Power Day Off

Less is Best is Good Medicine

2009-12-19T15:00:00.000-08:00

Somehow I got on the email list of an anti-vaccine physician named Mayer Eisenstein, whose newsletter often includes really interesting stuff about H1N1, the benefits of vitamin D, vaccines. I like this little clip about his philosophy of care, which echoes that of every family doctor we've had over the years: doctors' visits only as necessary (and they rarely are), vaccines and antibiotics as little as possible. I would add that hearing quarterly reportage regarding what percentile your kid falls in for head size is nothing short of bizarre.

Practicing medicine with a light touch is good for the planet and its people in innumerable ways. Think of the reduction of medical waste, plastic packaging waste, drugs entering bloodstreams and waterways, monetary outlays—oops—that's right, somebody's going to make less money. But if we all do less, it'll be okay to make less.

This is your party OFF plastic, and it's supergroovelastic!

2009-12-07T04:42:00.001-08:00

You've seen them. Pictures of the plastic continent, dead baby albatrosses decomposing to expose bits of human detritus, miles wide and deep of water bottles...

We have to stop using plastic completely. My resolution for the year is to turn my attention to this problem in our household—despite the amount of cutting back we've done, I'm still seeing too much plastic. I'm sick of reuse—it doesn't keep things out of the ground. Recycling is good as far as it goes (which means as far as glass). With plastic it just doesn't cut it.

What can we do about this leaching, toxic, non-decomposable, ubiquitous material?

We have to learn to live without it. We need more zero-waste initiatives, maybe even legislation to ban plastic, though when I googled I didn't come up with any.

At the domestic level, here are some good links for plastic-free living...

Plastic-Free Products

To-Go Ware: Personal favorite; we keep these in our car and use them for take-home leftovers all the time. There's other great stuff at To-Go Ware, too. "Lower Your Forkprint!"

Sanctus Mundo: Some great stuff—stainless-steel sippy cups for kids, stainless-steel freezer storage, water bottles w/o plastic touching water, etc.

Skoy Cloth: Plastic-free dish rags.

Kids Konserve: Waste-free lunch kits.

Biobag: Bags that decompose (though from what I read, you don't want these going to a landfill).

Fake Plastic Fish: a blogger's journey to remove plastic from her life. Chock-full of immediately useful information.

Less With Leaves

2009-10-05T00:24:00.001-07:00

Fall...it's exhausting, raking all those leaves into giant piles and then stuffing them all into bags and hauling the bags to the curb, not because you want to, mind you, but because your neighbors are doing it and will give you dirty looks if you don't.

We all know that the best place for leaves is right where they land, or in a garden, enriching the earth right?

Anybody who doesn't know this will soon, thanks to efforts like this one in my town of Kingston, New York, Leave it on the Lawn. The idea rose in response to a proposal by the city that prisoners provide free labor by picking up the city's bagged leaves.

I heartily endorse this measure to help the planet by doing less and leaving it on the lawn.

Now about mulching with a reel mower...looks like you can't. Maybe our cities could have a cheap or free rental program of battery-powered mulching mowers, charged up by solar panels? I hate the sound and smell of gas mowers, and they foul the air for everybody, so let's look at some alternatives.

No Power Hour, Day, Week, the Less the Better

2009-03-03T04:07:00.000-08:00

Saturday, March 28, 8:30 pm, show your commitment to climate change by joining millions of people in turning off your power for an hour. Now approaching its third annual event, Earth Hour is garnering increasing attention from Scouts to C40, as people organizing for this hour of no-power spread the word around a globe. A simple action with a bold message: switch off and vote for Earth.

Go them one better and go for Power Day Off all day the following day. You may find yourself enjoying your Power Day Off that you continue to do it once a week. Think of all the energy that would be saved if we brought back Sunday, or any day, of rest.

My Other Hubby is a Hot Water Bottle

2009-02-13T08:57:00.000-08:00

Cheap Winter Heat:

If you don't already forgo the electric blanket, know that it is an unnecessary energy hog. This little rubber baby right here is the key to survival at our house this year. With the thermostadt lowered to 50F every night, getting under the freezing sheets would be no fun at all if it weren't for our trusty hot water bottle. Our only problem is that one isn't enough for a family of four. Either you get the bottle, or you try to grab it, or you plaster yourself against the enterprising soul who filled it first. Hot water bottle + feather bed = hot sleepytime; I sometimes have to throw off covers.

