The Green Man

What's Eating Strawberry Creek? The battle over a scenic gem heats up -- again

2011-07-20T16:41:00.000-07:00

[Summary: For years private owners have quietly taken control of Idyllwild’s most visitor-friendly feature, its sylvan creek that meanders through town. Now, in a move that mirrors global struggles over the world’s most precious resource, they’ve begun to aggressively deny visitors and locals alike access to this community gem. The author's family cabin in Idyllwild was built by his grandfather in 1939.]

There was water, water everywhere, in Idyllwild this past weekend. I’ve never seen the creek running this fresh and full in July. And the foliage was so tall and so green down in the lush bed of Strawberry Creek I could hardly make my way down from our family cabin to town, a traditional 15 minute walk on normal – that is to say, drier – years.

At about the half-way mark, however, the trail got worse. In fact, it vanished. And as I paused, I also noted a disturbing and recurrent, if not new, violation of the streambed. It came at a point about a half-mile south of Town Hall. Suddenly about three-quarters of the water in Strawberry Creek, the babbling brook that runs down the southern side of Idyllwild and historically has given the town its bucolic backbone, was diverted past a fence into a property marked with “No Trespassing” signs.

“Ah, they’re back,” I said to my wife. “Those stream thieves, they never give up.”

I’ve been fighting this particular diversion since around 1962, when my cousin Chris and I came scrambling down the Creek, headed to town for our usual midday chocolate-covered frozen banana, only to find a backhoe digging a new channel and piling up a levee that blocked the old. The rest of the summer we tore down at night what they threw up during the day. But when the end of August came and we had to go to school, the bastards won. They claimed the Creek.

But out battle had an effect. We got into a wrangle one day toward the end of summer with the owner and his backhoe operator, who became furious at our ten-year-old’s eloquence and moral inflexibility. They made threats, which we duly reported to our fathers. Other land owners downstream got involved once they discovered they no longer lived alongside a stream but a dry ravine. Half the flow of the Creek was re-directed.

As the years went by, I’ve watched with pleasure as Nature completed the job we started: silting in the south branch, returning to the natural northern channel. Until today. It was my first visit in a year and a half, and the Stream Thief had done a lot of damage. Peeking through his barbed-wire topped chainlink fence, I could see he had a fancy upscale resort thing going on with our stolen Strawberry Creek. I could see chaise lounges, fairy lights, a bridge that would not have looked out of place in a Jane Austen novel. I could also see permanent intake hoses running into the Creek and what looked like an irrigation system hooked to a pump.

And so, here we go again.

It’s always about the water in Idyllwild, and it always has been. If they wish, Californians with a good memory or else a love of classic film can reference the movie “Chinatown” – about the theft of water from Northern California to fuel land development in the San Fernando Valley – or else recall the James Bond film with Daniel Craig, “The Quantum of Solace,” thinly based on the World Bank’s disastrous attempt to privatize the water supplies of Bolivia. Wherever you go in the world these days, it seems people’s water supplies are under siege from commercial interests.

Idyllwild shouldn’t be in a position to lose its Creek. It’s a mountain town blessed with a stubborn and proud community spirit, most recently tested in the 2005 Esperanza Fire that killed five local firemen. Since its shift from logging and cattle to tourism in 1901, it has kept a sense of itself as a place where nature is the main draw, unlike frantic Lake Arrowhead and tourist-strip Big Bear to the north, across the Cabazon Pass. Without a nearby lake to call its own, a big part of that draw is Strawberry Creek. You’d think they’d take better care of it.

Unfortunately, Idyllwild doesn’t own its Creek. As late as December 2008, in fact, Idyllwild couldn’t even be sure it had any right to its water – which was the source for every house and business inside the Idyllwild Water District. The IWD had to admit that no copies could be found of the initial 1900 agreement and the State of California had to admit it didn’t have any record, either. Since then the IWD has been drilling like crazy. Lucky they’ve been blessed by three of the wettest winters on record.

Thanks in part to this loose oversight over its most precious bodily fluid, Idyllwild has drawn national attention as a flashpoint in the “water wars,” what Alex Prud’homme calls the most important environmental struggle we face today in his new bestselling book, The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century.

Back in 2002, Idyllwild woke up in the middle of the worst drought in 70 years to find that a single land owner, Paul Black, had set up a pump and hose and was simply draining the Creek as part of a bottled water scheme. The resulting water war drew reporters from The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and my own wife, Mindy Pennybacker, who got there first in The Green Guide. (Mindy wrote an account of her experience in these pages: April 8, 2010: “How Idyllwild’s Water Wars Made Me See Green” http://www.mygazines.com/issue/8809/10.) Until he fell afoul of the State, which stopped his pirate enterprise, Black enjoyed nearly ten years of seeming immunity from Idyllwild’s leaders, even as he was turning the town into a desert.

Now, right after seeing my Creek diverted, I stumbled into the next front in the water wars: private owners blocking access to walkers. The trail that had been there for at least 75 years simply vanished. As we thrashed through brambles and thorn bushes where the trail had been, we came to a wooden deck with a picnic table. And here was an obliging welcome sign. Not for us, but for guests of the resort up above us, on the top of the Creek valley. For us, the way down to town was effectively blocked.

This right-of-way grab was pretty recent. I’ve been walking up and down Strawberry Creek since 1958, and though there’ve been cases of new landowner who didn’t get the word and tried to throw a fence across the trail, it’s always stayed clear and open, well-maintained, and in constant use. It’s the closest most visitors will get to a nature experience in Idyllwild.

Later, my wife and I turned around and headed back up the Creek, toward Fern Valley. Here, too, the path vanished, submerged in a vast gooseberry patch and hemmed in on the town side by a barbed-wire fence. If we hadn’t recalled the location of the path in winter we’d have been forced to turn back.

All this may sound like a tempest in a streambed, but as the headlines over beach right-of-way battles last week down in Malibu attest, local vigilance is all that stands between us and our own wet feet.

That’s why I went to the Ranger Station in town and asked the resident Smokey the Bear the $64,000 question: “Who owns Strawberry Creek?” His pleasant expression stiffened. I knew he was going to duck and he did, putting in a call to the de facto, i.e., unofficial and not-to-be-quoted spokesperson. I wasn’t surprised or put off by this, knowing how punitive bureaucracies can be to those who don’t have every word cleared from above.

Next I went to the local mountaineering store, and the guy there was more direct. “Who owns Strawberry Creek?” I asked.

“Well, down at The Grotto it’s the meth-head decadent types,” he replied. “Higher up it’s more professional people, so you don’t see as much trouble.”

Not quite the answer I expected, but not unhelpful.

