The Green Bandwagon

Everybody wants to be on it, now that it's all the rage; now that there's a buck to be made, everybody seems to want to go "green" and save the planet. Everywhere I look these days, somebody's flogging the "green lifestyle"--as if sustainability had become The Next Big Thing and that's why we should all get with it. Even cable television has discovered a lucrative trend and has lobbed a volley into the court of home improvement/DIY TV with something called "Planet Green." (Sorry; I've probably been watching way too much Wimbledon.) There seem to be many laudable features about this channel, but my introduction to its programming wasn't promising.

While I was hand-stripping the corners of the former sunroom/new study floors yesterday, I turned on a show called "Greenovate." The first episode--of three they were showing in a row--was actually the least offensive of the day's offerings. A "professional flipper" fell in love with the bungalow she was fixing up to sell, using "green" materials and methods, and decided to live there rather than sell it for a potentially hefty profit. The house is in Echo Park, an historic neighborhood in Los Angeles, and it may have been saved by preservation guidelines.

Some of the renovations were thoughtful, like stripping wood floors and painted woodwork with a citrus-based solvent (a bitch to use, but better than many of the alternatives) and using low- or no-VOC finishes. But the owner betrayed absolutely no interest in the sensibility that built the house (described as a "Victorian" on the program guide, but really a bungalow) and converted a potentially lovely built-in sideboard into a white-painted desk-area (although she was in the process of stripping woodwork elsewhere), eschewing the rich Craftsman color palette in favor of the ubiquitous white-painted interior that you can see on any spec-built house around here. It's pretty clear that even though she plans to live in it for a bit, the "flipper" will undoubtedly be turning this one over as soon as her kid is a little older and the housing market's not so depressed.

The second show raised my blood pressure to dangerous levels. A pretty little Craftsman bungalow on a Venice, California canal was gutted because the owners thought it was "the ugliest house on the canal." They destroyed the classic front porch and turned it into a god-awful open deck with no personality and no benefit that I can see, except that it opened up the "dark little house" to let in the sun. The same sun that is now baking southern California with temperatures hotter than they are here in north Texas.

Of course, they installed new sustainably-harvested floors (after having ripped out the originals, which didn't look all that bad to me, as I was hunched down on my knees scrubbing old varnish and rug crud off my pine floor boards), and "green materials" and spent way over their budget, in part because they didn't realize that permits were required for just about everything they did. Would that Venice had an historical preservation mandate that would have kept these people from turning a perfectly good house into a ranchburger. The cost of the house and its renovations ran in the neighborhood of a million and a half, and the show touted its new value as being around two million.

Two million damned dollars for a house! Any house!

The third episode was about a couple of greenies who wanted to "walk the talk" in their mod condo (in Santa Monica, California). The place already looked pretty good, but for $10,000 and a couple of months' work they wanted the following: all new, energy-efficient appliances (dishwasher, refrigerator, range, washer, and dryer); a new HVAC system on top of the condo; new countertop and cabinet facings in the kitchen; water-saving faucets and showerheads, and low-flow toilets in the bathrooms. All that and all new eco-bedding: bed, mattress, organic linens. All for ten grand. Right.

In all fairness, the place looked great when they were done. But they also went way over budget because their new bathroom fixtures had to be installed from within the tub-surround walls, requiring (for reasons that I do not understand) that all of the tile be torn out and replaced with new, recycled glass tiles. Why the hell not recycle the tiles they pulled out and leave the rest intact? Dunno. Not good TV material, I guess. The bathroom floor then had to be replaced with--get this--pebbles retrieved from a beach in Indonesia. Not pebbles gathered off the Santa Monica pier, but ones picked up in Indonesia (probably by underpaid peasant folk who don't understand that someday they're going to run out of pebbles) and transported to California using fuel. You know: the stuff these people are trying to save by renovating their house.

