You are currently browsing the Green as a Thistle blog archives for March, 2008.
Hot, Flat, and Thistled
This is me
About this blog
Welcome to Green as a Thistle. My name is Vanessa, I'm a journalist at the National Post, based in Toronto.
When I saw the documentary An Inconven— no, just kidding. Now that organic is the new bl— OK, no, seriously now. In short, this blog began somewhere between guilt and earnestness, between dissing Stéphane Dion's dog (named Kyoto) and finding myself amongst a group of eco-hipsters drinking hemp beer at an anti-styrofoam party.
I decided to take on a bit of a challenge: Spend each day, for an entire calendar year, doing one thing that betters the environment. The idea was that everything I did, I kept doing (so if I switched brands, it was a permanent switch; if I turned down my thermostat, I kept it down), so that by day 365, I'd be living as green a lifestyle as it gets.
It was a gruelling year, but in the end, it proved that being an environmentalist doesn't necessarily mean being a smug hippie, nor does it have to mean compromising aesthetic values or good wine. You can read more about what I learned in my book, Sleeping Naked is Green, or just keep reading this here blog. Now, I'm mostly writing about whatever the heck pops into my head (isn't that a novel concept for a blog?).
Happy holidays, ye fellow bloggers and readers! I don’t even really know what “ye” means, but nevermind. I just wanted to pop up into your RSS feed/inbox/Google search/etc. for two reasons, which are completely unrelated other than a tenuous connection to Christmas. One is this: I decided to make some from-scratch holiday gifts this year, […]
Yep. Me again. Creeping into the blogosphere like I tend to do these days — about once every few months, with a totally random subject of conversation, which every blogger will tell you does NOT lead to a very consistent readership. Oh well. But I thought y’all might like to know that Miss Thistle is […]
Sometimes, this city drives me crazy — there aren’t enough bike lanes, the public transit system is a mess and we’ve even banned kite-flying in one of our parks! And yet, every now and then, Toronto gets it right. The most recent example is here below, for your viewing pleasure: