Deceased Environmental Grandma

Note: This was posted to my friend "Sean Miller's" MySpace page. He's given me permission to reprint it here.

My grandma (Nana) died over the weekend. Don't be sad, she was 91, and was lucid, mobile, and well taken care of until her massive heart attack. We should all be so lucky…

As is customary, I reflected over her life during the last few days. For those of my friends interested in sustainable living, I thought I could hold her up as sort of a tribute, an example of environmental consciousness, and a role model for the "real" environmental movement today.

Let's get some things straight first. Nana was a conservative Catholic who went to church daily until her death, voted for GWB twice, and taught us how to say the Rosary. She was not a role model for the typical liberal intelligentsia. But she raised a family adherent to the principles of sustainability, moderation, and delayed gratification long before it was popular, or even defined.

Nana lived through the Great Depression, growing up one of 8 children to a dirt-poor immigrant Slovak tenant farmer family in Appalachia. Before it was even popular, she was saving produce containers, rubber bands, and any household item with any sort of utility. There was a succession of clothing in my family. New clothes would become hand me downs. Hand me downs, after they no longer could be mended, would become hand-hemmed dishtowels. Dishtowels would turn into kitchen and household rags. The final stage would be shop rags for my Grandpa's well drilling business. I am sure my mother and my uncle could tour the garage today and identify their 5th grade era clothing.

Nana kept a garden. And an assortment of pigs and chickens. All on a one acre lot. Hers was a model of sustainability. Mom and uncle Mike would literally "hoe a row" every day over the summer. Nana grew all the vegetables that the family would eat through the summer: in the fall they would can plenty to last through the winter. Organic residue would be fed to the pigs: the chickens ranged over the yard, though I suppose their feed was probably supplemented also through the neighbor's corn. When a pig was slaughtered, everything was used. Blood sausage was made, and it was exactly what it sounds like. Needless for me to elucidate further, the cycle of food residue-compost-protein was maintained in an organic cycle emulated even today by the best of the Soy FACE farms.

Nana's consumerism, or actually, lack thereof, was bred by her childhood economic circumstances that shaped her life. She and my Grandpa could identify edible mushrooms from thirty feet (a task that takes me 20 minutes and a dichotomous key), knew the best berry patches, and between the two of them, could create anything, from pipe, to clothes, crafts, xmas gifts, quilts etc from scratch. Even after my grandpa died, Nana would heat her small house (which she and my Grandpa built) with wood from the surrounding forests. Kindling of course, consisted of the pile newspapers and other burnables she stockpiled. Finally, around age 80, she switched full time to the oil furnace that they used as an emergency back-up, only after we worried about her hauling wood.

For those of you have actually calculated your ecological footprint through various web sites, I am certain that hers would fall under ½ and acre. She raised 2 healthy children and roughly in this much of working area. The rest was ornamental grass and my Grandpa's workshop.

The modern environmental movement has seemed to have been somewhat corrupted by consumerism. The dominant stereotype seems to be a sort of modern Yuppie (I have seen it referred to as Yuppie 2.0), an environmentally pseudo-conscious superconsumer who seems to focus on consumption. Instead of people minimizing purchases, the new pseudo hippie seems to love purchasing the newest, most visible symbol of environmentalism (new aluminum Sigg bottle, or organic trader joe shopping job, recycled glassware made of old pepsi bottles, and organic produce flown in at an incredible fossil fuel cost from south America). Surreptitiously, it seems, that well-intentioned people have been caught up in the glamour of consumerism.

Nana would never have been comfortable as any role model, especially for something such as environmentalism. But such things that were a manner of living for her, like growing her own food in a sustainable system, making clothes from rolls of fabric, and extremely limiting consumer tendencies through limited consumption and maximized reuse.

It leads me to ask, who is the better role model for sustainable living? Certainly my stereotype of the well meaning but hypocritical pseudo hippie who buys the $6 Ecuadorian pineapple at trader Joes and drives 25 mile home in some SUV at 20 miles per gallon comes off worse than my sainted Grandmother. Nana also lived at a time when the mother could and would stay home and run the household. But seriously, couldn't we all grow a couple more pots of tomatoes, or at least limit our consumption a little bit more?

I tried to identify people, outside of my most immediate family, who try to represent the principles Nana exemplified. While their politics really did differ (from extreme liberals to libertarians), the folks who garden/farm sustainably, make or reuse their clothes, can vegetables for the winter, and limit their consumerism tend to be cut from the same basic cloth (no pun intended). The big differences, politically/socially, tended to be whether they were devout or atheist, vegetarian or "carnitarian" (mostly vegetarian, but will eat game and fish that they personally harvest), or believed in individual responsibility vs. legislated welfare. Regardless of ideology, these people are somewhat isolated; fringed candidates from a majority world. It no longer, or maybe not ever, has been cool to live by the necessary provisions of a resource limited society. While this glue has bonded such a community, it remains split from society at large, mostly by those who still believe they can justify consumerism through a sustainable lens.

To wrap up, I look at the character of Nana, and the morals that she instilled in her children (my mother and uncle). Save. Save money by reusing and using land to its sustainable potential. Hone craft skills and personal talent. Educate yourself, but stay close to the soil. Though she believed in a deistic approach to farming, we can all acknowledge the custodial nature we can play to making our own lot or apartment balcony its own sustainable system. In all of our "superior" education though, we make mistakes in our consumer choices. I take quite a measure of joy in knowing that Nana, who was never educated past middle school, has ecologically trumped thousands of college and graduate students in the economy of consumerism.