October!

I can't believe that it has been an entire month since I have last posted! I am so sorry, and I wish I could say that I have been out doing fantastic things with wonderous stories of my adventures to post here for your reading pleasure. I am embarrassed to say that I have no idea what I have been doing for the past month, but I know what I haven't been doing...

Recently, I finished reading No Impact Man by Colin Beavan. What I was expecting was a story that read a little like a text book by a guy that preaches why he is better than you for doing all of the things that you know you should be doing. I was wrong. The story is charming, the characters (his family) are all relatable, and you realize that no one is perfect and everyone will have little set backs on their way to being a better person. It's a universal across the board - you will try something enormous, and you will fail, maybe fail twice. But when you don't give up, thats when you make a difference, even if you never truly attain the idealistic goal which you set forth. Beavan makes great strides and opens a lot of eyes about the alternatives to those creature comforts which we take for granted and forget to question. I reccomend the book, even if it only changes one teeny tiny little thing about your life. In fact, I think it should be required reading for all humans. do it.

One thing that I took away from the book is questioning my sushi. (Trust me, this is not something that I wanted to do, spicy tuna? yes, please!) Beavan touches on something that I was privvy to before he came into my life. See below for the video on the swirling soup of plastic that floats in the Pacific Ocean like a tangled nest of consumerism. Those plastic masses eventually, slowly, break down, tiny bit by tiny bit. Fish mistake these tiny bits for zooplankton and other (edible) organisms. Chemicals from said plastic leach into their bodies like a chemical marinade. Bigger fish eat the littler guys, and so on up the food chain until it lands in my Santa Monica Boluevard roll. That's enough to make me change the way I view things.

Seriously, read it, even if you breeze through a few parts (like the cloth diaper issue), you are bound to gain a little new insight from a guy that struggled through it as his full time job. If you're in/near nyc and reading isn't your bag, go see the documentary - I have heard great things. And ps. - my copy is available for loan for all of you cheapskates.

Now, go live your life a little more greenly, and take the stairs whenever you can :)