What I gleaned over the next day was what that the Strawberry Creek watershed is less a crazy quilt than a sleeping bag, with the National Forest Service owning the top and the bottom of the drainage and Creek, which leaves the big chunk in the middle, where all the people and houses are, privately held. However, it’s not all left to the moods and whims of owners and flatlanders, because the water is part of the water districts of downstream counties and cities. Santa Ana, San Diego, Riverside: all these have a say in Strawberry Creek’s fate, or, if they don’t, would like one. Arizona and California fought a war over the Colorado River, you might recall, back at the turn of the century. Guns and dynamite! The aftermath gave us the Salton Sea.

The Creek also is subject to environmental oversight, mostly by the State Department of Fish & Game, which considers the effect of any changes or diversions on wildlife and habitat. That’s comforting to know, or would be if all our state bureaucracies weren’t so underfunded and understaffed.

There comes a point, obligatory in thoughtful narrative journalism today, when the writer admits he shares some of the qualities of those he is criticizing. It’s sort of the Copenhagen Syndrome, where the hostages sympathize with their captors and forget to escape. My moment, my sticking of the toe into this river, came as I photographed the streambed and its blockages and diversions. As the photos show, hopefully, the Creek is just gorgeous this year, a true forest primeval. And I have to admit that’s the effect of having the trail blockaded. I also have to admit that I could get used to this, doing without the usual midsummer sight of all the plants and rushes battered down and dead, defeated by the heat but even more by the daily wear and tear inflicted by a couple of hundred tourist walkers and their dogs and children.

There’s only one problem with this vision. The privatizers don’t care if nobody ever walks or even sees Strawberry Creek again. They don’t own the creek, yet they’re taking it away, anyway, piece by piece. And if we don’t raise a ruckus and stop them, one day all we’ll have of Strawberry Creek will be photos like these.

How to Date a Milkshake: The Orange Inn and Me

2011-07-14T08:05:00.000-07:00

Back when the Pacific Coast Highway was a long narrow strand of paradise running between tawny yellow hills on one side and the sparkling ocean on the other, the only stops of any note between Long Beach and Dana Point were funky, weather-beaten "shacks" of all kinds: bars, liquor stores, fish joints, crab cookers, boat chandleries, dive shops, the world's first surf shop (Kanvas By Katin) and, best of all, Shake Shacks.

Shake Shacks were also part of an agricultural tradition that defined early California. The palm groves, the fruit orchards, the orange groves, all funneled their produce to the shack, which often was run by the family who owned or worked the fruited plain and hill behind it. You could count on them being there all over the state, on 99 running up the Central Valley, in the desert behind Palm Springs, even in Hollywood at the base of the canyons. The mystic vegetarian-yoga-Buddhist-etc religious fads that have come and gone in the Golden State were all served up with a sprout sandwich and a date milkshake.

On the way to and from Laguna Beach there used to be two, the Shake Shack on the bluff overlooking Scotsman's Cove, and the Orange Inn on the inland side a couple of miles north of it. So you stopped at one if you were going south and the other if you were going north. It was a perfect ecosystem.

We used to argue about which shack was better. A perfect exercise in teenage connoisseurship. As we got older, we tended to favor the view at the Shake Shack, but never doubted that the Orange Inn made the superior product, Southern California's most emblematic product, for me anyway: the date milkshake.

Then the cold-hearted thieves on the board of the Irvine Land Trust sued their own selves in order to break up all that open space and turn it into cookie-cutter developments. A chapter in criminal malfeasance, if nothing new. The thousands of homes added killed off most of the aquatic life and made water quality testing a part of every swimmer's routine. And traffic. The traffic became murderous, demanding more and more lanes and toll roads for the affluent and there you have it: our American Achilles Heel: we love to death what we love best.

The Irvine developers were determined to get rid of the Shake Shacks, of course. There was a battle. People rallied. They liked the idea of a little shack standing up to the big guys. They just didn't care to stop the original re-zoning of open space.

The Shake Shack on the ocean side of PCH was saved. The Orange Inn was forced to move, and found a home on PCH just south of Main Street in Laguna Beach. The orange groves and fruit orchards vanished, and houses took their place.

Private enterprise having done its worst, it was now time for government to step in. The Shake Shack sat on state land, donated by Irvine, like a dollar tip thrown on the table after a feast at a five-star restaurant. When Scotsman's Cove was turned into Crystal Cove State Park, the bureaucrats had their revenge on the owners of the Shake Shack. Their 50-year-old lease was put out to bid and Ruby Tuesday's took over the operations. You can imagine the depth of soul of the operation now, although they try to fake a date shake and a sprout sandwich -- the same way these places put doo-wop vinyl 45s on the wall and pictures of Elvis on the menu.

The Orange Inn, however, has hung in there, and not only has it survived, it is thriving. It's the most soulful place in Laguna Beach, which in the love-of-all-things-retro mood of the world, is keeping them in business. They serve home-made soups and turkey-avocado sprout sandwiches -- the surfer classic -- and a dozen other things, all terrific. The ambiance is sublime, the photos of old Laguna and the Original Orange Inn worth pondering.

Best of all, they make a date shake that is straight out of 1930. But it's not on the menu. You've got to ask for it. Although the proprietor, John, knows his clientele so well that when we walked in the door yesterday he took one look at our sunscreen-streaked faces and salty hair and said, "Date shakes? Four?"

Do One Green Thing's Mindy Pennybacker: "N0 MORE SHARK FIN SOUP!"

2011-06-01T20:49:00.000-07:00

At the Honolulu Book Festival, author Mindy Pennybacker, aka My Green Goddess, got a chance to strut her stuff. Shark fin fisheries kicked off the riff, but there's a nice overview of the power of the consumer to drive green change.

As we all know, for years big pompous people said that small people didn't make a difference. The Green Man even heard a few big pompous green people -- Bill McKibben and Michael Pollan, anyone? -- turn up their noses at the idea of consumers making a difference. Look at the titles of their recent books and you'll see they've changed their tunes. Great writers, both men, but they got caught up in their own hype.

Keep drivin' the change, folks. Everytime someone tells you that conserving water, gas, air or resources is a waste of time (and let's all go nuclear instead!) look them in the eye and say: "You're the problem. I'm the solution. Now get out of our way while we change the world."

Yeah, the Green Man used to be a rabble-rouser in his youth. He still is. Young, that is.

The Return of the Green Man: A Recipe for Fiery Hawaiian Lamb

2011-04-08T18:50:00.000-07:00

The Green Man began his blog and viral life in concrete canyon Manhattan. It was a world full of foodies and a great Greenmarket at Union Square and as a cook and a home-style chef it was a nice place to spend 26 years.

