Long time…no chat.  It was March when I last posted.  Life has been, well, interesting since then.  The Project stalled and with all of the physical and mental work that it took to rebuild the house, work through the insurance process and  reclaim our lives I quite honestly had no brain cells left to write.  I did try  several times.  I began half a dozen different pieces.  I just couldn’t make anything solidify. 

From March to July we moved three times.  I’ve had an enormous lesson in what it feels like to be uprooted which has made me extremely sensitive to the pain others feel when being displaced through disaster.  We were so very blessed to have so many people offer us assistance and we’ve done our best to pay their kindness forward to others that have needed help.  We just celebrated our first set of holidays since the fire and while I would have liked for things here to be a lot less scrambled, I am grateful that we have a home that we can all gather at. 

Thank you to everyone that was reading the blog before we went on hiatus.  Please check back in with us as I have some great ideas on retooling the project over the upcoming year.  I will still focus on Ecology and Conservation and will hopefull give you an enjoyable read with some interviews of intersting folks worked in.

Happy New Year and God Bless!

As you can imagine, the past 13 days have been a confusing, soul-numbing blur of people and phone calls and strangeness. We’ve gone from our home to a hotel and now to a rental house. I’ve had strangers go through everything that we own up to and including my underwear. My burning house made the Sunday morning news telecast in Atlanta, the Gwinnett Daily Post and even to the internet according to one source. Any sense of privacy I had literally went up in smoke. Saying it’s been horrible would be a gross understatement. But I truly believe that everything that happens in life is for a reason, even the really bad stuff like this.

I have gotten to see how beautifully compassionate people can be. People that we barely know or don’t know at all have stopped by and offered to help in any way that they can. The family living behind us not only called 911 but also helped get our two dogs out of our fenced back yard to safety. The couple living next door to us have been kind and generous in ways too numerous to list. Where I work, word went out via email and support has come in from every corner of the state, often anonymously, sometimes from names unfamiliar. While it has been hard, it has reaffirmed my belief in the goodness of humankind. It has helped me to see that even when you think that you are alone in this world, you are not… that we as humans are all in this together.

Our deepest gratitude and thanks to the Gwinnet County Fire Department, especially stations Nine and Twenty for their prompt response and for saving everything that they did, especially Tristan and Charlotte (the cats).

I cannot adequately find words to express the extent of our gratitude to the Fulkerson’s for everything that you’ve done, especially for being surrogate parents to our dogs Charlie and Lucy Lou.

My deepest heartfelt thanks go to my amazingly generous and caring extended family here at the Georgia Department of Transportation. I truly believe no finer group of devoted state employees exists anywhere in the country and I am humbled and proud to be a part of it.

We would like to express our gratitude and admiration to the Owners, Managers and Staff at Chick-fil-A on Sugarloaf in Lawrenceville.  You have nourished our bodies and our spirits during this crisis and we will never forget your support, compassion and generosity.

I am eternally grateful to my dearest friends Corliss and Pam for the thousand and one things that you have done to help us make it through this, especially for helping me to keep my spirits up. You two are angels!

And last but not least, our thanks to everyone at State Farm Insurance Company that has helped us during this. You have more than lived up to your motto and been there for us “like a good neighbor”!

In the area of expansion, I have added a second blog as a way to share the information that I have come across in my research for Project Capricorn. The sister blog is called E-Quicks: The Busy Person’s Guide to Environmental Responsibility (http://equicks.wordpress.com) and will be active by March 1st. It is my hope to publish posts small enough to be read quickly, with links for additional info if readers wish to learn more on the given topic. With so many people so pushed for time I felt that there was a need to have the ocean of environmental information distilled down to small “sips”. As Jack so aptly put it, not everyone cares to try to drink from a fire hose.

Project Capricorn had its first “field trip” last night. We went to Wetumpka, Alabama to review the latest production of “Second Samuel” by Pulitzer nominated playwright Pamela Parker. March 7th we will be attending the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival put on by Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper. For tickets and more info on the film festival, check out their site at www.chattahoochee.org. Look for info from both of these events on future posts.

Next week I will be publishing Project Capricorn’s first post regarding Native American and Indigenous issues. There are some exciting things happening regarding Native rights and Green development. In my opinion, Environmentalism and Indigenous peoples go hand in hand. I’ll be publishing more on this connection in future posts.
I am now set up on Facebook (k kala drake), Linked In and Twitter (@kkaladrake). I’d love to hear from you.

Also, if anyone has a direct way to contact Daniel Quinn, I’d be deeply grateful for the assist.

