Hermetically Sealed

My car broke down several more times after this photo, and so it finally came to that moment when I admitted that I was throwing repair money every month toward a sinking ship. Hence the phone call to the marketing director of Prius at Toyota's national headquarters in California. That's how I found out about the bladder problem (the bladder in the fuel tank collapses when it is cold out and does not allow for the tank to be completely filled when you gas up--this is apparently fixed in the 2010 model that is coming out in the spring, and, in reality, doesn't present much trouble to most people--it just means you can fill up nine gallons instead of twelve, but every gallon gives you almost 50 miles of travel) and the fact there is no traditional prindle.

"Prindle?"

PRNDL. Park, reverse, neutral, drive, and L, what's L? I have no idea. The Prius has a joystick instead.

And what a joy. I test-drove one and then rented one before getting my own.

And here's where it happened, with the rented one. I took the bus to the rental place ("Why did you take the bus?" the manager said, "We have a service that would have picked you up." "Because the bus passes directly in front of my neighborhood and directly in front of your location!" I answered, surprising him somehow). After a brief tutorial, I set out in this quintessential eco-car (okay, okay, I know there is question about its manufacturing process, but you can't touch this car stateside for miles per gallon).

After I picked up my older daughter later that day, my younger daughter already in the car, I told them I was going to demonstrate what I think is the coolest feature of the car--how it feels like it dies when you stop at a red light, therefore never idling! We were just about at the light when both my daughters exclaimed, "Wow!" upon discovering something completely different about the car.

"What is it?" I asked.

"The windows!" they replied. "They open!"

And sure enough, both their windows were halfway down, their snouts out them like cocker spaniels, and that's when I realized. My daughters have been hermetically sealed in the middle of a mini-van for the last nine years. They have felt no breezes. Smelled no smells. Had no control.

And, of course, that's when I got to thinking about myself, about how easy it can be to become "hermetically sealed." In my routine. In my work. In my outlook. And how exhilerating, but also uncomfortable and downright frightening it can be sometimes to roll down my windows and stick out my snout. Like in my work with my new city. I want to run and hide half the time. I'm a writer, for goodness sake. What on earth am I doing?

So I showed up somewhere in the Prius and a friend said to me, "You seem different already."

No longer a minivan-driving mom in suburbia, now with four windows down and the cold yet sweet forsythia-tinged air of change blowing through my life, I wondered where my smaller-trunked journey would take me next.

Hermetically Sealed

"You Grow in the Direction of Your Inquiry"

I picked up this book months ago at that beautiful store Anthropologie (which, unfortunately, doesn't seem to have any eco-credibility, as far as I can see from the research I've done, with the exception of offering a few books on the topic). Titled World Changing: A User's Guide for the 21st Century, it is downright encyclopedic and seems as if it were printed about two minutes ago because of the uncanny up-to-date timeliness of it, in a field that is changing daily.

Barreling through topics as diverse as the neobiologicial industry, transforming diaster relief, megacity innovations, educating girls and empowering women, and citizen science, this book is so far the very best, most useful one I have found for those of us who have read tons of this kind of stuff already. I, for one, have been engrossed in it in the oddest of places, at all times of the day and night, for quite some time now. The links alone will keep me busy for years.

And so, it is surprising to me that the line from the book that resonates the most with me is a little tiny line buried on page 400-something. A seemingly unimportant line, not a headline or a bolded line or a link, but just a simple little sentence of eight words. It goes like this:

You grow in the direction of your inquiry.

You grow in the direction of your inquiry. You grow in the direction of your inquiry. I haven't been able to stop thinking of that line. Each day I find myself asking out loud as the coffee percolates and the waffle cooks and the birds who have suddenly reappeared chirp the day awake, "How do I intend to grow today? About what will I inquire?"

