Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Abby Quillen

The Sun Will Come Out

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It’s been raining for two days. Then this afternoon, the sun came out. I grabbed my camera and raced for the door. But just as I got outside, the wind kicked up, the sky turned black, and rain began pelting down. This exact chain of events happened three times today, which may tell you a little bit about how my week has been. We’ve had long work days, a ferocious bout of illness, and just the normal to-do lists to contend with. It’s been challenging, I must say.

But we’ve had some ups too. My son was amazingly cheerful throughout his first stomach ailment. And there are the spring flowers. I just can’t get enough of the stretch of time between March and June in Oregon. Plus, our very first seeds are sprouting in the garden.

So, yes, it’s been a bit like a rain storm, with just enough sun breaks to keep us going. I was hoping to share some photos of sun-dappled leaves or a rainbow perhaps, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe tomorrow….

This post is for Steady Mom’s Thirty Minute Blog Challenge.

No Impact Man

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Over the weekend I watched the documentary, No Impact Man. Have you heard of it? Writer Colin Beaven talked his wife Michelle Conlin and their two-year-old daughter into dedicating a year to trying to make zero impact on the planet. That meant turning off their electricity in their New York City apartment, eating only local foods, giving up toilet paper, washing laundry in the bathtub, and riding bikes everywhere. Beaven says the point of the experiment was to see what would be easy to give up and what would be not quite as easy.

I loved that:

  • Michelle was a self-described reality-show addict and retail junkie and was less than thrilled about the project at first, but by the end, she loved riding bikes (even through Manhattan traffic), spending TV-free time with her family, and shopping at the farmer’s market.
  • Both Colin and Michelle said that the year made them better parents.
  • Michelle found that turning off the TV and all the gadgets made time slow down.
  • Colin discovered that working in the garden helped him connect to the rhythms of nature.
  • As the project went on, Colin reflected more about not just making personal changes, but getting involved in making change on a community level.

Things I wondered:

  • Why was it not against the rules to use hot tap water and the city sewer system?
  • Did they wash the diapers in the bathtub?

It’s a fun movie. I definitely recommend it if you haven’t seen it yet. I love that the message is not that we all must deprive ourselves to save the planet, but that less can be more. Simple living can be a deeply satisfying, rich, entertaining, connected, and fun way to live.

It left me wanting to power-down more often and do more bicycling, but more importantly, it renewed for me the importance of building community. At one point Colin Beaven said almost precisely what Rosie Kirincic told me recently when I visited Aprovecho, a non-profit collective dedicated to researching and teaching sustainable living practices and green skills: ““There’s accountability in knowing your community. It’s really a powerful thing.”

Have you seen No Impact Man? What did you think?

Great Escape

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It’s been an unexpectedly busy week around here. That means I haven’t had much time for blogging … but we did find some time to escape  to a peaceful spot next to a stream this afternoon. It’s in our neighborhood, just a few blocks from our house. But something about the sound of the water and the sunlight slicing through the tree branches makes it feel like a much more exotic get-away. It was exactly what we needed.

I hope you found a place to escape this week as well.

To Watch or Not to Watch

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It’s TV Turnoff Week, or as Adbusters calls it Digital Detox Week. You can learn more about it here. The idea is to take a break from the television, computers, and digital gadgets that have become such a huge part of most of our lives and see what we might be missing out on, like spring flowers, for instance.

“The goal is not to dwell on the pitfalls of our electronic devices but to reflect on ourselves. And who knows, if the magic begins to creep back into your life, the digital detox may never end.” – Adbusters

I abstained from all screens for the entire week last spring, and I had a great time. I completely recommend it. At the end I felt relaxed and recharged, and it helped me strike a better balance with online time and family time – at least for awhile.

Unfortunately this year, I can’t afford to power down for an entire week, because that would mean, um, not working. But I have family coming for a visit soon, and I plan on taking my own little digital vacation then, since I’ll be taking some time off from working and blogging anyway.

