ColumnAn upcoming reality show may signal the end of all that is good and holy.

I  am not one of those people who sees every little thing as a sign of the apocalypse. Inevitably, when someone says “this is the end of civilization as we know it,” they are not talking about Darfur, or even the recent economic decline. They are usually referring to something relatively minor –the cancellation of “Friday Night Lights” for example, or a pop singer who has inexplicably named her son “Bronx.” Referring to something as Armageddon is a big deal and I try to stay away from that kind of hyperbole, but I don’t know what else, besides God’s final fury, can explain “Big Hair Alaska” – a reality show about Sarah Palin’s hair salon.

A two-part series about The Beehive, the beauty shop responsible for Palin’s famous updo,  has somehow landed on the fall TV schedule and I confess, this causes me great concern for the state of American culture.

I do not say this as someone who is snootily opposed to reality television, since it happens to be my guilty pleasure. I’m reluctant to admit that, since I don’t want people to jump to the conclusion that I’m a slack-jawed idiot (a fairly common and perhaps  not entirely undeserved assumption made about people who confess to an affection for such programming.) But I got hooked on the genre in 1973, as I sat glued to the couch in my shag-carpeted living room, ignoring my algebra homework as I watched  “An American Family,” the precursor to today’s reality shows. This 12 part series (they were still calling them documentaries in those days), showed a nuclear family disintegrating in real time, and it gave me my first heady taste of voyeurism.

This shameful urge to peep into the lives of others would never entirely go away, although it would be many years before the airwaves would become glutted with reality programming. Some of these shows, including “Top Chef” and “Project Runway,” would become my favorites. While others, like “The Bachelorette” and “The Jersey Shore,” would leave me queasy with self-loathing. Hovering between these extremes are “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” a show I am always quick to explain that I only watch with my daughter. What I’ve discovered is that you can admit to watching public hangings, but if it’s a mother/daughter activity people will still look at you approvingly and say positive things about “quality time.”

I had very little interest in Palin’s own reality show, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” in which she proved that her much-vaunted belief in the sanctity of life did not extend to halibut and caribou. But Big Hair Alaska, a show that takes an unflinching look at Wasilla coiffures, has given me the welcome realization that I do, in fact, have some standards; because here, finally, is a reality show so vapid and so venial that I would not watch a minute of it, not for any amount of money. Unless Tim Gunn makes an appearance as a guest mentor – then I can’t make any promises.

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The post The End Is Near appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnBeen there, thought that.

Several months ago, Kimberly Clark announced that they would begin manufacturing a line of eco-friendly toilet paper. The paper would be produced without an internal cardboard tube, and could, conceivably, save millions of pounds of trash each year.  Toilet paper, by definition, is thoroughly and inarguably disposable, so finding a way to reduce its environmental impact is an astounding feat. And yet, I reacted to the news of this development with annoyance, feeling  somehow that I had been this close to coming up with that very idea. Taking the cardboard center out of a roll of toilet paper is brilliant but it’s also staggeringly simple. I think that given enough time I would have definitely come up with this idea myself– much the same way that some people think a monkey, if given infinite time and access to a keyboard, will eventually type the complete works of William Shakespeare.

This has not been the only time I felt like a terrific idea was rudely ripped right out of my consciousness. The world is littered with the best sellers I almost penned, screenplays I almost came up with, and articles I came very close to writing – all of which ended up being written by someone far less deserving of greatness; someone who actually sat down and wrote the damn thing.

For example, the guy who authored Marley and Me, a book about a sweet but overly exuberant Labrador retriever, must have surely stolen my idea, since I had a wildly hyperactive black lab and a long-simmering intention to write a book about him. I never got around to actually writing that book, but I thought about it quite a lot and I mentioned it once to a second cousin in New Jersey. Surely that counts for something.