And so it was that I got to thinking about Lupe. Lupe is one of the three women profiled in an excellent documentary titled Made in L.A., about sweatshops in L.A. and the women who rose up to fight the conditions under which they were working. Lupe, Maria and Maura not only helped change the conditions but they changed how they saw themselves, and, in doing so, they changed their lives. Lupe sticks with me in particular because she became a community organizer and leader in the movement. The most moving scene to me was when Lupe visited Ellis Island and she saw the photos of immigrants and the labor uprisings from an earlier turn-of-the-century and she wrote down the slogans these people had written on the placards they were carrying, with the intention of using them herself. She connected with those people long gone, and she grew from their experiences. By the end of this movie, Lupe is barely recognizable as the woman from the beginning of the film. And somehow, she reminds me of myself, because there are days I am barely recognizable to me as well.

Tuesday, for instance. I had had an amazing conversation with one of the board members on our City Sustainability citizen advisory commission and something brand new clicked for me. He has been on my back about how I tend to be more about action and less about protocol. I'm used to operating in an entrepreneurial way and waiting three months for approval is anathema to me. But that night, perhaps the stars were aligned just right or the moon pulled in a way that tilted my head and heart and mind just enough to crack it open a little more, and he said to me,

"Pattie, I know you want to get this done and move on. But if you do it the way government requires you to do it, it will live on after you have moved on. It will be part of this community for a much longer time, and will have a greater impact."

I swear I almost heard the angels sing. And I saw Lupe right then, right there, in my mind's eye, peering at those photos of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory women who died in that Lower East Side of New York fire that ignited a movement to improve factory conditions. And I realized that my moment in time, in history, is not about whether or not I will have access to a local farmers market or a bike lane or a no-idling carpool line in front of the school. It is about whether or not I will, and my children will and my grandchildren will. It is about changing not just attitudes and awareness but also policies and ordinances and laws. And it requires me to learn how it works and work within the system, however arduous and unnatural a fit that has been, thus far, for me.

And so I get it now. I get why things take months and why they should. I get the slippery slope of exception and why governments can't accommodate that. But I also get how extraordinarily hard it is for ideas to live and innovation to survive amidst bureaucracy. And that's when I think of Lupe.

I interviewed the director/producer/cinematographer of Made In L.A., a woman from Spain named Almudena Carracedo. The movie took Almudena more than five years to make. She had intended to do a simple short segment and had come to the United States for just a few months, so this experience ended up making an immigrant out of her as well and changing her life. Just as the story is one of resilience about the workers in the factory, it was a parallel story of resilience for Almudena as she sought funding and underwent her own seismic shifts.

"Before I made the film, I was an activist but I was more angry about social justice," Almudena told me. "During the making of the film, I learned to understand the motivation, the humanity, behind people, even the antagonists. At the end, we are all humans. I have become more tolerant."

And then she told me something that hit home for me.

"As a filmmaker, you have to find points of connection with your subjects. And because we are all human, there are always points of connection."

There are always points of connection. There are always points of connection.

When my co-board member reached out to me the other night and said the words that changed my entire view of the world, he connected with me brilliantly. And perhaps that is the direction in which I want to grow as a result of my inquiry. In the ability to recognize the points of connection. And to make a lasting difference.

"You Grow in the Direction of Your Inquiry"

And Into This Madness Came the Monkey Origami

Everyone has his or her breaking point, and I know we are all living under a great deal of stress right now, what with news headlines just this morning like Florida despair and foreclosures; Death toll in Australian bush fire hits 84; Joblessness hits new record; and let's not even go into the whole peanut butter recall thing. Close to home, a 7-year old boy was killed this week by a woman driving an SUV while he was crossing the street in front of a school, in a crosswalk, while a crossing guard was holding out a stop sign. All this stuff bombards us every day, even if you (like me) watch little TV. TVs have somehow become ubiquitous and I can't even ride the public bus or go to the eye doctor without it blaring at me.

Add to that your own personal schedule, which, for my family, has been an unprecedently busy time for about the last six weeks for reasons that will end soon but nonetheless have required some really fancy footwork on our part. Many late nights, early mornings, and military-calibre logistics. An older relative of mine said to me, "Oh, I remember when I used to thrive on activity like that!" and I thought afterwards, But no, I don't thrive on this! I thrive on digging in my garden and reading in the hammock! (And have I mentioned that January in Atlanta was the coldest I remember and that my garden is weeks behind where it usually is at this time of year?)