After seeing CFL bulbs explode on the market, and learning how we could save energy, Jack and I decided to replace everything in our house that we possibly could with CFL bulbs. At this point, roughly 90% of our house is lit with either CFL or standard fluorescent lighting.

When the time came to convert one of our bedrooms to our shared office space, we chose to replace the carpeting with carpet tiles from Interface Flor. I wanted something that was better for both our personal environment and the global one. We look back and laugh now, because we had Flor tiles in our home months before we ever knew who Ray C. Anderson was. Over time, as we can afford it, we will be replacing the flooring throughout the house with either tile from Flor, cork or bamboo.

I have banned all bottled water from our home and purchased stainless steel water bottles for all of my family members. The only exception to this ban is the two-gallon bottles of water that I purchase for emergency preparedness or use at our vacation cabin. All remaining plastic bottles are recycled.

I have purchased several re-usable tote bags to use while shopping. This is taking some habit retraining because the bags don’t do any good if I leave them in the car when I shop. While I am in the habit of using my own bag at Whole Foods, it is not a habit for me at Target or other retailers. But at least, I am trying and will continue to try until I get it right. Along this line, I am looking for an alternative to the plastic bags we use for our bulk goods and fruit/vegetable purchases. And I am sterilizing and reusing my bulk nut butter containers instead of getting new ones every time I shop.

I buy my beloved soft drink of choice in aluminum cans now instead of bottles and recycle 100% of the cans, even the ones I take to work. And at my office, I now have a ceramic plate, bowl and mug, along with two place mats and a stack of cloth napkins.  While being more environmentally responsible, this has had the added benefit of making my daily desk-bound lunch a beautiful and nurturing ritual.

I wash and re-use my plastic sandwich bags while I am looking for alternatives. I’ve also found, much to my delight, wax paper that uses a soy wax instead of paraffin. Paraffin is a petroleum product. I am eliminating the paraffin from my household, slowly, but surely and this is one area that I was having problems with. Plastic wrap was bad, but everyone on the web was saying to use waxed paper instead. Now I can use it and not worry about the toxins.

I have switched from sweetener packets to bulk sweetener at home. While I still will have packets for when I travel, I won’t be putting hundreds of empty paper packets in the trash anymore. In conjunction with this, I now buy tag-less tea bags, again to eliminate unnecessary paper. Every little bit helps.

Bit by bit, as things wear out, we are replacing them with more responsible choices. Most of my appliances are now energy star rated and our sliding glass door was replaced with a very well insulated set of French doors. Jack had the foresight to replace the older windows several years ago with double pane insulated ones and also to replace the water heater with a tank-less model (He’s so smart!)

I have tamed the paper monster by eliminating newspaper purchases, halving my magazine purchases and cutting out about 80% of my printer paper usage. This is again, taking some habit adjustment. I’ve also removed myself from about 75% of the mailing lists that I ended up on, thus lessening the deluge of junk mail and unwanted catalogs. I still buy books, but most of them are used and some purchases have been replaced altogether by library loans. While I will probably always keep some notes on legal pads, more of my notes are being kept in my computer or on a thumb drive.

I still have my SUV and have no current plans to replace it. But I do drive less. Jack and I carpool to and from work about 95%of the time now, and he uses public transportation to get from my office to his. Since it is a long commute home, we try to knock out as many errands and stops as we can along the way to keep from making additional trips out.

A lot of this may seem like little tiny measures, and they are. As Jack would say, I am nibbling away at the problem. Not everyone can financially afford to buy a hybrid car or photovoltaic panels or organic everything. We don’t all have the option to telecommute for our jobs. Public transportation options aren’t available everywhere. We just don’t always have good options. But it is my belief that if people start making the changes that they can a little at a time, then a little more, at some point we may reach the tipping point where we are restoring more than we destroy. And in the mean time, more demand for better products will encourage the market to innovate and give us what we ask for. It is like the pebble tossed into the still pond. Once we start to live more responsibly, we can if we choose to, make ever growing increases in our circle of influence.

All of these very small measures often feel like I’m sticking little tiny band aids on an enormous problem. But as I learned from author Joseph M Marshall III in his book titled Keep Going: The Art of Perseverance, taking even the smallest of actions indicates the presence of hope. What I know of humankind is th at with hope, we can accomplish miracles.

If you can, check out Planet Green on the web and the television. Also, heads up to John Webster and his documentary Recipes for Disaster.

