A teachable moment arrived recently in the form of an e-mail from the graduation committee of my daughter’s high school. It was a plea for extra donations to keep Safe and Sober Grad Night afloat. The Senior Class ritual is jeopardized because families and community businesses who usually fund the celebration are themselves struggling to stay afloat.

Safe and Sober Grad Night is a wonderful tradition for many Marin high schools. Seniors pile into buses shortly after tossing their mortarboards, and head for an all-night, chaperoned, substance-free party.  No one is excluded. There are no intoxicated senior drivers, no fancy clothes, no panic attacks or tears about who has a date and what to wear. It’s a bunch of kids, many of whom have known each other since kindergarten, celebrating all they have meant to one another before they set off for broader and divergent horizons.

I am glad to write a check to support Safe and Sober Grad night, but can’t we do more? What if we embrace the economic meltdown as an opportunity to scale back on excess and teach our kids the true value of community?

Marin, with its ostentatious consumption and intense pressure to keep up appearances, has always been a tough county. Rich and poor families both contend with the twin epidemics of affluenza and entitlement that commonly infect Marin kids. The financially stressed face even more urgent hardships.

These struggling families are not new, they’ve just been hidden. Long before Wall Street went belly up, there have been kids in Marin who skip prom because they don’t want to burden their parents. Countless parents have lost sleep trying to conjure up enough cash so their kids can keep up in the social competition. The widespread pain from the current economic crisis makes it easier to shed light on a problem that’s been here in the shadows all along.

Happily, there are signs of progress. Teens Turning Green, an organization founded by Marin students, is expanding its original emphasis on cosmetic safety to promote ecologically and economically friendly prom-going. Now that the focus on green includes the shrinking abundance of greenbacks, there’s an even greater opportunity for finding the silver lining in this perfect storm.

Of course, it’s fun to dress up and show off from time to time-- one needn’t be a killjoy. But imagine if everybody downsized in the status competition and contributed the savings to Safe and Sober Grad Night--especially the kids who don’t need to for their wallets, but may need to for their souls.

What if winter formals in far-flung San Francisco morph into winter square dances in the school gym? What if proms no longer feature pricey chocolate fondue fountains that ruin the girls’ finery? What if stretch limos and exorbitant ticket prices become as uncool as tobacco?

Imagine nobody losing sleep about affording either prom or graduation! As Teens Turning Green suggests, kids can lend and borrow clothes. They can do each others’ hair, toes, and make-up. They can drive the family car and donate what they would have spent on a stretch limo and all the accessories to Safe and Sober Grad Night.  Kids can even hold a car wash to get those prom wheels gleaming while raising money for the common good. Parents can do more than write a check—they can encourage their kids to give up excessive spending and instead give of themselves.

Teaching our graduates the value of community and living within their means—now wouldn’t that be a terrific send-off?

By Lorrie Goldin

Labels: graduation, green, greenbacks, Lorrie Goldin, poor kids, rich kids, safe, sober

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After preschool today, I was loading both boys’ bikes into the back of our Prius. A man walking his two dogs stopped next to our car. He was a big guy with large biceps and a bald head. Normally I’m used to getting comments about the kids’ bikes, etc. from fellow parents, but he wasn’t looking at the bikes.

“How do you like your car?” he asked. I explained how much I love it. He asked how often I fill up the tank. I said every two weeks, but I actually have no idea. I fill it up when it’s close to empty. But I told him it gets about forty-five miles a gallon.

This I knew.

“Nice.” he responded, nodding approvingly like guys used to do when eyeing trucks on top of large wheels or some vintage Chevy. I’m not a car person, but I felt “cool” in that moment. It makes me happy that fuel-efficient cars are attracting attention.

Buddhism teaches that positives often come from a negative. This is how I feel about gas prices right now. Yes, they suck. But they are making us look at gas consumption in a new way.

I really wish my kids’ school was within biking distance.

Maybe in the future.

