SECONDHAND NATION

The Green Year: Voicemail

 

One of the last posts I made before I went on my long, unintentioned hiatus was a review of Jodi Helmer's The Year Green:  365 small things you can do to make a big difference.

It was a good way to go out, had I decided not to return.  The Green Year is a great practical guide for people who want to make small changes that help the planet.

It's like a daily almanac or devotional - each day has a small idea or tactic to try out and includes facts about the various environmental concern addressed.  A truly simple, genius concept.  One I plan to use in guiding me as I plunge ahead into this blog.

Which brings me to March 11th's tip:  Upgrade your phone service to include voicemail.

In other words, shit-can your answering machine, Luddites.

Now, I'm biased because I absolutely loathe talking on the phone.  I have bad hearing in the first place, so it's just not a technology I am drawn to naturally.  I also hate how it interrupts me constantly.  It rings and I have to find the damn thing, then put on my happy voice and interact or deal with some issue I'm not interested in tackling at the moment.  

Whereas emails or texts do not interrupt me.  Both allow me to respond - eloquently, I feel - in my own time, with the particulars right there in print.  No message to transcribe, no blathering to suffer through, no waiting for the damn beep.  

So I will expand on this, and propose that not only should you upgrade to voicemail, you should get the best data plan you can afford and stop leaving people voicemails.  I HATE voicemail.  Everyone hates voicemail - getting it or leaving it.  

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far away, where people didn't believe in evolution and considered the universe 6000 years old, I had a job with an old-fashioned push button phone with an evil blinking light that indicated I had voice mail.  Needless to say, this was a job that gave me a damn ulcer and the people responsible for the blinking light were but one voice in a mighty, incoherent choir of idiocy.  

SO.  To sum up. 

Recycle your answering machine (info here and here.)

Read The Green Year. 

Don't leave me messages.  

Reset Button: My Favorite Green Reads

 

Obviously I needed to hit the reset button on my commitment to my blog.  When my constant thrifting dwindled to levels that don't realistically warrant online discussion, I felt like I had no reason to post.  

But that's silly.  Maybe I'm not the baddest rummage sale fiend on the block, but I've maintained that living green isn't about purchasing before, anyway.

So, toss in a little re-design and the realization that the secondhand economy and its implications for one's life is still interesting to me and here I am, blogging.  No ads, no widgets.  Just ideas.  

I'm kicking things off with the method that always soothes me in times of indecision:  a book list.  While some of these don't call to mind the current imagining of ecology (hello, Dwell magazine), all of them have been influential in some way about decisions I make in my daily life.  

And I think that's about all we can do at this point - we can call Congress and we can make daily decisions with our wallets.  So, I would whole-heartedly recommend any on this list as a good way to get a toe-hold into the whole green movement.

My Top Ten Green Books

1.  The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

2.  Not Buying It:  My year without shopping by Judith Levine

3.  The Omnivore's Dilemma: A natural history of four meals by Micheal Pollan

4.  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A year of food life  by Barbara Kingsolver

5.  Food Not Lawns:  How to turn your yard into a garden and your neighborhood into a community by Heather Coburn Flores

6.  Fast Food Nation:  The dark side of the all-American meal by  Eric Schlosser

7.  Cradle to Cradle:  Remaking the way we make things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart

8:  Having Faith:  An ecologist's journey to motherhood by Sandra Steingraber

9.  Inside the Third World:  An anatomy of poverty by Paul Harrison

10.  Confessions of an Eco-Warrior by Dave Foreman