BLUE

AKA The Evolution of an Environmentalist - Part 3 continued from "The Evolution of an Environmentalist - Part 2"

To understand what the BLUE movement is, we need to understand what it grows out of - dead environmentalism. Environmentalism is dead because it's approach is outdated, uninspiring and not up to scale for the challenge we face today - global climate change. Traditionally, environmentalism has isolated a problem, such as air pollution, created a technical solution, such as emissions standards for vehicles, and worked to get it turned into law. This doesn't work very well when the challenge, climate change, is the result of our entire way of life. Plus, environmentalism has said "No, No, No" and "Don't, Don't, Don't" for everything from shopping to driving to eating, basically living in our culture. This doesn't inspire and, instead, sets up a seemingly unattainable standard, leading us to give up before we start.

Ok. So what is the BLUE movement?

From Adam Werbach's speech "The Birth of Blue" at the Commonwealth Club on 12 April 2008:

As vast and common as the ocean, BLUE is a platform for sustainability that goes beyond the deep, beautiful green of environmentalism. Green puts the planet at the center of the dialogue. BLUE puts people at the center.... Green is the beating heart of the emerging BLUE movement. Green represents the simple and inarguable wisdom of ecology: that all things are connected. BLUE brings together a broader set of human concerns, from practice to price, from nature to society. BLUE integrates all four streams of sustainability: social, cultural, economic and environmental. BLUE puts the way we treat ourselves and each other at the center of our focus....

There are three desired outcomes for the BLUE movement. First, to measurably improve the quality of life of people who join. Second, to engage as many people as possible in the effort, and third, to increase the effectiveness of their activism. The primary tactic is getting one billion people to create their own personal sustainability practices.

Remember, when I wrote that I didn't get into environmentalism for the environment, but for the people? This is what I was talking about.

So, what does "being blue" actually mean? What does some one who's "BLUE" do?
Since, it's my computer curfew, the answer to that question will have to come another night.
Next up, PSP and the big box...

It's my birthday!

I don't normally acknowledge my birthday to myself or anyone else, but it is a big deal. It is the anniversary of the day that I started breathing oxygen. It marks that I survived and flourished through another year. And this year, it's my 30th anniversary, which I'm really excited about. The 20s were great and all, well, actually... they weren't always so great, but they got me here and I like here - a lot. I'm healthier and happier than I've ever been. I love my life.

To celebrate, last night I copied a friend (thank you, L!) and collected the cards and gifts I've received and put them on the table with my birthday flowers (thank you, Gilby and S!) so that I could enjoy them first thing this morning. I'm currently taking a break from the scavenger hunt that Mark has designed for me to find my present b/c I can't seem to find the next clue. (Quiet, you hecklers! ;-) I'll make myself a yummy fried ham and eggs and potatoes breakfast soon, work in the garden a little, cut out my next applique project and then wake Mark up so we can go on our redwood hike at Butano (thank you, SRL!). We'll eat dinner out on the coast and spend some time at the beach (thank you, Frays!) with a few good friends.

Life is good.

Oh, and isn't it cool that I turn 30 on Friday, the 13th, one of my favorite dates ever?

From the mouths of babes...

The secret of eternal youth is arrested development. - Alice Roosevelt Longworth. (Eventually dubbed "Washington's other monument," Teddy Roosevelt's rambunctious daughter raised hell in her hometown...for nearly nine decades.

Change is the only constant. Hanging on is the only sin. - Denise McCluggage - one of the world's fastest women on (race car) wheels

I am prepared to sacrifice every so-called privilege I possess in order to have a few rights. - Ines Milholland - Vassar girl who staged a women's rights rally...in 1909

The great thing to learn about life is, first, not to do what you don't want to do, and, second, to do what you do want to do. - Margaret Anderson - leading literary light of the early 1900s

A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. - Benazir Bhutto - Former Pakistani Prime Minister and prisoner of state

The older one grows, the more one likes indecency. - Virginia Woolf - bisexual Bloomsbury novelist

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. - Charlotte Bronte - author of Jane Eyre

Men and women are like right and left hands: it doesn't make sense not to use both. - Jeannette Rankin - first woman to serve in Congress

Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, that are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid voume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret's nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eyes bright with battle. - Catherine Drinker Bowen - professional biographer

To be perfectly honest, what I'm really thinking about are dollar signs. Tonya Harding

I'm not one of those little things. I have a butt and boobs. It's great. I sometimes tell people I weigh ten pounds more that I actually do. - Courtney Love

A Bitch takes shit from no one. You may not like her, but you cannot ignore her. - Joreen - one of the biggest bitches in the Sixties sisterhood movement

Strong women leave big hickeys. - Madonna

Total absence of humor renders life impossible. - Colette, author

I've always said: I'm happy to take my clothes off if the man takes his off. If you're willing to let him run around with his willy hanging out, I'm perfectly happy to run around in the buff. But nobody ever makes that deal with me. - Michelle Pfeiffer

It's like magic. When you live by yourself, all your annoying habits are gone! - Merrill Markoe

I never said, I want to be alone. I only said, I want to be left alone. There is all the difference. - Greta Garbo

I may be kindly, I am ordinarily gentle, but in my line of business I am obliged to will terrible what I will at all. - Catherine II of Russia

No man ever prospered in the world without the consent and cooperation of his wife. - Abigail Adams - Dear Abby, aka "Mrs. President"

A gentlemen opposed to their enfranchisement once said to me, "Women have never produced anything of value to the world." I told him the chief product of the women had been the men, and left it to him to decide whether the product was of any value. - Anna Shaw, minister

Men are more often defeated because of their own clumsiness that because of a woman's virtue. - Ninon De Lenclos - Seventeenth-century courtesan whose great gift to her fellow French women was teaching young nobles how to make nooky nicely