Jeans and a t-shirt?
They gave us Good Friday off from work. And I've decided to spend mine sitting in, you guessed it, a coffee shop. And I'm, you guessed it again, still working on sites. But this time, these are my own projects.

Increasingly, I'm having trouble with clothes. I've been replacing worn out articles with things that are appropriate work wear, but this also means my weekend wear isn't getting replaced. I'm down to a flimsy skirt and a pair of jeans. I can't help but think back to my mom, back when she was a systems analyst. She wore pretty suits all week long. What did she wear on the weekends? I don't remember! Mom, what did you wear on weekends? How did you balance your clothes?

I think I'll have to go to a Goodwill for some weekend clothes soon. Although it may be hard to find work-gear at Goodwill, for separates, it's much better than buying new.

A lot of people think "cheap" when they think of buying previously worn clothes, and while the prices are much lower, I feel the savings run much deeper.

Joe and I watched a Nova program the other night about frogs, specifically how they are mutating, disappearing, turning from male to female, and in general being wiped off the face of the planet. Of the many things that are assaulting these remarkable creatures, most of them come directly from us, through the water, the ground, the sky. Agriculture and lawn fertilizers, pesticides, even trace birth control hormones, these are all over our waterways, and they are harming the very bottom of the food chain in ways that, if we all could fully take in the scope of the problem, would cause us to curl up into little balls and cry.

There are many ways that we can be more responsible and prevent this sort of thing from happening. The root is population, there are simply too many people taking away too much habit. This is one of the reasons I cringe whenever I hear "habit for humanity." It makes me think, "Habitat for animals is not the same as habitat for humans." And we do need those animals. More humans also means more need for food, more production of pesticides to make that food (if only organic food cost less, but most people can only afford the stuff pumped out by Big Agra), more vehicles to move this stuff, more medications down the toilet and into the river, and more stress in general on the environment. So obviously encouraging family planning and standing by women's rights is one thing we can do. But there's no way that we can reduce the population significantly in a small period of time (100 years) short of mass genocide or nuclear war (both of which would have negative consequences that would probably just make things worse--not to mention I don't like the thought of either).

So, what can we do about the short term? Well, we can get petition our states to work on building waste processing stations that filter hormones and medications. We can start pressuring people with big lawns to plant gardens instead. (Never underestimate the power of peer pressure. If you can treat a person like a criminal for smoking, I don't see why you can't treat people with big lawns the same way. I know I do. It's my right to pass judgment on others. I'm an American!) Buy local organic, duh. And petition your state to pass laws that make farmers fence off large portions of waterways that run through livestock pens--something that makes a HUGE difference to water quality. If you raise animals, do this without being asked. If you live in an animal raising area, volunteer to do this for a farmer. (I want to do this when I go visit Mom in the mountains again.)

And lastly, you can buy used rather than new. Yeah, new and shiny is nice, and in some cases, especially when it comes to professional clothes, new is best. But everything you buy impacts the environment. With clothing, the dye has to be chemically manufactured, the cotton has to be sprayed with insecticides (this has resulted in poisoned rivers over in Asia), the clothing must be shipped, and hundreds of other environmentally taxing things must happen along the way.

Bonus points for visiting this site: http://www.storyofstuff.com/

I'm out of steam on this entry now, and I've really wandered all over the place. I must really love frogs.