Now this Green Man lives in Hawaii. The home of The Green Goddess, need we add? In the interim she has done well with her book, Do One Green Thing, and we found a Farmer's Market up on the backside of Diamond Head at KCC. I shop there every Saturday and spend about $60 to fill two large recyclable sacks with produce, bread, sustainable red veal, wild-caught fish, and fruits of all kinds.

Mindy, aka The Green Goddess, keeps asking when I'll put on my green leaf mask again and hit the chitlin circuit. It's coming, darling. For now, I'll just drop in a photo and a recipe now and then.

The Green Man's Fiery Hawaiian Lamb with Green Greens

2 lb boneless leg of lamb
fresh ginger, cut in slivers
fresh garlic, cut in slivers
white onion, chopped
fresh jalapeno pepper, chopped
some powdered cumin
some powdered garlic
some coarse black pepper
a half cup soy sauce
fresh or dry thyme, preferably picked from a neighbor's bush above dog-piss level

insert the ginger and garlic slivers in the lamb
dust with dry spices and rub
pour in soy sauce and bath the lamb like a baby in a tiny tub

cook at 375 for 15 minutes, then 25 minutes at 350

Serve with steamed baby bok choy and Chinese mustard cabbage

Brown rice, a nice red like a Douro, and a lightly dressed green salad.

How Obama Won the War Against BP and England

2010-06-17T16:15:00.000-07:00

Time for a recap of the fun of the last few days.... But first, remember all the criticism of Obama for his strangely passive speech and all of its "inappropriate" war metaphors? Turns out they weren't metaphors. We went to war, briefly, virally, against the United Kingdom and won. In less than a week we started collecting $20 Billion in reparations.

Here's the timeline:

1. GOP and Tea Party demand less regulation, plus chant with Sarah Palin: "Drill Baby Drill!"

2. BP rig blows. Sarah blames it on regulation.

3. Turns out Minerals Management Dept has been indicted during Bush administration for partying with oil lobbyists: sex, cocaine, porn, payoffs.

4. Turns out MM Dept invited BP and 4 major oil companies to "write the regulations." Good enuff for ya, Sarah?

5. Turns out Obama is to blame for the BP blowout, according to conspiracy theorists Beck, Limbaugh.

6. Obama and govt let BP try to fix what they caused: i.e., as Ronald Reagan said, "let govt get out of the way."

7. BP fails to fix, fails to cap, fails to report correct spill amount (off by 90%), tries to arrest reporters photographing oil spill damage. That's the private sector, right?

8. Obama appoints Coast Guard Adm to oversight.

9. Led by Louisiana Gov Bobby Jindal, aka Mr Private Sector, Tea Partier Extraordinaire, the GOP and Tea Party attacks Obama for not stepping in immediately and taking over for private sector sooner. It's government's job!

10. Democrats attack Obama, too. Everybody into the pool!

11. Obama points out we, the people, and the government, are not in the oil business, thus have no experience or expertise in capping 5,000 deep offshore oil geysers. Best we can do is hold BP's feet to the fire.

12. Haley Barbour, gov of Alabama and former head of GOP, says there is "no oil spill."

13. Sarah says it's all a plot to deny deepwater drilling in Alaska.

14. Major crude pipeline in Alaska's North Slope breaks. No fix in sight.

15. Cap is revealed on damage payouts for oil companies--$750 million, no matter how much damage BP does. The law was passed immediately after Exxon Valdez disaster.

16. Turns out Exxon never paid its fine or damages in Exxon Valdez disaster. 20 years later, their court appeals won in the Bush Supreme Court: any damage and payments to fishermen, businesses, and environment was "excessive." Nobody got anything. The 20 years delay meant everyone slimed by Exxon was ruined.

17. BP announces it will pay billions in share dividends to shareholders.

18. Obama says wait a minute. Don't do that.

19. British Govt complains of US interference in British Petroleum, a valued company in the UK. It is revealed that the British Govt holds 12% of its wealth in BP shares.

20. Obama holds Oval Office press conference, speaks in generalities about making BP pay.

21. GOP, Tea Party, Dems all roundly criticise speech.

22. Next day, Obama meets with BP CEO and gets $20 Billion damage payout guarantee, with no lawyers or appeals process to string it along. This agreement is unprecedented and BP did NOT have to agree to it, as their offshore rig was flagged as a ship from the Marshall Islands.

23. Today, the Gulf Coast people who are suffering an almost complete economic shutdown are lining up to receive emergency payments.

24. Today, all the GOP and Tea Partiers have "no comment." Except for head of the GOP, Boehner, who says the "US, not BP, should shoulder the burden for the cleanup," and GOP Rep Joe Barton who says Obama making BP pay up is "illegal and wrong."

25. Tomorrow--a prediction--the GOP and Tea Party will be too busy having sex with interns and little boys to answer any questions about the Oil Crisis.

26. Day after Tomorrow--a prediction--GOP and Tea Party will take credit for everything Obama did, and blame him for making Boehner and Barton speak out, claiming he is a Satanic ventriloqist.

2010-04-09T19:11:00.000-07:00

A handsome young fan of the book

while visiting a Barnes & Noble NYC

did find Do One Green Thing

bursting out with the Spring

and let out a scream: Take a look!

--thanks to Thomas Hutchinson (and his sharp eyes)

Alice in Wonderland premiere offers girl a chemical-laden shampoo as a promo: Drink Me!

2010-03-08T09:39:00.001-08:00

The author of just-out Do One Green Thing lands a post-Oscar knockout punch: the so-called organic shampoos Disney gave out at the Alice in Wonderland premiere are packed with chemicals and hormone distuptors, exactly what young girls don't need. Go see Alice?

It's on Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mindy-pennybacker/greenwashing-emalice-in-w_b_489256.html

Nothing surprises us anymore. We just have to keep on calling em as we see em.

Mindy on the Huff Post re: tsunami and my response

2010-03-01T12:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mindy-pennybacker/coming-next-hawaii-tsunam_b_479704.html

Increasingly likely that the tsunami, while serious in Chile and in theory, was highjacked as an excuse for the media and hotel folks to cook up a huge one-day shopping event that would boost the sagging local economy, raise TV ratings (and hence ad rates), mention all the stores and gas stations (advertisers) where you could stock up, and virtually force the tourists to order room service food in the expectation they'd be marooned for a week.

To be clear: the threat was real, but the Pacific Center knew by 6 am it would not be a major event, yet they and the Hawaii powers let an entire day unfold at crisis tempo.

The relationship to green living and Do One Green Thing: How our society handles disasters is being increasingly turned into a "how can I profit from this?" mentality. The lowlying areas of Waikiki that would've been most hurt by a tsunami are exactly where the tourists are kept penned up, like cattle. They're also where the Native Hawaiians, who understood the sea and its moods, had built a vast system of fishponds to practice sustainable aquaculture. The moi they grew, caught and ate were part of a food cycle we'd love to emulate--but now it's all concrete and hotels and imported sand for the beaches.

