Willimantic, Now & Then
Now, I am not really a numbers person. I have, however, been scratching away on my scrap of paper and the numbers are impressive. What do our life-style choices really save us?
Working locally, Sarah and I drove less than 4,000 miles the last year we kept track of it. That was a year when we went to several out of state shows to sell our things. That's about 200 gallons of gas, even in our big van, maybe half what we would use commuting to Hartford, even in a very efficient vehicle.
By Mark Svetz
WILLIMANTIC –June 2010
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Make it, Mend it,Wear it Out;
Make Do, or Do Without!
Some years ago I was talking to a friend about work and looking for jobs. As we shared experiences, he told me one of his “jobs” was gathering wood to heat his home. He spoke of the wood he found in terms of earnings for his family.
I remember thinking that was a novel way of looking at it. Certainly, he could have spent more of his time working for wages, but then he would have had to spend $100 or $200 a month to heat his home.
My friend was self-employed at the time, which made the transition from working for someone else and working for his family almost seamless. He could go and do a job for $200 or he could cut up, load and haul $200 worth of firewood. Either way, his household was $200 richer for his day’s work.
I have always tried to arrange my life so that I could support myself in a way that is consistent with how I want to live. For me that meant working locally, doing something I could be proud of, with people I like and respect. That’s not too much to ask, but it has lead to certain choices over the years. Wages have not always been my first priority.
I have always found those choices carried savings that balanced out the lower earnings in an almost poetic way. Working locally meant I could get along just fine with an old car – or no car. If the old clunker I was driving didn’t start some winter morning, I could always walk to work. In fact, I have usually walked to work anyway.
Sarah and I have been talking about this idea lately. We both agree it is better for the Earth, better for us, better for our community to need less, rather than make more. And that can be calculated in many different ways, all of which brings to mind the words from an old song: “Make it, mend it, wear it out; make do or do without.”
But all of this is not just about reducing our carbon footprint, although that is something we think about all the time. All of us in the modern industrial world over consume. Never mind how much we drive, simply owning a car, a ton and a half of metal, glass and rubber, is too much. All the material in our car had to be extracted from the earth in a process that is often destructive, not only of the Earth, but of cultures and lives simply because they happen to be near these resources.
11:9TipiLiving
The added benefit of this position is that often when we save money, we are also saving the Earth from so much of the damage we humans do, reducing our “carbon footprint,” if you will. Save money; save the planet; work less; have more fun. Sounds like a good plan to me.
Sarah and I are always figuring how much money we need in order to live the life we want to live. Often this entails plotting out the work we will do over a period of time. How much will I make this coming semester? How much will Sarah have to sew for the shows we have scheduled? But more often we are also trying to calculate how much we will need. And that always includes a close look at our expenses, with an eye to cutting the costs of our activities.
The corporations that engage in this worldwide destruction are generating unprecedented profits. The deregulation of the financial industry has brought us repeated failures and huge bailouts of the industry we now refuse to regulate adequately. More recently, at Massey Coal and BP we are painfully aware of what the deregulation of those industries is bringing: Worker casualties and environmental disasters.
With all this in mind, our personal life-style choices take on greater significance. For me, the words of that song become a battle cry in the defense of the Earth and the more traditional cultures of the people on the Earth.
So, let me hear you say – “Make it; mend it; wear it out; make do; or do without!” Now, let’s see if we can do it.
We have only to look at the newspaper today to see the destruction that comes from the industries that produce that car. The Massey mine explosion and the BP oil well explosion have taken a toll in human lives already, and the devastation is not over yet. These industries that feed our modern life-style are voracious. We let our governments give them a pass on environmental safety and worker safety, which they say is necessary to feed our appetite. Is it?
Last year, when CL&P was trying to build huge diesel generators for electricity on Card Street, we were told that Americans are going to require, on average, 3% more electricity per capita, every year, over the next 10 years. I understand that to mean that each of us will use three percent more electricity a year. Does that mean that in 10 years, we will need 30 percent more electricity than we use now
How many miners will Massey Coal have to kill to provide coal for that much electricity? How many more thousands of gallons – millions of gallons, really – will BP and other oil companies spill into our oceans?
And why, since they use our projected increased demand as an excuse for ever more production and destruction, is nobody insisting that we talk about conservation?
For us, commuting to work for the last three years has meant a beautiful walk from Pleasant Street, across the footbridge to our shop on Church Street. Talk about “carbon footprints,” some weeks the only footprints our commute leaves are in the snow!
When I think about conservation, I don’t just think about turning off a light or even using CFL bulbs. Rather, I like to look at all aspects of my life and see if it is possible to be part of a community that doesn’t require full tilt destruction to bring us an ever wider array of consumer goods. That’s what I’m talking about here.
One year, when we were living in Manhattan enjoying a life without a car, we decided to save all our travel receipts. Our idea was to see if public transportation in the city was a savings over what it would cost to own a car. I can’t remember exactly what the tally was, but I think it was around $1,500. This included occasional rental cars, taking the subway in our daily travels around the city, as well as public transportation to Willimantic and other places on bus routes.
CL&P’s Plant on Card Street in Willimantic, CT