Author Archives: Patricia Wild

January 8, 2011: At the chimney and fireplace store

So although there’s a ton of alternative ways to heat stuff out there (check out  yesterday’s comment/link re compost-pile water heating, for example), I’ve already confessed that I’m a hopeless aesthete, right? So when browsing Cambridge’s Black Magic Chimney and Fireplace store today, do I investigate pellet stoves?

Hell, no. I fall in love with a Vermont Castings stove. Which can be turned on with a remote. So is operational should we lose power.

And it’s so old-fashioned and pretty!

(I’m hopeless.)

Now: anyone want a baby grand piano? (Which is currently occupying the space this coveted stove could go.)

January 7, 2011: Anybody? Anybody?

OK:

Here’s the setup: An old house (probably built around 1860) in a densely populated city (Somerville, MA) and an owner (that’s me) who wonders how a future owner will be able to heat this house post-fossil-fuel dependency (currently, we use natural gas to heat water that noisily flows into our radiators.)

Got it?

So: I’m just going to toss out a bunch of words and wait to hear from people:

Geothermal?

Wood or corn or pellet stoves?

Anybody? Anybody?

(BTW: Did not mention solar power because a three-story apartment building is right next door/to our South and effectively blocks out the sun most of the winter. BUT if you know something I should know, don’t be shy: Tell me.)

January 6, 2011: Light: elucidated

A canceled meeting meant I could merely sit at the kitchen table this morning, still in my jammies, drink my coffee, and leisurely watch the feeding frenzy at our birdfeeder: the sparrows and chickadees already know a snow storm’s coming. So I was in the right place at the right time to notice when the morning sun pierced the crown feathers of a female cardinal so precisely, I saw the individual feathers.

Maybe it’s the coffee talking but that feels like an opening. A metaphor, maybe?

Something about Light?

Certainly I could start by elucidating why, in this month-long series re heat and Light, I capitalize that second noun.

Answer: because I am trying to write both about my bumbling around re heating this house and, dimly akin to that light-piercing moment at the birdfeeder this morning, seek Something Greater Than Myself as I bumble.

January 5, 2011: “Growing Good”

Today’s Boston Globe had a disturbing article in the business section: Evergreen Solar, a local biz, “has struggled against aggressive competition in China, a poor economy, and increasingly lackluster government support for the country’s solar industry.”

This is, of course, outrageous.

And worthy of a mini-rant. Are you ready? Here goes:

[Historical reference: In the sixties and seventies, many a rant began: “We can put a man on the moon but we can’t . . . ]

We can spend billions of dollars on war but we can’t support subsidize companies like Evergreen? (China, on the other hand has “ramped up manufacturing, using massive government subsidies to produce the world’s cheapest solar panels.”)

This is outrageous.

Here’s how I plan to cope with my outrage and my sense of powerlessness; I share this because it’s helpful.

When I read maddening articles like this in my morning paper, I remind myself that I’m reading, you know, The Boston Globe. Does the Globe know much about the countless visionary individuals and small neighborhood efforts and initiatives and small businesses who, indeed, recognize what’s imperative? Like Slow Money for example?

What do you think?

And I am comforted by the very last words of George Eliot’s Middlemarch—which I just finished last night.

Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

January 3, 2011: Ah, Finlandia

Yesterday, in the spirit of Telling Everybody What I’m Doing and Then Listening, my friend Betsy  mentioned her visit to Finland. She’d noticed that the streets were all torn up and had been told that Finland was doing interesting things to reduce their oil imports.

Hmm. Finland. Where it get’s to minus 20 Celsius. So this morning, googled “Finland heating” and came up with a slew of interesting things happening in Finland.

For starters:

1. Recycling excess heat from a large data center—to heat adjacent buildings and homes, I’m guessing.

2. Heating businesses producing heat for local district heating systems. Shared heat.

Both projects, especially the second, required commitment and enormous capital. Could this country, so financially strapped by the wars in—well, it’s just too damned depressing to name them all—turn on a dime, like it did when the US became a mighty war machine, and invest its enormous resources towards projects such as are happening in Finland?

Of course we can.