As for the other disaster, the tsunami that didn't happen for Hawaii, we know how media works: it's exactly what happened with The Weather Channel in the two years following Katrina. Expecting an increase in hurricanes and preparing to get bought out, TWC turned every weather event into a catastrophe. And then sat there mumbling while no hurricanes hit the US for the next two years.

The plantation mentality in Hawaii is to just say, "Thank God nobody was hurt," and ignore the flaws and scare-mongering. Unfortunately, the odds of a free press shedding any light on the subject just went down a lot, given the fact that the day before the Tsunami alert the two Honolulu papers, The Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin, merged. The latter paper buying out the former and closing it--and this six months after all four local TV news stations merged.

A Green & Manly Holiday Gift Guide

2009-12-09T02:57:00.000-08:00

Chorizo, the Green Man was thinking.

He was in a hurry; there were so many things to do, so many reasons to fret, from wondering why every office deadline matched perfectly with a holiday party to pondering why every "To Do" list he'd made since November had nothing crossed off on it except the word, the one word: Chorizo.

But there was no time, to think or to do. He had only time to be. And being the Green Man is a job that peaks around the holidays: so many wreaths to haunt, so many balls of mistletoe to inhabit, and then there are those ivied walls and gargoyles to visit—leering out at young and old alike. Reminding them that it's never too late to "Think Green."

Yes, the Green Man certainly keeps busy this time of year, much too busy to go shopping, except maybe for chorizo. Unfortunately, that excuse was wearing thin in the gift-buying department, especially with all three of the major holidays in full swing. Then again, being the Green Man, he had easy access to the ultimate excuse: "It's such a materialistic, consumerist, excessive season," his inner Green Man was saying, in a voice dripping with elite progressive snobbery. "This year I will give the gift of giving nothing, and feel the wiser and wealthier for it."

Here, however, the antipodal inner Green Man sprang into action, like a deranged but effervescent sock puppet who'd drunk too much chlorophyll: "Yeah, right, give nothing—but you sure won't turn down that new iPhone if it shows up in your stocking or Hanukkah Sox, will you?"

"Harumph," said the Green Man. But it was a point well taken, although in fact an iPhone would be of little use, lacking a swappable battery; the Green Man really needs backup power handy in case a monster tsunami leaves him marooned atop Diamond Head with no power for his iPhone. What he also really needs is for his beloved Jets to lose the rest of their games; that way they can obtain good field position for the best offensive blindside tackle in the NFL draft. Losing as a way to keep the karma in balance is a sort of gift to the gods, right? Wait 'till next year.

More to the point, the Green Man wanted to give, especially this year. In the past year, a lot of green wishes had come to pass: the local supermarket had increased its organic produce selection, had added green cleaning products and, especially nice for the Green & Manly among us, started sourcing grass-fed organic beef and lamb. This year the Green Man had tasted his first steak in ages—which is not the same as a well-aged steak. (And with the Green Goddess' approval, he might add, which is not a small thing at all.)

And it wasn't just the local supermarket. Green was everywhere, the bandwagon was rolling merrily along, and it was kind of fun to watch the naysayers scrambling to hop aboard. Of course, like all of those American mood-swings, this one bore watching, there were always shady characters and those seeking to take advantage of consumer confusion over labeling practices. But that's why the Green Man reads GreenerPenny.com (and yes, also to admire the illustration accompanying his own column).

Another reason to celebrate was on a most personal front. The Green Man had a dear family member fight her way through a desperate illness to health: reason enough to want to shower the 'hood with iPhones. (Which, by the way, are not green. The Green Man actually can't recommend them, having been part of the great dead battery rip-off that affected the first wave of iPods—a blot Steve Jobs and Apple haven't atoned for sufficiently, even with a class action settlement. Saith the Green Man to Steve Jobs: "Make me an iPhone/iPod that doesn't consume so many chemicals and lasts longer than its warranty and I'll stop haunting your backyard faun, even consider stopping the little trick I do when the ladies are watching.")

Finally, the Green Man had heard on the street that he would soon be receiving gifts of his own. Not to have given, if such rumors proved true, would of course just not do. Especially when one is blessed all year long with the company of a wife like the Green Goddess, a son like The Green Teen and a gang of pals like the Greenfellas, those witty and merry idlers, a little giving back is not amiss. So what is on the Green Man's last-minute list? First of all, buy local when you can. FedEx and other rush transport services consume an inordinate amount of fuel. Plus you're getting much-needed exercise if you walk and shop, and supporting your local economy by patronizing farmers, artisans, grocers and other retailers. To find a Farmer's Market near you, go to Local Harvest.

WHAT TO BUY THE GREEN TEENS. Teens are the toughest, but don't be daunted. For the Green Teen of the male persuasion, offer to cater a Rose Bowl Party with plenty of barbeque: hamburgers and steaks from grass-fed producers. To order the right stuff, download the Smart Shoppers' Meat Card. For those ski trips, bouldering jaunts and club-hopping jaunts, throw some Burt's Bees lip gloss in his stocking or in a PVC-free Timberland backpack made of 100% recycled polyester, or duffel by Mountain Hardware. If he's in college, promise to send him an Organic Gift Pack of assorted organic nuts and dried fruits, with some chocolate bars thrown in, from Diamond Organics. And, to keep him sweet, give him some of that Long Green to spend on what he pleases.

For that Green Girl Teen, find those hormone-disruptor-free soaps, cremes and beauty products by using GreenerPenny’s top green cosmetic list. Since in the Green Man's family the gals are more athletic than the boys, I'm gifting them with weatherproofing sunblocks for skin and lips and gift certificates for PVC-free sports shoes from Nike Considered. Support your local sheepherders, llama-packers and natural weavers by giving one of those floppy beanies the reggae toasters and Olson Twins like to sport. Try anything hemp from Rawganique. Just pin a little Long Green inside and you'll see smiles. Oh, yes, almost forgot: chorizo. Rumor has it this is the sausage of choice for both genders.

WHAT TO BUY THE GREEN GUY. Wives, the Green Man knows how hard you've tried to Green That Guy. Don't give up! Those previous attempts? Think of them as compost. Here is what to give that Green Man in your life (which is what I'm giving those Green & Manly Guys who've stuck by me no matter how the Jets are doing). Call it...well... The Green Man's Holiday Gift Pak:

1. A Six-Pack of Organic Beer—I'm partial to Wolaver's, but there's a lot out there now, including Pinkus' Hefe-Seizen, Samuel Smith's Old Brewery Organic Ale and Butte Creek Brewing's organic porter.

