Turn the Lights Down, the Lights Are Too Strong

Join in with EarthHour 2008 - a global initiative to reduce global warming and light pollution.

For one hour - 8 p.m. local time on March 29 - everyone is urged to turn their lights off. What will this accomplish you ask? Look at last year's results from Sydney's Earth Hour:

On 31 March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour - Earth Hour. If the greenhouse reduction achieved in the Sydney CBD during Earth Hour was sustained for a year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year.

The website has lots of great resources for other ways you can contribute - or not contribute as the case may be. I've been posting this info lots of other places, hoping we all can do our part. Pitch in. Eight at night on a Saturday is a good time for it to go dark, anyway, right? (nudge nudge wink wink know what I mean know what I mean?)

PS -- Turn the Lights Out - FABULOUS song by A-ha.

I Love You Light

A long while back, I heard a folk concert broadcast on NPR. A song by the artist David Crossland stuck in my mind. Titled Minots Light, it tells the tale of one keeper of the Minot's Ledge Lighthouse who used the light to broadcast the words "I Love You" to his wife.

Last week I finally broke down and bought the CD. (This is how I make purchases, I have to think about them for about six months.) The song is just as beautiful as I remembered it. Made for perfect background music as I walked along Pebble Cove Beach on a sunny Easter Sunday.

If you get a chance, pick up some of David's songs or albums -- he's releasing a live CD soon. He's got a beautiful voice and I'm a big fan of supporting independent musicians.

Pretty Bloggy

I occasionally lurk over at a fellow Gloucester blog: Good Morning Gloucester. Captain Joe takes lots of interesting and inspiring pictures. And lots of pictures of food, which is always a good thing.

A day or two ago, he uploaded some of Good Harbor Beach in early morning. Since it's snowy, rainy, and cold out today, I will treat you with one of his pictures of better days.


I live 1.2 miles from this spot. Have I mentioned lately how much I love my new home?

More from the Losers' Club Files

Losers Club Goes to Vegetarian Potluck.

Awhile back, I joined the Northshore Vegetarian Meetup group. I figured it would be a nice way to meet people who were into vegetarian food and maybe some casual socializing.

This weekend we were supposed to have a St. Patrick's Day potluck. I was concerned over what to make. Many people in this group, it seems, are raw foodists. Vegan, militant raw foodists. Me? Not so much. Life without pasta and mozzarella? For that matter, without bagels and butter? Puhleeze. But after reassurances from the group founder that cooked food was OK, I decided to make my infamous stuffed peppers.

Now, what was I thinking? I could have easily made anything, why did I decide to make an ingredient heavy, prep heavy dish? Oy vey. My stuffed peppers require at least three canned items, two boxed items, much vegetable cutting, assorted sauteeing, and copious mixing. And that's all pre-baking and "plating."

Saturday a.m. I journeyed the hour down to the nearest Whole Foods. If I was going to force these people to eat cooked food, the least I could do was make it organic. The price tag? $88. I spent all of Saturday night cooking like a madwoman. I made three trays of stuffed peppers. They looked and smelled gorgeous.




Alas, at noon, I drove the 35 minutes over potholed terrain to the house, only to find it dark and empty. The potluck had been cancelled -- the victim of flu and family emergencies. I hadn't checked my email; I hadn't been alerted.

Now I'm a hundred bucks poorer and I have three trays of stuffed peppers to dispose of. Here's hoping they freeze well.

Thou Shalt Not

Warning - gonna go deep for a moment. Avert your eyes if necessary.

So, yesterday, Pappa Razzi decreed that there were new sins. Among these are no-brainers such as "polluting the environment" but also questionable categories such as "genetic modification." But, as I was learning about our new list of No-Nos by the Vatican, I wondered about that phrase in general: No-No. By it's very essence, it negates.

Being a recovering Catholic, the young Me would never have questioned this. Don't do this, don't do that -- it was all commonplace. Lying = bad = don't do it.

But, in contrast, why not live life in an affirmative?

The older Me questions worldviews that cut life up into black and white and tell people what not to do. In other words, instead of telling us not to pollute, why not tell us to respect the Earth? It may be semantics, but semantics are sometimes powerful things.

I look at it this way. There's lots of people that say "I don't/won't eat: meat, sugar, cooked food, carbs, dairy..." And so if you (accidentally, natch) consume one of these things, you are breaking a rule. You are bad. (And, of course, if you live by Church tenets, then you have to go to Confession and be absolved of all your sins by an outside force, a Father).

BUT ... if you say, "I eat healthy," well, that can mean a lot of things. For me, that means not consuming meat and trying my best to rely on local and/or organic and/or less processed foods. But if I happen to really want to eat that box of Caramel Delights I bought from the Girl Scouts, well.... I just might. Because sometimes sugar and chocolate and coconut and caramel formed together in a chewycrunchy combination of sweetrichness feels healthy for me.

I'm trying to live my life less and less in a state of negative absolutes and more and more in a state of positive acceptance. That doesn't mean that I'm allowing myself to do everything. (For example, still choosing not to drink on schoolnights.) I'm just trying to realize that maybe life isn't about rules, so much as about attitude. Approach it with a sense of gratitude and acceptance and life itself becomes much more fulfilling.

I think. I hope. We'll see.