And so, it was inevitable that one day it happened. Something small. Something inconsequential. But it's the something that had me standing there in the kitchen, feeling the complete tilting of the earth beneath my feet, and, yes, even exclaiming out loud, "That's it. That's the straw that breaks the camel's back." Or, perhaps, the monkey's.

The monkey origami assignment came home in my younger daughter's backpack from a very well-meaning, generous-with-her-time mother. Three big fat paragraphs in 8-point type explained how the elementary school class was assembling a collection of origami animals representing character traits on a Roman shade that would be then sold at an art auction to raise money for the school, and my daughter was assigned the monkey. The enclosed instructions were four pages long, involved 45 steps, and required me to research "origami symbols" so that I could decipher them. One little sheet of enclosed brown origami paper would somehow, miraculously, become that monkey. And it was due in just a couple days, the exact couple days during which I wasn't sure how I was going to get from all the point As to all the point Bs where I or some member of my family needed to be.

I never touched that brown paper. My daughter, perhaps intrinsically sensing her mother's inability to participate in one more thing, took it over to a friend's house one afternoon and together they made the monkey. No, it doesn't look like a monkey, and yes, they added tape in a few places, which I'm guessing is a major origami no-no, but they had fun and they got it done.

My car has broken down several more times, by the way, which is starting to feel like a message from the heavens to me, and my friend Judy of the CSA drove way out of her way to pick me up at seven in the morning Friday so that I could join her at the always-excellent monthly Sustainable Atlanta Roundtable meeting, and I told her about the monkey origami.

"I think you're going to be the one buying that thing, Pattie," she said. And then we got to talking about the "monkey origami" of sustainability. The thing that breaks our back, that all of us seem to experience at one time or another, that feeling that what we are doing doesn't matter. That the water is already so filled with toxins that does it really make a difference if we bring our own bags to the supermarket?

"Perhaps we have to stop thinking of our actions as effective," I suggested to Judy, "and think of them more as symbolic."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Perhaps we have to accept that change will not be significant until the next generation, and our job is simply to plant the seeds of sustainable action in the memory banks of children, so that one day, when policy and process and practice all catch up with each other, they can achieve significant, real change. So, maybe it is less important that we recycle everything than that we recycle some things, particularly when children are watching or participating. That we ride our bikes occasionally so that they can see us from the back seats of minivans. That we simply try when we can, and not beat ourselves up when we can't. That we allow our advocacy efforts to skip a few steps and not look perfect and perhaps even require a little tape."

"So perhaps we pursue a different outcome?" Judy suggested.

"Yeah," I agreed. "And maybe lighten up on ourselves, and everyone else, a bit. Because, you know what, Judy, I've been thinking. Perhaps, ultimately, it all simply comes down to kindness. Good things seem to happen when we are kind, you gotta' admit. It changes the entire energy of the day, of the world. So maybe that's all that really matters, especially right now when things are so hard. Maybe the best way to create renewable energy is to just be kind to each other."

We rolled that around in our heads for a minute, until I had to say it, the ultimate "what if?' that has a way of putting things in perspective.

"I mean, once you accept the limits of a lifetime and the potential for the annihilation of humanity, what else is there to worry about?"

Judy laughed, but I could see a calm coming over her as well. And let me tell you, if you have a friend with whom you can share thoughts about the annihilation of humanity and somehow both find it relaxing, I say do whatever it takes to keep that friend. These are rare and valuable people.

As we hugged goodbye, feeling better about the world after boiling it down to its simplest essence, I suddenly felt a wave of gratitude. For a broken-down car that brought me together once again with this friend. For two children who didn't care about perfection. And for a mom who knew, somehow, that I needed the unexpected gift of the monkey origami this week.

And Into This Madness Came the Monkey Origami

What Happens When You Invite People In to The Dining Table of Your Heart

So I had my first of seven farm classes yesterday as part of the Georgia Organics Organic Farming Course I'm taking at Cane Creek Farm, and beyond the sheep and chickens and fields covered currently with rye and henbit and chickweed, the hoop houses and solar greenhouse, the stand of dried echinacea, the community garden plots, the raised herb beds, and the garden hidden under the power lines, I found myself fixated with this, this vine-covered outdoor dining room nestled in the middle of a fruit orchard just off the side of Lynn and Chuck Pugh's house.

