Cozy World

Beautifying Cities One Stop Sign at a Time

Someone took the time to knit a beautiful cozy for our neighborhood stop sign and in doing so, completely brightened my day. After a simple internet search I discovered that 'yarnbombers' all over the world are decorating bike racks, lamp posts and stop signs to delight, and inspire, while beautifying our urban landscapes.
Well, thanks to someone in my neighborhood, I definitely smiled for the rest of my walk--and several times throughout the day, so I'd say the movement is working.

To learn more please visit: Yarnbombing.com

Confessions of a Green Committee Member

Does it seem sometimes that “going green” or “being green” is a competition or an opportunity to judge others, whether positively or negatively? It shouldn’t be necessary to categorize people in terms of their greenness or their willingness to become so. I find that we go through life absorbing and responding to whatever we can at that moment, and boy is it an ever-changing process! I remember back to the days when I would go on long car rides for fun, not having any idea of the impact of gasoline use (granted I had just gotten a drivers license…). I remember that it was normal to let the water run the entire time that I was brushing teeth, and that a visiting high-school friend once turned off the faucet for me, shocked that I could be so wasteful; I had honestly never thought about it before.
My green habits have evolved gradually over the years, some gleaned from friends, others derived from books, yet others through my own observations. I’m one of those people who think that if something is the “right” thing to do, it should happen overnight! So at times I have felt frustrated and guilty about my still un-green habits, either because I haven’t been able to expend the energy (no pun intended) to make the shift quite yet, or because I honestly don’t know what the better solution is. So I confess that we are still working our way through a humongous box of cheap plastic kitchen trash bags from Target. And I confess that we’re still using pull-up diapers at night more than 3 years after being potty-trained during the day. And I confess that we still don’t turn off and unplug our electronics regularly. I confess! But I am working on these things to the best of my currently overtaxed abilities. More important, however, than the details of our greenness, is the fact that each of our actions produces ripples that impact us all. “One could not pluck a flower without troubling a star” (Loren Eiseley). I see both the potential beauty and the potential destruction lurking within each of us, but I am choosing to focus on the beauty.

Post by Linda Kealey