How I Single-Handedly Helped Save the Planet

Some people may question why I'm taking responsibility for the new Whitehouse website "Tips for Going Green". But other people who have followed me on my environmental journey for the last few years will not.

Seven years ago, while doing some volunteer work for a well-known national wildlife organization, I realized how difficult it was to find legitimate environment information on the internet. The information was certainly out there, but it was interspersed with hundreds and thousands of other websites that were just trying to sell something or earn money for their cause without providing any real information. So I began my "mission" to try to encourage a national program called Take Care of Your Share that created a gateway for all of the legitimate information that is available through government, university and other educational websites.

I created the gateway website (http://www.takecareofyourshare.com/) and I contacted representatives from every state asking them to help me by providing me the names of the organizations within their state that help to educate their citizens to Take Care of The Environment. Only a handful responded. But I updated the website as best I could. When someone clicked on a link for water conservation, it would go to the EPA website. When they clicked on Wildlife Habitat, it would go to NRCS. I provided other government resources for every form of environmental impact that I could think of. I created petitions for people to sign  and I continued my letter-writing campaign while I wrote articles and blog posts and books encouraging people to Take Care of Their Share of the environment.

The writing presented a problem. Some publications thought that allowing me to write about saving the environment was a conflict of interest. Although I could never understand that logic, it did lose me some writing jobs. I tried to apply for grants to give the books away but again, I was told that it was a conflict of interest, even if I didn't earn any income from the books.

So I continued to write and I continued to blog and tweet and pass along the message of how important I thought it was for everyone to learn how to Take Care of Their Share of the Planet.

There was a voice inside me that kept nagging me to give it up and telling me that I should, instead, buckle down and try to add a little income to our household. (Or maybe that was just my husband). But my love of nature made me persevere.

And then today, I visited the White House website and saw their page called Tips for Going Green. I clicked on a link called Protect the Environment at Home and saw that it went to the EPA website. I clicked on a link for Backyard Conservation  and it went to the NRCS site and I thought My God!!! They did it! They finally caved in to all of my pleading and created the website that our country needs.

Was it my "mission" that got it done? Did my mission even help a little? Who knows. Maybe all of my nagging emails to the president and to the hundreds of other government organizations finally made a difference to someone. Maybe the copy of the book How to Take Care of Your Share of the Planet that I sent to Michelle and Malia and Sasha Obama got passed around the White House during a family dinner.

But the fact is, it doesn't really matter whether it was my actions or whether our country has just finally reached the tipping point that made this the right time for these actions to occur. All I know is, that until I get a call from President Obama telling me otherwise, I'm going to take all of the credit!

Should Children Witness Childbirth

Should children witness childbirth? Good question.

Here's your answer.

Due to a power outage, only one paramedic responded to the call. The house was very dark so the paramedic asked Kathleen, a 3-yr old girl to hold a flashlight high over her mommy so he could see while he helped deliver the baby.. Very diligently, Kathleen did as she was asked.
Heidi pushed and pushed and after a little while, Connor was born.

The paramedic lifted him by his little feet and spanked him on his bottom. Connor began to cry.

The paramedic then thanked Kathleen for her help and asked the wide-eyed 3-yr old what she thought about what she had just witnessed.

Kathleen quickly responded, 'He shouldn't have crawled in there in the first place.....smack his ass again!'

Isn't "Mandatory Gratuity" An Oxymoron?

Definition from Merriam-Webster Dictionary: gra·tu·ity
Pronunciation: \grə-ˈtü-ə-tē, -ˈtyü-\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural gra·tu·ities
Date: 1540
: something given voluntarily or beyond obligation usually for some service ; especially : tip

My husband just got home from an overnight business trip and handed me his receipts so I could check them against our credit card bill when it came in. We were commenting about how expensive the restaurant bill was when we noticed that they had included a MANDATORY 20% gratuity. A 20% mandatory gratuity is pretty bad. What made it worse was that he hadn't looked at the bill that closely before he signed it and had added another very generous tip. The server ended up with almost a 40% tip!!!!

I have seen mandatory gratuities added before. They are usually for large parties and they are usually a bit smaller percentage. Perhaps 18% to allow the customer to pad that figure a little if they choose.

But my husband's dinner was just a party of two. This restaurant is already rather high priced. The entrees were $37.00 a piece and a glass of wine was $12.00.

I'm pretty steamed about the whole thing. I have left phone messages and email messages to the manager of the restaurant to take the addtional tip off of the bill and I am anxious to see how they will handle it.

Writing is more environmentally friendly these days

I decided to take some time to clean out some file cabinet drawers last night and it struck me how much more environmentally friendly it is to be a writer these days. I found folders full of old newspaper clippings, newsletters, hard copies of articles I had written and sent to publishers. All on their way to the recycling bin this week. It's not that I am writing any less, it's just that everything is done online now.

