A Pain In the Back

Green is back. Well, technically it’s been back “in” for a while now. And this time around it seems more real than prior events where we collectively cared about pollution and energy consumption.

The new term “carbon footprint” is now becoming a more common feature used to describe how severe something is to the environment. There’s even a website where you can calculate your carbon footprint.

We are doing a number of things around our house to conserve energy and reduce waste, which should help our carbon footprint numbers. Here’s our list;

- Compost kitchen scraps and yard waste (worms love it)
- Grow our own vegetables (people love it)
- Use compact floresent lightbulbs everywhere possible
- Use a programmable therostat
- Ride our bikes to the store
- Re-use grocery plastic bags
- Curb recycling for glass, metal and paper products
- Eat less at resturants (including a ban on fast food)

I read an article the other day about someone who’s advocating that we all stop using electricity for one hour on July 1, 2007. The movement is called One Hour No Power. They have a dedicated blog and places set up in You Tube, MySpace and FaceBook. He’s got lots of people signing up to support the one-hour black out. Take a look at the blog and tell your friends about it.

How are you working to reduce your carbon footprint?

Even animals do stupid things that result in lower back injuries. We found this chipmunk stuck in our bird feeder the other day. After some pushing and tugging we got him out. A couple of Motrin and he’ll be fine. We got some rough video of the struggle as well (very rough!).

April 23, 2009 Update: What I did not know is that my kids continued shooting video of the trapped chipmunk. I just found this video while transferring files from an old computer to a new one. You can see in this video the chippy’s face as he tries and succeeds on getting unstuck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtmLuOTv1_4

Now that is really something!

It seems everyone has a back story to tell. Over the memorial day weekend I talked with two people who were recovering from lower back problems. One of them was really in bad shape last winter and is now recovering from a major operation to fuse vertebrae. She and I got to talking about how to best manage day to day activities. It was interesting listening to her describe how she manages things around the house and yard. But it was also clear that she still had a preoccupation with household duties like cleaning, gardening, trimming trees, etc. Even with her recent major, life altering surgery, she still is interested in maintaining the lifestyle she had previously.

It’s the mind that causes people to continually injure themselves. People get possessed with cleaning and making order out of chaos. From those pesky weeds poking through the flower garden to the boxes cluttering the garage, we just can’t seem to let things go and ignore them. We have to move, rearrange, update, scrub, clean until we cannot.

For many people it takes real power and real discipline to ignore the disorder in life. And many people just cannot ignore the calling. You’d think people who, like myself, have gone through extended episodes of incredible lower back pain would learn to behave. It’s just not that easy.

Are you one of those people who has to make order out of everything? Or are you capable of just walking by?