There are other options for warming the bed though, from ceramic crocks to old-fashioned copper bedpans to a hot brick wrapped in your grammy's shawl to this cool soapstone bed warmer from Vermont Soapstone.

This is one of those ancient folkways that everybody should be reviving. Of course, there are lots of electric bed warmers out there. You can even microwave a hot water bottle, though we don't have a microwave and the whole idea of doing that gives me the heebie jeebies. But seriously, an electric bed warmer? That's just dopey! Anybody who's tried a hot water bottle and an electric heating pad knows that not only does hot water bottle get the Energy Star rating, it has a personality. It's fun to cuddle up with.

The best Energy Star warmers, of course, are loved ones, whether people or pets, in our case a cat. I imagine people who live with St. Bernards stay pretty warm this time of year.

Think Nothing, Buy Nothing

2008-12-02T09:25:00.000-08:00

That's what the badge on my hat said this past Sunday at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Catskill's Buy Nothing Day, where hundreds of people came and brought, or took away, gift-quality items without any money changing hands. It has become an annual tradition for my family to participate in Buy Nothing Day the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

This event allows people to recycle, give presents even if they can't afford to, and hang around talking to people from their community. It's the Anti-Black Friday—no stampedes, no credit card bill at the end of it.

My kids and I work in the café area, replenishing the by-donation snacks and managing the video/DVD viewing: The Story of Stuff, The End of Suburbia, Kilowatt Ours. (This year we would have shown Reverend Billy & the Church of Stop Shopping, but Netflix failed to deliver on time. Boo! Coming in May 2008, watch for What Would Jesus Buy?)

Have a Buy Nothing Christmas or Hannukah, or buy only from nonprofits whose work you support by purchasing goods or services from them.

In Praise of Darkness

2008-10-28T13:09:00.000-07:00

A book that affected me, when I was in my early 20s, was In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, a meditation on the Japanese aesthetics of darkness.

My family has come to experience our power-off Sundays as an aesthetic necessity. If we go out, we grow anxious for the unlit house we know awaits us at the end of the day. No email to be answered. The statue of Quan Yin by the flicker of candlelight on the bedroom mantelpiece. Our cat, a black blob on the feather bed. Quiet, as long as my husband can resist the temptation to surf the net on his Iphone.

Related reading:

National Geographic on our addiction to light.

Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century, by Wolfgang Schivelbusch

The Live Local Challenge

2008-06-26T10:56:00.000-07:00

The Eat Local Challenge for my area in the Hudson Valley of New York State begins in a few days on June 30, 2008, continuing through peak growing season and ending September 30. Participants will eat only foods grown within a 30- to 100-mile radius of where they live.

While I am not signing my family up for the challenge, I think it's great, and we will certainly keep working our garden, shopping the farmers market we can walk to and our local food co-op, and meeting with other people interested in urban gardening in our town of Kingston.

Another thing we have been thinking about over the past few years, and trying to bring more into being, is meeting a "live local" challenge. Right now our car is having some body work done, so we are limited to getting rides and traveling around town on foot, bike and scooter (my kids' razor is my favorite way to get around town right now—so portable, quick, great exercise, easy to whip out of the front vestibule and hit the street).

A good question to think about is how local can you live? Can you find new health practitioners closer to your house? My goal is to shift gradually to people and businesses I can walk to for health care, fitness, food, hanging-out with my computer or a friend, entertainment. Also, we are trying to put volunteer energy into our community—that is, those we can help that live within a radius of a few blocks.

This is aided for us by the fact that there are several good soup kitchens and aid agencies in walking distance of our house. Last night my husband and I went to a panel discussion of poverty with three impassioned, articulate speakers: Rev. Darlene Kelly, minister of Clinton Ave. United Methodist Church in Kingston, NY; Michael Berg, Executive Director, Family of Woodstock; and Roberto Rodriguez, Commissioner, Ulster County Dept. of Social Services.

All three gave a vivid overview of a support system for homeless people, people recovering from addiction, and people living in poverty that gave me a better idea of what this town—and so many like it—are facing, once winter comes and beyond. The many issues related to oil, jobs, and the lack of spaces such as affordable housing and rehab centers brought home that the number of people without basic survival needs met will be increasing for the foreseeable future.

Circling back to eating local and living local, those present talked a bit about the possibility of starting a community garden.

Earth Day Pledge

2008-06-20T12:39:00.001-07:00

At our local Unitarian Universalist congregation, members celebrated Earth Day by taking a pledge to do something for the planet, whether buying carbon offsets to cover their business trips, switching from paper towels and napkins to cloth rags and napkins, or retiring an incandescent bulb.

