donation

Climate Movement Monday: support on Giving Tuesday

/ Tracy Abell / 2 Comments

Welcome back to Movement Mondays in which I provide information and ways to support the frontline communities suffering the worst effects of climate change. Whether we want to face facts or not, the climate crisis is upon us and the sooner we act the better our chances to lessen the impact. Either way, an energy transition will happen. Tomorrow is Giving Tuesday so I’m highlighting organizations working hard on behalf of frontline communities. Donations of any amount (today or tomorrow) are greatly appreciated!

Image by Shameer Pk from Pixabay

Founded in 1997, Appalachian Voices brings people together to protect the land, air and water of Central and Southern Appalachia and advance a just transition to a generative and equitable clean energy economy.

To achieve this, we work to end harmful fossil fuel practices such as mountaintop removal coal mining and construction of unnecessary fracked-gas pipelines. We also strive to shift to clean, 21st-century energy sources including energy efficiency, solar and wind power, and stand up to monopoly utility practices that put profits over people. Our ultimate goal is to establish economic solutions that create community wealth and sustain Appalachia’s mountains, forests and waters.

The NDN Collective Climate Justice Campaign builds power throughout Indigenous communities in order to tackle the climate crisis. Our team runs and supports campaigns aimed at ending extraction, contamination, and violence in our territories. We advance policy changes, coalition building, and advocacy, while supporting the solutions-based work happening across our nations that utilizes traditional ecological knowledge in order to develop climate adaptive solutions that reflect our values of living with respect for all sources of life.

Healthy Gulf’s purpose is to collaborate with and serve communities who love the Gulf of Mexico by providing the research, communications, and coalition-building tools needed to reverse the long pattern of over exploitation of the Gulf’s natural resources.

We are preparing to launch an unprecedented solutions campaign to offer communities around the world a just pathway to 100 percent renewable energy. We need to set up infrastructure and ways of collaborating to bring clean energy access and justice to our systems everywhere. 

Thank you in advance for reading and donating. Solidarity! ✊🏽

Giving new life to old stuff

/ Tracy Abell / 2 Comments

On Saturday, we waved goodbye to my mother-in-law‘s furniture and miscellaneous items. There’d been an estate sale at the end of September, but much remained. We didn’t want to add to the landfill so put a FREE STUFF ad on Craigslist and let people know they could come from 10AM-2PM to claim whatever they wanted. Zippy and I went early to set up (including our Corsi-Rosenthal Box and free N95 masks) and to vacuum and dust off furniture. When we arrived at 9:15, a pickup/camper with a trailer was already in the driveway. As we unloaded our car, the man got out to approach us but I shouted to him that the doors would open at 10AM. Zippy and I hurried inside to get set.

At 10:00, there was a short line at the door. Turned out, they were all there for the same piece of furniture (which ended up going to the first in line). In the bustle of dealing with those folks (plus the several who came to check out the exercise bike), I lost track of the man in the pickup. A while later, I realized he was still in his vehicle and waved him inside. He came into the house and quietly began looking at what was available. When I asked if there was anything in particular he was looking for (because the furniture was spread throughout the house), I realized he spoke Spanish and not a lot of English. And then it hit me that he probably hadn’t caught what I’d yelled across the driveway to him when we arrived, and quite possibly hung back at 10:00 due to shyness/intimidation/uncertainty. He’d been the first to arrive yet an English-speaking person claimed a lovely buffet he may very well have wanted. I wished I could rewind and avoid the miscommunication.

But there were no do-overs.

After that initial rush of people was over, no one else showed up for our little giveaway. Not one more person. That’s the bad news. The good news? El hombre found much that he wanted to take! We spent the next couple hours loading three sofas, a freezer, two bed frames and mattresses, the exercise bike, lamps, tables, chairs, clothing, and a whole lot of miscellaneous stuff on his trailer and in the camper. The best part? We became so comfortable with each other that Estevao corrected my Spanish. “Uno más,” he said after I incorrectly announced “Un más” while shuttling bed frame pieces to his trailer. Unfortunately, much of my Spanish vocabulary eluded me and I found myself saying, “Lo siento,  no entiendo” more than I would’ve liked, but we managed.  Moving mattresses in narrow hallways and low-ceilinged stairways has a way of unifying people. It was kind of sad saying goodbye.

As Estevao headed out the driveway on his way to Chihuahua, Mexico, I hurriedly took pictures with my crappy phone camera.

I’d felt some anxiety as we prepared for Saturday. Despite the detailed information included in the Craigslist post earlier that week, I was getting emails asking questions about availability, taking stuff earlier, reserving items. Questions that were clearly answered in the post. Zippy and I don’t do indoor gatherings (in order to protect our health and that of others), so the thought of being in a house with a whole bunch of people wearing masks under their noses wasn’t appealing. But Saturday turned out to be a good experience.

Yes, there were lots of emotions being in my mother-in-law’s nearly empty home, watching it become even more empty. Knowing we’d never again gather there as a family brought tears. But Zippy and I got to spend time with a kind, properly-masked man who saw a use for items we no longer wanted or needed. He was breathing new life into my mother-in-law’s belongings.

Days later, I keep thinking about Estevao, hoping he had a safe journey to Mexico. It wasn’t until he was in the driver’s seat that my brain kicked in and I remembered “¡Buen viaje!” which I shouted too late. He probably didn’t hear my words, but I hope he felt the sentiment. I wish him nothing but the best.