Advice from LinkedIn: Find a Niche, Do What You Love, Have Fun, Sex Sells, Work Hard

I have gained so much insight over the last few weeks since I joined this group on LinkedIn. The discussions are lively and informative. I think I have learned more about myself and about my career in writing over the last few days than I have in the last few years.

First, I found that the most successful writers seem to have found a niche, and they stick to it. Maryan Pelland is one such writer. Since she commented in an online discussion that"The way to be a successful freelancer is to find your niche and cultivate your own success" I decided that I would check out her profile and discover her niche. She has developed the persona of The Digital Grandparent and is proud of her long-time success as a freelance writer. (It was, in fact, this persona of hers that led me to the idea for MY new on-line persona).

Kelsey Timmerman is another writer that I met on LinkedIn that has found his niche. Not only is his idea original, travelling around the world to discover where clothes are made, but his writing is so much fun and so clever, that he could probably draw a big following even if he wasn't as cute as a button and often writing about underwear.

In a discussion about whether it is better to write for love or write for money, almost everyone said love. Writing should be fun. Writing should flow. Otherwise, its just another 9 to 5 job and, as writers, most of us are looking for something else.

And then I found a discussion, while delving through the archives, where someone had asked the question "Sex Sells. Should we all endeavor to put Sex in our titles or headings in order to sell an article?" The most humorous part about his question and the ensuing answers (to me) was that someone was so bothered by his spelling and punctuation errors, that they didn't even see the fun and humor in his question (It's probably the same person that keeps moving my posts to the JOB heading because they are threatened by my incredibly creative mind and afraid that I might draw attention from their own posts).

Anyway, so what have I learned in the last week or so? I've learned to find a niche, preferably one with SEX in the title, that will allow me to write FUN stuff (even if I don't get paid for it), and then work very hard at becoming an expert in my niche.

So thank you LinkedIn group, for helping me decide on a new career path. Now excuse me as I head out on my new mission of becoming the world's most famous Sexy Senior Citizen.

Clean, Green Driving Machines

My latest article, published in Spaces Magazine, Jul/August 2009

The Life of a Nature Writer

I feel like such a geek sometimes - a complete nerd - when it comes to nature. I spend my time on my property kneeling down to get eye to eye with tortoises and slugs and caterpillars.

When I am wandering around, binoculars in hand, scanning the tree tops in search of some elusive bird that I hear but can't quite see, it often makes me chuckle, thinking of what the teenage me would have thought about what a nerd the adult me has turned out to be.

I am a birdwatcher, for Heaven's sake. I have become the strange neighbor that used to live down the road telling neighbors to keep their cat out of her yard to give the wildlife a fighting chance. I am the crazy lady who stands in the middle of a heavily trafficked road playing crossing guard to a mother duck and her young. I am the one that lets a large section of my lawn grow full of weeds and calls it a native landscape and the one that calls code enforcement when someone cuts down their 100 year old, protected trees. I am everything that the teenage me would have ridiculed and shunned.

I think of all the time I spent as a super cool teenager whining about how bored I was. About how I had nothing to do. My parents would say, “Well, why don’t you just go outside.” But I was way too cool to want to go out and look at the beautiful full moon my mother wanted to show me. I was too cool to want to just pull up a lawn chair and stare at the ocean with my dad. And now, I would love to be able to do nothing but spend time in nature. It’s where I find my solace and my peace.

But all of that beautiful nature that was around when I was a child is getting harder and harder to find. The woods are few and far between. The beach is dirty and crowded. The full moon is blocked by rows and rows of multi-story buildings.

I’ve got my own little piece of Paradise. A two acre piece of land that my husband and I bought as much to protect the trees from someone else’s bulldozing as to build our own little retreat. There’s a part of me that would like to just stay at home on our property, wandering around communing with the critters like a modern-day Elly Mae Clampett. I’ve got squirrels and rabbits and birds and all sorts of other wild creatures that share this space with me. I’d never be at a loss for something new to see.

But there is something inside me that won’t let me stay outside. It’s an urgency. A feeling of dread. A sense that I have to hurry up and convince other people to stop and look at all of this nature before it’s too late.

I’m not the type of person to chain myself to a tree or storm city hall or throw paint on the furs of the fashionably chic. I’m a little too meek for that. My words are my ammunition in this fight for nature, and so I use my opposable thumbs sitting at a computer, firing off missives and essays and petitions. I create websites about the virtues of the land and how to protect it. I set up habitat help-lines to answer people’s questions.

And it’s hard work. Not the actual writing and web-page coding and research and correspondence. What’s hard is staying inside.

I have a corner office with windows on two sides. There are hummingbirds and butterflies out front and warblers and hawks and rabbits and snakes out the side and I sit here with my chin resting on the window sill thinking “I just want to go outside”.

© Betsy S. Franz. Essay previously published in Florida Wildlife Magazine as a photo essay.