Did I ever tell you about the time I bought a loud bag of chips from the camp store in Panama City, Florida, primarily on the premise that for a few cents more the bag was 100% compostable and environmentally friendly? No? Well, let me tell you about it.

It all started in May when Pan and I went camping in Panama City, FL and found a bag of SunChips in the camp store. Colored in a very social media ‘esque’ and environmentally sound orange and green and earthy neutral, the bag was noticeably louder to the touch and appeared to be a new package all around for the Frito-Lay brand.

On June 7, I decided to try out the compostable claims and cut the bag into three portions, burying each portion in the same conditions. Granted my middle Georgia land is no commercial composting facility, it is a a very dry, hot heat providing soil with fine iron and sulphur properties. And perhaps this was my problem all along. Perhaps the bag was designed ONLY to compost in commercial composting facilities (of which there are only 8 in the state of Georgia.) Whatever the case, I proceeded in an effort to find out how compostable, recyclable, bio-degradable this bag may be.

July 20th found me digging up the first bag. You can read my results. NOTHING. The portion of the bag looked as it did the day I buried it save a few dirt spots and some dustiness. The odd part of the first dig though was that within hours of posting my results I received personal emails from the R&D team at Frito-Lay as well as the public relations team at SunChips. They essentially wanted to know all about my experiment and how I had arrived at the results I had. I was happy to speak with them and they promised they would get back to me as my experiment progressed. I must admit though that I have not heard back from them. Nonetheless the second dig took place on August 16, 2010.

Again, no change in the bag. Light passed through it the same way it did several months previous. It even looked identical to the first portion unearthed weeks before. I had been greenwashed and I was beginning to feel the SunChips claim were bogus, at best. I kept going back to the “commercial composting conditions” claim. I was convinced this was my problem. I HAD to take the bag to a commercial composting facility in order for it to pull a David Copperfield. But that didn’t please me.

If Joe Smith eats a bag of SunChips and then discards the bag out the window thinking to himself, “Oh, it’s one of those tree-hugger bags. It’ll just disappear like the bag shows,” and the bag claim is bogus, then isn’t the compostable bag just another piece of trash? It is for at least the 14 weeks it sits idle on standard soil under standard conditions.

So last week I went back to my burial ground, shovel in hand, ready to unearth the third portion. I have to admit I expected SOMETHING. I expected it to at least be thinner in appearance. But it wasn’t. In fact, it strongly resembled every other piece. After being buried in the hot, middle-Georgia soil (composted and ag. extension tested soil, mind you) for right at 3 months, nothing had happened; no sign of composting.

I have nothing left to say to SunChips. I am disappointed and if we must go to a commercial composting facility to allow for proper composition of our bags, then I consider their experiment to be one of marketing proportions rather than environmental ones. I am sorry Frito-Lay. You fail.

C’mon. Make up your mind! I live in middle Georgia. While I live in a city it is little more than a county seat with less than 11k people. We have two grocery stores (one a franchise and one independently owned). We have a movie rental store. We have three drugstores. It is a rather quiet existence 25 miles removed from the closest strip mall or office complex. The downside? Boredom. Because I grew up in the city and I spent a large part of my life in the creative arts world I often find myself missing theatres, museums, galleries, and the like. I miss French food and pubs that specialize in Ales. My life now is so different from just barely over two years ago when I lived in the middle of Brooklyn sandwiched between a Dominican neighborhood and an African-American one. Some days though, I am not sure if I want it to be.

I’m confused. Do I want to live on a hobby farm surrounded by acres of pasture, growing my own food, and sleeping by the suns clock? Do I want to continue harvesting rainwater, experimenting with solar energy, and longing for dairy goats? Or do I want a brownstone in the middle of ethnic diversity so rich the air smells of Bahamian beaches and Ukranian bakeries? Do I want absolute silence as I go to sleep or do I want the security of paramedic sirens and fire horns? Which lifestyle makes me feel more alive? Which do I truly want? I enjoy aspects of both and when immersed in one, can’t even imagine the other.

Is one more simple than the other? Six of one, half dozen of the other, I think in regards to which is more simple. Life in the city makes things more accessible; more evident. You can walk, ride your bike, take public transport, etc. You can enhance your life with cultural and artistic stimulation and you probably don’t have to go far to find a friend to spend time with. But out here in the county there is more time to reflect on life. There is better access to God’s creation, a stronger sense of “self,” and a plethora of quiet time to ease the stresses and strains of the day. The downside? Separation. I don’t need a crowd around me to feel good. I don’t need to be in the thick of things. But I do need to connect and I do enjoy a cold beer with good friends and that just doesn’t happen in the milking barn at sunset.

I have never been a lukewarm person though and I don’t intend to start now. I can’t live in suburbia. It’s a nightmare to even think about and I’m either staying out of the pool or I’m diving in the deep end.

What about you? Where is the life that late you led? Where is it now? And more importantly, where do you think it should be?

This week has been about anxiety for me. I have felt tremendous anxiety. I have read about God’s protection from anxiety. I have talked with others about their anxieties and I have learned to release anxiety.