Sadly, there are a limited number of great ideas, which is why I must frequently ransack the life experiences of my family members for inspiration. This does not make me popular at home, where my blood relatives live in fear of seeing themselves mentioned in print. When my daughter was in middle school she used to dread going to the nurse’s office. She would skulk in, trying to be invisible, wanting to quietly score some ibuprofen for an already mortifying case of cramps, only to have the well-meaning RN loudly exclaim, “Ali, I just read all about your bat mitzvah!”

My family would no doubt prefer to have their lives remain private. And when they express this to me I explain, gently but firmly, that I would love to be able to write a first-hand account of being an astronaut, a state senator, or even a rodeo clown, but the fact is, for the past 20 years my primary occupation has been washing other people’s underpants. It follows, naturally, that family life is often my topic of choice.

Of course, I am not the only one who has thought of mining the role of wife and mother as grist for the mill – the trash cans of magazines and newspapers everywhere are filled with the perky, housewifey efforts of those of us who think of ourselves as this millenium’s answer to Erma Bombeck. I will frequently read a “mom” piece and come away convinced that it has expressed an idea that I was right on the verge of having.

Which just goes to show that –tubeless toilet paper notwithstanding – there really aren’t a whole lot of original ideas left.  And the ideas I do have are frequently stolen right out from under me, before they are fully formed. My friend Stephen has experienced this too, and he announced recently that he wanted his tombstone to read, “I was going to say that.” I admire Stephen for coming up with such a clever epitaph…just seconds before I would have thought of it myself.

Susan Goldberg is a slightly lapsed treehugger. Although known to overuse paper products, she has the best of intentions – and a really small SUV. Catch her column, The Goldberg Variations, each week here at EcoSalon.

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ColumnTricking your children into eating their veggies presents an ethical and culinary dilemma.

Several years ago, Jessica Seinfeld (or as she is more commonly known, “that woman who married Jerry Seinfeld”) was involved in a messy court battle over a book she had written. Another author, Missy Chase Lapine, had just written a cookbook that advocated “hiding” nutritious vegetables in kid-friendly foods (pureed yams in yellow cake, for instance), thereby tricking children into ingesting small amounts of fiber-rich tubers, as well as other veggies. Seinfeld came out with a similar book around the same time and Lapine accused her of ripping off the concept.

The case against Seinfeld was found to be baseless and her book went on to become a huge success, far outselling the book already published by Lapine – a writer who had the bad luck not to be married to America’s favorite funnyman.

But while these ladies were duking it out in court, I couldn’t help feeling that there was something unseemly about two accomplished and well-heeled women fighting over a concept that boils down to lying to six-year-olds about what’s in their food. No matter who thought of it first, the whole idea behind Seinfeld’s book, Deceptively Delicious, seemed flawed, not to mention slightly immoral.

Besides the inherent ethical issues of deceiving one’s offspring, the problem with tricking children into eating vegetables is that they will grow up completely unaware that they have ever eaten or enjoyed a vegetable. If you steam, strain and puree spinach only to hide it in brownies, your kid will have no idea that he likes spinach – he will only know that he likes brownies. With childhood obesity at epidemic levels, do we really want to push more desserts on impressionable young people?

And how much nutritional value is ultimately is being gained by all this deception? Seinfeld’s Trojan Horse brownie recipe calls for half a cup of spinach in a recipe that will yield 12 brownies. Do the math and you’ll  find that each brownie contains one third of an ounce of spinach. Is it really worth all that steaming, pureeing and trickery – not to mention mucking up a perfectly nice pan of baked goods – to yield such a negligible serving of greens? Wouldn’t you be better off just trying to get your kid to actually eat some spinach? Or else openly and honestly giving him a Flintstone’s multivitamin and calling it a day?

In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that I was not even a little bit successful at getting my own kids to eat produce when they were young – a maternal shortcoming that caused me a great deal of guilt and shame. My son, when he was three years old, made my failings in this department all too public when he pointed to a fruit basket in a store window and yelled, “What’s that stuff?” (This from a child who, even as a toddler, could distinguish a Lorna Dune from a Nilla Wafer at 40 paces.) So maybe it wouldn’t have killed me to be a little more aggressive in getting my kids to eat healthier.

