“Do you want to have children?”

It’s a question that’s raised fairly often in discussions at my age. I’m almost thirty, unmarried, and have never expressed a deep sentiment for children either way. But, when I read editorials like Paul Krugman’s Betraying The Planet, in today’s NY Times, the answer is – in no uncertain terms, “Absolutely not”. And, on top of it, I need an explanation from new parents as to how they were able to face down the science that is readily available to us all – the science that paints a scorching picture of our planet’s future and whose looming deadline seems to creep ever closer – and make a conscious decision to people this planet with more innocents – innocents who, from day one, are also consumers. (Note: I am not trying to make a judgment, I truly want to know how.)

I want to know, as I look down the row of computers to my left – each one populated by mothers and fathers – how they can spend 8-10 hours a day making money instead of making this planet a safer, healthier place for their children to inherit. I want to know what they do in their off-time, their real-world lives to ensure that their children won’t die young in an insane heat wave or enlist in the military in order to fight a war over access to clean drinking water. In short, as someone who has made a conscious decision to add more beings to an already overpopulated planet, how is it possible to do anything without weighing the impact it will eventually have on the planet that your bloodline inherits?

Yes, I desire a family. I desire to inculcate a little person with everything I have learned in my years of trial and error and adventure. I desire cute baby clothes, hearing Mama for the first time, and height charts on the wall. But, who do I desire these things for? Do I feel there is a soul somewhere floating in the ether saying, “Please birth me onto Planet Earth! There’s nowhere else I’d rather be!” Hell no! That’s ridiculous to think that. I want all that stuff solely for selfish reasons. I want to experience my pregnancy. I want a child to strengthen the bond between my future husband and me. I want that child to care for me when I am elderly.

But, what do I want for the child? I want my child to live an enlightened, peaceful life. I want my child to experience the beauty of the natural world. I want my child to know, live, create, and share love. I want an Indigo Child. And I want a world that will match my child’s beauty and purity. But, in order for that to happen, I need to be creating that world in every step I take every day that I live.

So, that is my last question to new parents and parents-to-be. Is that what you’re doing? Are you conscious of how every decision – whether minute or major – is part of the foot print you leave on a planet you ultimately bequeath to your children? Do you use that awareness to lighten that footprint until it’s almost invisible? And if not, at this point, how in the world could you possibly do anything different?

(Note 2: Although the tone of this piece sounds self-righteous at points, please know I am asking myself these very same questions and hoping if anyone reading has found answers that work for them, that they share them with me. - Julie)

Give The Cheap Seats a Chance!

Yesterday, I went to see Anvil: The Story of Anvil at the Regency Fairfax. This retro theater in the center of LA offers a $5 matinee price for all shows before 6:00. I remember when it was $3, then $4. Even at five, this is the cheapest show in town. So, here’s the mysterious thing. Hardly anyone is ever there! It was ironic to be watching a documentary about a band who fears performing for pathetically tiny crowds in a theater with two patrons.

Once I got into the theatre, realized there was only one other person besides myself, and began contemplating how much money this for-profit establishment was losing on the screening of this film, I rushed back out to the lobby during previews and bought myself a popcorn, handing at least $4 of straight profit over to management. The popcorn was stale, of course, being there had been no one else to eat it all afternoon.

So, I would like to take this opportunity to ask everyone to patronize their local discount theaters! Please! Before they are gone and we are forced to see films like Anvil or Every Little Step at the Nuart or the Arclight for $14.50 or to wait for them to come out on DVD. These little cheap seats are there to reward you for your patience by slashing prices and making movie-going affordable again! Sure, the air-conditioning is out in theater 2 and the girl loading the projector is also getting your popcorn, but you can see three second-run movies for the price of one first-run release here!

So, what’s keeping you? Take advantage while you can!

I’ll be there again for The New Twenty on Friday night if you want to join me!

If Sidewalks Could Sprout Leaves

I remember reading in 2003 that future wars would be fought over access to clean water. Ever since then, I have been highly conscious of my water usage. If I’m over at your house and you walk away from the sink to grab something out of the refrigerator and leave the water running, I will jump up from the table and shut it off. Or, if I don’t know you that well, I will cringe on the inside and you will lose major points.

The other day, I returned to a neighborhood where I used to live and when I waved to an old neighbor in his yard, he dropped his water hose on the ground, still running full blast, and came over to engage me in a conversation. I couldn’t focus on anything he was saying, as all my attention was drawn to the gallons of water spewing forth onto his cement walkway. I quickly excused myself so that he could get back to what he was doing (watering non-drought tolerant rose bushes).