2. A cast-iron pan—Is iron organic? Sure. More importantly, its tool. Men like tools. And this tool is the gift that keeps on giving, because it gives the recipient the means and the desire for the job: which is cooking...at any hardware or kitchen supply store, or get a Lodge chef skillet or a Le Creuset enamel-backed iron.

3. Food to cook—Don't make your man wait to use his new tool. Start him off with a slab of fresh line-caught fish from local fishermen, in my case, when I’m branching out in New York City, Greenmarket Phil Karlin at Union Square; line-caught tuna like Phil's is small, so lower in mercury. For other fish tips, check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s regional wallet cards for what’s safest for you and the seas. Meat diehards will love a grass-fed or organic Porterhouse (no fear of mad cow even with the bone in) from your farmers' market, Niman Ranch, John Morrell, Applegate Farms or Organic Valley. Or there's always a beautiful shimmering gelatinous block of organic tofu from your local supermarket or shaped like a bird (with stuffing to match) from Turtle Island Foods just in case your giftee is one of those wild and crazy guys who's heard the news about soybeans and fertility.

4. Music to cook by—A CD of "Jumping at Shadows," the 1960s-archival blues and rock masterpieces from Peter Green (get it?) and the original core of Fleetwood Mac. These are the lost classics you've never heard, nearly 30 of them, good to grill or chill by. Unconditionally guaranteed by the Green Man, they will inspire you to make on your mantle for a Peter Green bobble-head doll next to those of Clapton, Page, Santana and Beck (Jeff, that is)...

5. Chorizo—This is the Clint Eastwood of sausage. In the hard sausage version, this is my secret ingredient for fish and chicken stews, used in small amounts for a real taste kick; or, lightly warmed, as a tapa con gusto. The soft Mexican-Californian version is another deal, the essence of huevos rancheros. With either one, you're in Treasure of the Sierra Madre territory. Ask at farmer's markets, supermarkets, European and Mexican food shops; for hormone- and antibiotic-free chorizo, try http://www.ranchfoodsdirect.com/ or 866-866-MEAT; in a pinch, make your own with recipes from www.johnmorrell.com/sausages.

WHAT TO BUY THE GREEN GAL OR GODDESS. This is the real tough one, because let's face it, she probably thinks she is the expert. But that also means this is your chance for a real breakthrough in Green Gender relations.

1. Buy some affordable, recycled-wood bamboo bowls, plates and cutting boards from your local artisans, houseware stores, green supermarkets/lifestyle stores like ABC Home & Planet (goodwood, goodthread, organic bed), or Green Depot.

2. Get her a surfer girl organic cotton waffle hoody and all sorts of other eco-gear from Patagonia stores (www.patagonia.com) or a hemp or organic cotton bell-sleeved top or fleecy hoodie from Sweet Grass Fibers.

3. Use that new or old cast iron pan she bought you—cook up an organic storm on Monday night for the last football game of the year!

4. Tell her you love tofu and want some at every meal—Kidding? Not quite. I didn't say you have to eat it, after all.

5. Depending on where you live, it might be hard to get organic fresh flowers from the local markets. But if necessity dictates, for the Green Goddesses (wife, mother, mother-in-law), you can make an exception and do an online splurge. Order organic blooms grown in California, presented in a recycled-glass vase with a side of Costa Rican organic chocolates, from Organic Bouquet (http://www.organicbouquet.com/). Or torch ginger, bird of paradise and ti leaves grown organically in Maui from Diamond Organics (http://www.diamondorganics.com/).

6. Chorizo—For some reason, I have a surplus of good Spanish chorizo lying about the larder this season. Boys, time to get grillin! (In fact, we really are living in the Golden Age of Chorizo, but that is the subject of another column.)

For more shopping tips and the latest and most authoritative green consumer information, go to GreenerPenny.com and admire my picture, of course.

And watch for Do One Green Thing in March, 2010 - your one-stop super-sourced guide to all things green, without the lectures, from my very own Green Goddess, Mindy Pennybacker.

Did My Shampoo Just Change My Sex?

2009-12-01T11:00:00.000-08:00

But then she started messing with my SHAMPOO.

Now, the male gene for emotional and domestic stability often finds first expression by attachment to our earliest cosmetic products. It's like a baby duck bonding with the first living creature it sees. Only with us Greenfellas, hanging out in the locker room at 13, parting our hair with a little dab o' do-ya, it tends to be Old Spice, Bryllcreem, Mitchum Anti-Perspirant. Despite the mixed messages the advertising sometimes delivered ("All my men wear English Leather or they wear nothing at all") we still are fiercely loyal to the old brands.With shampoo, that tended to be a brand that preyed on the fear of white specks showing up on our black tuxedos (a slight disconnect at age 13 fashion-wise), and, after we got to college and realized chicks were hep to the whole white specks anxiety, to that old standby with pictures of flowers on it. Who could be against, like, herbs? (Heh-heh.)

Of course it actually had been years since I bought any of those old standbys, but then the other day I got fed up with washing my hair with plain soap because the Green Witch hadn't been to the drugstore. So on my way home from work I broke the rules. And got the scariest lecture about a kind of F-word you'll never hear on television:Phthalates.

Yeah, that kind of Phth-word. SCARY.

Holding her trusty yew switch as a pointer, the Green Queen rapped my nethers and said: "Exposure to phthalates--chemicals widely used as synthetic fragrancing agents, as well as in plastics--correlates to abdominal obesity and insulin resistance in U.S. adult males, according to a March, 2007 study in Environmental Health Perspectives online. The CDC says that all Americans have phthalates in our bodies, and previous studies have linked the chemicals to subtle genital and reproductive hormone changes in male infants."

Naturally, I immediately checked myself out. And my pals, that gang of reluctant but trying Green Men called the Greenfellas. At the top of this entry is what we looked like--nothing subtle, right? [Editor's note: the photo was removed by divine intervention, but take our word for it... In fact, take several words: hideous, blubbery, gastropod-like.]

Scared yet? I was. And out to recycling went those nasty phth-phth-phth-alates.

[If you like horror movies about giant tadpoles mutating and eating small cities you'll love reading about Phthalates on GreenerPenny.com]

Hawaiian Hat Tree

2009-11-30T12:09:00.000-08:00

Who needs to visit the milliner? In tropical Oahu, the environment supplies all our needs, including the craving for Carmen Miranda-influenced headgear such as this one, spotted on a proud local tree during its morning promenade.

The Thanksgiving Nightmare

2009-11-26T18:35:00.000-08:00

The Big Bird is on the runway... the passengers, who strangely resemble cubed carrots and celery sticks, grumble as a fat ol' giblet waddles down the aisle and attempts to wedge an oversized crouton into the overhead rib rack... "travel on this day is such a hassle," they think, just before the attendant shuts the door and the temperature rises sharply, uncomfortably...