I must also admit that I have, at times, been intentionally and flagrantly dishonest with my children. My husband and I, on several occasions, taught our baby daughter the wrong words for certain things, just to see how long it would take her to figure out the deception. My only defense is that we were young and sleep-deprived, and we thought it would be an interesting social experiment. Also, we found it amusing as hell.

Ironically, one of the words we messed around with at the time was “broccoli,” which we taught my daughter to call “dumplings,” (inspired no doubt by the fact that both of those foods could be found in our usual Chinese takeout order). Looking back on this parental deception, my daughter has let me know that she thinks her father and I were massive tools – she also thinks she might be owed some kind of monetary reparation. To this day she will spear herself a forkful of broccoli, glare at me and hiss, “dumplings indeed.” On the bright side, however, she is 18 years old and eats her vegetables without needing to have them boiled and mashed and hidden in chocolate pudding. Jessica Seinfeld’s children may not be so lucky.

Susan Goldberg is a slightly lapsed treehugger. Although known to overuse paper products, she has the best of intentions – and a really small SUV. Catch her column, The Goldberg Variations, each week here at EcoSalon.

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ColumnLightning strikes twice (make that four times) as many men as women.

A study by Popular Science Magazine has determined that out of everyone who is hit by lightning, 82%  are men.  In my house this has led to lots of merry speculation about the reasons for this lopsided statistic. My daughter thinks it’s because lightning is attracted to men, much the same way that mosquitoes are reportedly drawn to people with type O blood. Interesting though it may be, I can find no scientific evidence to support this idea.

My husband subscribes to the more Hemingway-esque theory that men get hit by lightning because they are more likely than women to be outside doing manly activities like playing golf, being lumberjacks, and participating in soccer riots. To his credit, immediately after voicing this theory, my husband retracted it, on the grounds that it made him sound like a lifetime member of the He-Man-Woman-Hater’s club. Besides being condescending to women, this suggestion ignores the fact that women also spend lots of time outdoors: playing professional soccer in nearly empty stadiums, dragging garbage cans to the curb (because someone has to do it), and walking across town when we grow weary of being groped and harassed on public transportation. It’s just that, unlike men, we are willing to interrupt these activities during life-threatening electrical storms.

Yes, it’s as simple as that: women don’t get hit by lightning because we are smart enough to go indoors during thunderstorms. The people at Popular Science agree with me on this, although they word it more delicately, saying that, “men are less likely to stop outdoor activity when stormy weather hits.” Inevitably, one has to wonder why this is so.

Golf is one of the most likely ways for men to become lightning-bait, which is not surprising, since it is a summer-time activity that strands large groups of people out in the open when they’re holding long metal sticks (also known as “lightning rods”). I live right next to a golf course and during thunderstorms a distinctive blaring horn will sound to tell the golfers to come indoors. Minutes later there is a second round of horns for the die-hard meatheads who ignore the first warning. Recently I asked a member of the club if women golfers were, in fact, more likely to heed the first warning – he laughed and said “Oh women don’t need the siren at all – they come in at the first sign of a storm.”

My theory on this is that women have learned  over time to be more alert to the signs of danger. Years of sharing elevators and subway cars with sweaty predators and perverts have taught us to recognize a threat when we see it. Women do not ignore danger, maybe because the repetitive panic that accompanies peeing on sticks to see if we’re pregnant has taught us that foolish acts can have dire consequences. Finally, we simply lack the macho bravado that makes men feel like sissies if they run inside at the first sign of thunder.