If you’re thinking of celebrating TV Turnoff Week and on the lookout for some non-digital activities for the week, check out the links under “Homegrown Entertainment” over there on your right.

Last April I reviewed Living Outside the Box: TV-Free Families Share Their Secrets by Barbara Brock (2007). I thought you may enjoy the review if you missed it:

The statistics about television-watching in America should concern everyone:

  • The TV is on for 6 hours and 47 minutes a day in the average house.
  • The average person watches more than 4 hours of TV a day. (That adds up to 9 years of a 65-year-old’s life).
  • 66% of people watch TV while eating dinner.
  • 70% of daycares use TV to occupy kids during a typical day.

What does this mean for America’s kids? The average child spends 1500 hours a year watching TV, as compared to 900 hours in school, and sees on that flickering screen:

  • 8,000 murders by the end of elementary school.
  • 200,000 acts of violence by the age of 18.
  • 20,000 thirty-second commercials a year.

It’s hard to imagine that all this TV isn’t having detrimental effects on Americans, especially children. And sure enough, anecdotal evidence suggests that too much TV contributes to all kinds of behavioral problems at home and in school. Kids have attention problems. They fight with each other over TV programs. They beg for brand-name products. They grapple with weight issues and obesity. They don’t play outside in nature. They don’t read.

When we turn on the tube, do we turn off life?

In Living Outside the Box, Barbara Brock mentions the personal and cultural ills TV undoubtedly contributes to, but it’s not her focus. Instead she asks us to ponder what we miss out on when we’re sitting and mindlessly observing so much of our lives away. After all we could be reading, writing, painting, crafting, traveling, cooking, baking, hanging out with friends, playing instruments, singing, gardening, exploring, running, walking, or just playing. We could actually be living.

A very small minority of Americans (less than 1%) lives TV-free. Brock sent 500 of them surveys to find out about them. Who are these rebels? Well, they vary widely, but the striking thing is, most don’t miss TV at all. More surprising, their kids don’t seem to miss it. Brock’s research makes you wonder – are kids more addicted to the television, or are  their parents? Even if you can’t seem to drag your kids away from the tube, you might be surprised at their reactions if you shut it off altogether. Of kids who pledged to ditch TV for three months, many reported it as the best time in their lives.

TV night: Relaxing or stressful?

Brock makes a lot of cogent points, but one most registers with me: she points out how watching TV, even in small amounts, structures our time. For instance, you don’t want to miss a favorite program so you rush home from a night out, or you race through dinner, or you hurry through a phone call with a friend. You always have one eye on the clock.

Sure enough, we have a TV night in our house, and it’s always more stressful than other nights. We rush around to get everything done before the shows come on. Usually our evenings just sort of unfold. We turn on music, we talk, we play with the baby, we clean, we play games together, or we read. We glance at the clock occasionally, but it doesn’t dominate our nights. I feel better on these TV-free nights. I sleep better. But I’m not sure it’s the TV that makes me feel stressed, or just watching the clock.

The computer counts too.

I was surprised that by Brock’s definition, my family is already TV-free. Brock considers anything under six hours a week TV-free, and we watch about two to four hours. But every time I wanted to feel smug about my TV-free ways, Brock slipped in a mention of computer time. Oh yeah, that. I know aimless Googling and Facebooking doesn’t make me happy, but I find myself clicking away at the mouse a little too often.

Searching for balance.

Living Outside the Box is a fast and easy-to-read book. It will undoubtedly make you ponder how entrenched TV is in our lives and what kind of impact it’s collectively having on our society. Could Brock’s arguments convince a die-hard TV addict to change her ways? I doubt it. And if you lean toward the TV-free life already (which I suspect most people who read the book do) you may feel a tad hopeless reflecting on how entrenched television is in most people’s lives – a little like a teetotaler stuck in a tavern. After all, it doesn’t matter if you’re hellbent on knowing all your neighbors better than the cast of Survivor unless your neighbors feel the same way. However, if you’re thinking about ditching the TV, and concerned that it might turn your kids into social deviants, Brock’s research might ease your mind.

