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Homespun living Pasadena family gets basics from own efforts
Todd Ruiz, Pasadena Star-News
For Jules Dervaes and his three adult children, each branch sagging with fleshy eggplant and every lick of sun-generated energy are small steps along the “path to freedom.”
Laboring full time at their urban homestead in Northwest Pasadena, the Dervaeses cook up their own biodiesel fuel in their garage, while outside, pygmy goats trim their lawn and provide fertilizer.
The family has invested seven years of ingenuity, sweat and sacrifice decoupling from the status quo and connecting to the world at large.
Hot water for their showers, for example, comes from water heated by the sun inside a black, rubber hose coiled atop an outdoor shower stall.
Solar power also heats their food, accelerates composting and provides 70 percent of the family’s power.
Every available space at their Cypress Avenue home, from the tillable soil to the rooftop solar cells, is put to use in their living experiment, a quest for total independence from power grids and supermarkets.
Dervaes estimates they’re less than half the way to complete independence. But while the family grew more than 6,000 pounds of produce last year – much of which they sold to area restaurants – one resource continues to stymy them.
“Water,” Dervaes said. “We can get free energy and grow our own food, but water is trouble. We just keep praying for rain.”
(2 September 2007)
A contributor calls this “A homegrown revolution”:
Since the mid 80’s the Dervaes family has been transforming their typical city lot into an exemplary model of sustainable urban homestead. These urban eco pioneers document their journey on their extensive website at Path to Freedom.
The green faith effect
Kathryn Young, CanWest News Service
Solar panels aren’t mentioned in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, so Rev. Margaret Cornish had to write her own blessing for a special dedication service last Sunday.
On the roof of St. Alban’s Anglican Church in Richmond, B.C., she asked that “the blessed sun shine on us and warm these panels, our hearts and this sacred place.”
Solar panels are becoming a common connection for Christian churches, Hindu temples, Calgary synagogues and Toronto mosques as faith groups across Canada act on the so-called Green Rule: “Do unto the Earth as you would have it do unto you.”
Cornish said her solar panels are “an outward and very visible sign that we are deepening our commitment to important environmental issues.”
Congregations are also caulking air leaks, reducing garbage, conserving water, and installing rain barrels, compact fluorescent light bulbs, energy-efficient furnaces and appliances – all in an attempt to live out their common belief that humans need to care for their planet.
“It’s a whole nascent movement, a green faith movement,” said Rory O’Brien, program coordinator of the Greening Sacred Spaces program run by the ecumenical group Faith and the Common Good, that has a network of affiliates in B.C., Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia. “We were really taken aback by the interest out there.”
In Ontario, Sacred Spaces is involved with 77 congregations, half Christian the other half Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Bahai, Unitarian, Zen, and Hare Krishna.
(1 September 2007)
Pope to youth: Save planet ‘before it is too late’
Reuters
Pope Benedict, leading the Catholic Church’s first ‘eco-friendly’ youth rally, on Sunday told up to half a million people that world leaders must make courageous decisions to save the planet “before it is too late.”
“A decisive ‘yes’ is needed in decisions to safeguard creation as well as a strong commitment to reverse tendencies that risk leading to irreversible situations of degradation,” the 80-year old Pope said in his homily.
Intentionally wearing green vestments, he spoke to a vast crowd of mostly young people sprawled over a massive hillside near the Adriatic city of Loreto on the day Italy’s Catholic Church marks it annual Save Creation Day.
More than 300,000 of them had slept on blankets and in tents or prayed during the night. Organizers said they were joined by some 200,000 more people who arrived from throughout Italy on Sunday morning.
“New generations will be entrusted with the future of the planet, which bears clear signs of a type of development that has not always protected nature’s delicate equilibriums,” the Pope said, speaking to the crowd from a massive white stage.
Making one of his strongest environmental appeals to date Benedict said: “Courageous choices that can re-create a strong alliance between man and earth must be made before it is too late.”
(2 September 2007)
Related from BBC:
Pope leads eco-friendly festival (BBC)