I haven’t read any statistics about it, but I’ll bet that fewer women than men are killed during the Running of the Bulls in Pamploma. This is because women, by and large, have the good sense and finely honed survival instincts to spend their leisure time doing something that doesn’t involve racing around medieval European side streets while being chased  by large, bloodthirsty mammals with horns. Women, in general, live longer than men, and while much of their superior longevity can be explained by a pragmatic lack of idiocy, something else seems to be at work here too. Despite our quaint and anachronistic reputation as the weaker sex, a recent study just reported that women are much less likely to die from most forms of cancer. Women also have much lower rates of heart disease and we are practically exempt from hemophilia.  Some might say that we are the lucky sex. And while I would never dream of claiming we’re the smarter sex, at least we know enough to come in out of the rain.

Susan Goldberg is a slightly lapsed treehugger. Although known to overuse paper products, she has the best of intentions – and a really small SUV. Catch her column, The Goldberg Variations, each week here at EcoSalon.

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ColumnGot Affluenza?

Affluenza is an affliction that is characterized by the relentless pursuit of material goods and luxury services. This condition is about keeping up with the Joneses, even if the upscale lifestyle comes with debt, stress and no real or lasting happiness. While some may think of this syndrome as just another pop-culture cliche, others consider it to be a real affliction. I happen to be an accomplished hypochondriac, and generally think there is a decent chance that I have every possible ailment that exists, whether it is physical, spiritual or emotional (in fact, at this very minute I’m trying to decide if the pain radiating across in my left shoulder is a muscle pull or a heart attack). But affluenza is one condition from which I do not suffer – my aging inner hippie, coupled with a lack of disposable income, keep me fairly immune from rampant consumerism.

Also, for the last 20 years I have been a middle class person living in an extremely affluent suburb, and this has lent me an aggressive form of reverse snobbery. I like to think of myself as a latter day Beverly Hillbilly, clanking around Mercedes country in a rusty Toyota with a failing muffler. I wear my relative poverty as if it were a sign of groundedness and moral superiority, when it’s really just the result of laziness and half-assed financial planning. But living as I do in a town known for movie stars, former presidents, and investment bankers, I am familiar with affluenza, and its sufferers.

If any of the following symptoms apply to you, you may have contracted a bad case of affluenza:
-You have no idea where the toilet brush, rubber gloves or cleaning supplies in your home are kept.

-When you hear that Kim Kardashian is planning a wedding that will cost ten million dollars, it strikes you as something to aspire to, as opposed to the end of all hope, reason, and laughter.

-You have a nutritionist and an acupuncturist. For your dog

-You use the word “summer” as a verb, as in “We summer in our cottage in Maine.”

-You have, at least once, bought something so extravagant, that you had to divide the purchase between two credit cards, a fistful of cash and some traveler’s checks.

-You paid someone else to teach your child how to ride a bike.

-You are unaware that there are cars manufactured in the United States, not to mention Korea.

-Your engagement ring can be seen from space.

-You think of Depression as something to be treated with Prozac, as opposed to government job initiatives and tax breaks for small businesses.

-You are unaware that drinkable water is available right out of the sink.

-The thought of spending $56,000 a year on college does not immediately give you chest pains (although I guess that could just be a muscle pull…)

-Two words: life coach.

Susan Goldberg is a slightly lapsed treehugger. Although known to overuse paper products, she has the best of intentions – and a really small SUV. Catch her column, The Goldberg Variations, each week here at EcoSalon.

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ColumnThe founder of Facebook vows to eat what he kills. Like?

Mark Zuckerberg has just announced his intention to only eat “that which he kills with his own bare hands.” It’s hard to discount any idea that springs from the mind of the guy who dreamed up Facebook while he was still a teenager. But I’m having trouble deciding if this slay-your-own-entree idea is The Next Big Thing, or if it’s merely evidence that earning a billion dollars in your early twenties can turn you into a major head case.

Not that I have a problem with people wanting to kill their dinner – I happen to be a committed carnivore, so the fact is, someone’s killing my dinner. It would be the height of prissy hypocrisy for me to look down on the people who slaughter the source of my turkey burger, while I stay clear of the carnage, keeping my hands (if not my karma), perfectly clean and pure. So while I’m not opposed to killing animals for food, I’m way too squeamish to do it myself.

