I didn’t get to finish up the radio show talking about the veggie garden gal who got busted in Oak Park, Michigan, but I just heard from www.treehugger.com that she has been freed. E-democracy works. Or maybe it is just the green mobsters in Oak Park who made their voices heard. God bless Facebook and the social media for making news that matters.
Ana and I are doing some remodeling. Our closet. You can guess why. More room is required. Limited resources, though. Definitely a case of ecological scarcity, though what is scarce is space.
I consulted with Anderson Plywood, which provided me some options. When you are remodeling like this, you are probably going to be using a prefinished material. But the question of which material is critical. The issues included toxicity (formaldehyde is frequently used in pressed board and plywood); environmental impact (much of our plywood is illegally harvested from endangered rain forests); and price. I like a happy medium but not at the expense of my values.
My choices were vast. Lots of different materials for making shelves. Prefinished melamine was relatively cheap, about $32.00. But when I looked up melamine, as I mentioned today on the Healthy Living Green Patriot Radio Show, I was reminded of how it has been turning up everywhere, in baby formula, toothpaste, pet food and housing materials in toxic amounts–and killing. God, do I really want this in my bedroom? Not if I listen to my friends like Greg Horn, author of Living Green. I heard about melamine in dry wall and all sorts of horror stories. I couldn’t sleep thinking of bringing it intentionally in my home, knowing what I do.
I didn’t want the melamine for me or anybody. I also heard it was high in formaldehyde, a known human carcinogen. I didn’t want it in my house. I found it a terribly offensive ingredient to put into such an intimate setting. Instead our friends at Anderson Plywood had some beautiful eye candy for Ana and I called bleached maple that was certified to be sustainably grown in America by the Forest Steward Council, the most stringent oversight certifying group in the world, governing even the finishing lacquer.
This meant so much not just to me but to other people. So much cheap plywood comes from Indonesia, destroying rain forests. People are displaced, of course, and this kind of exploitation fosters home grown terrorism; interestingly and sadly, these rainforests from where so much of the world’s plywood comes are home to endangered orangutans as well. So while you might not care about some poor family that is in the forest almost everyone cares about the organutan plight. Strange, but true, one supposes.
Most of us buy wood products without even questioning where the wood comes from. I try not to do this all of the time but a lot of times I feel powerless. A lot of times, like with picture frames, we seem to have little choice. Go to buy picture frames and they are all from China and the wood is probably from some poor primate’s nest, but this project we had some terrific choices. God gave me these choices and asked me to make the right one.
We took advantage of them. The prefinished, FSC-certified, bleached maple was around $69.00 or roughly threefold more than the melamine, but once I saw the beautiful finish achieved and knew what kind of love went into these trees and I knew they were from America (still looking for their forests; cradle to grave, you see) I was hooked like a silly Santa Monica sea bass suckered by a squid on a snelled hook. But to me there was no choice. The closet is turning out great. It is a beautiful finish too. It opens up a lot of space and makes life nicer. We are consumers, so if we are let’s do this thing right.
Ana and I do great things together. Thank the Lord!
For the interior paint, we used AFM Safecoat. They are all we use. We love their subtle brilliant colors. This is the paint to choose. They are doing our entire home.
All of this is part of happiness. I was thinking that whatever one does good here is a personal virtue. It is good and basic.
Back to the Radio Show
The person who made this really clear today is Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff from Healthy Child Healthy World. She pointed out these are the basic things. 5 simple steps all starting at home. You start with these to make your children safe. All children need nontoxic products around the home, because the toxic ones, like home and garden sprays, are proven carcinogens. You have to do these small things all the time and since you have to do them everyday and if you are like her or me you are thinking about them a lot of the time you hope they are things of God and make no devil or enemy dance glessfully, and so you do them thinking they are the good things, and you hold on to your beliefs, though they are a chimera. But what happened to this country isn’t–and if we take care of our kids we take care of America. We don’t need no stinking oil!
These are some of the lessons for today. In the meantime, we have no bed!! That’s the worst of the remodeling. All my clothes are on the bed. There is dust everywhere. But we are having a blast. Last week we drove up to San Simeon, and we may or may not go someplace this weekend, we don’t know yet, but we are going to certainly have fun doing whatever we do. I have to get some black work boots. That is what I am thinking of and how do I find eco-work boots? Tomorrow.
I think about terrible fate and how we can’t afford to be naive. I think about knowing everyone is safe. Thank the Lord. Praise the Lord!
Work boots!
