Enjoy all the interesting things you’re learning during this stay-at-home period.
Tag Archive for House
Saving Can Be Cool in the Summer
Here are a few hints to keep your house–and so yourself–cool this summer: 1) Open up the window coverings when sunlight isn’t streaming through, then close when the sun hits the windows. 2) Use light-colored, loose-weave mesh shades to let in light and keep out heat. 3) Apply reflective (also called low-emissivity, or “low-e”) coatings to the outside of windows. Then, sit back, relax, and enjoy the comfort, knowing that, by not using your AC, you’re saving energy and money.
[For more easy, money-saving, Earth-friendly tips, download a FREE copy of Green Riches: Help the Earth & Your Budget. Go to www.Smashwords.com/books/view/7000 or your favorite e-book seller and download to your computer or e-book device. Totally free, with no strings attached.]
Personal: My Mom
My mother had three kids, kept a spotless house, worked in the family business, dealt with laundry down steep cement steps in a dank, unfinished basement using a ringer washer and depending on a clothesline and sunshine, lived through the death of her youngest as an infant, managed questionable activities of her son, and taught independence to her physically disabled daughter. She has been gone for many, many years, but she lives on in the hearts of the kids who survive her. On Mother’s Day, I reflect on her love for us.
Repairs & Clean-Up–Too Much!
WHAT A MESS! The weather’s getting nicer, but there’s too many repair and clean-up chores. What to do?!!! Help yourself and someone else’s family by hiring a day-worker from a local day-worker center (e.g., St. Vincent de Paul). Find one on Yelp or Google or even an old-fashioned phone book Pay is usually $10-$15 an hour, and the center sends you people who are qualified to do the job you need done. When not out on a job, these people spend their time in training, improving their English, and gaining skills that make them better workers for you while building a brighter future for themselves and their families. So, what’s there to lose, except for that broken fence, or that peeling paint, or the hopelessness that these willing workers have felt in the past?
Get Rid of Ants Naturally
Use natural substances to fight ants in your house. Place one of these where they’re getting in (or just place along baseboards): bay leaves, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, salted cucumber peels, mint leaves, or tea from mint tea bags.
[For more easy, money-saving, Earth-friendly tips, download a FREE copy of Green Riches: Help the Earth & Your Budget. Go to www.Smashwords.com/books/view/7000 or your favorite e-book seller and download to your computer or e-book device. Totally free, with no strings attached.]
Add Boxes
Beautify your patio or deck with planter boxes. Grow your own organic veggies, or flowers to cut and bring in to perk up the house. This is an easy, fun way to reduce your carbon footprint.
[For more easy, money-saving, Earth-friendly tips, download a FREE copy of Green Riches: Help the Earth & Your Budget. Go to www.Smashwords.com/books/view/7000 or your favorite e-book seller and download to your computer or e-book device. Totally free, with no strings attached.]
Hope for Pregnant Workers
There’s hope for pregnant women. They’re often fired from their jobs because of “unreasonable demands,” like taking bathroom breaks, needing to keep a bottle of water nearby, or having to get help with lifting heavy loads. (These are actual cases.)
Today, Senators Bob Casey and Jeanne Shaheen are introducing their Pregnant Workers Fairness Act in the U.S. Senate. It isn’t proposing that employers make major concessions, just the same reasonable ones afforded to people with disabilities. It would be illegal to fire a pregnant woman for needing such small accommodations.
Since May, when Rep. Jerrold Nadler brought this bill to the House, it has gained 100+ co-sponsors, plus support from a variety of organizations– public health, business, women, workers, and religious.
Sounds like a no-brainer to me.
Steve Jobs No; Selma Yes
They’re trying to make Steve Jobs’ childhood home a monument. Why him? Just because he’s rich and famous? Yes, he achieved a lot, but so did Selma. As she grew up she read whatever she could lay eyes on, experienced and dealt with discrimination, dreamed up businesses she would one day run, began writing at an early age and submitting letters to her school principal and the editor of the local newspaper pointing out injustices she saw. She and her mom planted a garden full of vegetables and flowers and set up habitat for critters visiting their yard–then she taught her friends how to do it, getting them involved and enthusiastic about gardening and looking out for bad things happening to the land around them.
In other words, while she was growing up, she was becoming a socially conscious person, even active in promoting social justice in small ways; she was also a budding entrepreneur, environmentalist, and teacher.
Today she, like Steve Jobs, uses what she learned and the skills she developed as a child in that home. Today she’s just a mother, teacher, spokesperson for the environment, advocate for social justice. Her house isn’t important enough to preserve as historically important, because she’s nobody famous. Just a world-changer in her own right.
The Jesuits are Selling Me
I just realized that I’m being sold at El Retiro, the Jesuit Retreat House in Los Gatos. Well, not me, exactly, but my book, Small Things Count: Simple Ways to Live Christ’s Love Each Day. The reason that this is exciting to me is that El Retiro is one of my favorite spots on Earth. Its 50 beautiful acres offer a peaceful place to relax, think, commune with Nature and God, or participate in a group or individual retreat where you can work out your place in the universe. It has a small bookstore where you browse, sit and read, then, if you find something you like—such as my book—buy it. To learn more about this wonderful place, go to http://www.elretiro.org.