading the newspaper.

Now to address “merry.” Making merry with too much kissy-kissy can be bad for your health. Germs are the least of your problems. What if you’re hitched and the kissy isn’t with the person you’re hitched to or the person you’re kissy with is hitched to someone else. Check the national gun registration database before you engage in this dangerous behavior. Oops, that’s right there is no national database.

Making merry with words can kill you. Let’s say you’re a comedian and tell a dirty joke and someone reports you to the boss and the boss fires you and you can’t find a job and you are depressed and you decide there is nothing to live for . . . you get the idea.

Eat, drink, and be merry at your own risk. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

At this point you may need to take a pill to calm your anxiety or settle your stomach. Don’t worry the water isn’t fluoridated yet.

Note: At my creative nonfiction class this week, we were given a minute to write down everything that passed our lips during the day. When the minute was up our assignment for next week was to write an essay based on the list. The above is the result.

Filing a Life

Two weeks into the new year the mess in my work space has reached critical mass. If I don't do something soon an archeologist of the future may find me buried in layers of my own history. I can't write or draw or even pay bills in the middle of this chaos.

I set aside all day Monday to sort through papers, photographs, drawings, art supplies, books, newspapers, letters, files, and too many useless treasures. I look at the piles of like items littering every inch of the floor and wonder how to implement a method of organization. File cabinets, drawers, and shelves are already full.

Several inches of file space free up when I decide to recycle documents related to my job with Right Brain last year. Although I'm not ready to trash the whole experience, a large quantity of paper can go to the blue bin by the curb.

I take out a box of old file folders emptied when I cleaned out my father's shop. The labels handwritten in pencil are easy to erase. Files marked "Hand Tools," "Joiner," and "Rotted Wood Turning" are changed to "Writing Notes," "Banner Project," and "Family Research."

I wonder - how long will it be until my children empty the contents of these file folders into a recycling bin and erase my handwritten labels? Maybe it doesn't matter as long as I don't die unhappy and alone like my father with a file cabinet full of unfulfilled dreams.

Epiphany In A Morning Routine

A year ago I started walking for an hour up on Mt. Tabor every weekday morning. I motivate myself with a cup of mocha at Rain or Shine Coffee House at the end of a week if I keep to the schedule. Not every week merits a cup and during the summer the garden lured me away from my routine, but even when my feet don't follow the path, my mind and heart remember the daily practice.

Through every type of weather - wind, downpour, snow, freezing or boiling temperatures - the routine has been the same. I leave the house sometimes as early as seven, walk West a few blocks on unimproved Taggert Street, cross Division at 60th, wind through the neighborhood to enter the park and follow the service road to the double reservoir. One lap around the reservoir is followed by a breathless 100+ step hike to the upper reservoir. My ultimate goal is the highest reservoir about 2/3 of the way up the mountain. This old reservoir is my "Altar in the World".

Reflected trees and sky dance among thousands of raindrops dotting smooth water, bird wings flutter, firs sigh - this hundred-year-old horseshoe shaped reservoir cradled in a bowl carved out of the south side of Mt. Tabor is sacred space for contemplation. It is a place to ponder the end of another year spent and the beginning of a new year to come. Walking here daily is a tonic of light, love, peace, and hope.

Last year soon after I started my morning routine I was reading Barbara Brown Taylor's book about "discovering the sacred in the small things we do and see" (An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith). The practices outlined there are deceptively simple. Finding the sacred in the ordinary transforms us.

Today I stopped for my mocha on the first day of the week to celebrate a year of walks. A funny thing happened - a friend I wanted to talk to (I'd never seen him there before) stopped by at the same moment. Yesterday was Epiphany (the coming of the Magi). Today was an epiphany experience (an intuitive grasp of reality through something, such as an event, usually simple and striking. Webster).

There is room for epiphany every day when we are awake and present in our lives.

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