They spent $20,000 total, and that must have been because they had--ahem--connections. My rough estimate on the cost of appliances, the bed, and HVAC (no labor, no cabinet renovations, no countertop) is $12,600--shopping at Best Buy, Home Depot, and online (at EcoBedroom).

I'm thinking that if this couple were really trying to be environmentally conscious, they'd have thought a little more carefully about the impact of some of their choices.

I have to give these folks credit, though. They had the cojones to install a worm farm in their fancy new kitchen with its recycled-glass countertops and spiffy new stainless steel appliances and sustainably harvested teak cabinet fronts. This they use to compost food scraps to provide fertilizer for their house plants.

Last Friday, the Dallas Morning News, which has climbed aboard the bandwagon at full steam, ran a story about one of the founders of the local business organization, Sustainable Dallas. Once again, however, the message is this: if you have oodles of money you can transform the environment. You can live in (what looks like) an 8,000 square-foot house (with a conservatory under construction) on an acre and a quarter, and compost your neighbors' lawn clippings (their lawn-care service workers dump the stuff in the compost area for them), without asking (I'm guessing here) what kinds of pesticides and chemical fertilizers are being used on the the acres of lawns from which those clippings come. And you can feel really good about life, the universe, and everything because you're keeping bees, or baking cookies in your cute little solar oven.

I suppose I should just be happy that all of these folks aren't buying new McMansions being built on spec in old neighborhoods, like the one that replaced the tiny little bungalow in Lakewood Heights, were we lived before we bought this house. After buying Velvet Oil for our floors at Dallas's best outlet for environmentally friendly stuff, Green Living, we drove down the old street. We knew we were going to be depressed, but we did it anyway. Literally every other house on the block has been torn down and replaced by a huge Thomas Kinkaid mock-house: a silly evocation of a non-existent past not even remotely connected to north Texas.

Although I should be thankful that people are finally getting interested in sustainability, I just wish we could collectively get away from the idea that the only way to live "green" is to throw everything out. Wouldn't it be better if we rehabbed as simply as possible, without tearing away a house's historical being, and without going out and buying more new stuff that we don't bloody well need?

Sorry. It's been a long week, and the floors still aren't finished. But the paint's on the walls, the crown molding goes up today, and we should be able to "move office" before the weekend. Only about four days off schedule--and still under budget. Our total budget for this effort, by the way, is our "economic stimulus" check: $1200. And that includes the bookcases.

Photo credit: Once again, Wikimedia Commons came through with a lovely photo by Slivester Nuenenorl cor Bounifeuisc (that's how he spells it) of a sunset at Jimbaran Beach in Bali. He calls it "The Affinity of Stadérrouté," taken June 7, 2005. I think the pebbles would look better here than on somebody's bathroom floor.

The Recycled House

I suppose that there's something to be said for buying a brand-spanking new house, with everything pristine, fresh, and never messed with by anyone else. The attraction is actually somewhat more appealing now that I'm in the middle of rehabbing two rooms in our 85 year-old prairie/craftsman bungalow hybrid (with a floor plan similar to the Aladdin kit home pictured at left and linked here; our porch wraps around to the left of the living room, and there's a former butler's pantry/now breakfast room between the kitchen and the dining room), and trying to undo the bad previous rehab jobs carried out (I suspect) by the previous owner. He and his wife had lived in the house for twenty years before he died and she decided to give up a great house for a spit-and-sawdust piece of architectural crap on the other side of town.

Mind you, the first house I owned was a new one, in a low-cost suburban development, primarily because it was all we could afford. That, apparently, is one reason first-time buyers don't choose old houses--the financing is easier to come by if you buy from a development, and it usually requires a much lower down payment.