This encounter, in conjunction with the malfunctioning sprinkler across the street that erupts like Old Faithful onto the sidewalk every morning at 5:00 am, gave me an idea for a grassroots website. www.WaterWasteWatch.com is a place where residents of LA can post reports and photos of local water squanderers and cite their physical address. Visitors to the website are encouraged to then send a polite, concise letter to the offender asking them to fix the problem. Templates are included on the website in order to encourage a consistent message and friendly tone. The website also acts as a resource for the recipient of the letter, where he/she can find assistance in taking action to correct the water misuse problem.

I was all ready to give the idea a go when I visited LADWP.com and saw that they have a Water Conservation Team already in place! I was thrilled. Mission accomplished. Move on to next task. You can either call 1-800-LADWP or you can send an e-mail to waterconservationteam@ladwp.com and make your report. Apparently, they then follow up on these cases, issuing warnings and eventually tickets. They are also proactive about catching water wasters and drive around in a “clearly marked Prius” on the lookout for those breaking the law.

It has been six days since I reported the gushing geyser across the street. It’s still going off. I’m not discouraged. It’s only been four business days and the house is currently uninhabited and undergoing intermittent remodeling. But, I have to wonder…if www.WaterWasteWatch.com existed and I had posted photos and a report there (assuming I had done sufficient work to promote the website), would the owner (also assuming he has mail forwarded from this address or checks it frequently) have already received a small stack of letters encouraging him to make a change for everyone’s sake? Would he have been moved by the peer pressure and made a trip to the house over the weekend to turn the sprinkler system off? Perhaps.

There is another seriously malfunctioning sprinkler system on my street (oh, if driveways too could sprout leaves!) and I will send that report in. If I see that neither of these matters are resolved by the time the summer heat – and inevitable drought – sets in, then expect to see Water Waste Watch go live. And expect some water conservation, grass roots style!

Here's to holding everyone, including ourselves, accountable.

The Keyhole in the Laundromat

Who knows why early childhood memories broadside us at completely random moments? Who knows what jostles the small pocket that houses them just before the minute details of light, color and texture spill out and reconstruct themselves before our mind’s eye?

Today, I was sending an e-mail out at work (something about information technology and outsourcing) and without a moment’s notice, I was six years old at the Laundromat on Main Street , peeping through a keyhole into the apartment in the rear of the store. I have no idea the last time this memory surfaced or, honestly, if it ever has since then, but the emotional clarity that accompanied it was surprisingly sharp.

The Laundromat was in Almena, Wisconsin, population 456. It is where I was born and where I would spend the weekend with my dad after my parents were divorced. My dad didn’t have a washing machine, owing to the fact that he had no running water in his dilapidated home. So, every now and then, we would drive the block and a half up Main Street, past the bar, the post office, and the “supper club” (In those days I viewed this as the fancy place to eat, but if I were to see photos of it today, I would probably shudder at the sight.) to the Laundromat.

While waiting for the clothes to finish, surely I got bored and I think my dad even left me alone once in a while when he went to retrieve his mail from a post office box. I would wander towards a door set in the center of the rear wall, tucked back in a small alcove between soap dispensing machines and hard plastic chairs. In my memory, it’s a thick, glass door with curtains on the reverse side. This is where the elderly owners of the Laundromat lived, although I don’t remember ever actually seeing them. I would get my eye right up to the keyhole – the old-fashioned kind that afforded the peeper a moderately decent view – and I would look inside. What I remember most is the light – filtered and dusty – as if the shades were permanently closed. I remember faded greens and a hint of mauve. I remember heavily textured synthetic fabrics. It was like a museum. A room of steadfast relics, void of movement with an almost dollhouse-like quality. A place very unlike my father’s house.

I think of what I would do as a parent if I found my child peeping into someone’s home through the keyhole. I imagine I would tell them to stop immediately and teach them a lesson about personal privacy. That, to me, seems appropriate. But, how could I ever know what I was robbing them of in doing this? How could I know that I was dispossessing them of a mysterious, magical flashback twenty years down the road on a day when they need it most.

It’s amazing to ponder this collection of moments. The keyhole at the Laundromat segues into playing 301 with my dad at the bar next door, drinking Shirley Temples and playing Rosanne Cash’s Tennessee Flat Top Box over and over again on the jukebox. These images, however convoluted or gussied up they’ve become over time, are our histories and when they pop up and give us a jolt like mine did this morning, I know it’s a signal that the time has come for me to tell that part of my story, lest I let it slip away and it chooses not to return to me again in this lifetime. How many moments have already done this? How many memories will not return again before our last day on earth? A great many, I suppose. There’s only room for so many thoughts in our heads. But, as long as they choose to surprise me here and there, root me, and make me grateful for the path I have traveled, then I will honor them by putting the words, as best I can, down on paper.