Still, there’s so much hypocrisy when it comes to eating meat, and I think Zuckerberg should be commended for at least opening up the dialogue. My daughter prefers not to eat anything with a face, but she will make a completely unreasonable exception for pepperoni (although pepperoni really doesn’t have a face, coming as it does from assorted scraps of random beasts), even if it is the particle board of the meat world. Other people will eat any form of meat, while taking a moral stand against fois gras, because they think it’s cruel to aggressively fatten the liver of a duck just to make an unctuously tasty appetizer. We are all hypocrites.

Personally, I draw the line at veal, not for any logical reason, but because knowing it comes from a baby cow makes me want to lie down and weep. If this makes me a hypocrite, so be it. I am comfortable with the unpredictable nature of my position on animals, which boils down to this: we are higher up on the food chain than pigs and chickens so it’s all right for us to eat them. But to enjoy killing animals, to do it for sport, for the unfathomable pleasure of watching a creature die, is abhorrent to me.

I am not advocating legislation against this – I think people have the right to hunt for the fun of it, it’s just something I’d prefer they not do, much like chewing tobacco or speaking loudly on cell phones. If I ruled the world people simply wouldn’t hunt for sport. They also wouldn’t wear ironic sunglasses or use the word “panties” in spoken English.

But if you’re going to eat meat then you should have the guts to admit that it comes from animals, from living, breathing creatures who frolic and feel pain, who love their moms and run joyfully through the woods on a summer day. And despite a Hemingway-esque overabundance of macho posturing, there is a certain unflinching courage in Zuckerberg’s willingness to admit to himself that his meat did not originate shrink-wrapped from the Whole Foods butcher counter.

I somehow find myself admiring this young man’s plan to kill his dinner, to look his meals squarely in the eyes before he takes them down and has them sauteed with truffles and a nice buerre blanc. And yet, I can’t help thinking about Zuckerberg’s other recent passion, the adorable, fluffy white puppy named Beast that he adopted a few short months ago. This sweet little dog, with his rich daddy and his own Facebook page, was promptly proclaimed “the luckiest dog alive,” but I’m not so sure. One can only hope that Zuckerberg doesn’t get a sudden attack of the munchies one day, while teaching little Beast to fetch.

Susan Goldberg is a slightly lapsed treehugger. Although known to overuse paper products, she has the best of intentions – and a really small SUV. Catch her column, The Goldberg Variations, each week here at EcoSalon.

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ColumnIt turns out that chick flicks are not always woman-friendly.

My husband and I were sitting in a dark theater watching a movie I had chosen, which meant it was a pretty standard indie flick, a wordy, self-conscious exploration of feelings, relationships, and female empowerment, played out at a glacial pace by anemic-looking actors from a former Soviet Republic. About an hour into it, my husband, Bob, leaned over and whispered, “When does the car chase start?”

In our daily lives, Bob and I try to break down stereotypes and model gender-neutral behavior for our offspring, but when it comes to our taste in movies, we have always been the poster children for the most simplistic of boy/girl generalizations.

During our courtship, when we tried to impress each other by denying our truest and most basic selves, we each attempted to fake an appreciation for the others choice of films. For me, this meant pretending to understand the steely-eyed appeal of Clint Eastwood, as well as an endless parade of late 20th century Star Wars movies. My husband, for his part, insists he spent most of the 80’s sitting through a steady stream of films that showed precocious young French girls embracing womanhood in quirky Parisian apartments.

But with marriage came an end to the charade, and cinematic battle lines were quickly drawn – there were “his” movies and “my” movies and after only a few seconds of a coming attraction we could tell which was which. The presence of an armored vehicle, a hired assassin or a flame thrower put the film squarely on my husband’s list; my movies were instantly recognizable by the the appearance of Dame Judi Densch, a Bronte sister, or the Pacific Northwest. (Chick flicks often take place in Seattle, maybe due to the abundance of coffee shops.) It should be noted that my movie picks are often even more unbearable for my husband because they have subtitles. As he says, “I barely want to see this movie – I certainly don’t feel like reading it.”