I have to come clean and admit that I (sigh) drive an SUV. I know, those are the three little letters that make Eco-avengers around the world cringe. I don’t have a flex fuel or bio-diesel anything. While I do have a Toyota, it’s not a Prius. I needed something that could accommodate three young men(one over six feet tall) in the back seat and a 120 pound dog, not necessarily at the same time, but you get the idea. I felt that this car was my best, most affordable option when I traded in my much loved but gas guzzling P.T Cruiser – Turbo. I loved my Cruiser, but my conscience and my wallet couldn’t cope with the “costs” of owning it anymore.

Let’s keep going. Next is my home. The twenty-three year old house that Jack and I share isn’t high efficiency or eligible for LEED certification, unless you get lots of bonus points for dust. There are no super insulated walls, no low VOC paint, no renewable source flooring. I don’t have a composter in the back yard and the only thing at my house that runs on solar energy is the little set of landscape lights I got at Wal-Mart. Shameful….I know.

I dye my hair, have a million bottles of chemical laded lotions & potions, own no less than two dozen bottles of toxic nail polish and prefer my perfume to come from Paris, France not Little Five Points. (You can’t see me, but I though you should know that the more I type, the lower I sink in my chair).

Like many Americans, most of my clothing is made in China and a large portion of my food is over processed and pre-packaged. There’s so much plastic everything in my home and office environments that I honestly don’t know what to do some days. You see, we’ve managed to design our lives to be utterly dependant on the stuff.

As bad as all of these confessions are, I have one more that just absolutely humiliates me…you see, tree-hugging Kala Drake is addicted to paper. There…I said it. I am a paper addict. I consume tons of the stuff in the form of books, magazines, newspapers and my personal favorite, printer paper. I’m old-school enough that my address book and shopping lists are on paper. I keep notes on at least a half dozen legal pads. And I even still use paper checks for payments. Horrible, isn’t it? How could someone who publicly labels herself as a tree-hugger be such a big paper hog? How can a would-be environmentalist come to terms with all of her irresponsibility? Well the truth is, now that I see what I have been doing I can’t in any way reconcile or rationalize my bad behavior.

Like so many other people, I was in a self-imposed state of denial. It’s fairly easy when you think of environmental issues as always being someplace else. The trees that were being mowed down to produce all of my paper goods weren’t my trees, from the forest that I revere as sacred. That hair dye wasn’t polluting my water. The emissions from my SUV weren’t a problem because climate change to me was something that effected polar ice caps, not me and mine. I believe that’s how a lot of people think. The damage we are doing is always conveniently somewhere else. Out of sight, out of mind.

I did a quasi-experiment where we held on to all of our cardboard and paper recycling for a month. Looking at the size of the pile at the end of thirty days was enough to make me nauseous. And that was just the stuff that we could recycle. Paper towels, paper napkins, pizza boxes and other non-recyclable paper goods would have probable added another foot to the stack. I shudder when I think how that much was created by just three people. Thinking about the volume produced by the nearly seven billion people in the world today is just mind numbing. My heart sank when I learned about the quantity of raw material extracted from the earth to produce my trusty laptop. I began to weep when I thought about my SUV killing polar bears, or any other living thing for that matter (with the exception of really icky bugs.  I know that they are an important part of the food chain, but I really don’t like having them stuck to my grill).

I think that when confronted with the truth, humans will do one of three things. Some will deny the facts that are before them. Others will accept the facts, but then be so overwhelmed by them that they become paralyzed. The rest will accept the facts and modify their behavior accordingly. I have chosen to be in the third group. I am working myself through the various stages of the grief and remorse that I feel for my behavior and am striving to change. Next post, I’ll discuss what I am doing.

It’s been a few days since my last post. I had promised Jack that I wouldn’t publish anything while I was loaded up on narcotic pain killers. Today is the first day since my surgery that I feel remotely close to human. That’s really saying something because when I awoke on Thursday in the recovery room, I felt like someone had been through my insides with a cheese grater (no insult intended Dr. Tookes). Anyway, although the repair work was more extensive than anyone had anticipated, it did go well. Due to a bad reaction to the anesthesia, I ended up spending one night in the hospital. Even while I was there I was, when awake, thinking about my environmental and Native studies.

I had taken with me the book Keep Going: The Art of Perseverance by Joseph M Marshall III. It’s words brought great comfort to me and helped me to accept this latest setback as another storm that in time will pass. From it I will hopefully gain strength for the journey ahead, in addition to getting me one more hole closer to being a human colander…….. oh where would I be without my sense of humor.