When Beloved Spouse and I finally landed full-time teaching gigs and could afford to buy a house, we really wanted to stay in East Dallas, where we moved after my daughter graduated from high school. We had spent two years in Chicago and moving back to the suburbs was difficult, so we got out as soon as we could. After five years of living in a real neighborhood, within walking distance of good restaurants, pubs, and interesting places to shop, we were ready to settle down into a little prairie bungalow in the same area. But two things happened to thwart our plans: other people had discovered the area, making it more desirable than it had been when we moved there, and causing prices to start drifting up. On top of that, many of those who had just discovered the neighborhood didn't like the little houses, so they began to buy and tear down--completely destroying the character of the place. Enter the McMansion speculators, and the resulting end of our plans to stay in Dallas.

Few places exist these days that are actually safe from this phenomenon. Some areas of Dallas have since acquired historical preservation status, but the prices in these neighborhoods are beyond our reach. We began to look at northern suburbs that would lessen my husband's commute, and ended up here in McKinney, which has a well-established historic district and still (eight years ago) affordable houses with some character. Morris's Craftsman aesthetic had ruined me for today's housing styles, and we really wanted something more substantial and more closely geared to our own "antique" lives. It takes me longer to get to work, but I've got a schedule that only requires my presence on campus three days a week, so it's not as bad as it seems. And, we don't have to watch the cheesy little house across the street torn down and be replaced by something totally inappropriate to the lot and/or the neighborhood. The rule around here is that if a house is sound, it has to be restored within city guidelines. If it's not, it has to be replaced with a house in an appropriate vernacular style represented in the city's history.

The main problem with our preservation efforts has always been money. The house was so incredibly attractive to us when we bought it that we overlooked its many flaws, and firmly believed that we could fix everything ourselves. Chief among these problems--at least the ones that didn't have to be taken care of by professionals immediately, like wiring and a heating system--are the floors. In three rooms they are potentially gorgeous quarter-sawn oak. In two others, they're red pine. I hand-stripped the floors in the living and dining rooms, after we had removed the gold shag carpet installed in the '70s and discovered that between us and the great floors lay carpet padding embedded in the original lacquer. That's as far as we got before we had to throw down some rugs and live with what we'd been able to do, because we ran out of time.

Nobody who visits seems to notice how cruddy the floors are because the house itself is so charming. It's very comfortable, and the walls are lined with books everywhere one walks, so the floors don't get noticed. But we notice them, and are finally getting around to doing something about the study and the sunroom (where we watch television, and where the dogs sleep). We're actually switching the purposes of the two rooms, so that I can work while looking out on the garden, and so the now-study can be turned into a guest room in anticipation of my daughter's graduation from college (finally!) this coming winter, when we'll be having family to stay.

This new effort has required emptying the dog-room/sunroom of books and most of the furniture, so the really bad seventies-era wallboard job can be repaired (what were they thinking?) and the walls painted, crown molding (which was removed for some unknown reason) can be replaced, and floors stripped and sealed or otherwise protected. Then the new Ikea bookcases can be installed, the desks moved, the books returned--and we can start on the "new" guest room.

What chaps me more than anything, and what has made me somewhat more sympathetic to new-home ownership, is the fact that the "repairs" attempted on this house thirty years ago were accomplished so badly. The guy may have survived the Battle of Iwo Jima (according to his wife), but he didn't know bollocks about remodeling a home. So I've spent the past three days patching great gaps between drywall segments, just to prepare to paint. Today that part will be done, and we go to rent a sander, because I've tried fifteen different ways to get the padding-encrusted varnish off the floors (which we've had covered up by large area rugs for the past few years). Nothing works that doesn't cause me several days' worth of lower-back recovery time.

As if by magic, this month's issue of Old House Journal arrived yesterday, and features a post-fire renovation. There are floors in this house that are as close to natural as it gets--with only an environmentally safe oil sealant to protect them. This is exactly what I've been looking for: permission to leave this potentially lovely wood looking as bare as possible. Clearly, I spent much too much time amongst the nuns in my youth to need "permission"--but it was a kind of moral confirmation. I'd probably have done it anyway, but just seeing a good house in a national magazine with floors that haven't been layered with polyurethane (the way they seem to require it done on This Old House) was enough to bolster my confidence.

