This has been a joyful week for ForTheGrandChildren. We received our approval for our 501c3 non-profit status and we hired a new web team who is quickly solving our remaining problems. We have also begun meeting with people who have expressed an interest in becoming part of our organization. We feel that the energy is beginning to flow towards us and our excitement about our work is growing.
Peter Drury of Sightline sent us the quote of the week based on last weeks notes about grandchildren. We loved it. Grandchildren need grandparents to remember the past... And grandparents need grandchildren to remember the future. This seems to fit with our byline ForTheGrandChildren- Being Present for Future.
Lucrezia from Vashon wrote this to us: I have been reading your weekly newsletters and I'm inspired by your vision. I am a great grandmother and am dedicated to be and do whatever I can to leave an inheritance of more grace, love, health and dignity on our beloved planet.
Victor Reports: Roberta and I were in a conversation last week in which we were positing that people were becoming more conscious and a friend argued that they were not. He claimed that people were still buying big SUV's and Trucks and it turns out that he is partiallly right but there are some encouraging trends. The Seattle PI ran a article on Saturday that shined some light on these facts. Here are a few interesting ones: 1. The top three selling cars/trucks are still pickup trucks but sales have declined for these. 2. SUV's remain the favorite of many people despite the high price of gasoline but people are buying smaller SUV's. 3. Hybrids are increasing in sales rapidly but still make up a small percentage of the market. 4. Small more gas efficient vehicles sales have increased to about 20% of the market.
I learned a long time ago that a car takes more energy to build than it will use in it's life time. This suggests that keeping a car as long as you can is very important.
Our friend also stated that people will continue to fly despite the high global warming cost. Giving up the 'vacation freedom' is probably hard to imagine. Our friends believe that we can't ask people to stop flying on vacations and our retort was that we probably can't but maybe their grandchildren can.
On this subject Roberta and I are thinking about non-air plane vacations. We are studying the train routes between British Columbia and Los Angeles. We discovered that the train stops in Portland, Eugene, Klamath Falls, Mr. Shasta, San Francisco, Santa Barbara and that you can connect by motor coach to such exotic places, as Bend and Coos Bay Oregon, and Monterey and Carmel California. Something to think about.
Our son Joel is in a graduate school program at UC Davis. He wants to become a transportation consultant. He just attended a conference sponsored by his department where one of the keynote speakers said it is wrong to believe that Global Warming is coming. It is already here.
THE CRANKY ENVIRONMENTALIST:Last week we introduced Bob Schuelen as our Cranky Environmentalist Blogger. Look for his blog on our website. The following paragraph is a sample from his first blog. Bob is currently shopping for a car. We will hear next week that experience was like!
For many years I was one of those environmental types who was always running around turning off lights, putting on extra sweaters and driving around in a micro car, all the while thinking everyone else should be doing the same. After all, no matter which way you looked at it, the environment was imploding, and doom seemed near: although never near enough that I thought people would embrace my minimalist lifestyle. While I consider myself incredibly lucky that I generally enjoy being a minimalist, I 've got my own indulgence: nature. I like to look at the stars, listen to the birds and smell the woods, and I like to do it with as little interference of machines and other people as possible. Not all people, just the noisy ones. I like space- enough that I can listen and watch without having to hear someone's conversation, getting bonked by a Frisbee or worrying about some dog peeing on me. I kid you not, I once got peed on. Luckily it was raining, and I had rain pants on. Like anyone else, when I can't have my indulgence, I get just a little bit cranky. (Read the rest of Bob's blog at http://www.forthegrandchildren.org/blog.
MORE BLOGS: Co-founder Rich Henry will be soon starting his own blog regarding the lessons that we can learn from the struggle to overcome cancer as a metaphor for dealing with the diseases that are inflicting our planet. And Ron Ein will be writing a blog about how to fix the criminal justice system. Being present for the future includes not tolerating the brokenness of our healthcare, education and criminal justice systems. All of these blogs will be found on our web site under the blogs tab. In order to respond to the blogs you will need to be a member of 4TGC.
HELP! We are still looking for inexpensive office space in the Bellevue/520/UDistrict Corridor. Please contact us with any ideas.
The Joyful Future is the name we have chosen for our weekly newsletter and more in-depth periodic journal. This is Volume/issue 1.4. It will include news, teachings, event notifications of a national and local interest and much more. There will often be links to our website and there will be opportunities for members to respond in the form of blogs and forums. It is our way of communicating with our friends and supporters. Our website at http://www.forthegrandchildren.org should be working by early next week. YEA! Let us know what you think and consider joining. And you can always unsubscribe to these emails by replying to them with unsubscribe in the subject line- but we hope you don't as we have big hopes for this work.
ForTheGrandchildren
Victor Bremson and Richard Henry