By Kristy Lund

Labels: green, Kirsty Lund, Prius

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My sister, Dr. Kirsten the biologist, has recently published an article in a conservation journal focusing on the impact of the 1935 damming of the Colorado River on a now endangered marine fish, the Totoaba. 

The change in their habitat has slowed their growth, delaying maturation and thus spawning. The impact was documented by comparing prehistoric otoliths (ear bones) found in aboriginal shell middens, with modern, post-dam otoliths. 

It’s a teensy bit technical, but the bottom line is because of our ever increasing urban need for water, the earth’s natural balance is thrown off and over time the resulting change in habitat can no longer support many species. 

Two of my kids had field trips this week so it took me three days to read the seven-page article, but immediately I drew a parenting corollary.  

The impact of urban sprawl, big box store malls sprouting like toxic mushrooms in open pastures, huge home theater sized SUVs, soulless stucco McMansions and drive-through Starbucks, has eliminated our youth habitat.

Because of the dwindling number of places where our kids can safely hang out unsupervised and be kids, there is a delay in human maturation. (Not that I'm encouraging river spawning.)

In current youth habitats there's too much traffic, too many electronic diversions, too much stress to achieve, accomplish and be a resume kid.  The juveniles stay juveniles much longer (boomerang kids?).   I'll need to do some earbone core samples to support my theory, but I think I'm on to something.

By Mary Allison Tierney

Labels: green, Mary Allison Tierney

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Going “Green” has become some sort of trendy tagline instead of a thought and action process that weaves throughout society, government and our homes.

It is a noble cause to think we can save the Earth from ourselves after so many gazillion years of ebb and flow, but it does make me wonder about the regulation of goods and policies in the now; the “Green” police.

Take organic produce for instance. I have eaten organic produce ever since I could afford it, which was well after college graduation because before then my best job had been removing staples from old paperwork at the local municipality.

Back then, I made barely enough money and thought I was invincible so I didn’t really care what I consumed, to a point. I drew the line at liver and anything still alive; candy processed beyond recognition was still fine as were any kind of artificially-flavored salted snacks. I didn’t have kids yet, so it wasn’t about saving the Earth for anyone, I just thought the food tasted better.

You see, I am of the generation whose mom cooked dinner but most of the veggie sides required a can opener to serve. Basically, I didn’t realize that fruit and veggies could actually have a flavor other than butter or salt, or both.

Then I discovered the organic section of the grocery store that was at the time very small, very expensive and very hard to find. However, living in California provided many farmer’s markets and loads of fresh produce so I persevered. I learned that apples didn’t naturally grow the size of my head and bananas more realistically compared with, well, that’s another story.

Anyway, after having kids I stayed organic for other reasons such as the slim possibility that the pesticides may hinder their neuronal growth or something. I already have a tough enough time figuring out the little guys. And, organics are becoming more accessible to us time-starved moms. The organic section of the grocery stores are getting bigger and even places like Wal-Mart are getting in on the action.

Selfishly, this concerns me. I worry about quality control. If organic farming was so good at mass production, why were pesticides created in the first place? Not that I don’t think everyone should have access to organic produce, I am just concerned that the bureaucracy of certification which is already ambiguous, may not be able to keep up.

For instance, why can we visit Mexico and get sick drinking the water but are now able to purchase “organic” produce that is mostly made up of water from there? This concerns me on many levels. Is it organic because technically the stuff that makes us sick is bacteria organically found in nature? Are they using tons and tons of bottled water to irrigate? Are they heating the stuff up to a high temperature to kill everything? This ambiguity worries me, is most probably unfounded, but it makes me skip tomatoes for the week.

This past Earth Day I was washing my natural-sized eight dollar pear that I had waited days to become ripe and peeled of the sticker. First I was annoyed that the sticker took about a dollar of surface area off the pear, and then I wondered: Is the glue that attaches the pesticide-free certified label to the fruit, organic, too?


By Jennifer O’Shaughnessy

Labels: earth, green, Organic, produce

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