The choice of films is not the only movie-related thing we disagree on – it turns out we also have very different opinions on the extent to which we need to drench our popcorn in butter-flavored petrochemicals. We also disagree on how early we need to arrive (I like to get there half an hour early to secure a mid-theater aisle seat, while my husband prefers to arrive fashionably late, insuring that we will stumble over other people’s knees as the credits are playing). But it’s the films themselves that cause the most disagreement, and choosing what to see frequently comes down to a Celebrity Death Match in which Helen Mirren is pitted against Bruce Willis. We compromise by taking turns selecting films, and as time goes on this has become less problematic – at this point in our lives we can both fall asleep pretty much at will, thereby turning even the most horrible movie into a fairly enjoyable nap.

But lately I’ve noticed that I’m losing my taste for the movies being marketed to women. The turning point I think, was a recent crop of insultingly exploitative “women’s movies,” films that were shamelessly marketed as destination flicks in the hope they’d inspire a cinematic Girls’ Night Out. The most obvious example of this genre was last summer’s Sex and the City 2, a horribly bad film about four late-life sex kittens high-fiving their way around the Middle East, on the hunt for shoes, anonymous desert intercourse, and Hollywood’s dumb-downed version of sisterhood.

But as bad as SATC2 was, at least it didn’t pretend to be anything other than a mass market, girl-power romp. Even more offensive are  some of the movies that are supposedly meant for thinking women, films that purport to make serious points about relationships and gender politics. There was one in particular that I dragged my husband to, a highly touted release that clumsily combined whimsy and self-empowerment to create a painfully wrong-headed mess that appeared to be about feminism, assertiveness, and the redemptive powers of pie. The ham-fisted message of this movie was that women are good and men are bad. When the heroine commits adultery it is presented as a fearless quest for freedom and truth, but when the male character commits adultery it’s because he’s an immature, rudderless horn dog looking to score. The simplistic stereotypes were insulting and false, but even worse, they made for an unforgivably tedious viewing experience. It was about an hour into this movie, numb from all the pointless chit-chat, that I found myself wishing we had gone next door to see the The Bourne Supremacy. I leaned in towards my husband and whispered, “Do you think they’ll blow up a bridge any time soon?”

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ColumnAs the saying goes, “Girls go to college to get more knowledge,” but do they care if their schools are eco-friendly?

My poor, misguided parents somehow failed to realize that getting me into a decent college was supposed to be their mission in life. In fact, they had practically no involvement at all in my college search, a process which was, by today’s standards, incredibly short and sweet. As a high school senior, I cut school with three friends and visited two colleges in one day. I chose those schools based largely on the fact they didn’t require application essays, and of my two choices, I selected the one that had the most promising male-to-female ratio. I’m pretty sure I spent more time selecting a prom dress than picking my college.

To say that things are different for kids today is a gross understatement. Helicopter parents (like me), now take a scorched earth approach to college applications, and we have all become wily experts in the art of marketing our children to institutions of higher learning. Parents now spend the better part of high school shepherding their offspring through a grueling application process that requires total commitment, massive amounts of time and energy, and a small army of paid professionals (tutors, essay consultants and private college advisors). I have spent the past two years schlepping my daughter to far-flung campuses where we have grinned like obsequious idiots at the perky tour guides who showed us around (A word to the wise: don’t waste your time trying to impress, or bribe, these young tour guides, since they have no say in the admissions process).

I have spent untold hours harassing my child until she fine-tuned her applications, studied for the SATs, and cranked out the gazillionth draft of her personal essay.  And she was on board for all of it, an equal partner in the madness, as she immersed herself in the process of becoming an informed consumer of U.S. universities. My daughter has combed the internet and college catalogs to create stacks of Excel spread sheets, meticulously categorizing schools according to size, location, fraternity life and academics.  But for all her research, my daughter had absolutely no idea where her college choices stood in terms of being green.