Here's to telling your story.

See, Mom! Look What I Can Save!

I am a self-professed thrift-store junkie. Spotting a good buy gets my heart racing. I will dig, sift, climb, and linger until I feel confident that I have seen every last item and pondered its each and every use before I leave the store. Some days (but not often) I leave empty-handed and some days I leave utterly triumphant. Yesterday was one of the latter. I went to my favorite Goodwill in search of brown heels, because my dog had snacked on mine all day while I was at work. I left the store without the heels, but in possession of a few unexpected treasures that thoroughly thrilled me.

I cycle to work, so I love knickers. I also love them because almost no one wears them and that makes them even more unique. Knickers are not to be confused with Capri pants (gag). They are shorter and often cuffed at the bottom. Yesterday, I saw a beautiful textured fabric poking out of the overstuffed pants rack, reached in to pull it out and found I was holding a pair of Louis Verdad knickers in my hand, tags still on, with a heart-stopping price of $374. In my size!

I moved over to the jeans rack and quickly flipped through the Express denim, the tapered Levi’s, the bell cuts with frayed bottoms until my fingers felt the luxurious denim of a brand new pair (again, tags still attached) of Karl Lagerfeld Slim Fit jeans. My size, to the inch!

I went to the dressing room and both pairs fit beautifully! The Lagerfelds, aside from possibly being the sexiest pair of jeans I have ever worn, were designed to be worn with high heels (or by a woman measuring 5’10” or taller), so I made my way to the shoe rack where I found an ever so gently worn pair of red Via Spiga heels that looked killer with them.

When I was trying on shoes there was a gentleman who had started conversing with me (there definitely are those types who treat Goodwills like community centers). He said, “Now certainly you could find a man who would be willing to buy you a nice, new pair of shoes.” I appreciated his sentient, but explained that besides the fact that I’m not chasing anyone’s money and the fact that I could buy myself a nice new pair of shoes, this is fun for me. Whenever I need something, my immediate reaction is “time to go to the thrift store”. It hasn’t been “time to go to the mall” since high school.

So here are the calculations I came up with.

Retail Values:

Louis Verdad Couture Knickers: $374
Karl Lagerfeld Slim Fit Jeans: $220
Via Spiga Heels: $150 (price adjusted down $40 b/c they are not BRAND new)

TOTAL: $744

Goodwill Prices:

Louis Verdad Couture Knickers: $6.99
Karl Lagerfeld Slim Fit Jeans: $9.99
Via Spiga Heels: $9.99

TOTAL: $26.97

I saved: $717.03

And I was out of the store within 30 minutes.

From my friends who don’t thrift shop, I usually hear that they don’t have the patience to sift through the junk to find the gems. But, if saving over $700 in less than thirty minutes isn’t a good argument for giving it a shot, then I don’t know what is. Which, I’m totally cool with because then, as they say, more for me!

Yeah, You Wish You Could Consume Like Us!

The traders in the room next to me are tuned in to Fox news for nine straight hours every day. They also fancy themselves sideline commentators, which makes it quite obvious to the casual observer that they are not President Obama’s biggest supporters. One woman actually called him Osama, because she “seriously couldn’t remember his name!” (…sigh for humanity…)

This morning, Fox was airing a clip of the president’s most recent speech where he stated (paraphrased from memory) “Americans, no matter how green you say you are, you still are consuming more resources than an average Indian citizen on a daily basis”. To which, one of the traders replied, “I’d like to hear from one of them [Indians] who wouldn’t trade places with one of us in a heartbeat.”

I rolled my eyes and my heart sank, because aside from the fact that he was missing President Obama’s point entirely, which I take to have been a reevaluation of what we truly need to get by in an age of dwindling resources, he was making an arrogant, and too common, assumption that everyone wants to be an American. Still.

I don’t feel the need to overanalyze his statement, and I recognize that we are blessed in many ways to live in this country, but the belief that America is the greatest country in the world is fading like a cut flower sipping at the last drops of water in its vase. And the fact that one of my fellow Americans would dodge the accountability inherent in Obama’s statement and opt for a rebuttal laden with such cocky entitlement is what worries me most about the fate of our nation.

Hitting the Road on the Van's Maiden Voyage

Origin: Hankook Park

Destination: Charmlee County Park, Malibu Creek State Park, and Topanga Canyon

Soundtrack: Fleet Foxes, Zero7, Speedsquare, Camera Obscura, and Midlake

Reading Material: Bohemian Manifesto and a November 2008 issue of Rolling Stone

This weekend marked my inaugural voyage with my 1980 Volkswagen Vanagon. It was not only the first time I took her on the freeway, but also the first time I exposed her to any sort of hill – something that I learned is quite a challenge for her. But, overall, she performed beautifully and unfolded her personality to me over the course of the two days.