I thought about how it is so easy to rail against the evils of this product or that product when more often than not it is not the product that is at fault, it is humankind’s thoughtless use or abuse of the product.  Lets take plastic as an example. I have personally banned a large percentage of plastic products from my house and have voiced complaints that so many of our consumer purchases are packaged in the stuff. Yet in some very personal ways, plastics have helped me to stay alive for the past nine months. Plastic bags and tubes were used in the storage and delivery of the liquid nutrition that sustained me while my pancreas healed. Plastic syringes were used for antibiotics and pain medications, both of which I couldn’t have managed without. There were plastics everywhere, from the little thermometer covers to the big CT scanner. And I was thankful for them all, especially that little  plastic bowl full of oatmeal after thirty-six hours without food.

In The Story of B, Daniel Quinn states that “there is no one right way for people to live”. I truly believe that. And the way to live that is right for me will include wisely used plastics.

I’d like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Daryl Tookes and Nurse Tammy Griggs for everything you’ve done for me these past months.

Special appreciation goes to Nurse Samera Rose of Piedmont Hospital for treating me like a friend and a sister. Your warm smile and kindness made the pain tolerable. Thanks for everything Sam!

Many thanks to the folks of Coram Home Health Care of Georgia especially Carolyn, T. and Marlene. You ladies rock!!

And finally Jack and I would like to express our thanks to the dozens of doctors, nurses, technicians and support staff at Piedmont Hospital, Northside Hospital and Kaiser Permanente of Georgia. We are truly blessed to have been cared for by such compassionate and professional people.

A re-sealable plastic soft drink bottle is more convenient than aluminum can. Paper napkins are more convenient than cloth. Even the little pre-measured sweetener packets, they’re more convenient to use, right? Well….maybe? I started to look at the environmental impact of those conveniences. Do I need that plastic bottle more than an unpolluted ocean? Absolutely not! Wouldn’t I rather have trees and clean air than all of the throw-away paper products in my home? Being a certified tree-hugger, that’s a resounding yes. So maybe part of what needs to happen is that we truly do need to think differently and maybe part of the solution is that we just need to think, period.

How many of those convenience items would we buy if we took just a moment to think before we buy? I would like to believe not as many (there goes my wet-jet mop with the throw-away pads!). If thinking about the global impact of that new roll of paper towels doesn’t stop you, maybe thinking about the money will.

How many dollars could we all save if we didn’t buy disposable stuff? I don’t have any statistics, but I’m sure it’s a lot. If we think about it, we see that it’s not convenient to throw money away. I don’t know about anyone else, but I personally work hard for my little paycheck and would like to have more of it to spend on important things like travel or concerts or good food and good wine to be shared with family and friends.

Rest assured that I will be making my family nuts over the next few months routing out all of the conveniences that really aren’t necessities. And I will keep reminding myself to think before I buy.

Note: I have picked up Daniel Goleman’s book Ecological Intelligence to read while home recuperating. And for anyone who hasn’t already read them, check out Ishamael, The Story of B and My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

To anyone reading, I will be homebound for ten days starting the 21st.  If anyone has any suggestions for things to read during this time, I’d love to hear from you.

Ray C. Anderson, industrialist, author and founder of Interface Inc. in Atlanta

L. Hunter Lovins, Esq., co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute and president and founder of Natural Capitalism Inc.

Paul Hawken, environmentalist, author, entrepreneur and co-founder of Smith and Hawken.

Dr. David Suzuki, scientist, environmentalist, broadcaster and founder of the David Suzuki Foundation.

Daniel Quinn, lecturer and author of numerous books including Ishmael, winner of the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship in 1991.

Melissa K. Nelson Ph.D., cultural ecologist, researcher, educator, author and former president of The Cultural Conservancy.

Tewanee Joseph, CEO and Executive Director of the Four Host First Nations Society.

Ron Colombe, owner of Eagle Feather Designs and author.

Laura Turner Seydel, co-founder of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, Chairman of the Captain Planet Foundation and works too numerous to list.

Joseph Marshall III, educator, lecturer and author of numerous books including The Journey of Crazyhorse: A Lakota History and The Day the World Ended at Little Bighorn.

Laurie Fowler, educator, researcher and Co-Director University of Georgia River Basin Center.

Winona LaDuke, Native American activist, environmentalist, economist and writer. Executive Director of both Honor the Earth and White Earth Land Recovery Project.

It is my hope to engage these folks in regular, simple conversationswith the hope of expanding my awareness and understanding in each of their areas of knowledge.   And then I hope to take what I have learned from all of them and turn it into positive action so that I too can make a difference.