This is kind of surprising, given that college guidebooks have started aggressively ranking schools on their environmental profiles, rating them on their use of solar energy panels and the number of recycling bins scattered throughout the campus. Those college guidebooks are my daughter’s bibles, and from them she has learned and retained the tiniest and most obscure details about each school she’s applied to: she can tell you the exact number of undergraduates, the percentage of students who live off campus, and whether or not the school accepts transfer credits. She can describe each school’s personality, recite its mission statement almost verbatim, and tell you if it attracts hipsters, stoners, or meatheads. But when I asked her if she knew the schools’ green ratings, she was stumped, and extremely surprised to learn that she had missed an entire category of college information. Her friends, we would come to learn, were equally ignorant that data on sustainability was readily available in college guide books.

These are not kids who are indifferent to the environment. On the contrary, my daughter is the vice president of her school’s environmental awareness club, and her two best friends are co-presidents. My daughter and her friends recycle religiously and care passionately about global warming.  But there is simply no room in their jam-packed little heads to hold even one more fact about the colleges they are considering. With the economy in a shambles, these kids feel that their future success and happiness depends on being admitted to a “top” college, so they just can’t afford to worry about a school’s commitment to sustainable food sources and low-flush toilets.

Today’s high school seniors crave acceptance to colleges with big names and big endowments, schools that will impress future employers, schools that will give them a high-status decal to slap on their car’s rear window. Ironically, many of those decals will end up on the back of a Toyota Prius, because these kids  genuinely care if their car is environmentally friendly – they just don’t seem to care if their school is.

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ColumnA crackling fire makes my earth-friendly instincts go up in smoke.

Maybe it’s middle age, or maybe it’s just that I’ve become jaded, but the truth is, very few things surprise me these days. Of course, some things still surprise me: the fact that country music is the most popular radio format in the United States – that was a shocker. And the recent news that Donald Trump is considering a run for the presidency – I didn’t see that coming. But I was also surprised to learn that having a fire in my fireplace is environmentally incorrect – and I really shouldn’t have been.

How could I have failed to realize that smoke – any smoke –  is a respiratory irritant and a known pollutant? On the frequent occasions that my chimney has backed up, I have felt the smoke stinging my eyes and burning my lungs – I have watched my children and guests coughing and retching as they were overwhelmed by thick smoke from a malfunctioning flue. Did that seem like a healthy thing to me? Looking back on winter, I’m appalled at my cluelessness, because I actually thought having a fire in my house was a back-to-nature thing to do – practically organic in its old-time prairie appeal. A raging fire in my family room seemed somehow more eco-friendly than relying on an oil-burning furnace for warmth.

At least that’s what I thought, until The New York Times set me straight, pointing out in a recent article that every fire I made this past winter produced a micro-cloud of pollution, exposing my family and neighbors to a fluorocarbon output equal to roughly a pack and a half of Newport Lights. Not to mention the tiny particles that everyone but me has always had the good sense to consider a health hazard. The American Lung Association has gone so far as to recommend that  consumers avoid wood-burning fires altogether, citing research that names wood stoves and fireplaces as major contributors to particulate-matter air pollution in much of the United States.

How did I not know this, or rather, acknowledge this? To my exceedingly slight credit, I did, at least, cut back on fires this past winter, saving them for really special occasions, like the Super Bowl, or snowstorms, or a cup of hot chocolate on a chilly afternoon. The sad fact is, I simply don’t have the willpower to completely give up that lovely woodsy smell and the single most flattering light a woman my age can be seen in.

Instead, I did what I do best: I stalled. I waited out the winter and let the arrival of spring turn my fire habit into a happy non-issue. This is, to be sure, a passive and not particularly admirable way to right my environmental wrongs. It does not make me look very good, so I comfort myself with the knowledge that my friends are equally flawed when it comes to the environment. There is my friend Dorothy, who spends each winter turning up the thermostat, while simultaneously opening her windows “to maintain a perfect lizard-like body temperature while still enjoying fresh air.” Then there is my friend Eileen, who will admit to having a couple of drinks to lessen her guilt when throwing out cans.

