So much going on in the 'ville!

In case you missed it, last Sunday was Earth Hour, where you were supposed to turn out your lights for an hour, but apparently the folks down in Australia didn't take March Madness into consideration when choosing a Sunday. Sadly, we did not participate due to the pressing need to watch the Elite Eight games.

Down in Williamson County, the kids at Hillsboro elementary/middle are participating in the Free the Children Water Project. The thought of all the bottles of coke and PowerAde that are not being trashed warms the cockles of me 'eart it does... but they're still drinking water out of bottles:

According to the scorecard, students can save up to $1.50 per glass by drinking water rather than milk, soda or juice and up to $1 per bottle on sports drinks. Every time they drink a glass or bottle of water, they put that savings into a cup. At the end of the two weeks, the money will be collected. (emphasis mine)

I don't know anything about the Free the Children thing, but the project sounds like a good idea to me, at least to raise awareness... but I wish they were thinking about the bottled water part of it as well (see Think Outside the Bottle for why)

In other news, there's finally an answer to the question of what will be done with the old Wild Oats building... a Trader Joe's is moving in! I think I've talked before about how I miss the old Wild Oats - I liked how small and homey it felt compared to the new Whole Foods. Not to say I don't like the WF, but I miss the way things were. I'm excited to see what a Trader Joe's is like, finally, and maybe I'll be going there instead of WF soon.

Also, in case you haven't checked out the Greener Nashville site or you don't get their eblasts, there is a big Green Business expo going on over at Lipscomb today.

That's it for this week, folks! Stay dry and warm, and let me know if you want to buy a condo!

Walking in Green Hills

Anyone who's ever met me knows I'm not a big walker... when I was a kid, I hated walking to the bus stop before school - I hated walking to class in college - and I hated it last month when I went to a friend's place in East Nashville and we walked from his house to the bars.

My dislike does not stem from a dislike of exercise - I actually love walking for exercise, love taking the dogs for walks, love taking an aimless walk around the neighborhood. When I visit AblePonder down in Mississippi, one of my favorite activities is walking with her and the dogs! Rather, it stems from the fact that I hate to get sweaty when I'm not supposed to be sweaty, and I inevitably sweat when I walk, ruining makeup, clothes and comfort for longer than the duration of the walk.

I said all of that to say: a walkable living area has not been on my list of priorities... until now.

I had the luck to work from home two days this past week (it was mixed luck, to be sure, but luck nonetheless), and I took advantage of that by taking a couple of breaks to go for walks. I'm not sure how good the walks were for my lungs (this city air is dirty!), but they were good for my mood overall, not to mention my pocket, what with the gas I didn't use driving in to the office!

It was not the first time I've walked in my neighborhood, but it was the first time it really hit home how completely UN-walkable it is. Not only are there spotty sidewalks (on the wrong side of the street for me on Hillsboro, and very few along the small side streets), but the shoulders are really skinny and non-existent in some places.

This is not to say there aren't people jogging, biking and taking dogs for walks - but I'll bet it's stopping many more from doing so. I also have adopted a new dog, Madeline, who has much more energy than my geriatric pup Georgia (she's 14!), and I'd like to take her for walks. Luckily, I'm right across from the park, so we can go there. But really, I'd like to feel I'm getting somewhere - and sometimes, I'd like to actually get somewhere - like a coffee shop, the grocery, the pharmacy, the post office, kinko's...

When i lived in Hillsboro Village, the walkability of the neighborhood was really wonderful - restaurants, bars, a grocery, coffee were all within a quick walk and really invited an outdoor community.

Now, in Green Hills, the residential/commercial mix ought to be walkable, but the lack of sidewalks discourages this. Still, on Thursday morning, I balance-beam-walked my way along the side of Graybar Lane and Hillsboro Pike down to Starbucks to have them fill my mug with coffee. Then, I walked over to the park in the afternoon with Madeline. And it felt so good!

