Hello! Thanks for visiting my web page!
As you can see, it is perpetually in need of updating...
The courses that I am instructing in STS reflect the majority of my interests. Although my professional training is in physics and polymer science, I have been a truly devoted student of learning all aspects of sustainable living, including organic gardening, which I first learned from my father; holistic health and nutrition - much of which I also learned from my father who now runs a small health food store ; passive solar design (which has always fascinated me) and smart (green) ecological design, which I’ve learned through hands-on workshops and a great deal of reading and discussion; and community-building skills, which I have garnered through experiences working with groups and through reading about community-building techniques from both the design (Christopher Alexander) perspective and the psychological (M. Scott Peck) perspectives.
To synthesize and utilize this material in a way that not only "sustains" human and other life habitation of our planet, but also is regenerative, requires some analysis of our behaviors and actions. Wackernagel and Reese took the first stab at broadly assessing our ecological impact on the planet with a method called Ecological Footprint Analysis. While it still falls short of convincingly nailing our impact, it is apparent that to "sustain" our current level of consumption and wasteful lifestyles would require an additional 4 earths! Global climate change is no longer debated: it’s known to be a fact that out planet's climate is changing in ways that could prove disasterous to many. The time is short and precious to make the changes necessary for our descendants to survive. I am devoted to this cause.
When I am not being morose and gloomy about everything, I enjoy playing music and cooking delicious, nutritious vegetarian and vegan foods! While my distant music training is purely classical (my mother’s influence here! - on flute, viola & piano), I am finding delight in learning improvisational jazz and blues, adding instruments to my repertoir such as the penny whistle, wooden flutes, a kazoo and any percussion instrument you put near me! I play the guitar in a haphazard, extremely rusty fashion, having learned to play the chords necessary to play in a church folk group. For awhile I really got into writing and playing my own "folk songs" having to do with the environment, my relationships with people, and my own personal, internal struggles. These are carefully filed away and not often played, as they are largely depressing little tunes. I hope to someday dust off my guitar and become more skilled at playing cheerier things!
Having harbored a curiosity about and a desire to become vegetarian for several years, I stopped cooking meat in 1990 (the 20th anniversary of Earth Day), and stopped eating it altogether by the end of 1992. I then began the long, arduous task of altering my eating habits to find things that helped me feel GOOD - which was not necessarily what I WANTED to eat! So dairy went down to just eating yogurt and, occasionally, butter. Sugar, refined grains (pasta, white flour), and any simple starch (e.g. potato) which could quickly break down into sugars were minimized or eliminated totally. Eggs were out. Fried anything was out for good. Stir-fried stuff was minimized and permitted depending upon the oil used. Because I couldn’t digest beans, finding suitable protein substitutes was a real challenge, but I realized that I had great difficulty digesting almost ANY protein!
So what did I eat? What DO I eat? I hope to gradually share with you my findings about good eating habits and how to get on the road to healing your body with good food. Check out the section on Holistic Health, Nutrition and Food Preparation/Preservation/Consumption . I hope to eventually share with you some "smart", tasty recipes for foods you can grow in your own backyard! Many of these were developed by my husband, Gene Bazan, whose guidance in cooking delicious vegetarian foods has been invaluable to me.
As the homestead pioneer of this 20th century, Scott Nearing, summed up, "Do the best that you can in the place where you are, and be kind."