I can’t speak for my friends, but I have vowed to do better in the future – to be smarter, more responsible and more evolved. By next winter I plan to boycott my fireplace and make my house a smoke-free zone.

Cross my hearth and hope to die.

Editor’s Note: Susan Goldberg is a slightly lapsed treehugger. Although known to overuse paper products, she has the best of intentions – and a really small SUV. Catch her column, The Goldberg Variations, each week here at EcoSalon.

Image: snowball.team

The post The Goldberg Variations: So Much for the Afterglow appeared first on EcoSalon.

I used to make fun of people who drove Hummers. I would see those suburban road warriors taking up a lane and a half on the highway and I would say something rude and cutting about insecure twits who needed an off-road monster car to protect them from fender benders in a Whole Foods’ parking lot. I would speculate as to what type of “inadequacies” a man might be compensating for by wanting to drive a really big car. Oh, I was tough. Brutal even.

I wasn’t crazy about Suburbans or Escalades either, but I reserved a singular fury for the behemoth Hummers, unique even among big SUVs for their overkill and gas guzzling. Three times as big as a typical sport utility vehicle, with a frightening lack of emissions efficiency, these cars struck me as iconic symbols of waste, excess, and arrogant disregard for the atmosphere. But not anymore. Oh, how things have changed.

As I write this, Hummer has gone out of business, a victim of its own hubris and rising gas prices. In related news, sort of, my daughter has been driving for just under a year and my heart constricts every single time she pulls out of our driveway. There are a number of factors that worry me, but of particular concern are icy winter roads, other (stupid) drivers, and the gravitational pull of her cell phone. I am afraid that she will miss something in the blind spot, that treacherous dead zone where danger lurks, just out of sight.

It seems insane to me that a girl so young, so slight, so lacking in life and vehicular experience, should be allowed to hurl herself down weather impaired roads, with nothing between her and other cars but a dainty and insubstantial Honda Civic. I would like her in something bigger and stronger, something heavy and completely unyielding. I want her in a four wheel fortress.

Like any responsible parent, I have logged hours with my daughter in the car. We have practiced merging and lane changes, we’ve gone uphill and downhill in all kinds of weather, in daylight and dark. I have warned her till I’m hoarse and yet I still wonder: will she look away from the road to answer a text? Put on lip gloss? Will she lose control of her car while turning on an Ingrid Michaelson CD? This is a child who has mastered AP Calculus, but I’m not sure she’ll remember that oncoming traffic has the right-of -way when she’s making a left turn. She is a smart girl but she’s still a teenager, not too far removed from wearing braces and reading books about vampire love triangles.

If I can’t always be sitting next to her when she drives, then I want the car to step in and protect her for me. I want her car to be imposing. Scary. I want it to bully other cars on the road, show them who’s boss. And the fact is, emissions or not, if Hummer hadn’t gone out of business I would genuinely love to put her in one. It comforts me to imagine her in something big and tank-like, wearing a helmet, encased in bubble wrap and packed in with Styrofoam peanuts (still more environmental no-nos.) This makes me a hypocrite, I know, but from where I stand – at the intersection of mother love and civic responsibility – I would choose my daughter’s safety without a second thought. Yes, I want her to inherit a cleaner planet, but first I want her to emerge unscathed from her first years behind the wheel.

And the eco rage I once felt for the road-hogging cretins I used to berate? It’s still there, but it’s tucked away, hidden someplace where I don’t have to see it or deal with it. It’s in my blind spot.

Editor’s Note: Susan Goldberg is a slightly lapsed treehugger. Although known to overuse paper products, she has the best of intentions – and a really small SUV. Catch her column, The Goldberg Variations, each week here at EcoSalon.

Images: TheFriendlyFiend, fujisan3 (Mr.mt)

The post The Goldberg Variations: Maternal Road Rage appeared first on EcoSalon.