Haha, I like that title! Anyway, was looking for a recipe for slow cooker black beans (which I found here - yes, I even need a recipe to cook black beans) but while I was lingering on the page I noticed the author put a link to a chart for the energy consumption of different household appliances, and thought it would be a handy thing for the blog.
We've gone for almost a year without a microwave oven. I miss having one (our old one finally broke and after taking it to the hazardous waste dump decided not to get a new one). At first there were good reasons not to have one - we were eating too much convenience food, facilitated by having a microwave, so getting rid of the microwave solved a lot of over-eating and wasteful package consumption. The other reason was maybe not so good - microwave ovens have always seemed kind of creepy to me, so I thought I was somehow being more environmental by not having one. But, after substituting the microwave with a small toaster oven, I'm starting to see that maybe microwaves are more eco-friendly in that they use less energy to heat food, they're convenient for re-heating coffee, and they kill bacteria on scrubbies, giving them a longer use life (I did an Accidentally Environmental Experiment where I boiled the scrubbies and it was a complete mess and really yucky). So, I think we're going to get another microwave oven and I learned a valuable lesson that eco-friendly does not always mean giving up something that is weird like a microwave oven. The end.
1 comment:
Hi, Michele! I don't think my earlier attempt to write to worked, so I'm trying it again.
My name is Tamara. I’m new to your blog (and new to doing some blogging myself) but have a long-time interest in environmental issues. Recently, I’ve been thinking about how the internet - especially blogs - can be a place for telling personal stories that are also forms of environmental activism. I was hoping I could draw on your expertise in this area for a post that I’m working on for my blog. If it’s ok, I’d love to (virtually) talk with you a bit about your experience with creating and posting to this blog and then share our conversation through a link on my blog at artplaceidentity@blogspot.com. I’m hoping to gather some insights about what it means to share personal stories with an activist dimension online from people who have more expertise in this area than I do. I just started blogging recently for a Visual Research Methods class I’m taking, (I’m a graduate student in Cultural Studies) and I chose to pursue my interest in this topic as part of a project for this class.
One of the things that really interests me about your blog is that it is both personal, because it’s about your own life and own experiences, and political, because it advocates green living. Maybe this is a chicken-and-egg question, but I’m wondering what role each of those aspects of the blog played in your decision to start it up. Was it more a personal experiment - a way to investigate and shape your own ideas about certain environmental issues? Or, were you already committed to a certain set of environmental values and began blogging as a way to raise awareness about them? Some of both? Neither? Has this changed over time?
I also wanted to ask you about the audience for your blog. When you post, who is it you primarily write for? Is it people you know off-line, or is it mainly for an online community? Is there a particular activist community that you’ve communicated with through your blog? How does their feedback shape your experience with the blog? How does the blog form (short posts, links, pictures) shape your decisions about what to include on the blog?
Finally, what do most appreciate about the experience of blogging, personally? What influence that you hope your blog will have on others?
Thanks very much for the work you do on your blog and for considering this invitation to share your perspective on these questions. Any thoughts you have would be very greatly appreciated!
All the best,
Tamara Ramirez
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