Wonder Boy and I consider ourselves to be pretty green. We recycle religiously, we compost all of our non-dairy food scraps, we’re vegetarian, we’ve taken measures to make out home as energy efficient as a 110-year-old house can be. You get the picture. So when I heard about this year’s Farmers’ Fair in Covington, Kentucky, it piqued my interest. When I found out the keynote speaker was Ed Begley, Jr., I was all “Done deal, no debate – I’m going.”
I don’t have some secret crush on Ed. I’m not that familiar with his show, Living With Ed, though I have seen an episode or two. I just know that he is a man who is dedicated to living in a way that is environmentally friendly. And that is someone I can get behind.
I invited many folks to go to the fair but in the end it was me, my mom and Wonder Boy. Everyone else missed out because we got this close to Ed:
And his message was pretty cool. He basically said he makes okay cash now so he can afford to do crazy things to his house to be greener, but in the beginning he did small things. He encouraged people to only do what they could afford to and to move up the scale as they were able. First a composter, then a solar-powered water heater, then solar panels powering your house. That inspired me to push myself to do more. Maybe we can do an energy audit on our house and see efficient things really are? (We need to repair an obviously leaking front door first because otherwise we’re just setting ourselves up for failure.)
He spoke also about transportation. This is where I felt like I was being spoken to. Ed drives an electric car and has done so since the 1970s. The reality is, most of us have a very small area in which we drive and that area can be covered by an electric car. For Wonder Boy and I, we have made a choice to live very close to where we work (or to work very close to where we live) so that we don’t pollute with fuel. But we are still a two-person household with two cars, a scooter and, soon, a moped. That’s crazy. We also live about three houses down from a bus stop so public transportation is readily available.
I’m ruminating on this. Deciding how I can turn the message I heard into some positive action. I’m glad it got me thinking.
There was one other really great thing about the Farmers’ Fair. Baby animals!!!
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