Other People's Gardens

2009-11-09T16:04:00.000-08:00

One of the greatest gifts is permission to gather from another person's garden. It's something that has happened to me, one way or another, all my life. In college way long ago, I joined my rock n roll band in a ramshackle Victorian in Santa Cruz one dreary winter. Come spring: voila, vegetables and flowers sprang up out of gray withered sedge, including apples, blackberries and a persimmon tree, plus a pomegratate bush that must have been planted 50 years before. This year, on an island in France, a tough-hewn guy swung out of his truck cab as he drove out of our village and dropped a sack of vegetables on our stoop. "Use the garden!" he shouted (in French). I wandered around later that day and ducked under a stunted apple tree to find 40 square feet of intensive local agriculture. Gathered up the day's meal (see photo) and for two weeks after, too. So here's to gardeners, and to gardens that keep on giving. Bon Appetit!

A New Cookie for America - Obama

2008-11-03T16:02:00.000-08:00

From Eleni's Bakery in Chelsea Market, a preview of what we hope will be a new hope for America and the world...

To a Neighbor, Obama’s Hawaiian Drive-In Choices Explain a Lot

2008-08-13T12:46:00.000-07:00

During his week of vacation in Hawaii, Barak “5-0" Obama has kept a low profile and added to his reputation for being in the right place at the right time–in this case, given the John Edwards affair, out of the headlines.

Always a great place to vacation, Hawaii has an extra advantage for a politician, because of the six-hour time difference between Honolulu and New York City. Unless it’s a pack of Zeros coming in over the Wai’anae Mountains at 7:00 a.m. on December 7th, it’s hard to make media waves, something the candidate and his handlers probably counted on.

But that doesn’t mean Obama didn’t leave analysts something to chew on. You just had to know where to look–and be able to think “local.” This humble word, so popular now in organic food circles, is the key signifier in Hawaii, a land of many visitors, many migrants and immigrants, and many ethic groups--and thus in need of one way of denoting who is from “here” and who is from “there.”

In Hawaii this week Barak gave clear proof that he is indeed a local, despite the Chicago community activism, despite the sharp silhouette he cuts in a suit, despite looking, yes, different from all those other presidents.

Barak went local in a Friday statement, as reported by many sources, including Michael Falcone of the New York Times, in a time-honored way for a politician–by evoking food, the ur-indigenous reference point. “I might go to Zippy’s. I might go to Rainbow Drive-In. I might go get some shave ice,” the candidate said, adding, “I’m going to go body-surfing at an undisclosed location.”

Aside from the undisclosed beach, which every local bodysurfer could identify with a 90 percent degree of certainty–but will never tell Fox News--“5-0-Bama” was delivering a specific message. He was locating himself in a specific neighborhood, Kapahulu-Diamond Head, where my wife and her family grew up, and where the candidate’s half-sister lives. That he did it by his choice of drive-ins is most appropriate to Hawaii.

Hawaii has a glorious tradition of drive-ins, sadly diminished over time by development and mainland franchises, but Zippy’s and Rainbow, both located a few blocks apart on Kapahulu Avenue, are two of the great remnants. Up until the early Reagan years Honolulu seemed like a place where clocks had stopped in 1956, and you could get a teriyaki burger and a frosted mug of root beer delivered to your Chevy’s window by a carhop.

A local franchise, Zippy’s is the more upscale by far of the two Obama mentioned, offering indoor seating and a diabetic coma-inducing dessert menu to go with its saimin noodles, Portuguese sausage and egg-over-rice breakfasts, and the Island standby, chili rice.

Rainbow is the funky spot, with a tricky parking lot and a lunch crowd of construction and state workers who order massive cholesterol-laden plate lunches that typically include double scoops of macaroni salad and rice to go with the entree: teriyaki or katsu chicken or beef, hamburger patties in gravy--and, of course, more chili rice.

Thus the brief quote by “5-O-B” is, when you parse it further, a masterpiece of nuance and concision. By coupling Zippy’s and Rainbow, he went high-low, and earned the candidate points from all income, ethnic and cultural levels. Mentioning shave ice, the favored local dessert of flavored syrups poured over a mound of snowy shavings, connected to the kid in everyone.

Furthermore, by specifiying that he “might go for a Zip Min,” Zippy’s saimin noodle bowl loaded to the max, he dismissed an issue that has plagued his campaign: that he is someone who lacks a serious appetite. The steaming noodles in the Zip Min come topped with crispy shrimp, fish cake, egg and wun tun (or as they call them on the Mainland, won ton dumplings).

The Zip Min is a Hawaiian Whopper, the kind of meal that mandates an appetite such as might be raised by a morning bodysurfing run to Sandy Beach. Since this is exactly what Barak Obama says he’s going to do on his vacation, his street credibility here goes off the scale.

I just know the dude has been there, like me, standing in line at Rainbow’s, no shirt, wearing flip-flops, with sand in his ears, jellyfish stings in his baggys, and sea-snot running out his nose from going over the falls and getting thrashed in Sandy Beach shorebreak. After that, only chili rice and a root beer float will do.

While it’s just one quote, it’s a masterpiece of local cool, the equivalent of Abe Lincoln’s pose as the “rail-splitter from Illinois.” It’s an affirmation that, far from being an elitist carpetbagger who cares only for his waistline, Obama is a real guy.

Thanks to the above, I now feel, beyond a doubt, that I know who Barak Obama is–a bodysurfer in more ways than one, capable of riding this wave all the way to the biggest bowl of saimin of them all.

Who is that Green Man?

2007-05-06T08:20:00.000-07:00

Who Is That Green Man?

"Don't do that," said my wife at 6:35 in the morning as I started to fill the tea kettle with water from the tap.

"Coffee," I gently reminded her. "It's good."

She shook her head. "Let the water run for a minute first thing every morning. Gets the lead out of the pipes," she added helpfully, as I continued to stare at her.

"Don't do this," I said. "It's too early to be green."

"It's never too early." She yawned. "Besides, I don't want you to get Alzheimer's from lead poisoning. Don't want to have to change your diapers for 20 years."

"Ah, there it is: the self-interest principle at work. Adam Smith would be proud of you."

"Who's Adam Smith?"

"The Scottish economist who called self-interest the invisible hand of the marketplace? The inventor of the idea of a consumer-regulated free market? You don't know who he is?"

"Oh, that Adam Smith." She yawned, a gape so grand I saw tonsil cleavage. "I haven't had my coffee yet."

"And why is that, Mrs. Green Goddess?"

"It's been over a minute now. Fill the kettle."

The teenager staggered silently past. There was a crash as he fell into the living room sofa. I broke an egg into the little Teflon frying pan.

"I wish you wouldn't use that pan," she said.

"Stop," I said, cutting the Grafton cheddar.