It goes like this:

I, ____________, pledge to _______________________, as a way to Honor and Protect the Earth.

Signed, ___________.

Our Earth Day pledge this year is to increase our backyard garden yield. We dug up some yard and put in more crops than we have before. I have a long way to go as a gardener. All our brussels sprouts will mature at once, because I planted the seeds at the same time. That was probably not the way to do it. And I know I could use our space better to get higher yield. And I allow the groundhog to decimate fledgling plants, instead of finding a way to discourage him/her. But it's a step forward.

The Long Emergency

2008-06-20T05:50:00.000-07:00

I like how James Howard Kunstler tells it like it is, saying it's high time to stop hoping everything will be fixed by hybrids, the law of attraction, and high-tech carbon-catching.

"Wake Up America. We're Driving Toward Disaster," James Howard Kunstler, Washington Post.

My husband and I picked up his book The Long Emergency the other day. I'm sorry to say we got it for only $4 at Inspired Books in Uptown Kingston, New York. Sorry because this bookstore, one of the reasons to like Uptown Kingston, is closing. Another economic indicator for our region.

No doubt we are in for radical restructuring of our daily life, and we should be getting used to this reality, building up all that is local, agitating for train lines, discovering new foodways and suitable employment.

But this book is so alarming and depressing as to produce a lack of functionality. Nihilism won't save the human race, if that's what we're about. So while the reality check is needed, I have to keep my spirits up by regular visits to World Changing and other sources of support for those of us who think it's possible to scale back, find low-tech and affordable fixes, spread a new set of values, and accept on faith Kunstler's words from the early pages of his book, before he takes us on tour of the coming hell:

"If I hope for anything in this book, it is that the American public will wake up from its sleepwalk and act to defend the project of civilization. Even in the face of epochal discontinuity, there is a lot we can do to assure the refashioning of daily life around authentic local communities based on balanced local economies, purposeful activity, and a culture of ideas consistent with reality. It is imperative for citizens to be able to imagine a hopeful future, especially in times of maximum stress and change."

KWH Down, to a Point

2008-05-21T07:18:00.000-07:00

While being interviewed for an article in The Poughkeepsie Journal-Record (don't know if that was ever published), I reviewed our kilowatt hour usage over the past couple of years.

IMPACT OF COMPACTS

We changed over completely to compact fluorescents on October 16, 2006. Our KWH usage went from:

Before compact fluorescents: 10/06: 2,386 KWH
After compact fluorescents: 11/06: 2,057 KWH

A difference of 329 KWH.

IMPACT OF ENERGY STAR APPLIANCES

We upgraded to Energy Star fridge and clothes washer on February 23, 2007 (we already had an Energy Star dish washer).

Before Energy Star upgrade: 2/07: 2,628 KWH
After Energy Star upgrade: 3/07: 2,275 KWH

A drop in just one month of 353 KWH.

After that, usage dips further, into the 900s, because of the summer. (We go away, our radiant heat floor is off, we dry clothes outside, need lights later in the evening...)

Now a note about switching from oil heat to more-efficient-but-still-nonrenewable gas heat. We think we have increased energy efficiency this way (also by completely covering our attic floor with foam insulation), and we believe it's less expensive, but don't let this happen to you: we got a bill for several thousand dollars in early spring. Seems the gas & electric company had noticed a sharp rise in our gas usage, but thought it was their mistake, so they adjusted down and continued to bill at our old usage rate. This gave us the false impression that gas heating our house was quite reasonable! They fixed their mistake and billed us all at once...yikes.

350 on Power Day Off

2008-05-11T17:18:00.000-07:00

It's Power Day Off. My husband and daughter have gone off to the kitchen by the light of a hand-cranked flashlight (I love anything handcranked) to get some dinner.

I have just been reading (on reserve power) a TomDispatch by Bill McKibben, whose organization Step-It-Up seems to have transformed into something called 350, representing the amount of carbon dioxide in parts per million that recent science recommends as a target. The goal of the organization is modest—to make 350 a household number.

But we go on thinking about how to reach this number. McKibben says that we must "make trains an absolute priority and planes a taboo." How about rationing, is anyone talking about that? I googled "ration electricity" and the top page's hits relate to Zimbabwe, Iran, Bangladesh, and Ecuador, all of whom have debated and/or implemented power rations. So far.

A culture of self-limited power usage will help us get to 350. Lights out, laptop off.