Why do I say that?

Because I believe in That of God in everyone.

Because I believe in transformation.

Because I am “practic[ing] resurrection.”

And because I don’t think it’s a coincidence that one of the greatest anti-war songs is, you guessed, “Finlandia.”

January 2, 2011: Lesson # 1

So a big part of this month-long Light and heat project should be bumping up against those irrational, stuck places in myself, right? And  acknowledging those uncomfortable, oh-that-again moments? Seems necessary. And honest.

So I’ve already discovered that although I thought I wanted to be open to whatever methods are currently available to save energy, my (ridiculous) house-pride/entitlement just might keep me from big-time changes. Like covering my drafty windows with plastic weatherizing. Way too tacky, m’dear! And, besides, just using Saran Wrap’s a huge challenge for non-dextrous me; I seriously doubt I am capable of effectively covering an entire window.

So I walked to Tags, a local, independently-owned hardware store about a mile from my house, to see what the latest, recommended-by-a-salesperson method to plug up leaky windows might be. Which turned out to to be a clear liquid you apply with a caulk gun (My VT daughter had recommended this stuff. You gotta listen to someone from VT, right?). Problem: The package warns that this stuff produces fumes. And, yeah, my windows are not airtight but it is the middle of winter. Everything’s shut tight. So shut tight that I can still detect the slightest whiff of the fish curry we had at Christmas. So, reluctantly, must pass on “the latest.”

So, promising myself to get the liquid sealer in, say, October, and to seal up everything one window at a time—with the back door wide open—I bought rope caulk and, relishing the playing-with-clay/hands-on work, plugged up the most egregious gaps. I’ll wait for a windy day to finish the job.

Oh! Something I don’t know: is this caulk toxic? Would Ruby, my precious, toddler granddaughter, get sick if she grabbed a handful? Since she won’t visit here until the summer, not an issue. But I’m investigating, anyway.

January 1, 2011: The Premise

Gotta admit: When I saw “Julie and Julia,” my immediate reaction was, “Damn! Wish I could blog about some interesting project like that.”

Well, now I can.

For the next month, every day, I will blog re my (probably meandering/non-linear) exploration of how best to heat my old, drafty house.

Why?

Lots of reasons:

# 1. Every time I try to visualize a post-fossil-fuel future, I always get stuck at: How the hell would I heat this house after we run out of natural gas and oil? Related things to figure out:  how do I reduce my carbon footprint? And how do I prepare myself for the inevitable blackouts and brownouts which will accompany the climate change we are already experiencing?

2.  Just as, ten years ago, I felt like Spirit was asking me to do Something about race and white privilege—and, eventually, about our broken criminal justice system—I sense that same sort of nudging re climate change. (And, yes, I pray that way will open so these seemingly disparate leadings will somehow converge.)

Hence: Light and heat.

December 28, 2010: . . . “And it’s all still in there.”

To paraphrase W. C. Fields: All things considered, I’d rather have the Blizzard Christmas of 2010 to the Norovirus Christmas of 2007 (when our entire family took turns being violently ill.). Although the terrible driving conditions meant some family members had to leave our Boxing Day dinner early—so we didn’t have our annual opportunity to systematically check-in, easily my favorite Christmas tradition—two members of our far-flung family stayed an extra day. A treat. Being housebound also meant all those special holiday leftovers were especially appreciated and grandchildren’s toys entertained their owners and their doting aunts and uncles and grandparents.

And, of course, we were lucky: We didn’t lose power and this drafty old house, which shook and swayed every time a stiff wind roared past, kept us (relatively) warm and dry. And when we ran out of coffee—ohmygosh!—we could simply climb over the snow banks of Union Square to buy locally roasted French Roast.

The people of Scituate, a seaside town south of Boston, were not so lucky: homes and businesses were flooded, two houses burned down, dozens of people had to be evacuated from the chest-high water.

Maureen Trayers, who lives next door to one of the burned homes, and whose own house was heavily flame-damaged, said this as she was being rescued: “We just had Christmas. And it’s all still in there.”

