Environy

The title of this post sounds like a word Dubya may have pulled from his vast and jumbled lexicon. Don’t bother looking it up as it is not yet a word and probably never will be. I made it up for the purposes of this very brief journal entry. A month or so ago, in an effort to appear as if I was doing my part for the environment, I purchased a 12-pack of those weird new light bulbs for the lamps in our home. Two things became immediately apparent: there is a 2-second delay when you switch them on and the light they project is absurdly dim. (This latter issue is especially annoying for a 56 year-old who buys $1 reading glasses at Target.) Yesterday I used the last of these bulbs and was left holding the empty and sturdy cardboard container in which they were packaged. There is little doubt that the paper, water, glue, ink, printing, fuel and energy expended to create and now recycle this cardboard was considerably more than the energy saved by using its contents. I have decided to burn it in my back yard, roast some hot dogs and then do some reading in the rich glow of its flame – a light much brighter than the bulbs it contained.