The plan for the next two days is to finish the floors, paint the walls (the color is The Freshaire Choice's no VOC "Natural Ginger Root"), and install the molding. At the weekend the move will take place, and the now-study will be emptied so we can start in on it. The room itself is much smaller, the molding intact, and the quarter-sawn oak floors in better shape, so it shouldn't take as long. Which is good, since I've only got a week and a half left before I've got to get back to renovating my courses for next quarter in time for classes to begin on Bastille Day.

More on this later. But I did want to let folks know that I haven't turned into a slacker while on holiday.

Ruminations on Weaning

I was inspired this morning by an editorial article in the Dallas Morning News on breastfeeding, prompted by the death this week of La Leche League founder, Edwina Froehlich, at the age of 93. Thinking about nursing babies leads to reminiscences of "those days" around 30 years ago, when it seemed that I had a child attached to a nipple for the better part of six years of my life--and I only had two kids. But although I was not a La Leche League member until I moved to Dallas and was searching for some kind of community in this god-forsaken corner of the universe (sorry, Dallasites, but I never have been able to learn to love this place and still think of myself as living in exile), and even though I fondly referred to my fellow members as "the militant milkers," I nonetheless kept nursing my kids until long after "normal people" had weaned theirs and sent them off to pre-school.

I was gratified to learn that about 75% of American mothers now at least attempt to nurse their babies, but not at all surprised to discover that Texas is somewhere near the bottom of the stats. Once, when my daughter was about eight months old and we had visited a mall so my husband could take my son skating, I sat in the observation area happily watching them scoot around the ice, and nursed the baby, who was covered by a shawl so completely that only her little feet poked out. I noticed a woman glaring in my direction from a few seats down in the row ahead of me, and when she caught my eye, she scowled and said "That's just disgusting. Can''t you do it in the bathroom?"

Even then I was a bit of a snark, so I smiled pleasantly back at her and asked, "Why? Is that where you eat your dinner?"

She huffed out of the area, and I felt a bit smug, but also furious that anyone could view such an activity as "disgusting"--as if I had bared my breasts and gone prancing around the arena. Come to think of it, that might have brought on some applause (I was rather a babe in those days).

Remembering this incident also got me to thinking about the fact that because I nursed the kids for so long, they were each a bit difficult to wean. They were no longer nursing for nutrition but for comfort and security, and it was an easy way to get them to sleep. But when it came time, we literally weaned them on books: substituting reading time with Dad for nursing time with Mom.

If only it were that easy to wean ourselves from the comforts and conveniences of modern life: the fast food, the fast cars, the chemically laced products that permeate our daily lives.

My dear friend and former student, Jen, has essentially told me I'm nuts (see her comment on my last post) for suggesting that we wean ourselves from sugar--and so I'm here to defend myself, and to argue not for abstention but for moderation: To wean ourselves from the satisfying (but calorie-laden and nutritionally bankrupt) bowl of Tiramisù, toward a more moderate means of taking care of the culturally-induced cravings for sugar that we've all become prey to.

Every now and then, when I'm feeling my exile more deeply than usual (I need a mountain fix every couple of years, and it's getting near that limit again), I crave something to make me feel better. Usually, it's pie. I love pie: Key lime, lemon meringue, chocolate, strawberry, cherry, pecan--almost any kind of pie. I've been known to call my husband and ask him to pick up pie on the way home. Of course, this becomes more and more difficult as one becomes aware of all the crap that goes into commercially produced pies--the ones available in the freezer case at the supermarket (their in-house bakery versions are usually awful). So the poor, dear, man is confronted with the problem of locating the least environmentally and nutritionally problematic version of pie. Loaded with trans fats and high-fructose corn syrup (usually only one of several sugars), the ingredient list alone usually dissuades me if I'm the one on the pie hunt. But he's more tolerant than I am, and wants to help me out, so he comes home with the most inoffensive choice available.

