Walking and coffee...but not at the same time and actually it's a chai latte.

I am now sitting in one of my favorite cafes downtown, sipping an iced dairy beverage in a glass while avoiding doing work for my thesis. And I feel pretty good about myself.

Why, you ask? Because, well, I walked here. Yes, I resisted the very strong urge to get into my car and I walked. This is no small undertaking, being that I reside in suburbia and it takes 45 minutes to get here on foot. But actually, it wasn't so bad. This is partly because I am now used to walking great distances* after spending six and a half months living in Florence, Italy, where it took me 40 minutes to get from my house in Le Cure to the Duomo.

My willingness to take the slower route is one of the biggest changes I see in myself post-Firenze. Not saying I've completely turned over a new leaf, but before I was a hyper-efficient, talk-on-the-phone-while-driving-and-sipping-coffee-out-of-a-to-go-cup type. Okay, actually the to-go cups always made me feel guilty and I can't handle caffeine, and now you have to have one of those headset things to talk on the phone in the car and that's just too complicated for me. But anyway.

The point is, before I never walked downtown. Somehow I always thought of a reason to drive, in hindsight likely because I couldn't justify "wasting" 40 minutes walking. But in Florence, I became a proponent of what I like to call "The Public Transportation Mentality." In less capitalized terms, I mean when you're taking a bus or walking everywhere, you're forced to give up control. For example, sometimes you are walking to the bus stop to catch the bus to work and you see it pull up to the stop from a block away. Or, even though Florentine bus drivers are speedy in sometimes frightening ways, once you are on the bus you get there when you get there. I'm sure it helped that my bosses at work didn't really care what time I got there, and neither did my bookbinding teacher. In any case, public transportation forced me to calm down and breathe a little.

As I neared downtown this morning, breathing slightly heavily (too much gelato!), I saw two people toting disposible coffee cups. One thing about Florence is that to-go cups do not exist there. People drink their coffee at the bar, standing up, in ceramic or glass. They drink it fast (I mean, an espresso is tiny after all), but slowly, too. They are not sucking it down while yacking on the phone while hurrying to their next destination. They take a moment to enjoy that coffee and maybe chat with the bartender. And it wasn't an infrequent occurence that a friend of mine would arrive at work on the same bus that I did (ie, two buses after I'd intended to get there) and stop for a coffee before heading up the hill.

Maybe I'm able to say this because it's summer, I don't have a job, and I don't actually have anything to do but work on my thesis. I guess I'll have to see how it goes once I get back to the "real" world...but I hope I can continue with The Public Transportation Mentality and my fondness for ceramic drinking vessels. Both seem healthier in a lot of ways (and also more fun).



*relative term. We can talk about how I never go hiking later.

Message for the toters

(my bag is the less sturdy version of this, but hey, you get the idea. from flickr)

I'm about to sound like a crotchety old man, but it's really true that times they are a-changin'. These days, you can't go anywhere without encountering "eco"-minded products. That magical prefix that seems to be stuck in front of everything from umbrellas to soap (and almost every other book in my favorite bookstores). I remember that a few years ago, I was very excited about this fact. I even bought a good number of those books.

But at this point my excitement has faded and I'm feeling the effects of information overload. I'm becoming jaded (and not exactly green...yeah, I'm sorry, had to do that one).

Anyway, one of my biggest turn-offs is tote bags that proclaim one's eco-friendliness. Seriously, why be so explicit? Can't you just use a regular tote bag? Or at least a more subtle one? Granted, lots of them are on the cutsier side and feature softer messages like "Recycle!" (which I sortof like) or "Green is the New Pink"(which I hate). And it's not like I don't like some of them. But some are downright aggressive (like this one, which angrily insists that you STOP USING PLASTIC BAGS).

I'm saying all this because I myself own an aggressive tote bag. I got it at EATALY, a heavenly place (well, a combination food/bookstore, which is basically my definition of heavenly) in Bologna. I have to confess, I only wanted it because it says Eataly on it, and I absolutely cannot resist wordplay like that. But along with the logo, I got a bag that says "Io non uso...borse di plastica."

This translates to "I don't use...plastic bags." Strangely placed ellipses aside, at first I was ambivalent about the message. But as I started actually using the bag I became self-conscious. I started feeling guilty after episodes of impulse shopping not only because I had yet again failed to go to a museum and was instead shopping, but because I was absent-mindedly accepting plastic bags for my purchases. Here I was, toting around a bag proclaiming that I don't use plastic bags, and there I was, stuffing a plastic bag into it hoping no one would notice. Big oops.

In the midst of my discomfort, I started thinking that maybe my aggressive, very blunt tote bag was working more on me than on passers by. Instead of simply being a billboard for airing a self-important eco-message to other people, mine was also modifying my own behavior. I felt like a total hypocrite, and not privately. I'm pretty sure there's some psychological study out there that indicates that people are quicker to change behavior when they're embarrassed, and if there isn't then I'll vouch for that conclusion based on my one-person study.

I'm not suggesting that we turn to embarrassment tactics to get environmental messages across, but my experience indicates to me that in order for change to happen, people have to find the motivation themselves. And that can be difficult in a green prefix-saturated world full of aggressive, self-righteous messages directed at other people. This is a problem my college environmental group has faced, with lots of people writing us off as assholes who are trying to tell them what to do.

Maybe the focus should be changing ourselves first. Maybe cultural change and reevaluation comes easier out of a group-learning approach...the "no one's perfect but we agree that things need to change, and dang it we're trying!" attitude. The working together approach.

Alright, I'll put my soapbox away. Which is actually a bag.

Bloggin' again

No matter how many blogs I start and ignore after four posts, there's something about the idea that keeps me coming back. Maybe it's the promise of bringing order to my thoughts (says the girl whose chosen method of organization is to pile things in heaps). Not that making piles is a bad way to organize: I know where everything in my room is. It's like sedimentary rock...

But the internet is a different story. With so much information zinging around (unlike the pile of clothes in my room, unless I can't find my flip flops), I find it hard to get a grasp on my thoughts.

Usually, these thoughts are about the environment. Okay, who am I kidding, often they are about leather boots. But other times they are about the planet and carbon dioxide and how guilty I feel about my leather boot obsession. I'm constantly bookmarking New York Times articles and "green your lifestyle" websites and trash experiment blogs. But where do my bookmarks go? Into my decidedly unorganized delicious account (who knew you could make a service like that unnavigable? Guess that's proof that you can't make piles on the internet...yet).

In any case, here I am. An oxymoron of an environmentalist who wants to save the planet but hates dirt and can't seem to take a shower in under 15 minutes. A person whose idea of the outdoors is her front patio (which is 85% paved, now that I think about it). This will be my attempt at keeping track of links, articles, websites, musings, rants, photos and maybe the occasional craft project. Here we go!