Conservation Lobby Day

Here I am with Terese Berceau and our Lobby Day group. We met with two legislators ( my other one was Senator Risser) and asked for their support on the four conservation priorities.

Both Risser and Berceau have a 100% track record on conservation issues. So we were there to thank them and ask them to take a leadership role.

Here are the Conservation Priorities for 2010

* Preserve Groundwater: Wisconsin's Buried Treasure: manage Wisconsin's groundwater resources to preserve lakes, streams, wetlands and drinking water supplies.
* Stop Global Warming in Wisconsin: address the threats of global warming in Wisconsin through clean, renewable energy jobs and energy conservation.
* Restore Conservation Integrity: return Wisconsin to an Independent DNR Secretary and a timely appointment of Natural Resource Board members.
* Protect Wisconsin's Drinking Water: protect Wisconsin's drinking water supplies by making sure we safely spread agricultural, municipal, and industrial waste.

Volunteers R Us Part 2

Volunteering meets No Child Left Inside




We joined another family with two boys in volunteering for an Arboretum work day. It involved tools, lots of movement, and we could see the results of our work right away. Afterwords, we celebrated by going out for lunch at Pasquals ( you are probably seeing a theme) We have made a commitment ( along with this other family who conveniently has two boys) to volunteer once a month.

Arboretum work days are held each Saturday from 9-noon. No training needed, you don't have to RSVP, they supply the tools, training and cookies!

Volunteers R Us

One of the goals for this year is to volunteer with our kids. Here we are volunteering in a Lincoln Elementary Classroom (we brought along a few extra boys because it is more fun that way.) We volunteered in Ms Weaver's third grade helping the kids to learn about rocks. Ms Weaver said, when her students wrote about "best part of the week" most of them described when the middle schoolers visited with their rocks!

Protecting Our Water

When I looked back out our photos for our New Year letter to family and friends...there were a lot of picutres of water: Tippicanoe Lake, the WI river, Lake Superior, Lake Wingra... When I am feeling stressed...I walk to one of the springs that feeds into Lake Wingra near our home. We are blessed by having access to clean water: to drink, to play in, to sit by... But we need to act now to protect our water so that our children and their children will have the same access to clean, safe water.

Protecting our ground water is one of the top four issues that League of WI Voters is working on. I wrote my legislators today to tell them I support strong legislation to protect WI ground water. For more information, check out the League's website

By the way, I got an awesome email back from Rep Spencer Black! He rocks!

Photo Source: flickr kittenwants

Conservation Lobby Day

I have been struggling about what to do this year related to policy work. We need big changes to protect our environment..and big change means policy change. But which organization? Which policy? I get overwhelmed by the sheer number of issues and environmental organizations. And ( research shows) when you get overwhelmed...you go to your default option...which for me is...do nothing.

So I've decided, in order to make it easier, my goal is to pick one policy advocacy issue a month.

This month, I've signed up to go to Conservation Lobby Day, on Jan 26. This is a well organized event, with clear conservation priorities. They have a track record of success. It means a day of work...but it is a day well spent where I meet people who have similar values to mine.

If you are in WI and interested in going..check it out. There is no cost and they provide training.

Energy Audit Follow Up

Our top four recommendations were:
1. Ventilation ( this is to address our water problem)
2. Attic sealing up leakage and insulation
3. Water heater to gas-tankless
4. Sidewall insulation

We are going to work on 1 and 2...since 3/4 are big ticket items.

Our next steps are:
1. get at least two bids from contractors to do the work outlined in our Energy Audit ( Laura made it easy to get bids. She gave us a list of businesses to contact and drafted a request for bids)
2. Get a hygrometer to measure the humidity in our house. We need a baseline so we can tell if we are making a difference.

The reason we have a lot of water: We have 4 people taking showers, cooking, and breathing in a relatively small space in tightly sealed house. These leads to quite a bit of water in the house which condenses on the windows ( esp. at night) and leads to water soaked wood and mold. We need to get the water out of our house ( stronger fans, run them longer)

Looking Back Looking Forward

 


What I learned from 29 Day Giving Challenge
I receive more many more gifts than I give. I just wasn't noticing.
I give more gifts than I realized. I just wasn't noticing.
Non material gifts mean as much ( and sometime more) than anything that can be purchased ( this I had noticed)

I was left with the desire to say thank you more often. And am still thinking about how I show gratitude

Highlights of We are the Them
When I think back over the past year, the highlights for me are
Conservation Lobby Day..because we took action at a policy level as a family.
10 day no car low car challenge: because it was Ben's idea and he stepped forward as our leader, beause other families joined us and I was reminded that making change fun is important and because I got to be a hero :)

I learned that having the blog connected me to more people, inspired others to take action and inspired me to keep going.

What Next?
I thought a lot about ending the blog so I could move on to other challenges...but we have some unfinished business. the most important is the Energy Audit on our house. We still have to decide how we want to follow up. So our January Action is to review the results of our energy audit and decide what we will do.