Climate Change and Depression? Kick it in the Butt with Peer Pressure

On the days I ride the bike to work, I pass a house with a big old Chevy diesel truck idling in the driveway. There's never anyone in it or near it. It's just sitting there burning fuel and polluting the air. I pass idling empty cars all over the place, but this one is remarkable in its consistency. Keep in mind, this is happening in July - not December.

Not this bike, but you get the idea

Sometimes I also see a pseudo-jet-powered bicycle buzzing down 47th Street. Some guy in town has strapped a 2-stroke leaf blower to the back of his old Huffy cruiser. He scoots by loudly and slowly in a cloud of blue smoke.

And I wonder about these two pollution factories. Do these people actively want to destroy life on Earth, do they just not give a damn, or do they not believe they're hurting anything?

And it depresses the tar out of me! It definitely negates any positivity created by my bicycling and composting and recycling and running around the house turning lights off.

Yes, I know where I live. I am in West Texas where it's guns and beef and diesel and God-sponsored politicians wealthy from oil and lobbyists. There is little room for a mesquite hugger here. And it gets really depressing. Combine that with consistently record-breaking weather and people running around everywhere killing each other - this is not a great season for joy.

So, this morning I found myself googling climate change depression. I found lots of stuff - lots of depressing stuff and Naomi Klein quotes. I also found an article, Depressed about Climate Change? Good. Here's How to Take Action, that offered some hopeful advice. I needed some hopeful advice.

The rest of the article offers a  great deal of insight into climate change inaction, but this paragraph really hit home. So, if you see me trying to use positive peer pressure on my social network, you'll know what I am trying to do. Does anyone know Jet Bikerson's Twitter handle?

May you influence positivity and not give in to depression!

Spur(ring) The Tiny(House)ness, Texas



Last week, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal ran another story on our local tiny-house-friendly town, Spur, Texas. [Blogger note: For those of you not familiar with Spur, they are the first town in the US to actively embrace and encourage the tiny house lifestyle.

 

 

They built it and the people are thundering in like a small herd of box turtles.] It was good to get caught up. I am sneaking in some photos garnered from the website.

Bright sun and a pumpjack, must be home.

Loving the skylights.

To be honest, I have been slacking in keeping up with goings-on in Spur; not from a lack of interest as much as a presence of way too many interests. After reading the AJ article, I popped over to spurfreedom.org and poked around for a while. My favorite part of that site is always the blog, and again it did not disappoint.
 

 

As life gets busier, more complicated, and more stressful here in the city, I see a great appeal in finding a way to live low-cost and low-profile in a place like Spur. I recommend reading the How to make friends and get along in Spur, TX blog post. They have a library, a community garden, and they are near hiking trails and a reservoir. Pretty tempting stuff.

 



Avalanche Journal: Follow-Up on Spur Tiny Houses

 

May you find the place that is just right for you, be it Spur or Bangladesh. Happy Monday, friends!

A Good(will) Surprise in Lubbock Recycling

Eddie Perez of Goodwill

 

Recycling. It's something we don't do terribly well in this part of Texas. So I get a little excited every time I learn about a way that recycling is going well here. I got a little excited today!

 

I went on a tour of the Goodwill Industries of Northwest Texas facility on 34th just east of I-27. There I learned that Goodwill has an electronic waste contract with Dell computers. Yes, there is an outlet for electronics recycling here in our dusty town! And there's no big procedure to it. If you donate unwanted, outdated, or non-working electronic equipment to Goodwill, they will try first to sell it in one of their stores or in their clearance store (the Pound Store), but if they don't sell it, they will package it up and send it to Dell to be dismantled and recycled. And that has me excited, but it does not stop there.

Goodwill also works at recycling all unsold materials. The tour took us through the salvage warehouse where they sort all unsold items. The metal items are sold to Jarvis Metal for recycling. Clothes and textiles (even stuffed animals) are baled, sold, and shipped to recyclers and resellers. Even shoes get the treatment. Eddie Perez explained to us that they work diligently at keeping donated items out of the landfill. He even spoke of finding new recycling opportunities such as CD's, DVD's, and X-rays. That's not to say that they are at 100% on recycling, but it's a world above what we normally see and they are striving to do better.

 

While there, we also had the opportunity to tour their document shredding facility. The bales of shredded paper are sent to secure facilities in the US to be turned into pulp and recycled. I was excited to learn that (walk-in) residential shredding is encouraged  (32¢ per pound) and they take unopened junk mail (they remove plastic windows and shred plastic credit cards and such). If you worried about it, they have provided an observation window to allow you to see your documents being shredded.

 

Yep, things are looking good for recycling at Goodwill and they do all of this while working at their Mission Statement: To Create Job Opportunities for People with Barriers To Employment. More recycling, more jobs, and a better quality of life for our town.

 

[MH sidebar: I need to head back to the Pound Store this weekend - I saw crutches and messenger bags there - the perfect ingredients for building the panniers from the MH post earlier this week. Such a great resource for us DIY upcyclers!]

 

It's a great day when you find out about great things going on around you. May you also learn great things about your neighbors.

 

 

 

 

Someone Wrote an Article About My Favorite Pass-time - Turtle Crossing!

