So, About This Resolutions Stuff:

Unlike most of my friends--or even most of the denizens of the planet, I think--I don't 'do' the New Year's Resolution thing. My feeling is that I make changes when the changes feel like they should be made. If, in July, I think it's time to stop indulging in a certain non-supportive behavior—well then, I'll stop in July. If, on January 1st I am out of ideas for change, but know that something will hit me in the head like a baseball thrown by a myopic 4-th grader eventually, I don't push it. I've not seen the use in sitting around straining my leftover brain tendrils at what seems to me to be an utterly subjective and random time of year just to come up with an idea of how to be a better me. Why not do this on April 17th? Why not on September 24th? For someone like me who takes the really long view of life on planet Earth, a view that includes what happens long after I break down to soil, it seems to me to much more organic to tackle these dragons as they arrive and neuter them then, be that on Feb. 18th or November 29th.

That being said, on the chance that you are one of those resolutions people, and on the chance that this year has caught you up short on ideas, allow me to plant a few seeds:

1. Refuse or decline plastic bags at the supermarket, mini-mart, and drug store. The last time I went to pick up some toilet paper and a new toothbrush I was given enough bags to stitch together to create the hot air balloon from THE WIZARD OF OZ, and I had quite the time of it trying to get the clerk to take them back. Did you know that every single scrap of plastic EVER created on this, your home planet, is still here with us? Things don't biodegrade in a landfill very well, especially plastic things which need strong sunlight to being the process of breakdown. You know that ever-growing wad of plastic grocery bags that threatens to take over your kitchen? By the time your grandkids have grandkids the whole planet will look like that, and they'll be trying to eat, drink and breathe through it. Have you driven past the lovely and fragrant Maui landfill lately? Treat yourself to a Sunday drive and view the plastic bags hanging like mutated Spanish moss in the trees downwind of the landfill. Know what else is downwind of the landfill? The OCEAN. Ocean animals eat this stuff because they don't know what it is. Do your part to put a dent in that tragedy: decline the plastic bags as much as possible and re-use them when you can if you must accept a few.

2. Resist the urge to feed anything or anyone on or around this island who isn't directly related to you by at least 99% of their genes. Fish, birds—all of them got along fine before we showed up with bags of frozen peas and seed mix. Ocean fish can't digest cellulose, which is in all land-grown plants such as peas, and at any rate learn to behave very badly when frequently fed. They abandon mates, eggs, and nesting sites when we show up waving (ye gads) cheese whiz and Wonderbread around. Do they know they're going to suffer from it? No, because they have no reason not to trust us. And if that doesn't make you feel responsible then I don't know what to do with you. As for bird feeding, know that in Hawaii at elevations below about 7000 feet you are not likely to see a native Hawaiian bird, so you would be, by feeding, propping up the population of introduced birds that have forced native birds out of their natural and proper homes, and out-bred them. Do you want this on your karma chart? Thought not. Leave the fish be to eat and behave as they know how, and leave the birds to duke out the balance of things without paving the road to hell with golden good intentions.

3. Can we all just stop throwing cigarette butts on the ground? Can we? Thanks. It's not like they don't go anywhere—they go down the throats of fish and birds. They toxify the soil. They look terrible lying there and they will make any alien race that comes to observe us think "Nah. Not worth handing the secrets of interstellar travel—look what they do with their cigarette butts! Can't risk having Alpha Centari look like that..."

4. Buy locally. Buy everything locally that you can. Buy your neighbor's big fatty ruby red tomatoes and your fellow island citizen's gorgeous handmade furniture and your brother's auntie's cousin's hand-pressed cheeses. Buy fruit grown three miles from you and dishes thrown on a potter's wheel across town and wrapping paper that the kids in the school down the road made for a fund-raiser. Buy avocadoes and picture frames and counter tops and porch railings and honey FROM HERE. Or if you're not from here, from where you LIVE. Where the blood, sweat, tears and love of real people make real things and everyone has an investment in making sure the land stays alive, vibrant and productive. Put your love and your money where you live and watch how well that works. Let mega-corporations smooch your behind while you live, fully, with the molecules of all the parts of your real and actual home circulating happily in your body.

5. And last but not least, swim more—in the ocean, in the lakes, in the rivers. Soak your overachieving body in the sweet flowing arms of Planet Mom, and see if you don't come out different. Make a point of it. That's all I'm saying. It worked really well for me, whatever day it was that I figured out I should do it.

A hui hou,

Judy*