I found myself fixated with it because, frankly, when push comes to shove, and life gets boiled down to love, gathering around a table at the start or middle or end of day to tell stories and connect is all that really matters to me.

And so as I stood there shooting pictures yesterday, the light cascading like water across the ridge and enveloping this little place in the world in an ethereal glow, I thought of you across our FoodShed Planet and how much I've missed gathering with you each day, under our symbolic "cyber-arbor" and sharing stories. And so, today, I invite you to pull up a seat, grab a bowl of potato and kale soup and crusty fresh bread (which is what Lynn made for the class participants, and much to my joy she said all the soups she will be serving throughout the course will be vegetarian), and let me tell you what's new.

First, Farmer D. Okay, wait, let me back up a bit. So everyone's read Michael Pollan's "letter to the president," right? I actually read it the Sunday it came out in the New York Times magazine while I was on the beach in Florida. So that was October. If you haven't read it, you can read it here, or let's just say it's all about what's wrong with the food system and how it needs to change, and Pollan called for an actual Farmer in Chief. Since then, you couldn't swing a cat without hearing about Roger Doiron's White House Victory Garden campaign. In fact, I wrote to Roger and told him that, about the swinging of the cat, and he wrote back that he can't wait until you can't swing a cat without hitting a Victory Garden. I'm with ya', Roger.

Oh, so back to Farmer D. Recently, there was a push to "nominate" a Farmer in Chief, in preparation for if this whole White House Victory Garden thing actually happens (and I believe it will). Emails have been flying around suggesting voting for this one and that one. All very strong choices, it appeared to me. But my personal fave? Yep. Farmer D. Unfortunately, he was late to the game and voting closed last night, but he still came in 16th nationwide (56,000 votes were cast in 10 days!) Here are the results.

Debbie Smith of Idbids. So no matter what happens with my City of Dunwoody regarding sustainability (which I expect to be a great deal, by the way), I consider any effort I have made or will make to already be worth it simply because of having becoming friends with Debbie. This is one amazingly talented person, and to think she has lived mere blocks from me all these years just knocks my socks off. How many people live near all of us whom we never get a chance (or make a chance) to meet? I have one word of advice for anyone feeling stagnant or lost or winter-weary. Get out there. Smile, say hello, introduce yourself, get involved, share, take a risk, and live your life out loud. Okay, fine that was twenty words, but you can get a feel here for what can happen when you slow down and connect. So here's the latest on Debbie. Her sustainable toy company, Idbids, has earned the following awards for its Eco Friendly Starter Kit:

* Selected as one of Dr. Toy’s 10 Best Socially-Responsible Children’s Products for 2008

* Selected as one of Dr. Toy’s 100 Best Children’s Products for 2008

* NAPPA Honors Award Winner

* Winner of The National Parenting Center’s 2009 Seal of Approval

* Nominee for a 2009 Toy Industry Association Educational Toy of the Year

* Scholastic Teachers’ Pick Best of 2008 for Green Classrooms

* Mr. Dad Seal of Approval

* Winner of Creative Child Magazine’s 2008 Preferred Choice Award

And this just in--the Atlanta Business Chronicle just published the nine Georgia companies that have been named finalists for the 17th annual Marketing Awards for Excellence (MAX Awards). Idbids is one of the nine. According to the article, the MAX Awards honor the best in new products, new services and marketing innovations developed or launched by Georgia companies in 2008.

Kate from Australia's Hills and Plains Seedsavers. Remember how she took an around-the-world trip this past fall? Well, she is now blogging from rural France, where she recently moved. Here is her post about it. Can't make this stuff up, folks!

As for me. Here is my latest monthly column from New Life Journal, a regional publication that specializes in natural healing, green homes and sustainable living. One of my bread photos actually made it into print, too, the one from my post from January 12 last year, Your Life Is an Occasion. Rise to It, which was one of my very favorite posts. Who knew then that the simple act of swinging open my garden gate and inviting neighbors in would change my life so much in just a year?

Swing open the proverbial gate to your life today. And invite people in to the dining table of your heart. You just never know what will happen.

What Happens When You Invite People In to The Dining Table of Your Heart