earthday in bunnaland: a vindication

Certain private conversations about, and the dearth of comments on, our most recent post: "our dinner with al gore," precipitates this clarification, this vindication if you will. Though the tone (meant more as a catalogue of our commitment to the environment, a précis to impress Al Gore) may suggest otherwise, the post actually contains very few falsehoods. Confessions: we did not actually invite Al Gore; we do not own a loom; Zoe's diaper, although cloth, did not feature any endangered species; and compost piles are expressly forbidden in our complex by-laws (or we would have one). The rest of the post is pretty much true. We meant no disrespect to Al Gore or other like-minded environmentalists. We are committed to our green lifestyle and encourage others to be kind to our mother earth. 

our dinner with al gore

We really wanted to celebrate Earth Day right this year, so we decided to invite a special guest to dinner. We'd never had a Nobel Prize winner in our home before, but we figured since he was going to be in the neighborhood we could at least extend the invitation. So we made plans. We figured that after appearing on "Oprah's Earth Day Event," he could hop on the 57 and drive down (we were sure he'd insist on driving a hybrid), and spend the evening with us. We usually eat dinner around 5:30, so he'd have to leave right after taping. We made a nice sign on recycled packaging paper and hung it on the sliding glass door, which we purposely left ajar so he could smell the compost pile in the backyard.

We made sure to wear the bamboo clothing we purchased at the clothes co-op this weekend (an amazingly versatile, renewable resource - but of course, we wouldn't have to tell him that!) and Zoe wore one of her cloth diapers - the cute one with the little prints of endangered species on it. Biff made wild Alaskan salmon while I cooked up some organic whole wheat pasta with homemade organic pesto and organic feta cheese, and we topped it off with a nice organic spinach salad. Very tasty and all cooked with energy from the solar panel we installed last summer. We figured we'd give him the special seat between the plastic recycling and the loom. When 5:30 came, we were all ready. Everything was perfect, except no Al. 5:45. Still no Al. 6:00. Nothing. What an inconvenience. Our food was getting cold and the guest of honor still hadn't arrived. Dejectedly, Biff took down the framed picture of Al at one of the screenings of An Inconvenient Truth and put it in his place. It just wasn't the same.

There was a somber mood at the dinner table, but we celebrated the best we could. We tried to console ourselves with thoughts of next year, but the Earth will be a year older and we never know what might happen.

Happy Earth Day.

earthquake in bunnaland: it's all yer fault

Growing up in the West, Biff and I remember the good old days of mandatory earthquake drills. Seismologists continually warned us that the "big one" was coming and so we were periodically startled by the shrill whistle of the earthquake alarm and herded under our tiny little desks by faculty reliving memories of being crammed into plywood fallout shelters like this one, that looks like a great place to flip through a book and eat a can of Campbell's tomato soup.

I could never manage to get my entire body under the desk. I had to choose between my head and my legs - and I was one of the smaller students.

So moving to the Midwest we thought we were trading earthquake drills for tornado sirens and twister preparedness seminars. We were wrong. Apparently we live near what the USGS considers the area of highest earthquake risk in the United States outside the west coast: the New Madrid fault. What do you know?

Early Friday morning we felt the tremor. I should say Biff felt the tremor. I was groggy and dismissed it as a figment of her imagination. It wasn't until later that morning, when we assessed the damage, that I realized what had happened. Our office was almost unrecognizable; we're still alphabetizing.


And our pantry? Well, we had to enlist the help of our neighbor, Albert, to help clean up all the glass. He got right in with both hands.


We'll try to post more pictures of the clean up.