Lately, however, we've discovered the wonders of nuts. And dried fruit mixed with nuts. Or a square of really good chocolate (preferably with nuts, and even better with a bit of dried fruit). A handful of Nature's Best "Nantucket Blend" from Costco (here's a recipe from the Paleo Recipes blog) will usually do the trick now, but I'm also going to try something else the next time I'm confronted with waves of desert-longing and nostalgia. I'm going to make Gram's Applesauce Cake. This is a spice cake my grandmother used to make, filled with raisins and occasionally walnuts. It calls for an indeterminate amount of powdered chocolate, and uses applesauce instead of fat. Except for the white flour, it's actually a nutritional godsend, full of fiber and wholesome nutrients, and now I make it with a blend of whole wheat and unbleached white flour, and add a bit of ground flaxseed to bump it up even more. I haven't made it in a while, though, so this week, in the cool of the morning, I'm going to make a double batch and freeze segments of it so that whenever I want to feed what's left of my sugar addiction, I can just pull a chunk out of the freezer and save my husband from the frustrating--and ultimately unsatisfying--pie hunt.

The other weaning issue that keeps coming up is this: How do we change our lives so that we depend less on gasoline and other petroleum-based products? Sunday's Dallas Morning News ran a story about how gas prices affect just about everything we buy--and it turns out that it's really hard to find stuff in the average supermarket that isn't in some way dependent on the industry. So the way to wean ourselves from this unhealthful dependence is to become aware not only ingredients (check labels for chemical information), but origins: where products come from, and how far they have to travel. Since everything from shampoo to toothpaste can contain petrochemicals, take a look at Ecology Center's Body Map: The True Cost of Petroleum to discover not only how pervasive these chemicals are, but how they affect our health as well as our economy.

Solutions don't have to involve buying pricey substitutes for fancy cosmetics at Whole Foods. It's fairly easy to make natural cosmetics (especially lotions and creams) from simple ingredients. Same with household cleansers. A few standbys like baking soda, vinegar, witch hazel, aloe gel, and olive oil, are cheap and easy to obtain and can be used to make everything from drain cleaner to night cream. If you need help getting started, Earth Easy has some great information on home-made cleaning products and non-toxic house care.

Since soap-making isn't one of those things we can do all that easily by ourselves (although some folks do it as a hobby), a jug of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap in your flavor of choice (I was once told that the Peppermint version is "better than sex," and although I don't think that's quite true, the soap's still a treat in the shower). By the way, forget any rumors you've heard about Dr. Bronner's containing a date-rape drug--any true soap will test positive for it as the company's president Michael Bronner shows on this video. Toothpaste isn't particularly easy to make, either, but you can get by with baking soda if you have to. We substituted Tom's Natural toothpaste for Arm & Hammer a few years ago, and our teeth are actually in better shape than they were with the commercially-hyped versions. The toothpaste is a bit more expensive, but Dr. Bronner's is cheaper than most fancy soaps, and is just plain nice to use.

Many of the suggestions I make on this blog are based on the notion of the thought experiment. So no, Jennifer, I do not think you really have to give up sugar--no more than I really think that people have to give up electricity, even though the folks in More News From Nowhere do so. But imagining a different life is a step toward making a different life. We are, after all, metaphor makers. It's one of the things we do that makes us human; we can see things differently and, if necessarily, act accordingly.

Around this house we've made a considerable number of changes over the last few years. The place is becoming a kind of laboratory for working through alternatives to our own personal status quo. We are finding that old dogs, in fact, can learn new tricks. And while I don't insist that everyone make the same changes, I do hope that the blog has begun to inspire folks to deal with the current economic situation with imagination and mindfulness--rather than despair.

Image credit: Stanisław Wyspiański Macierzynstwo, 1905. Wikimedia Commons.