The first leg of the journey was making my way to the coast (with my roommate and one of my adventure partners, Erik) via highway 10. Up to this point, I don’t think I’d driven her faster than 40 miles per hour. I was, to say the least, shocked to hear the sound she makes at about 55 when there is any kind of cross wind. It is an incredibly loud beating/thumping noise coming from the front end. Since the engine is housed in the rear, the only conclusion we could come up with is that it is a purely wind related phenomenon. It’s not something I am terribly worried about, but would like to get to the bottom of nonetheless, as it is not a pleasant thing to listen to as you’re cruising down the freeway.

Once on the PCH, we drove alongside another VW Van, more of the Samba bus style, and I shared my first VW bus owner to VW bus owner salute. There were a number of these that followed over the course of the weekend and each was a nice affirmation of my choice of vehicle. Driving up Highway 1 was glorious. The weather was indisputably perfect and our sound system was bumpin’! Zero7 was singing:

So you crash and you burn
Sometimes the road will twist and turn
Some of this, less of that
Forget all about the map, California Roads

Cash it in and throw it all away
Never needed any of it anyway

We arrived at Charmlee just in time for a sunset hike. This time of year, everything is so lush that comparisons to Ireland and Hawaii are unavoidable. Charmlee has unbeatable views of the Pacific, expansive meadows, and lots of rocks and trees where you could tuck yourself away and die to the rest of the world for a while.

We finished just after the sun had dropped behind the mountains and headed back out on the road, going deeper into the canyon. We popped Speedsquare in the stereo and started jamming until – “What? Erik, what’s going on? My gas pedal’s not working. I’m not getting any power!” Our immediate decision was to turn the van around and head back to the coast, which is a 3.5 mile downhill ride. And a good decision it was as we had no cell phone reception in the canyon and because my engine almost immediately cut out. We coasted down with no power brakes and all the lights on my dashboard glowing an ominous red until we reached Hwy 1 and were grateful to find a small, Vanagon sized pull off right before the stop sign. My heart was racing the entire ride down and I had a nagging fear that the brakes were going to fail and send us into the ocean.

Turns out, we just ran out of gas. We found that out when the tow truck arrived two hours later, gave her a couple gallons, and she started right up. It’s actually pretty easy to run out of gas when your gas gauge is inoperable and you have no idea how much gas was in the tank when you bought the vehicle. I thought it was almost full upon taking possession but in reality, it was nearly empty. Now I know! And the problem of the gas gauge is fixable. I just need to order some small parts from the VW dealer.

We filled up at the next gas station and made it, tired but grateful, to Topanga Canyon. We camped on an overlook across the street from a friend’s cottage where we were able to cook a late dinner that we practically fell asleep over and wash up before retiring to the van. We didn’t experience a restful night’s sleep, likely because we were parked on a slope and were too tired to move a bunch of crap off the bed and sleep the right way. Lesson learned.

The next day was breakfast at Pat’s, a Topanga hideaway with live music and almost as many dogs as people on the patio. We read from Bohemian Manifesto and filled ourselves with coffee in preparation for our hike in Malibu Creek.

This day was the big incline test for the van. I think many people I know would go mildly insane driving her up a hill, but I tried to experience the slowness as a form of meditation on the phrase “It’s about the journey, not the destination”. I think I am going to have a decal of that applied to my windshield just to remind myself anytime I’m thinking I should have bought that little 2002 VW Cabrio Convertible I was eyeing before I set my sights on Miss Vanagon. She frequently tops out at 35 mph on steep inclines, even in 2nd gear.

Most importantly, however, she got us to our destination for the day - Malibu Creek State Park. This place not only draws the aforementioned comparisons, but also evokes images of the Norwegian fjords because of its dramatic green cliffs. We meandered creekside and inhaled deeply to soak up the negative ions, scrambled up the side of a dam, and squeezed through steep rock formations. We invented outrageous stories to explain Penny’s presence in a park where no dogs are allowed.

The weekend was coming to a close. We dropped our friend off at his place and headed back to LA proper. With less cross winds on the way home, she only thumped a little on the freeway heading eastward. We decided to exit Western Avenue, just to experience the stark contrast of where we had been and where we were returning to. We passed Happy Time Book Store, Korea Underwear Discount Center, and Young Dong Café.

And before we knew it, I was backing the van into our driveway in the fabulous enclave of Hankook Park. We thanked her and patted her on the dashboard – she has no name yet, by the way - and set about unpacking. It was a great initial trip and after a few cranks of a wrench and replacing of this and that, the next one should be even better.