In case it comes up in some deranged trivia game somewhere, my absolute favorite animal in West Texas is the common box turtle. And I am pretty darned fond of the red-eared slider. I am also fond of travelling the back roads where I sometimes run across these little RVs with legs. I always stop to help them across the road so they can avoid the RVs with wheels.

This particular red-eared slider did not care much for the old Mercedes, but it was excited to see Lake (Puddle) J.B. Thomas.

Imagine my joy today when I ran across an article on MNN instructing people in the proper ways to assist turtles in their road crossing!

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/how-did-the-turtle-cross-the-road-with-your-help

May you be a turtle's saving grace some day!

Bonus Link: The Common Box Turtle on Wikipedia

For You Lubbockites Who Are Concerned About Local Environmental Protection

The Lubbock Chapter of the West Texas Accountability Project meets tonight at the Red Zone Cafe, 3602 Slide Road, at 7pm.

More details on their FB page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/West-Texas-Accountability-Project-Lubbock-Chapter/425994047488560

May you stand up for that which you believe in.

Water Conservation DIY: Rain Barrel Plans and a Local Business

(To see the really cool interactive Nelson Minar map, click here.)

That beautiful, impressive, and downright depressing map shows rivers, streams, and watersheds in mainland USA. Notice that we are right in the center of one of the driest regions on the map. With clean, fresh water becoming one of the most valuable and crucial resources we have in the area (and with us being caught up in one of the most extensive droughts this region has known) it becomes more and more obvious that we have to be better stewards of the water available to us. (And I should probably sell my beloved canoe.)

So, here at Mesquite Hugger, we hope to encourage that stewardship by offering real-world approaches to conserving water. 

If you are blessed to have a roof over your head, you have a very effective tool for capturing moisture. Yes, I know that we do not get much rain, but when we do, a roof has a large amount of surface area to maximize water collection. As we approach spring, this is a great time to look at combining a rain barrel with a rain gutter so that you can take advantage of a free natural resource. (And you won't have as many pesky mud puddles in the backyard for your white greyhound to roll in.)

You know I love Instructables, so here is a link with lots of ideas for creating your own and implementing your own recycled rain barrel system.
Instructables Rain Barrels

You may be asking yourself, "Self, what about the local business he mentioned in the title? How is he going to tie that into saving water locally? Will he ever get to the !@#$% point?!!!"

It's time for you to meet Julie and Jason Hodges at Prairie Workshop. From their website:

Prairie Workshop LLC is a woman-owned professional services firm specializing in the fields of Landscape Architecture, Heritage Planning and Environmental Education.  We partner with respected clients and colleagues to design, plan and promote the development, stewardship and education of landscape values that represent a sustainable natural and cultural heritage.

What this means to this article, is that they can help you landscape your yard in a way that saves water, promotes local heritage and local fauna, and they can help you to learn ways to take better care of the world around you.

And if you would like to see Jason speak and learn about conserving water in our region, get yourself up to Amarillo to attend the Texas Panhandle South Plains Water Conservation Symposium on February 12th.

May your rain barrel fill with water and your heart fill with the joy of taking care of us all.

FM 1269: Fluvanna

If you have never headed north out of Fluvanna, Texas on FM 1269, then you are missing out on one of the most spectacular views in all of West Texas. Words and smartphone photos are inadequate to describe what you will see.

If you leave Lubbock on Highway 84 heading southeast, you will head through Slaton, Southland, Post, Snyder….and you will eventually hit I-20 which will you speed you on your way to Dallas. Because everyone wants to or has to go to Dallas.

Tucked between Post and Snyder is a little place called Justiceburg. Justiceburg, for me, is a wonderful place. The Caprock, the train tracks, Fort Justice, the Salt Fork of the Brazos, the red clay, Lake Allan Henry, the herd of pronghorn antelope, and all those huge wind turbines up on the Caprock all surround Justiceburg. Fluvanna is just a few short miles away from Justiceburg.

FM1269 runs mostly north/south through Fluvanna. The wind farm is just north of town on that road and the top of the Caprock is a pretty amazing place. The view is breathtaking, the windfarm is also something to see (and hear). At the base of the windmills you will often see a herd of deer that know they live in area where they will not be hunted.

If you head south from Fluvanna on 1269, you will see a different world. Pump jacks, drilling rigs, and ponds set up for hydraulic fracturing (tracking) water supplies dominate the landscape.

I remember an annoying country song a few years ago called "God Blessed Texas". North of Fluvanna on 1269, I believe it. South of Fluvanna, not so much.

May the sun, the wind, and the rain power your future.

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For you tiny house fanatics out there

(Notice that I snuck in a gratuitous vintage scooter shot here. Somebody get that guy a helmet - and some arms!)

We are resurrecting an old house for my mother and brothers after last week's fire, and it has me thinking again about tiny houses. The house we are re-building is actually three tiny houses tied together. (These tiny houses were called lake cabins when they were originally built.) Keith, Grizz, Swartz and I had great fun installing roofing, sheetrock, flooring and lots of other wonderful stuff on a building that was originally 14' x 20'.

I have mentioned Derek Markham's writing before and thought this would be a great time to share his website that has all kinds of great tiny house resources. Enjoy!

Derek Markham's Tiny House Site

By the way, how cool would it be to introduce yourself as, "I am Joe Smith, builder of tiny houses"?

May your house be Goldilocksian - just right!