Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Family and Life

Living in Santa Cruz for just a few weeks. Getting back into 'the good life' (family, Californian wine, running, yoga-ing, the ocean, Steve, the trials and tribulations of a privileged liberal community), and trying to be awake to what the universe has to teach me in my life in this moment, right now. Being reminded of what was important, what is important, what should be important.

Gun violence makes me so angry. The Keystone pipeline (remember I've been in Africa for 2 years so some stuff that is tired for you is still new to me). WTF? I read a little thing in the May 27, 2013 New Yorker (did I list reading The New Yorker up there in my definition of the good life? Well, please consider it edited in) about the terrible Keystone pipeline and for me it all boils down to one simple question:

how much oil would I personally have to commit not to use in the next year in order for Obama to say 'hell no!' to the pipeline?

It seems like a pretty 'simple' math problem to me (economist and math friends, help a sister out here). How much (of the worst kind of) oil would the pipeline bring us? Divide that by the number of Americans (or number of adult Americans? or number of car-owning Americans?) to figure out what each of our personal liability is. I'm thinking it wouldn't be all that much. Like, we each commit to make one less car trip a week. To ride our bike more.

Let's save the environment and our own hearts, let's bike!!

...I've definitely been hanging out with community college bike co-op-erators a lot lately, but too much? Nah, can you have too much of a good thing?

But seriously, let's kick this addiction to oil, be it foreign, domestic, north American, or whatever. Oll is oll, no matter where it comes from. And let's stop this gun violence. And let's make the world a better place. For everyone. White, black, rich, poor, American, African, otherwise. It seems like a lot, and it is overwhelming, but the day we get numb to it all and stop caring, that's a scary day indeed.

Santa Cruz summer to-do list:

  • Bigfoot museum
  • ride bikes downtown
  • Lean In book club
  • medieval feast
  • Africa presentations
  • see Steve multiple times per week
  • find trivia
  • Shakespeare Santa Cruz
  • LA trip?
  • run
  • yoga
  • read
  • read some more