Farewell, old friend

/ Tracy Abell / 5 Comments

Yesterday I bid farewell to our 17-year-old Prius, a reliable car that carried me and mine over 164,113 miles. We donated it to a local non-profit and I watched as it was loaded on the truck. Even though it was just a car, a possession, I choked up . So many memories.

  • I went to the dealership in November of 2003 to place an order for the 2004 Prius model (the first year with a hatchback) which were in high demand. Because Zippy was less enthused about buying a hybrid vehicle and was busy at work, off I went. Alone, but armed with a ton of research on buying a new vehicle. The two salesmen wanted to treat me like a joke, but I insisted they deduct various costs including fees for taking up space on the lot (since the car would go straight to me upon arrival), advertising, rust-proofing, and upholstery treatment. When they pushed back on one of those demands, I said if they couldn’t accommodate me I’d buy from another dealership in the area. One scoffed: “You’d drive across town to save $150?” I assured him I would. They dropped that fee and we made a deal. When I walked out, I was shaking with adrenaline. I also felt pretty kick-ass.
  • There were so few Priuses in those early years that whenever two passed on the street, the drivers always exchanged a grin and a wave.
  • The summer of 2004, we took a three-week vacation to drive the Prius across the country to visit family and friends. Wildebeest and Zebu were nine and seven. It turned out to be our very best family trip. Ever. No fighting. It was glorious.
  • As Zebu got older and became driving-age, he insisted the Prius had no guts. He was wrong. I could drive up Highway 93, from Golden to Boulder, and blow past most every other vehicle whenever there were passing lanes.
  • Zebu also disliked the Prius because he was too tall and his head touched the ceiling.
  • Wildebeest loved the Prius and its money-saving gas mileage (which averaged about 44 mpg over the years) and often offered to take it off our hands.
  • In those 17 years, we had to replace the battery two times with refurbished batteries.
  • I went through a phase in which I tried to convince Zippy we should start a battery refurbishing business. He never succumbed to my entrepreneurial pitch.
  • The Prius wasn’t great in snow and sometimes I had to abandon it on the side of our hilly street because it couldn’t quite make it to the driveway. We eventually bought snow tires which made a huge difference but some years, due to climate change, there wasn’t much snow so we didn’t bother putting them on. It was like a game of roulette: would we get huge snowfalls and regret the lack of traction?
  • Pre-snow tires I once got the carpool stuck and all four elementary-age kids had to get out to push the Prius from the snowy gutter where it’d slid.
  • Something about our silver Prius attracted accidents. Zippy and I were both rear-ended multiple times** and once I sat with Zebu at a stop sign in the rain and watched as an SUV turned right onto that street and slow-motion slid over to smack into the front of the Prius as Zebu and I yelled, “Noooo!”
  • (** one woman who rear-ended me was named C*rmen Riskey which somehow felt like a perfect name for the situation).
  • When the valiant Prius was taken away yesterday, it bore zip ties and packing tape on various parts of its body.
  • One of the times it got hit resulted in extensive damage that required a body shop. While the Prius looked good as new after that, the gas bladder was never the same and would only accept 5-6 gallons of gas at a time which meant that one of the greatest perks of owning a Prius –fewer trips to the gas station–was no longer the case. Over the years I swore even more than usual as the pump handle clicked off and on as I tried squeezing in a tiny bit more gas.
  • Once I loaned the Prius to a friend who’d only driven later models and she called me to say the fob wasn’t working. Apparently, the newer models would start if the fob was in the driver’s pocket so I had to explain that my Prius fob had to be inserted in a slot in the dashboard. (The same thing happened with the donation pick-up driver last night; when he couldn’t get it to start, he thought we were donating a dead car as opposed to just a seriously wounded car).
  • My brother-in-law drove it once and somehow triggered what Prius drivers refer to as the “red triangle of death.”  He was in a panic but we’d become somewhat nonchalant about its appearance over the years and talked him through it.
  • Several weeks ago, Zippy decided to have the snow tires put on rather than buy new tires. While the Prius was driving very well at that point, it was increasingly touchy so we didn’t want to invest in new tires. After paying an unbelievable $150 for that switch plus disposal of the old, bald tires, there was an immediate change. Like, immediate-immediate. The red triangle of death had returned. When Zippy floored the gas pedal to get up our hill, our beloved old Prius could only muster 10-miles-per-hour.
  • It was time to say goodbye.
  • That goodbye dragged on and on for a whole week because the pick-up company got WAY behind due to the blistering hot weather across Colorado. Several of their trucks died in the heat and one nearly caught fire. But at 6:30 last night, Eduardo arrived to carry my dear little car away.

Here’s the Prius making its final trip down our street. I’m not ashamed to admit there were tears in my eyes as I waved goodbye.

#GreenNewDeal and fighting for a livable future

/ Tracy Abell / 5 Comments

I spent Saturday and Sunday with about 35 passionate young people dedicated to fighting for a Green New Deal. Our local hub of the Sunrise Movement (Sunrise Colorado) held a training retreat in which national organizers shared strategies to help us in this fight. It was an amazing weekend and I felt SO. MANY. EMOTIONS.

I cried at the beginning when we all shared who and what we were fighting for, and I cried at the closing when we sang together. But I also laughed a ton, learned much, and felt lots of hope for the future.

The Sunrise Movement has already gained much more traction on the climate crisis than I’ve seen in my lifetime. PLEASE consider donating a few dollars to my hub to help us continue this vital work. https://secure.actblue.com/donate/sunriseco

Or if you’d prefer donating to the national movement, you can do so here: https://www.sunrisemovement.org/

Thank you in advance.