Complicated Schmomplicated

I volunteer for four organizations: the Women's Foundation of Colorado, Smart-Girl, Denver Kids, and the Women'sVision Foundation. I love it. It's a lot of work, but it's the right kind of work. The kind that makes me feel like I make a difference in the world. Like I'm using my skills in a meaningful way. I'm meant to do it. It's a core part of my being.

And the funny thing is, the more I do it, the more of those "Aha!" moments I have--the moments where I see how one concept relates to another, understand how important a new idea is, or see why it was so serendipitous that I introduced those two people to each other. When I explained this to a friend, he said those kinds of realizations seem to make things more complicated for him. And that's when I realized that I live for those moments. To me, "complicated" means interesting, challenging, and stimulating. The more complicated, the better.

My life is rich with complications.

How Do You Cycle?

Today I paid 75 cents more to buy a used book than I could have paid to buy the same book brand new. One less new book purchased is less raw materials and energy used to produce it. What would have been better is if I had shopped at the local used bookstore and found a copy there. That way, the carbon footprint would have been smaller because the book wouldn't have to be shipped to me. I'd also be supporting the local economy with my purchase and the 12.2% sales tax rate I pay for the privilege of buying goods in my town.

I'm also starting to keep non-recyclable plastic bottle lids. I know I'll be able to figure out a way to make them into cool jewelry if I put some creative energy into it. This is known as upcycling--taking something that would otherwise be thrown away and giving it new life.

We took our old electronic equipment to be harvested for parts instead of dumping it. We paid a small fee.

I made a bulletin board out of old champagne corks.

I recycle every scrap of paper, cardboard, and paperboard along with the plastics and glass that my recycle company will take. I'm considering starting to collect the plastics they won't take so that we can drop them off at a recycling plant where they're a little more enlightened.

A friend uses a dry-erase board rather than paper to take notes for something that he needs to remember only temporarily. This is an example of a practice known as precycling--figuring out how to do something differently so that you don't unnecessarily waste a resource in the first place.

Another friend is going to put a flagstone patio in her back yard. She listed her grass on Freecycle.com, and within a week, a guy came to cut her 100 square feet of sod and take it away. She got her flagstones from another friend who had taken out his patio.

What ideas and practices have you incorporated into your life that contribute to sustainability?

Everyone's a Poet

Gary and I celebrated our fifteenth wedding anniversary this year with a poetry date at Bear Creek Lake Park. We ate a gourmet picnic lunch, read poetry, and went for a walk on one of the many trails. Listening to the birds and cicadas was heaven.

One of the books I had checked out from the library was Pizza, Pigs, and Poetry: How to Write a Poem, an entertaining book written by our nation's first Children's Poet Laureate, Jack Prelutsky. Not only did I laugh out loud a few times, I got so tickled I snorted. Perhaps the pigs in the poems had an effect on me.

Mr. Prelutsky has lots of good advice about how to write poetry, even if you're not part of his target audience. Though I've heard it before, it stuck with me this time: Write what you know.

it's still summer

the rain comes

nights are cool, cooler

than the weeks before

the air is chill

with wet

I shiver

anticipating fall and

slipping a sweater

over my head

smelling woodsmoke and

damp leaves