"Just for him. He's still growing. For us, it's okay, the Teflon won't make any difference."

"Stop."

"Teflon's fine, it's just that when a pan gets old and degrades it gets into your food. Chemicals from Teflon wind up in your blood stream. In studies this has been shown..."

I put a mug of coffee in her hand. "Go. Away."

When it was ready the teenager got up off the sofa to eat his home-made Egg McMuffin: organic whole wheat English muffin, natural additive feed-free egg, sharp cheddar cheese from Grafton, nitrite-free Canadian bacon. I paused to admire my handiwork, because this was as close as I would get to having any. (She wants me to lose ten pounds; an "experiment," she calls it, which almost always translates into nothing fun for breakfast, and no desserts.)

Back in the kitchen, I made myself a bowl of Special K, sliced a banana, poured skim milk. By the time I sat down at the table, the Green Goddess had finished her coffee and was back in the kitchen making a second pot, while the teenager was done eating and had gone off to shower, leaving me alone with the sports page and my first cup of the day. It was organic Mexican shade tree half-caf, and not half-bad.

The teenager left for school. The wife left for a meeting, but gave me a fanny pat before she went. "My green man," she said. "I'll pick up a pie for dessert at the farmer's market."

The system works, I thought. Maybe Adam Smith was on to something.

****
EDITOR'S NOTE: The Green Man threw out the Teflon pan. The above photo contains nothing but good honest steel.
****
Return to www.greenerpenny.com
****

Foraging: Mi Vida Loca-Vore

2007-04-25T19:46:00.000-07:00

Foraging: Mi Vida Loca-Vore

“I really want to congratulate you,” said the Green Femme as the Green Man staggered through the apartment door after another two-hour, all-public-transport commute. “You’ve become a real loca-vore.”

“A what?”

“Like a carnivore, only you buy local and in season.”

“I do?”

“Like a herbivore, only a local-vore. I mean, loca-vore. Get it?”

“In Spanish that would mean I was crazy and female, you know. As in Mi Vida Loca-vore.”

The Green Femme was not amused. I sighed. “Okay, what exactly did I do? I mean, do right, for once.”

“Not for once. You’ve been doing a lot better lately.” Then she opened the fridge and took out the leftovers from my Saturday shopping expedition. Plonk. “A fish from Phil’s at Abingdon Farmer’s Market.” Plop. “A brave little hydroponic lettuce from the Korean folks.” Thwack. “A loaf of bread from Bread Alone–no, wait, bread doesn’t count as loca-vore since New York State doesn’t produce grain.”

“Sure it does. What do they make all the beer from?”

“It’s imported, dummy.”

“I thought that only counted if it came in green bottles and from over the border.”

“Not if you’re a loca-vorist.”

“But beer is the one language all men have in common.”

“Doesn’t matter.” She surveyed the 75 percent loca-vore ingredients before her. “Do you feel like cooking?”

The following evening The Green Man’s cell went off as he wearily mounted the stairs in a long file of commuters exiting the Seventh Avenue subway stop. It was a warm day, the first warm weekday of spring, and the sweatstains were already in full bloom and full fragrance.

“Hello?”

“Pick up something for dinner, okay?”

“Loca-vore? Or just organic? Or anything to quell the savage beast–”

Cell phones don’t make a click when someone hangs up on you. You can keep talking for blocks, if you’re the long-winded kind. Eventually you realize you’re babbling like an idiot, though. And you’re embarrassed, until you realize everyone around you is babbling like an idiot.

In the straight shot home, at this hour, past seven p.m., all my green theory went out the window. This was Survival Hour, what paramedics call the Golden Hour. Get that Green Man some food now! And there was the supermarket.

“Buy local,” I thought. And there, by the door, was a stacked case of beer, in tall green cans, with a sign that said: STRONG BEER.

“Subtle,” I thought, and took one. At $1.25 it was as cheap as anything I’d find in a 10-block radius. But where was it from? The word “beer” was printed in five or six different languages, as were the ingredients. It made me want to hum The Internationale, or rather, the Beer Internationale. (“I get knocked down, but I get up again...”)

I studied the label: 9.5 % alcohol. Good heavens! This was way past malt liquor. Who were these fiends? Finally, the tiniest of small print revealed the secret place of origin: Lithuania.

“Brothers, comrades,” I breathed. “Neighbors–what’s one beer?”

I strolled between aisles down to the long low meat cooler. And there it was: locally, proudly, boldly, manly. “Nittany Lion Franks.” The football fan in me rose and shook a foam finger at the sky. Nittany Lions! The mighty enigmatic mascot of Penn State, home of Coach Joe Paterno of Happy Valley, Pennsylvania.

That local could embrace ballpark franks I had no doubt. Besides, an orange sticker said “Reduced for quick sale.” Into the basket–did I dare?

The cell rang. “Hello?”

“Did you shop yet? Because forget about it, I think it’s just too warm in the apartment to cook. I ordered Chinese.”

“Loca-vore Chinese?”

But she’d hung up.

Cooking: Spring's First Lobster

2007-04-23T18:45:00.000-07:00

Cooking: Spring’s First Lobster

Punxsutawney Phil let the Green Man down this year. You know, the groundhog Phil. After a long cold winter, and a cold and even longer spring, in New York we were sick and tired of our Uggs, our fleece slippers, our Dr. Zhivago fur hat and even our flannel jammies. We wanted daffodils by the river, dammit.

Most of all, The Green Man wanted Phil the Fisherman to come back to the Abingdon Square Farmer’s Market. It’s a fact that Phil Karlen and his family feed the Green Man and his family at least three days a week, from around St. Patrick’s Day to Thanksgiving. That’s eight months of the year that we eat fresh local fish (and even a meal or two during the winter months, thanks to Phil’s frozen crab cakes). That’s a lot of flounder, monk, scrod, tuna, skate, sole, scallops, squid, and clams. And so we were happy to see Phil return.

But the weather stayed bad all through March and into April, driving away the one sure sign of spring for the Green Man. Not the groundhog’s shadow. Not the daffodils, or the crocuses on our block in Chelsea, or babies in their strollers. No, for us spring is the flaring red shell of one of Phil’s Long Island lobsters peeking like rosy dawn itself out of a shopping basket.

Last weekend, Tax Weekend as it is commonly known, the weather stayed too cold and the sea too stormy, but Phil promised me a lobster for Earth Day.