Honey Bees on the Wax

2008-03-25T13:27:00.000-07:00

The media are full of stories about the plight of the honey bee (here's a recent New Yorker piece), Colony Collapse Disorder, and the implications for our food supply.

Last weekend I and my family visited a local organic beekeeper, Chris Harp, who, through his organization, HoneybeeLives, gives the only U.S. classes in natural beekeeping. Students come from as far as Canada to get instruction from him in how to care for bees, keep them stress-free, happy and well fed, and address problems that arise in beekeeping.

A rather alarming document was recently issued by the New York Dept. of Agriculture that reads, in part:

"In 2007, legislation was passed and signed, which authorized the Department [of Agriculture and Markets] to establish a database and beekeepers, yard locations and the number of colonies at each location for the purpose of conducitng more effective and efficient surveys for existing pests and new emerging pests such as CCD. . . .

"There are several benefits associated with this process. They include: . . .

"6. The ability to aid in the identification of bees available to meet agricultural pollination demands."

The thought of organic beekeepers, who spend so much energy, insight, intuition and thought caring for their limited bee populations, having to turn those healthy bees over to commercial agriculture is most alarming.

Let's hope the industry will instead pay HoneybeeLives to help them convert their bee management practices to natural beekeeping. Here's a tidbit from the HoneybeeLives website:

"Honeybees are amazing, gentle creatures. They live in colonies which function as a single organism, each Honeybee working for the good of the whole. They nurture the beauty and fecundity of the earth with their gift of pollination, and through that pollination mankind [sic] gains strength, and nature diversity. Honeybees are also in dangerous decline, and we all need to take notice."

Let's hope the movement to increase backyard colonies will help bring about a turning of the tide for the honeybee and secure our apples, peaches, zucchinis, cantaloupes, and the dozens and dozens of other crops that depend on the honeybee for pollination.

What do bees have to do with Power Day Off?

Aside from beekeeping 'being' of general benefit to the planet, your local beekeeper (or you, if you decide to get your own colony) is a great source for cut comb foundation or blocks of wax that you can melt and make gently aromatic candles for use on Power Day Off.

We buy our cut comb foundation through Rowe's Apiaries in Kingston, New York.

My Other Car is...Not a Car!

2008-02-25T08:05:00.000-08:00

Highly recommended, Alex Steffen's essay on the Worldchanging blog, My Other Car is a Bright Green City.

"Creating communities dense enough to save those 85 million metric tons of tailpipe emissions is (politics aside) easy. It is within our power to go much farther: to build whole metropolitan regions where the vast majority of residents live in communities that eliminate the need for daily driving, and make it possible for many people to live without private cars altogether."

The reader comments are interesting, too.

Power Pooling

2008-02-25T07:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Power Day Off and our family faced the dilemma of how to watch the Oscars without power. Actually we had to solve this dilemma a long time ago because we've never had television reception.

On Oscar night we invite ourselves over to somebody else's house.

We bring some food, invade their TV room and engage in some power pooling. Co-housing communities are good at this, with their common houses for group meals and hanging out. SuperBowl fans excel at power pooling and so do families who congregate and cook together during holidays. The more we do it, the better.

And we came home from the light, bright, loud Oscars to a dark, silent, snow-surrounded house, and re-entered our hibernation.

Better World Travel Club Lessens Impact of Cars

2008-01-14T09:33:00.001-08:00

"We work for cars," a friend recently said. Meet our boss, a Volvo V70 that gets us everywhere we can't walk to and often makes us wish we lived near a ZipCar agent.

Yesterday was our second breakdown in a few months, and as I write we are getting a tow to the Volvo dealership in Wappingers Falls, making good use of the 100-mile free tow feature that comes with our membership in Better World Travel Club.

I want to testify that Better World works just as well as AAA, because so few people I talk to even know about it. A travel club that gives roadside emergency assistance to cars AND bicycles, advocates high emissions standards, facilitates eco-friendly travel and puts out an energy-smart e-newsletter, plus auto insurance that offsets your first ton of carbon for free? Yup. Better World also keeps a "triple-A watch" to remind you why you decided to leave the "Arrogant, Anti-environmental, Archaic" auto insurance giant in the ditch.

Wouldn't It Feel Good to Pay Less?

2008-01-07T14:19:00.000-08:00

The 2008 War Tax Boycott appears to be picking up steam. Here's another way that not doing something—in this case, paying taxes to the U.S. government, would do the old big blue marble a good turn. Less war means fewer dirty bombs spilling radiation, less hummer traffic, oh, to say nothing of fewer wasted lives and wasted limbs.

