Your turn to help me –

It’s true, I still don’t compost.

I outline my quandary in detail in my latest FilterForGood post, but basically, the problem is that composting sans a plot of ground to call your own is difficult and unsatisfactory, due to either logistics and cost.

The worm composter appears to be my best option — you can read the FilterForGood post to see how I got to this conclusion — but apparently the wrigglers won’t eat about 3/4 of the vegan organic material I was hoping to compost. I’m still also afraid of killing them by simply deciding to go out of town for a bit.

So I ask you — Should I get a worm composter? Convince me –

Update, 5/21/09: Mission composting delayed until 7/1

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I have a confession to make. I still haven’t seen The 11th Hour. Or Human Footprint. And I’m reluctant to watch Blood Diamond, even though it’s not even a documentary. Or to click the Watch Instantly button on Netflix to finally see Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.

And you already know from my Eco Trip post yesterday that I haven’t read Bottomfeeder or Bottlemania.

On the other hand, I’ve still watched a lot more eco-documentaries and read a lot more research-based nonfiction eco books than the average person. And I watched one more docu film, FLOW, last night — which I’ll review shortly. And I have to watch a couple more docu DVDs sitting on my coffee table right now because I’ve committed to reviewing them. And I have 5 or so books on my shelves I need to read and review.

The thing is, I’m glad that these films and books are coming out. Each will interest, I hope, a different subset of people that may not’ve been introduced to the environmental movement otherwise. But the combo of all these films and books being delivered straight to my door for review — and the fact that almost all these films take the “give ‘em 90 minutes (or 200 pages) of doom and gloom then a 10-minute (or 20-page) ray of hope dependent on achieving near-impossible large-scale enviro policy changes at the end” format — has actually driven me to the point where I cringe when I hear about a new eco documentary or good eco book coming out.

I guess this is a long way of saying you may be seeing less book and film reviews here — at least after I’ve gotten through the current backlog. I’m also wondering if anyone can commiserate with this feeling that I SHOULD be reading and watching this stuff because it’s “important” — but I just don’t want to / can’t anymore –

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Your turn to help me –

Don’t you love green LA girl’s new header and slightly modified design? That’s a rhetorical question :)

The new and improved blog design comes courtesy of Kim Woodbridge, my tech guru whose excellent work I recommend to every WordPress blogger who wants to spend more time blogging and less time futzing impotently with tech issues, and Cassandra Davis, a car-free graphic designer who designed the dreamy new header.

My question is this: How can green LA girl metamorphose to better serve you? Are there other features you wish green LA girl had? Is there stuff you want green LA girl to cover — or cover more or less frequently?

All constructive criticism and suggestion’s very much encouraged. Comment away — or feel free to email me at greenlagirl@gmail.com if you’d like to keep your ideas private. Thanks for interacting –

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Your turn to help me –

So I started taking Larry Santoyo’s Permaculture Design Class last weekend — and I realize now why I never got any tomatoes from my balcony garden: I was trying to impose my love of tomatoes on my balcony, instead of using my balcony for uses it’s actually suited for :P

Illustration: This is how much sun my balcony was getting at 9:35 am yesterday. That’s right — none.

At 12:34 pm there are the first glimmers of sun on the edges –

And at 2:09 pm we’ve got some real sun –

Which, by 5:35 pm, is gone again.

You may be wondering why it took me so long to figure out tomatoes won’t grow well on my balcony. Let’s just say I was blinded by my love of tomatoes –

My question is this: What does my balcony want to grow, if anything? Are there any yummy shade-loving veggies I can balcony-garden?

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Word of my speaking at BlogHer ’09 must’ve gotten out because the conference is officially sold out!

I’d love to meet as many green LA girl readers at BlogHer this year as possible — and have even been thinking of putting together some sort of green event on Thursday night, provided I can convince my conference roomie to throw one with me in our room at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers and line up sponsors.

What I’m wondering is: Are you registered for BlogHer? And if so, are you getting in Thurs., in time for my potential party?

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Bananas are gonna go bye bye, I wrote earlier this month, citing a lot of research from Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World.

Turns out — Dan’s an Angeleno who’s into not just bananas but also bikes seriously! The two of us shall be meeting up to talk bananas and bikes over vegan banana splits — or at least banana-flavored vegan ice cream — at Scoops this Thursday, and in preparations, I’d like to know — What are your burning banana questions?