Presumably, at that very traumatic moment, as she’s climbing into a rescue vehicle, by “all” Ms. Trayers meant the presents and the gift cards, the tinsel and the wrappings, the decorated Christmas tree, stockings; cookies and a turkey and eggnog.

But I’ll bet that very soon she’ll realize that, yes, the wonder of the winter solstice, of light in the darkness, the hope of a peaceful, promising new year, the blessings of being alive and together and safe; yes, Maureen, all that is still in there. In you. In me. In all of us.

December 20, 2010: “Star of wonder. . . “

There’a a little beauty parlor on Somerville Avenue that’s hung some cheesy, glittery Christmas ornaments in its large, plate glass front window. Feeling glum a couple of days ago, I’d walked past that window just as the morning sun struck those ornaments. And the world—at least my teeny part of it—was transformed.

OK, I thought. Instead of viewing the asphalt and concrete and heavy traffic of Somerville Avenue as portents of doom and destruction (which is what I’d been doing), maybe I should instead look for something that speaks to the GLORY of my species.

And, immediately, there it was: the brand-new bike lanes of Somerville Avenue. Truly, those lanes are a miracle, a gigantic break-through, yes? (Unfortunately, there were no riders on the bike lane when I had this revelatory moment. That would have made this Ah HAH perfectly cinematic!)

As somebody noted at yesterday’s meeting for worship—which preceded Friends Meeting at Cambridge’s always tear-producing Christmas pageant—when the Holy family knocks on the door of that crowded Bethlehem  inn, it’s a “metaphor” for letting in light/joy/wonder/God. We get to choose if we open that door.

And how often.

December 13, 2010: Disquiet = Repeating Joy (Eventually)

Haven’t we heard this story before? A gentle and Spirit-imbued man, a traveler, a stranger, by his powerful yet graceful presence, shakes things up, challenges the complacent and the easeful, but then dies much too soon.

For me, Elphas Wambani was such a man. (And Elphas would roar at being paired with You Know Who!)

A Quaker from Kenya, Elphas had come to this country a few years ago to study at Episcopal Divinity School—and, although his Kenyan Quaker/FUM tradition was decidedly programmed, to worship at decidedly unprogrammed Friends Meeting at Cambridge.

From the very first time I met him, Elphas pushed my “I’m not doing enough; I should be. . . ” button: Enormous pain about his country, its AIDs epidemic, and how little I have done, how unfair it is that I have so much; you know, the usual White American Woman’s Guilt.

At his memorial on Saturday, a gathering for EDS and FMC folks, I reflected on that disquiet: And I think it’s because he was so gentle, so loving, such a man of faith, that I couldn’t discount his witness. His presence keenly reminded me: Yes, Patricia, there is a Kenya. And a Bangladesh. And a . . . Had he been a hectoring, rhetoric-spouting guy, had he been angry or unpleasant, how easy it would have been to not allow myself to acknowledge his reality. And my own.

Tragically, Elphas died in his sleep this summer at age fifty-four, after returning to Kenya. Such a loss. So unfair.

But there is such joy to be reminded that, yes, gentle and loving are so powerful they can change the world. Because, yes, we have heard this story before.

December 6, 2010: Repeat the Sounding Joy—again

Saturday morning, I invited my husband to join me to shop at a crafts fair and to pick up our Christmas wreath.

He declined. “We’ve gone there for several years,” he pointed out. “It’s always the same.”

Exactly!

This holiday season, more than ever, I relish same-old, same-old. Aside from not sending Christmas cards (“[Sending Christmas cards is] expensive, and time-consuming and environmentally unfriendly” declared The Boston Globe‘s Miss Conduct yesterday.), I joyfully repeat my holiday traditions.

Why?  It’s not just because lately it seems as though the loonies have taken over my country. Or that my father died. Or that my writing’s stalled. Which make keeping my balance and perspective and equanimity hard sometimes, so that same-old feels safe. Not entirely.

It’s also because when I light a candle  or deeply breathe in the living, green, verdant smell of our Christmas wreath, I connect with the billions of my species who feared/fear the dark and the cold and mortality, yet remain hopeful but yearning.

And I am finding enormous comfort in that connection.