Environmental Talk

Another day, another project….

The Greek philosopher Plato once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Or maybe it was Clint Eastwood.

Either way, it’s sound advice I almost never follow. I have, perhaps the worst combination of personality traits possible for being a homeowner on the cusp of a green revolution.

I am enamored with almost every project I read about or see on television. I have an over-abundance of curiosity about new things, a totally unjustified optimism about my ability to do what looks so easy when I see it on HGTV and enough of an ego to believe if a guy with a high school education can build a new porch, well, so can I.

I should also add that the last time I took an aptitude test, I graded out in the lower two percentile of the country in mechanical ability and spatial reasoning.

Basically, if there’s a contest to build a piece of Ikea furniture between me and a dude with cerebral palsy, you should put your money on the guy wearing the protective helmet.

Which is why the whole trend toward natural and sustainable living scares the daylights out of me.

I’m accustomed to relying on the service economy to take out my garbage, pack my groceries and heat my house. The thought that I might be forced to have to rely on primitive survival skills that vanished with the Cro-Magnon Jabos is very disconcerting.

Which is why, when I come across an article entitled THE AMAZING $500 WOOD-BURNING STOVE…THAT YOU CAN BUILD FOR $35 (OR LESS!), I figure I better read up and learn how to construct a stove out of a discarded water heater that is not only functional but also will “look classy enough to put on display right in the living room.”

There were two things that struck me right off about the article. First, it was (as of this writing) the most popular article on the Mother Earth News website. Secondly, it was written in January 1978.

Talk about a magazine committed to turning back the clock and recycling!

In 1978, people were still eating beef jerky for dinner and I’m pretty sure Colorado wasn’t even a state yet.

Hot stove league …

Not to bore you with the details, but after reading the three page article about how to build the stove, the only thing I came away with was that I would have to spend at least one afternoon trolling through a junkyard.

The dude in the article built his stove from materials he scavenged from a variety of places and suggested that all his stove cost him was a day’s worth of labor.

By my conservative estimates, that means I would complete the project when the next Clinton got elected. I’m talking about Chelsea, of course.

So, for now, I’ll continue to read and, perchance to dream about building my own stove. And hope that nuclear power is the next workable energy-saving technology.

That way my symbiotic relationship with the service economy will remain intact.

global warming, climate change, Mother Earth, wood stove, nuclear power, beef jerky, Colorado