I picked up Living Outside the Box because my baby’s getting to the age where the television sucks him in. When he gazes at it and his eyes start to glaze over, my instinct is to shut it off – for good. It’s not that I think TV will destroy him or make him into a zombie. After all, I watched my share of I Love Lucy marathons as a kid. I just want his childhood to be full of music, books, friends, and nature. I want his time to be unstructured and unhurried. I want him to be satisfied with all of the comforts and joy we have in our lives, not to be constantly told he needs more toys, cereal, clothes, or candy to feel good. Most of all, I want him to have a real life, not a childhood spent observing fictional kids on television living.

But I’m just not convinced we should put the TV out with the garbage. One of those four hours of TV we usually watch each week is The Bill Moyer’s Journal on PBS, and every time I start thinking of TV as evil, I see Moyer’s lopsided grin. That show, and a few others – like Curb Your Enthusiasm, Six Feet Under, and Freaks and Geeks – have added something to my life. They’ve make me think, or laugh so hard I can’t breathe, or see the world a little bit differently. They’ve made me happy. I know the real answer is to only invite in the television programs that stimulate my family. But what a challenge that is – especially with kids.

What do you think?

I’d love to hear how TV fits into your life. Do you have TV-free or TV-addicted kids? Have you struck some kind of balance? Are you participating in TV Turn-Off Week? Why or why not?

The Future of Green Jobs

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Today Shareable.net published my article about an inspiring summer jobs program that taught a group of young people how to build green infrastructure and ended up transforming one participant’s life.

The article starts:

John Williams calls himself an aquarium fanatic. “I have six tanks right now – a 125 gallon, a 55 gallon, a 30, a 16, a 29…. The 125 gallon is ridiculously huge, especially because it’s all glass,” Williams says. “I stick with fresh water. Something like 75% of the world is covered in salt water, so I find fresh water more exotic.”

Williams is 22. He lives in an apartment in Cottage Grove, Oregon, a small town about twenty miles south of Eugene. Last spring he was working as a bartender when he heard about summer jobs designing and building an aquaponics greenhouse at Aprovecho, a 40-acre center outside of Cottage Grove dedicated to researching and teaching sustainable living practices and green skills.

Aquaponics is the cultivation of fish and plants in a recirculating environment. The fish waste flows to the plants and fertilizes them, and in turn the plants clean the water, which returns to the fish. Aquaponics is gaining in popularity in green circles in the United States, because it makes it possible to grow a lot of food – both fish and vegetables – quickly.

In a recent New York Times article, Micheal Tortorello wrote, “There is something about aquaponics that seems to inspire this quirky blend of entrepreneurialism, environmentalism and survivalism.”

That certainly seems to describe Williams, who fears that climate change will devestate the water supply. He immediately signed on for the Aprovecho summer jobs program. “It was right up my alley,” he says of the opportunity to help build an aquaponics greenhouse just a few miles from his home.

You can read the rest of the article here.

In Search of Purple

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I’ve been reading photography books lately, learning about aperture, shutter speed, film speed, and light meter.

One of the books recommends that I snap photos of a particular color each day. So I walk down our block in the mornings with my camera as my son toddles along beside me squealing about everything he sees. “Bike,” he calls every time a bicyclist passes. “Purple floof” he says as we stop to photograph a flower. “Doggy, doggy, doggy,” he shouts as my neighbor’s dog runs toward us. And I watch for the way the sunlight hits flower petals.

It feels like we’re both learning to look at the world differently. He’s cataloging names, words, and descriptions. And I’m learning to see swirls, swaths, and splotches of reds and yellows and blues.

It’s spring – what better time to study color? It’s popping out of the landscape everywhere I look … like purple.

This post is for Steady Mom’s 30 Minute Blog Challenge.