MamaStories

But I have found that my voice is the best way to move things.
And things need moving.

(This is a cross post with Wayland Voices – the Transition Wayland blog, where it’s not just me “speaking”.)

I’m reading Gura’s book, American Transcendentalism, A History, and on page 19 there it is:

Toward that end they called “for immediate application of ideas to life,” so that in this brave new world a thinker “was called on to justify himself on the spot by building an engine, and setting something in motion.”

Exactly. Let’s build this engine!

We started our Riot in October of 2008. In the interest of making my bookkeeping easier, I’m going to count Year Three as a 14 month year. The percentages (of US National Average) for Year Three for (1) Gasoline, (2) Electricity, (3) Heating Oil and (4) Water are as follows:

Next year I’ll calculate not by percentage but by solid numbers (gallons, KwH), because I am sure that with the fluctuating economy, etc., the consumption of the Average US household changes, and I’m not sure if these changes are reflected in the admittedly simple Riot calculator. Still, it’s a baseline.

1. Gasoline. Gasoline is still our bugbear. Year Two is so high because we calculated in our trip to Europe, which same trip we took this year, though I’ve not figured it in because I don’t know how anymore. So, by all intents and purposes, our consumption should still be up there in the 50th percentile.

2. Electricity. Year Three was of course the year we installed solar (switched on in August).  Solar is actually more costly than the Wind energy we were purchasing from NSTAR, so while we kept our consumption level, our percentage went up a little compared to Year Two.

3. Heating Oil. As you can see, we made the most headway with heating oil in Year Two, when we installed the woodstove. That we cut the consumption of heating oil even further in Year Three is due to three factors: (1) so far, to not having experienced a Winter, (2) to being even more vigilant with our woodstove than before when it did get cold, and (3) to discovering that our oil furnace is more efficient than I had been figuring (I recalculated for Year Three only).

4. Water. The fact that the growing season was moderately wet and that the garden was anyway rather neglected during Year Three is partially the cause for our water consumption going back down to Year One standards.

All in all, these comparisons are useful only as a way to keep us on the straight path and indicating the most problematic areas, in this case reconfirming gasoline as something that could really, again, bear improving upon. And we might just do that, in Year Four!

We have a few plans for the new year. Just a few. But I think my most important aim is to connect meaningfully with someone, every day. That could be a phone call with a  friend who is far away, an impromptu  lunch with an acquaintance, a meeting with fellow activists, a speech to strangers followed by a conversation, making a new  friend. Or some time with myself.

I’m a private person. I can be by myself or in the cocoon of my family for days on end. I never had a great many friends, but I am close with those I have. My resolution is to give more thanks for them. For how wonderful it is that you show up on their doorstep and they make you stay longer than you had planned. That someone is there to take care of your child at a pinch, or to pick you up from the airport even though it’s late. Someone who will meet you, at a second’s notice, at a nearby conservation area on a nice day for a paper bag lunch. Someone new, who invites you to a festive meal and you arrive finding her oldest friends gathered there as well. Someone who hears you don’t have plans for New Year’s Eve and who out of the blue invites you to dinner… I resolve to be more mindful of my friends, to make every meeting count.

And over the last year, with the start of my activism, I’ve learned that one can really never have enough friends, how enriching it is to make new friends.  For in new friends especially we see what we can become, what we are capable of, and how we can be of service. We see the variation of humanity, the great mystery and adventure of the other. I resolve to be more interested about who it is behind the face that I encounter for the first, maybe third time, and to ask of them, especially: how are you different from me? What can I learn from you, what gifts do you bear? And how can I help you, empower you?

All this is really part and parcel of my third resolution, which is to be more conscious about self care. Discovering the awesome power of community made me neglect, for a while there, my care of self. I wasn’t eating and drinking right, or spending the time and energy on family, art and study that I was used to. I seesawed from me to community and back again, burning the candle at both ends. By now I have come to glimpse that self care and community work are not two poles, but rather two sides of the coin that is me. I am thinking that at any time I can flip that coin and go with which ends up on top, knowing it will even out at the end. And that, most importantly, caring for the one implies caring for the other. For truly, how can I be a friend of myself without befriending another, and vice versa? I resolve to test that idea, to make it work.

So there you have it, my New Year’s resolution, in short: to be mindful of the other, of myself, every day, face to face.