Actually, to be accurate, the organizers recommend you do write a check for the amount you would have paid in taxes, but the addressee on the envelope should be working in the life-support field—providing medical care, disaster relief, or helping victims of war. A complete guide can be found on the boycott website.

Disarm the Planet

2007-12-06T06:05:00.000-08:00

In remembrance of Dr. Randall Forsberg, a memorial will be held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

December 15th, at 2:30 p.m.
with reception to follow.
Location: MIT's Wong Auditorium
at the Tang Center
Corner of Wadsworth & Amherst Streets
Cambridge, Massachusetts
All are welcome

Article in Boston Review by Randall Forsberg
"The solution, as always for civil wars based on ethnicity or religion, is not military but political."

Buy Nothing!

2007-12-02T04:17:00.000-08:00

Protest stuffism at the holidays and year-round!

We celebrated Buy Nothing Day at our Unitarian-Universalist Congregation yesterday. I think it was our fourth year collecting unwanted, "giftable" items and inviting one and all to come and take, no charge, no strings attached.

We have food and drink by donation, show anti-consumerist documentaries such as Affluenza, The End of Suburbia, and More Fun, Less Stuff, and everyone has a great time. It necessarily mean "less stuff," but the "more fun" is there, and the "quit going out and buying all that unnecessary new crap in the malls" is a decent message, and it's much more lively and social than standing in line at Target (not that I'd know!).

Tsk, tsk, I'm posting this on Power Day Off, so I'll sign off now, but here's the Buy Nothing Day link for further exploring:

Buy Nothing Day - Adbusters

And more related links can be found at the Buy Nothing Day page of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Catskills:

Buy Nothing Day in Ulster County, New York, USA

Participate by Not Participating!

The Best Car is No Car

2007-11-19T21:27:00.000-08:00

In the midst of all this prattling about hybrids and questionable alternative fuels, I welcome the automobile divestment movement. These are the folks discussed in such venues as Divorce Your Car who advocate giving your wheels the boot—riding a bike, walking, using public transport, sharing a vehicle or using Flexcar, or going from three or two-car household to one.

My family of four had no car in Brooklyn (we used rentals, train or bus when leaving the city), but we bought one to move upriver and for the past five years, we've survived with only one car. It helps that my husband can bus to NYC for work when he needs to, which is, thankfully, not often. The sidewalks in our city of Kingston, NY help, bike lanes would improve the situation greatly.

It's tricky. I drive more than I'd like to. But it takes two hands and then some for me to count all the places I can walk to, and that to me is what makes an ideal habitat. Maybe one day soon the Hudson Valley will be fully hooked up with light rail and trolleys and more of us will have no car.

GENERAL STRIKE

2007-11-05T14:51:00.000-08:00

"If someone were to suggest, for example, that we begin a general strike on Election Day, November 6, 2007, for the sole purpose of removing this regime from power"...

...I would say let's do it.

Often, my husband and I look at each other in despair and shout, "General Strike!"

The power of doing nothing via the general strike has been displayed on many historical occasions. Of course, it's more than nothing to organize, to unify, as Garret Keizer argues in the above-linked Harper's piece suggesting a general strike for tomorrow, "Election Day".

It will not happen tomorrow, but there's no time like any time to stop, to stop working, driving, buying and assenting, and to show this and any future "administrations", whether democratically-elected, stolen or bought (when was the last time we got Option A?), that we will no longer allow what we have allowed to take place in the United States in the name of its citizens. There is no time like now to talk amongst ourselves about the power of a general strike and the possibility that we could make it happen—once, on election day, monthly, weekly...

The Energy Vacation

2007-10-27T09:26:00.001-07:00

Found on Treehugger, a variant on Power Day Off, the Energy Vacation. For a day or two, or a week...or once a week all year round.

Vacation, Vacation, Vacation!

2007-10-24T06:43:00.001-07:00

Briefly, very briefly, I worked in the profit sphere, in a position involving online publishing and the great travel-writing legend, Arthur Frommer. His booming voice and turns of phrase were very amusing—once, after a digital emergency involving his America Online site had been resolved, he called me and shouted, "Crisis averted! Crisis averted!" When I left the job after six months (and I was pushing it, lasting that long), he took me and my then fiancé out to lunch for Italian food. He's a mensch.

But my favorite thing about Arthur Frommer is his outspoken advocacy of four-week vacations. One of the outrageous things about life in the U.S. is the way we use our prosperity, such as it is, to punish ourselves by overworking. In the spirit of promoting Doing Less, here's a link to a Frommer blog post about the need to organize for more vacation time come the next presidential election.