It’s about ten blocks to Abingdon Square from our place. (Phil’s fish stand at Union Square is a tad out of the way for me, and he actually runs the Abingdon Square stand himself, usually with his grandson, the econ and music major.) It’s also my basic Saturday Food Walk , taking me past Myers of Keswick–that shrine of all foods British in New York–and the Chelsea Market, which supplies our Ronnybrook yoghurt and milk, our Amy’s Breads, lots of produce, the odd cut of meat from Frank’s the Steakhouse butcher shop, the Italian almost-like-wholesale Buonitalia store, plus a good wine shop and Eleni’s cookies. So as food walks go, it is right up there with Chinatown and Little Italy and bits of Bleecker Street and Lexington Avenue (in the upper 20s): the equivalent of the Hollywood Walk of Stars, only much tastier, and even healthier for you.

I set out with my cloth bag and camera, taking the pix you see here. The lobsters, two of them, already cooked, were waiting. “The first of spring, baby!” said Phil, hoisting them into the air.

I had bought two hot dog brioches from Amy’s Bread, intending to make lobster rolls for lunch, but the day grew so warm that the Green Femme and I ended up wandering for hours, just letting our bodies unkink from the long winter. Lobster rolls didn’t seem right for dinner–a little chill had returned--so as the sun set back home I started boiling water for some organic pasta and put in the steamer some broccoli.

The rest, as they say, is recipe:

*in cooking pan under low heat, add dash of olive oil, quarter stick of butter, then:
coarse sea salt
fresh ground black pepper
half cup frozen corn
one clove garlic chopped fine

*quickly shell lobsters, picking out meat and tossing underhand into pan with economy of motion
*when you get to the lobster body, eat the green stuff with your fingers but don’t tell your wife
*cover and cook for 5-8 minutes
*drain pasta
*cover with lobster, squeeze half a lemon, sprinkle with Parmesan

Serve with a light, even “green” white wine. I particularly like the cheap Portuguese tinto verdes with their slight fizziness and lower alcohol (10%). You can drink a couple of glasses and still blog afterwards!

The Running of the Seals in Laguna Beach

2007-04-19T19:22:00.000-07:00

Last April, around this time, The Green Man was in the O.C.--the "real" Laguna Beach, and we're not talking about high school kids in Manolos and Humvees--when he saw from his car window that a Pacific swell was running. One thing about that Green Man, he is never without his swimfins and trunks, so a quick turnoff later he'd parked and was scrambling his way down to a pretty little cove under yellow sandstone cliffs. It was foggy, early in the day, about 10 a.m. and he had the beach and ocean to himself (while the Green Surfer Gal was changing, that is).

So we're swimming in the (cold: 59 degree) water and have just taken a nice first ride on a wave when we hear a cheer. There must be a hundred people standing on the sand, cheering us!

Now, the Green Man knows adulation has its place, but isn't that easily flattered. Although, you know, it was a pretty nice ride. And what can be a more graceful sight than that of a black rubber-clad adult male carving down the face of an emerald green wave?

So we take another wave, and plan our pull-out so that we land upright in the shallows right in front of our audience. Hello? Where are the cheers, people? I mean did you see that wave?

No, in fact they didn't--because the good people of the O.C., god bless 'em, are lined up cheering five portable dog kennels. Whose doors, when raised, launch five baby seals who leap forward and gallop like black rubber-clad golden retrievers down the sandy carpet into the sea, right past the Green Man (whose Green Goddess raced to hand him his camera for the shot at the top.)

The baby seals had been rescued over the previous winter, restored to health, and were now fattened up and on their own. Duck-diving and porpoising, they stuck around and played in the waves for awhile with us, before heading off, barking, for the poo-stained rock that seems to be a seal's idea of the Ritz Carlton.

We caught a few more waves after that, and agreed that there is still a "real" O.C. beneath the "real" Laguna Beach--you just have to look for it.

Happy Earth Day!

Hey, Did My Shampoo Just Change My Sex?

2007-04-19T10:16:00.000-07:00

One of the advantages of being married to a Green Czar is, of course, being spared every kind of disaster by exposure to weird, body-and-soul-destroying chemicals. The best part is I don't have to raise a finger--most of the time. The Green Goddess just makes the bad stuff go away.

But then she started messing with my SHAMPOO.

Now, the male gene for emotional and domestic stability often finds first expression by attachment to our earliest cosmetic products. It's like a baby duck bonding with the first living creature it sees. Only with us Greenfellas, hanging out in the locker room at 13, parting our hair with a little dab o' do-ya, it tends to be Old Spice, Bryllcreem, Mitchum Anti-Perspirant. Despite the mixed messages the advertising sometimes delivered ("All my men wear English Leather or they wear nothing at all") we still are fiercely loyal to the old brands.

With shampoo, that tended to be a brand that preyed on the fear of white specks showing up on our black tuxedos (a slight disconnect at age 13 fashion-wise), and, after we got to college and realized chicks were hep to the whole white specks anxiety, to that old standby with pictures of flowers on it. Who could be against, like, herbs? (Heh-heh.)

Of course it actually had been years since I bought any of those old standbys, but then the other day I got fed up with washing my hair with plain soap because the Green Witch hadn't been to the drugstore. So on my way home from work I broke the rules. And got the scariest lecture about a kind of F-word you'll never hear on television:

Phthalates. Yeah, that kind of Phth-word. SCARY.

Holding her trusty yew switch as a pointer, the Green Queen rapped my nethers and said: "Exposure to phthalates--chemicals widely used as synthetic fragrancing agents, as well as in plastics--correlates to abdominal obesity and insulin resistance in U.S. adult males, according to a March, 2007 study in Environmental Health Perspectives online. The CDC says that all Americans have phthalates in our bodies, and previous studies have linked the chemicals to subtle genital and reproductive hormone changes in male infants."

Naturally, I immediately checked myself out. And my pals, that gang of reluctant but trying Green Men called the Greenfellas. At the top of this entry is what we looked like--nothing subtle, right?

[Editor's note: the photo was removed by divine intervention, but take our word for it... In fact, take several words: hideous, blubbery, gastropod-like.]

Scared yet? I was. And out to recycling went those nasty phth-phth-phth-alates.

[If you like horror movies about giant tadpoles mutating and eating small cities you'll love reading about Phthalates on GreenerPenny.com]

St Patrick a Green Saint?

2007-03-14T18:39:00.000-07:00

St Patrick a Green Saint?

The Green Man’s 10 reasons St Patrick is an Environmentalist Saint:

1. The beer is green

2. They bike there

3. He didn’t just drive the snakes out of Ireland, he car-pooled.

4. Van Morrison’s version of "It’s Not Easy Being Green"

5. A four-leaf clover on a colleen’s lapel is prettier than a cloverleaf interchange on a freeway

6. Leprechauns leave a smaller carbon footprint

7. Blarney is a sustainable resource, unlike B.S., which emits methane gas as a by-product

8. A four-pack of Guinness will take you farther than a six-pack of Bud

9. U-2

10. You can power a lightbulb off a potato (we saw it in science class)

Bonus:

11. The beer is only green once a year