October 24, 2009 – The International Day of Climate Action

I last blogged about what I would be doing on October 24. Just go to 350.org to see the amazing array of snapshots from this day of global action. People around the world — in 181 countries — hosted 5200 events.

Why all this effort? To call attention to a very big problem. Scientists say that 350 parts per million is the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere. And we are now at 390. The day’s events were designed to send a message to delegates to next month’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen that we need to get CO2 back to 350 ppm. The activities of this global movement were a huge story around the planet and made the front page of many newspapers, including the New York Times.

Activists in New Haven, Connecticut struggled with intermittent rain and a blustery wind. But two of us rang the bell of United Church at 3:50 pm, while a stalwart group formed the number 350 on the historic New Haven Green, a site for political actions since the city’s early days.

We also handed out a short list of easy steps for mitigating climate change. Please give them a try.

October 15, 2009 – My First Blog Action Day

So, I’m breaking all my rules. I’m taking a detour from the history part of my road to greenness to jump to the here and now. Today I'm joining over 4,000 bloggers on Blog Action Day 2009 to talk a bit about the issue of climate change.

Why? We have a very big problem. Scientists say that 350 parts per million is the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere. And we are now at 390.

There are many small steps each of us can take to reduce our own carbon footprint. We can walk, take the bus or train, or bike, when possible (and safe to do so). And when the car is absolutely necessary, we can pool the trips. We can shop wisely – reducing the amount of packaging in the items we purchase, and the number of miles the food we buy has traveled to get to us. We can shop farmers’ markets, helping the environment and the local economy. We can unplug when appliances are not in use. We can use less paper. We can buy less stuff and recycle more…

You get the idea. None of these things is difficult to do. And the more people make these choices, the bigger the difference.

But we can also use our voices to call for the leaders of the world to take some larger steps. There is a global movement to send a message to the Copenhagen Climate in Conference in December that we need to get CO2 back to 350 ppm. You can read more about it at 350.org, which has declared October 24, 2009 as the International Day of Climate Action. There are over 3000 actions registered in 158 countries for that date, just 9 days away. I will be at the one on the New Haven Green, symbolically ringing our church’s bell at 3:50 and talking with others about ways we can work towards getting back to 350.

Please join me that day, wherever you find yourself.

Detour Number Two – The Apartment Near Campus

In the spring of 1974, my best friend and I decided to stay in New Haven for the summer and to live off-campus for senior year. When I was seated next to him at Jonathan Edward College’s junior dinner, former Mayor Dick Lee had casually offered to land me a summer job, and I took him up on the offer. I found myself employed as a model maker at Roche-Dinkeloo Architects just over the border in Hamden. MAJ found a position at the hospital and we scoured the listings for apartments adjacent to the liberal arts portion of the campus.

We found our place – the second floor of a three-story brick building on the ambulance route to Yale-New Haven Hospital, but cheap and very near the places we needed to be. We were sandwiched in between a couple on the first floor who engaged in nightly screaming matches and a pair of female grad students on the third, one of whom paced constantly and talked loudly to herself, about very unusual things. She would become the famous one — Meryl Streep was rehearsing her lines above our heads.

All summer I packed a lunch and rode my bike to work. We had no air-conditioning so MAJ and I walked to the mall on Thursday nights (late night shopping night) to get cool. On other hot nights of the week, we might duck into Partners, the gay bar diagonally across from our apartment, with cheap drinks, music we enjoyed and a safe environment as long as we stuck together. A person we came to know as “the friendly hippie” was often sitting on his stoop in the next block of buildings and he watched over our comings and goings throughout all the seasons we lived on Park Street. He is still around, with much less hair, a respected member of one of the churches on the green, and I know him today by his given name, “Robbie.”

For the entire year we lived very frugally. (I think each of us was being paid $2.50/hr. And I recall that rent was $220/mo. or $110/mo. each.) We made our own yogurt. We got a toaster oven with green stamps donated by MAJ’s mother. Each of us purchased our own groceries – what we could carry home a bag at a time from the urban supermarket a block away (Bags were much larger and made of paper without handles.) My staples were cereal, cheese, tomato soup, canned tuna, peanut butter and jelly, oatmeal bread, spaghetti, sauce from a jar, fruit, milk and orange juice. I threw away a lot of cans, but no food was wasted.

When we moved out after graduation, we kept the trash to a minimum and took all our unwanted clothes and many other items to the Salvation Army store up the street.

As a segue to the next post I should add that little did I know when I embarked on this great adventure, that the first summer I chose not to return to my family in Massachusetts would be the summer I would meet my future husband at work. And that New Haven would become my home.