Arthur Frommer on the lack of adequate vacation time in America

When we talk about energy conservation, let's consider human energy. Let's consider the epidemic of stress-related diseases and health concerns. People need paid vacation not only in order to travel and better understand our world, but to take care of their health, their families and their homes, and to have some simple down time. Two weeks is not enough, and plenty of people don't even get that!

Power Day Off on the Radio

2007-10-17T07:58:00.000-07:00

Listen here to me (Nancy Graham aka red eft) and my kids, Ray and Ada, talking about Power Day Off, taking it slow, creativity, unschooling, and other things of interest to us that all seem to interconnect. You need Windows Media Player to hear it.

This is a recording of the program "Spiritually Speaking," that broadcasts from the Vassar College radio station on WVKR 91.3 FM on Tuesdays from 4-5pm. Hosts are the Reverend Dr. Linda Anderson, Rabbi Rena Blumenthal and Paul Murray. The show is sponsored by the Network of Spiritual Progressives—Hudson Valley.

A Day Without Drive

2007-10-16T10:11:00.000-07:00

A license plate for fans of The Lorax, seen on NYS-I87:

UNLESS

I suppose it is one of the ironies of our age that we are all Oncelers in way or another, posting the UNLESS sentiment on our polluting vehicles, or blogging on our electric machines about turning off electricity, etc.

In keeping with such ironies, I and my family usually drive our car on Power Day Off, because it's fun to do stuff on weekends in the Hudson Valley. But once a week, give or take, we go for a No Drive Day.

We walk our errands and spend the rest of the day here doing stuff around the house.

Like Power Day Off, if every American instituted a No Drive Day, think of the saved fuel, the cleaner air, the improved attitudes as folks vacation from road rage. I won't try to do the math, but I'm sure the statistics would be impressive.

If you aren't already a biker, walker or public transit person, try it, for just one day a week. Of course, more than one day is good too.

Let's review what we've cut back on so far: one day of no electric, one day of no eating, one day of no driving. Is it deprivation? You be the judge. Usually, in our family, it feels like the opposite, and I'm willing to bet that others who take a day off from something feel the same way.

Get busy doing nothing, now!

When Fast is Slow

2007-10-09T12:19:00.000-07:00

How about fasting once a week?

Give your system a rest, your body a time to heal, take a break from the kitchen, remember hunger.

A friend of mine fasts one meal a week and donates the approximate cost of that meal to a nonprofit.

To speak of fasting calls up the idea of a strike, another powerful form of doing nothing, but I will post about that another time.

People fast to clarify the mind and soul, to protest that which oppresses them or others, to clean their bodies, to spend less on food (those unable to afford food are not fasting, they are going hungry), to increase their awareness of food and the earth. People fast for spiritual, political, medical and environmental reasons. Or all of the above.

Whether you drink water or juices for one meal or for one day, or many days, fasting is a way of slowing. Of paying attention. Like unplugging the electricity, it's free, requires doing nothing, awakens quiet. Try it.

Directions for safe fasting.

Welcome to Power Day Off!

2007-10-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

In January 2007, I and my family decided to try to power down for one day a week. We would give our appliances and lights a rest, and spend a relatively quiet day as a family. We were motivated by a desire to do something about climate change that would be simple, free, and readily available to anyone.

It would be an ecological practice and a spiritual practice.

Since ancient times, those who observe the Sabbath or other holy days have refrained from working, using electricity, using money, and/or driving. We think there's something to be learned from that practice.

If the entire U.S. gave power a day off once a week, how much would we save?

Well, my math is often wrong, so feel free to correct:

According to the Energy Information Administration, there are 107 million U.S. households which, in 2001, used 10,656 kwh each for the year, or 29 kwh per day.
29 X 52 days (at one day per week) X 107 million households equals an annual savings
in the U.S. alone of:

161,356,000,000 kilowatt hours

Seems like a lot!

There are other benefits, of course, to a day without TV or movies, email, toast, hair dryers. A whole movement of people call it "simple living." But you don't have to go off the grid to do it, you don't have to buy a herd of sheep. We can all do LESS, right now.

So join in the fun! Here I will post about anything related to doing less that appeals to me. I am not a model of rural, self-sufficient living. I live in a small northeastern U.S. city that allows me to walk to many places. I grow a few things in a garden. I compost my food, and I and my husband are trying to make a large and leaky Victorian home more energy efficient.