Keep in mind that your Qs need not be scientific or fair trade or enviro related. The guy’s recently dedicated a post to reviewing Banana Nut Cheerios, for example (verdict: the banana taste could be more pronounced). Feel free to ask the most curious banana questions you can conjure up. I’d like to know, for example, how often Dan has banana nightmares….

Update, 4/4/09: Book review: Banana — The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World

Update, 4/26/09: The Banana interview: Dan Koeppel reveals the best banana spots in L.A.

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Organic oreos‘ve been around for a while now, but I though you’d wanna know about the new organic junk food that’s hitting the market. A few things I found at the Natural Products Expo West:

Organic pop tarts, aka Nature’s Path Frosted Toaster Pastries. The bulk of the pastry’s basically made of sugars, including organic evaporated cane juice, organic evaporated cane juice invert, organic dextrose, organic honey, and organic molasses.

Similar but somewhat healthier: Revolution Foods’ Jammy Sammy sandwich bars. Made with whole grains, these looked and tasted more like large fig newton type cookies.

Organic cotton candy, aka Bernod’s Spun City Certified Organic Cotton Candy. Made with organic evaporated cane juice, natural flavor, and natural color, the cotton candy was pretty popular with the Expo crowd.

Oddly, I feel better about the totally nutrition-deficient cotton candy — which’d really only be eaten occasionally at birthday parties and such — than I do about the pop tarts, which some people eat every day for breakfast…. Would you feed these to your kids? Eat them yourself?

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Once upon a time, WordPress’ incoming links box would give me a list of the latest posts in the blogosphere that linked back to green LA girl’s pages. Those were good times.

But since a few months ago, WordPress’ incoming links box started filling up mostly with links to posts that don’t actually link back to me. Instead, they’ll link to the latest posts from blogs that have me on their sidebar blogroll.

Take this example from last night. Racked LA and Eater LA are indeed linking to me in those posts, but California in Texas and Bikes in the City are not — they just happen to link to me in their sidebar.

Why is this happening to me, and how can I make WordPress revert back to the way it used to populate my “Incoming Links” box way back when?

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When you feel like the only atheist in town without a tree or menorah…. Apparently, some of these atheists got together for a godless geekfest in london. The show, called Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People, featured atheist luminaries like Richard Dawkins and … Ricky Gervais. Cute!

To go along with the show, The New Humanist put together a revamped advent calendar. Each day during Advent got its own podcast, featuring a scientist or philosopher more worthy of rational celebration than Jesus.

So it seems the religious and irreligious alike love holidays and gifts and spending extra time hanging out with friend and family and good food and yummy drinks. But what fun godless traditions can atheists observe during the holiday season, eco-style?

My one idea right now is cutting out Darwin-inspired shapes (ex below) on fancy recycled paper — maybe Ellie Pooh paper? — to use as gift tags.

But I’m less interested in glorifying Darwin or other scientists than perhaps using the holiday season to celebrate eco-consciousness and smart urban living…. Got better ideas?

Image via New Humanist and evolvefish

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Metro experts and experienced bus riders: Can you help reader Anna with her travel conundrum?

Recently I decided to try to use public transportation to get to and from LAX. I’m coming from Montrose (north of Glendale), so it requires getting on the 90/91, stopping over near Hill and 4th in downtown, taking the metro from Pershing Square to Union Station, and then the flyaway bus.

The problem I ran into is the transfer point at Pershing Square with some very intimidating-looking people. It could be that it is perfectly ok, but I still did not feel safe transferring at the point, and ended up taking super shuttle back home from LAX.

Is there any information on safer areas as transfer points, i.e. places that would be safe to wait for a bus that only comes by once every half hour?

I just moved to LA 2 years ago so not too familiar which the safer neighborhoods vs. not, and it seems like in LA, the safe vs. unsafe neighborhoods is difficult to figure out. I try to take public transportation and bike when possible, but I don’t want to do it at the expense of my safety and health.

I don’t think I’ve ever waited for a bus around Pershing Square — or tried to go from Montrose to LAX, whether by bus, car, or any other means — because I’ve never been to Montrose. Which is to say my suggestion to Anna would be to try to fly out of Burbank….

But I’m hoping the savvy bus riders out there can give Anna some LAX travel advice too. Name your best transfer point for her in the comments –

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