Along the way though I found things that make me happy and have sustained me in the lull times.

This week I updated all my social networking profiles like , and .
I started writing for and meeting other contributors.
Pan and I began dreaming and trying to figure out finances for this .
I spent hours trying to figure out how could effect multiple housing situations around the globe.
I watched an embarrassing 27 times.
I then contemplated how different my life would be with .
But I ultimately decided I would .

This week has simply flown by. The high school yearbook is wrapping up so I got a lot of calls asking me to do last minute portraits for students who did not have anything to submit yet. I also spent some time taking some shots to round out the yearbook for final upload. I would complain but there is nothing to complain about. All the students I worked with were great and so appreciative. And the school always goes out of its way to accommodate me. Pan only made the week better by fixing up some amazing dishes this week including chicken and rice (leftovers today, in fact), pork chops with some sort of roumalade and, of course, brilliant steak. And if all that weren’t enough, we are going to be working on bring the gardens back to life this weekend which will include firing up the tractor – always a guilty pleasure of mine. But at work I found myself getting lost on the Interwebs and enjoying a wish list of things – yet again!

• I found a lot of practical ideas when researching and studying again.
• I found a great picture (which I promptly lost) of , which I have asked my wife to work on when her shop gets warm again.
• Several times I tried to stay interested enough to read but instead decided to check out the .
• About Wednesday I felt like I just needed to remember the good ‘ol days. So, I did…!
• Oh….and !
• But as always I returned to in life. Well, with some goats.
• In this dreary, cold weather I would gladly settle for just , to be honest.

As the title of this post reads, thankfulness shouldn’t require practice. Sometimes though I have to remind myself of all the wonderful things in my life that I should be – and AM – thankful for.

Inspired by Laura at Heavenly Homemakersas well as the Crunchy Christian Mom I decided to just post a quick reminder to myself as well as a challenge to others to take a few minutes today to focus on thankfulness.

First and foremost, I am grateful for Pan. She is a delight to wake up to and go home to each night after work. She is a blessing; my best friend and my partner.

I am grateful for my family. With all of the ups, downs and in-betweens, I am so grateful for them.

I am grateful for my job. There is no mistake about it. I don’t like it all the time and I am not often challenged by it. But I am grateful to have a job to go to that offers me a bit of security; financial and otherwise.

I am grateful for photography and the outlet it allows me.

I am grateful for the weekends. They offer rest and rejuvenation. I am so thankful that God commands a sabbath.

A poignant question, I think, considering I have not so much as looked at this blog in well over a month. So what have I been up to you might ask? Perhaps the question better asked is what haven’t

I been up to?

Pan and I were approved to purchase the house we were looking at in early August but ultimately decided it wasn’t the one for us at this time. We politely turned down the financing and decided to just keep praying for God to open doors for us. In the meantime we have taken over a new part of the house (we are currently “living in community” with my folks and sister) and painted it a lovely, tranquil blue with white trim. The only accents are a few pillows and some of our growing art collection.

As fall is approaching we have moved from spring/summer garden status to autumn garden status and are enjoying watching the new growth. I have to say that our spring/summer did exceptionally well with the ‘top performer’ ribbon going to our cucumber plants. And now we are harvesting snap beans each day from a few plants I originally thought weren’t even going to break earth from seed. Boy was I wrong! So to date we have planted beets, vidalia onion, lettuce (red and romaine), broccoli, collard greens and fall tomatoes. This in addition to our pepper plants which are still blooming impressively.

Work is still going fairly well although we have all been asked to keep our hours right at 40 hours/week with no overtime. This is sometimes pretty challenging as I have to be in the office to do my design work but if I am going to have the hours to tend to my “reporter/photographer” role I need to reserve some hours. So as one would imagine my days are a bit hectic, coming and going, averaging up time on the time card, etc. I have gotten some solid photos lately and shown at two different galleries in middle Georgia.

Pan and I have also started attending and working with Vertical Community Church

which has really been a highlight for us. We had been praying for some time for God to give us a body of believers to hang with. Traditional churches were not cutting it and we are both over the whole “Sunday best” thing. We literally just ran across Vertical as the pastor, Shane Harris, put an ad in the newspaper I work for. God does, in fact, work in some strange ways. So we have really gone headfirst into Vertical and are quite pleased we have.

So that about brings me up to date. I mean, other things have happened and life always has a new adventure but for some reason I just don’t think too many folks out there are waiting with bated breath to hear from me.

I wanted to desperately to write a blog post today. I don’t even know why. I just felt like it was time. I wanted to reconnect with the few that faithfully continue to read my words and look at my images. But alas, I am here with nothing to say. It isn’t that life is unfulfilling or even uneventful. Quite the contrary. Each day is filled with new things to do, new people to talk to, new ideas to think through, new pictures to take. But when it come to really sharing them I find myself wanting to be selfish and just enjoy them for what they are, when they are. No repose. No pondering. No analyzing. My feeding the chickens each morning is not some great metaphor for life and I don’t do it whilst Twittering the clucks ