I went with my wife to help out with a business-oriented fundraiser in Sacramento. I didn't do much helping, but she did: putting together silent auction baskets with cheeses and special spaghetti sauces, etc.
The Central California Hemophilia Foundation's annual crab feed fundraiser. (I did a Rotary one in Sebastopol a couple of weeks ago.) I don't really get these things so...I guess I'm not quite a Californian, yet.
People arrive with their tools and implements, shiny and stainless, in preparation for the main course. The Crab. They try to fill them up with antipasto, salad, pasta, bread/rolls before the roll out the expensive stuff and give them a chance to dip the succulent white meat into the butter melters that they've toted with them. (Some of them seem to need a toolbox on wheels to bring all the tools they've got to use.)
I had to leave: the noise, the crowd. The two Sacramento police cars out front. Why? With their engines running for an hour or so. Hello, green awareness! Anybody home?
Crab is not available at the coast these days, for large parties like this. People have to go to Oregon and Washington.
I had this fantasy last night that a greener alternative to this fundraiser -- of course, in my fantasy, we wouldn't need to convene -- would be to just send in a check. No one would have to use gas to drive to the event. No boats would have to burn diesel and make ice to cool the just-caught crabs. No trucks to get the crab to the fundraiser. No gas/electric to cook the crabs. The list goes on: you get the point.
In my fantasy, I was thinking that the 600 people who came would only have to write a check for $20 each to cover what they raised in all the auctions, tickets, raffles, etc. And, the carbon footprint would be significanlty lowered.
So, then, I was thinking: why don't we have the ability to calculate our carbon footprint for events like this? It could be just a little worksheet. So, what's unconscious would become...just a bit less unconscious.
The Central California Hemophilia Foundation's annual crab feed fundraiser. (I did a Rotary one in Sebastopol a couple of weeks ago.) I don't really get these things so...I guess I'm not quite a Californian, yet.
People arrive with their tools and implements, shiny and stainless, in preparation for the main course. The Crab. They try to fill them up with antipasto, salad, pasta, bread/rolls before the roll out the expensive stuff and give them a chance to dip the succulent white meat into the butter melters that they've toted with them. (Some of them seem to need a toolbox on wheels to bring all the tools they've got to use.)
I had to leave: the noise, the crowd. The two Sacramento police cars out front. Why? With their engines running for an hour or so. Hello, green awareness! Anybody home?
Crab is not available at the coast these days, for large parties like this. People have to go to Oregon and Washington.
I had this fantasy last night that a greener alternative to this fundraiser -- of course, in my fantasy, we wouldn't need to convene -- would be to just send in a check. No one would have to use gas to drive to the event. No boats would have to burn diesel and make ice to cool the just-caught crabs. No trucks to get the crab to the fundraiser. No gas/electric to cook the crabs. The list goes on: you get the point.
In my fantasy, I was thinking that the 600 people who came would only have to write a check for $20 each to cover what they raised in all the auctions, tickets, raffles, etc. And, the carbon footprint would be significanlty lowered.
So, then, I was thinking: why don't we have the ability to calculate our carbon footprint for events like this? It could be just a little worksheet. So, what's unconscious would become...just a bit less unconscious.
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