What carfree living looks like
So now we wait for the rain to stir dormant roots and wash away all evidence of my former motoring life.
Here’s the dead spot on my lawn where the minivan used to be parked. It had been sitting there since last May, when I hung up my keys to begin a 30-day experiment in carfree living.
Eleven months later, it was time to cut the cord. The wrecker came and picked up my car last week. Now it’s just me and my bikes. Into the Great Wide Open.
Want to explore simpler living? Start with these 95 articles
There are probably a dozen sites on my “can’t miss” list. One is Tammy Strobel’s Rowdy Kittens.
Tammy is great writer. She also has a good eye for curating the writing of others. Here’s a good example: The Ultimate Simple Living Guide: 95 Rockin’ Posts. Almost a hundred articles on the simpler life, conveniently arranged by topic.
A handful of my favorites:
Dude, Where’s Our Car? (Shareable)
The joy of walking (mnmlist)
The Story of Stuff (Annie Leonard)
26 Essential Ways to Achieve Minimalist Freedom (Far Beyond the Stars)
The Minsumer Movement: A Quiet Revolution (Miss Minimalist)
Enjoy.
What would you do with an extra few weeks of vacation?
David Damron of The Minimalist Path turns in a great guest post today on Zen Habits:
If you had the opportunity to do one activity for one week without any worry about finances, cost, or other outside commitments, what would you love to do for this week?
You may actually have this time at your disposal already. Turns out the average American watches an astonishing 5.1 hours of television each day. That’s the equivalent of over three work weeks each month.
I dumped my TV a couple years ago, but discovered how much time I was destroying elsewhere when I went on a social media diet. After throttling back on Twitter and Facebook (and outright abandoning other services), I was surprised how quickly my creativity and productivity blossomed.
Nothing you enjoy doing is really wasted time. But if you were willing to give up television, social media, or some other major commitment, what could you do with all those recovered hours?
Calendar image based on a photo by Katy Warner and distributed under a Creative Common License.
Burning rig sinks; oil slick headed for U.S. Gulf Coast
The U.S. Coast Guard says a burning oil rig has sunk into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, raising concerns of an environmental disaster.
Fires had been raging aboard the Deepwater Horizon since a massive explosion late Tuesday night. Eleven crew members remain missing since the blast, and hope for their rescue has dimmed. The semi-submersible exploration platform had been listing heavily as crews pumped water into the inferno.
Prior to this morning’s sinking — ironically, on Earth Day — Coast Guard officials had minimized chances of a significant pollution event. Fire was consuming much of the 8,000 barrels of oil per day still being pumped by the stricken platform. But the loss of the rig changes the environmental equation. In addition to the crude, rig operators say there are 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel on board used to power the platform’s propulsion and drilling equipment.
Storm may push oil northward
While the Deepwater Horizon was positioned about 50 miles off the coast of Venice, Louisisana, AccuWeather meteorologists say an approaching storm system will bring southerly winds over the area Friday, forcing oil toward the Gulf Coast. That brings the potential of a marine disaster to the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast, one of the richest oyster grounds in North America. It’s also the same area still struggling to recover its tourism economy in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Houston-based Transocean, the operator of the rig, and the Coast Guard have dispatched boom-carrying ship to the area, in an effort to contain a growing slick visible on the Gulf’s surface.
Fresh environmental scrutiny likely
Whether or not oil reaches the Gulf Coast, the Deepwater Horizon disaster is likely to reignite debate over the environmental risks of offshore drilling. In March, the Obama administration opened large sections of the Gulf, Alaskan, and Atlantic coastlines to oil exploration. New rules would permit drilling with 50 miles of the Virginia coast. That’s about the same distance offshore as the stricken Gulf platform.
Image credit: U.S. Coast Guard
Killing the Bicycle Buddha
Tony Kornheiser is an idiot. And that’s fine, because Tony Kornheiser is paid to be an idiot: He’s a sportswiter and commentator for ESPN, and it’s his business to entertain. I spent many years in radio, so I know entertainment sometimes means provoking people. Kornheiser is pretty good at that. Now and then, he goes too far. These episodes usually culminate in an apology, a slap on the wrist from management, and robust ratings.
I’m really not here to drag Kornheiser through the mud. Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong has already taken care of business. He called out the ESPN host, extracting a rather comprehensive mea culpa for a rant last week in which Korneiser went off on cyclists and suggested motorists “run them down.” As a fulltime commuter cyclist — I haven’t driven a car since last June, and rely upon bicycles for transportation — I found Kornheiser’s comments to be repugnant.
Here in the United States, bicyclists and motorists are still learning how to share the road. It’s an awkward and sometimes tense state of affairs. The last thing we need is a broadcaster giving some unstable motorist justification for aggressive behavior when they pass a bike during rush hour.
20 simple ways to save (lots of) water
Water: so simple; so critical; so surprisingly precious.
Most everyone with access to a computer and the internet takes water for granted. For us, it’s an inexpensive commodity, never more than a few steps away. We’re not forced to share a faucet with other families, or with an entire village. We never encounter a padlocked tap. Few of us have tasted genuinely unsafe water, much less carried it for miles from some far-away creek.
But a decade into the new century, over two billion people lack access to clean drinking water. It’s estimated that by the year 2030, over two-thirds of the world’s ballooning population will live without a regular supply of safe water. Meanwhile, land development, shifting climate, and pollution threatens the freshwater resources common to us all.
We’re getting to the end of World Water Week, a good time to step back a moment and give some thought to this most basic of human needs. Water isn’t a given, nor is its supply endless. Thinking about taking your water use more seriously? Here are 20 places to start.
Liz McLellan, Farm Nerd and Hyperlocavore
Liz McLellan is a self-described nerd.
Until just a couple of years ago, she was the kind of nerd you might imagine: a web and media strategist, with a strong technical background in user interface and application design. Her resume includes stints at Silicon Graphics and assignments on both coasts — most recently, New York City.
But today, Liz likes to call herself a “farm nerd.” She’s traded the Big Apple for — well — apples. And home grown tomatoes, too. Working from a garden at her new digs in small-town Oregon, Liz is patiently spreading compost and the gospel of residential microfarming through her rapidly growing online community, Hyperlocavore.
More Minimal is about simplicity, and it’s tough to imagine anything more more simple or satisfying than pulling fresh veggies out of your own backyard. With spring finally upon us, we thought it might be a good time to catch up with Liz. We asked her a little about hyperlocavorism and what it means to share the good earth with neighbors.
Why everyone should be thinking like a minimalist
This chart — issued Thursday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — isn’t without its critics. You can read a rather spirited discussion of its merits in the comments section over at The Consumerist.
Still, the takeaway is this: The decline in employment during our current recession is deeper and more persistent than at any time since 1974. The horizontal axis depicts months. The vertical axis shows the ratio of that month’s nonfarm payrolls to the nonfarm payrolls at the start of recession.
There are some encouraging signs in the economy, such as the slight dip in unemployment last month compared to the past 60 days (from 10 to 9.7 percent). But the economic recovery, such as it is, remains fairly anemic. All the more reason to be unburdening ourselves of the unnecessary, looking at ways to reduce consumption over the long term, and finding satisfaction beyond the checkout line. The New York Times has more analysis.
About the author
Chris Baskind writes about the environment and simpler living. He's also an advocate of carfree transportation, relying entirely on bicycles since June, 2009.Three years ago, Chris launched Lighter Footstep, a pioneering website focused on greener, healthier, more affordable living. It was recently acquired by the Mother Nature Network (MNN). Connect with Chris on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.