7gen Bloc

I had my "a-ha" moment with the iPhone on a trip to New York City last winter. Breezing down 95 into New York, traffic began to back up and eventually stall. With time on my hands, I looked to see if I missed any calls on my newly acquired gadget (thanks Santa!).

So...what's the big environmental news of the past two weeks? Don't ask me. I have absolutely no idea.

I've always said that school is great, but it's really up to Mom and Dad to do the teaching that counts. As parents, we bear the ultimate responsibility for making sure that our kids leave the nest with all the wisdom they need to make their way in the world.

Well there you have it. Winter's first snow has fallen here in Vermont. There wasn't much to shovel out my way, but today in the clearing skies, the distant mountains are white and it's obvious that there are lots of winter scenes unfolding in the surrounding hills.

Everyone likes a clean home, but few of us enjoy the chore of cleaning...unless you're like me. Some of my earliest memories are admiring my mother as she cleaned the house. I wanted to take part in her ritual from a very young age. Growing up in the 80's, our house was filled with brightly colored cleaning products –- albeit with Mr. Yuk stickers on them.

The Carbon Shredders is a community-based low carbon diet initiative that is engaging the folks in the Mad River Valley, Vermont to pull together friends and family and find a whole host of ways to not only reduce their carbon footprint, but also the community's.

And so it has come to this. A handful of hours. One single day. Election Day 2008, a watershed moment in the American story and quite possibly in the history of humanity itself.

Here's the thing: All the bravado and mental preparation in the world melts into a big puddle of nothing when your first child gets placed into your arms. In my case, courage and certitude were vanquished by an unholy mix of icy fear and incendiary joy. Amidst it all came the sudden revelation that I was a rank parenting amateur of the first magnitude who'd suddenly been handed the ball in the Super Bowl of Life.

Here in Vermont's northern Champlain Valley, the first big frost came last week to mark the end of a long and fertile gardening season. We've pulled up the last of everything except the root vegetables and the cabbage. Today the first snow fell, but inside we're still enjoying the fruits of summer and will be for several weeks to come.

Did you know that babies are born with more than 200 man-made industrial chemicals in their blood? Did you know many of the consumer products we use, from cosmetics to foods to household products, contribute to this phenomenon? When you look at a label on a cleaning product, do you truly understand what you are reading as well as you do when reading a food label?