So I've been thinking about an ideal, walkable Green Hills. Obviously, it's something that is seen as profitable - case-in-point is the expansion of The Mall at Green Hills. Down by the new California Pizza Kitchen is the Hill Center - and it is an outdoor, walkable shopping center. I'm looking forward to going down there to check it out. So - if it is profitable, couldn't local businesses be persuaded to help defray the costs of sidewalks (I'm thinking of Pier 1 imports there at the intersection of Glen Echo and Hillsboro)?

Those two days working from home have encouraged me to venture out of my house de pie more often... I'll try to venture away from my favorite street, Boensch, and perhaps I'll put on some sturdy shoes to better navigate those skinny, steep road shoulders. Still, though, until utopia descends and lays sidewalks or wide shoulders and makes me a less sweaty person, my walks are going to be challenges - which isn't a bad thing to add into the mix, after all.

Hillsboro Recycling center rocks! And Keep America Beautiful is maybe not so awesome after all

Back when I was working at a little community newspaper down in Williamson County, I was also living in The Gardens at Hillsboro Village. Both were themselves follies of post-graduate youth... but reading No Impact Man today made me think of another folly of that time - my resistance to recycling.

My time at the newspaper as a writer, listings/calendar editor and web editor coincided with the time I lived with my first after-college roommate - a guy who had the attitude that recycling was the status-quo and not recycling was, frankly, odd. I, on the other hand, could have cared less. The apartment complex had a dumpster, and after walking down three flights of stairs to empty any trash we had, I was unwilling to go further. But he was insistent, so we had a bin in our kitchen to collect recyclables, and our ignorance of the area had us driving 15-20 minutes to what we thought was the nearest recycling facility (Charlotte Center by the Strike-n-Spare) . This drive did not help my it's-way-too-much-effort attitude about the whole thing. When that roommate and I parted ways, so did I and the recycling bin.

Still, I continued to moderate calendar listings at the paper, which happened to be chock-full of community/government-sponsored events. The city and county governments were really good about sending in event listings and such - we never had to track them down. So there was a steady stream of these events, as well as a large quantity, and at one point there was a glut of events run by Keep Williamson Beautiful. Maybe it was around Earth Day or something. Anyway, there were opportunities for free shredding, free disposal of paint/gas/oil, and common-area clean-ups. The sheer amount of the events, I suppose, is what stuck in my mind, and I was left with the rather passive impression that Keep America Beautiful - the KWB parent organization, was a good thing. I didn't think too much about it - it seemed like the KWB events were good things, even if they bored me... I wasn't really into the whole community-togetherness thing anyway.

And I said all of this to address two things that occurred to me today.

First, I was surprised when I read this post on No Impact Man this morning. Basically, it talks about how
"...bottling and canning corporations promoted individual environmental action back in the 70s as a way to shirk their corporate responsibilities. Beverage industry interests told us all to clean up our own garbage through a front organization, Keep America Beautiful (KAB), so they wouldn’t have to."

You know, it's this sort of stuff that feeds my cynicism and sadness about capitalism and, well, people in general. I want to beat my fists against a wall in frustration over the failure of people to just try to Do Good! Why can't they simply try to respect themselves, their fellow man and their environment? Why don't they believe, at least a little, in karma? ::sigh:: I always end this train of thought by coming to the conclusion that all I can do be responsible for my own actions and choices - All I can do is all I can do.

Yesterday, I took the recycling over to the Hillsboro Recycling Center in Green Hills (check this site out for info on where you can drop off recycling). It's back behind Hillsboro High School on Hillmont Dr. (off Glen Echo), and there are not only recycling dumpsters, but there's a Goodwill collection truck there. I will admit, part of why I have started recycling is because of this center. It's super convenient! However, the other reason is because of my relatively recent preoccupation with being a little bit green... and one of the things that encourages me to at least try is Colin's blog. The point here is that the Hillsboro Recycling Center is AWESOME! Going there actually renews my commitment to recycle what I can. It's so nice that, in a community where I don't get the feeling there's much environmental awareness, there's this wonderful recycling center.