The Smart Woman's Guide to Loving Her Home

I spent $4 to recapture a memory from age 22. As a senior at Smith College, we were all invited down to the college green house to collect ivy plants in tiny pots. I'm not sure if a Seven Sister College is part of the Ivy League to outsiders, but inside of Smith the ivy plant is a strong symbol of our identity. 

I bought my $3 ivy plant at my town's Wal-mart. After drooling over the pretty glazed pots, I decided that our household budget would permit me only the 77 cent clay pot. As I checked out, I'm always surprised with the cheapest option is often the more beautiful option.

Ivy is the plant of marriage. The cords of ivy symbolize the cords of friendship and love that bind a couple together. I put my ivy plant in our bedroom window.

Marriage and the physical structure of a home functions like a green house. The lifetime commitment creates a safe interior structure that allows things to grow easily inside. As a wife and mother, I'm conscious of the daily growth that happens for my children and my husband. However, I don't always remember to "put myself into the equation." Marriage is relationship that is meant to help me grow into my "best self", too.

This week I moved my writing desk into our bedroom which has a locked door. I put an ivy plant in our bedroom window. Last night I sat in my tiny backyard in a folding chair and looked at the stars with my husband.  When I turned around, I could see my four inch ivy plant from the second story window.

Someday, I hope my book gets finished. I hope my blog gains many readers. I hope I get many chances to work for clean water and better care of our environment. For now, I'm grateful for the small spike of promise. I feel a peacefulness inside my home and inside my life. I'm only sorry now that I undervalued this avenue towards self-confidence and self-expression for so many decades.

It's So Easy Being Green

After five years of living in the same house, I finally met the man who drives the recycling truck in my West Virginian town of 17,000. It's been six months since I read Pope Francis encyclical on the environment, Laudato si' with my parish priest. I've run 3 environmental conferences since that night, given six public talks, and enjoyed warm hugs from members of the Sierra Club.

It still took me 5 years to get my act together enough to put our our glass jars and aluminum cans on our front sidewalk on the right day of the month. 

"I'm too busy" was the excuse inside my head. In my defense, we do have 3 kids under age 6 and kitchen space is a premium inside our tiny 1950 cape cod that currently sleeps 8. 

Yet there were jobs that I wanted to do to save the environment, and there were jobs that I didn't want to do. I was picking and choosing my role. I'd buy LED lightbulbs. I'd happily talk to Appalachian geologists on the phone for hours. But I didn't want to stand still and wash icky glass spaghetti jars for hours in my kitchen. 

Along comes Pope Francis, with his gentle leadership, and he insists that being a good manager of the earth's resources is an essential part of being a good Christian. It wasn't enough that cook dinner for my family every night. I needed to be responsible for the our trash also. 

So I stepped out in my good resolutions and ran into a confusing loophole of poor public information. Have you ever read Joseph Heller's Catch-22? Read it. If your community has clear recycling rules, then they still have other environmental regs that are a mess. Maybe its unclear how to dispose of cellphone batteries or test for lead in your kitchen faucet or figure out the daily electrical needs of your old water heater. Somehow when science and law get mixed together, pandamona can ensue. 

Then one day, I put out the recyclables out on the curb on the right day of a 14 day period. The recycling truck stoped at my house at 10 AM and an elderly man got out. He stopped at our curb and stared at the two boxes in front of him. 

I stopped teaching school and walked out the front door. "Did I do it wrong?" I called out from our steps. 

The man's grimace turned into a true Southern Smile. "Yes, but I'll fix it for you." 

"No, wait a second,"I sait as he picked up the box and turned away from me.  "Can you take a moment and explain how it is supposed to be? I can do it better next time." 

I stood on my cold sidewalk in my bare feet and I learned how my specific community wants to have their recyclables sorted. It wasn't how I did it in Gaithersburg, MD. It wasn't how I did it in Madison, WI. The man told me things that didn't show up clearly on any public info brochure that I'd picked up in City Hall.

My city had a method. I had to learn it.

It turns out it's so easy being green. It only takes humility.  

The Oscars: Reflections from a Moviegoer

The Oscars make me realize how rare it is for people to actually talk about the content of movies. Normal Oscar chatter tends to be about the dresses actresses wear, or what someone says in an acceptance speech. The core value is the recognition of great talent that we have in film making today. 

Brie Larson won Best Support Actress for Room. Honestly, as a Mom to 4 daughters, I'm not sure if I'm ever going to have the guts to sit through this movie.  I recently watched Larson in Short Term 12, which is a film on Netflix. Larson is an incredible force in this film as a caring supervisor to at risk teens in a long term foster care setting. This is a film which every parent should see because it talks about the power of "presence" even when a young person faces severe challenges in life. If you have any reservations about seeing Room, go check out Larson's work in Short Term 12.  Let's hope this brilliant actress gets lots of good roles in the future.

Leonardo DiCaprio won for Best Actor in The Revenant, which is honestly another movie I will probably not see. Yet I'm happy Leo got recognized for his talent. An interesting backstory that's being talked about in Washington, D.C. is that the original novelist, who created this entire concept in 2002, wrote this book in his spare time while working as a lawyer. Michael Punke came early to work to type his novel in a quiet law office.  He quit his legal job, took a job as a professor in Missolu, Montana. He planned to spend the rest of his life writing, teaching and fishing. Then he was offered a "dream job" as a deputy U.S. Trade representative and ambassador to the World Trade Organization. Due to Federal Ethics regulations, he can't participate in any of the hype surrounding the movie. It's commonly accepted around town, "Oh, that's ironic! But he made the better deal by working for the WTO."  I'd just like to say, I wish the guy had written more stories!  Even if frontier survivor stories aren't my genre, the guy has talent. I think DC has a lot of people who can talk wonk policy on the WTO, but there are not a lot of writers who could help get DiCaprio his first Oscar.

A movie that I want to see is the short film Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness by fellow Smith graduate, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. This film will premier on Monday, March 7 at 9:00 on HBO. (I don't have HBO. Does anyone one to tape it for me?) This film is about honor killings in Pakistan. Over 1,000 women are murdered each year. This documentary film traces the life of one of the few survivors.

What are the films that you want to see after watching the Oscar results last night?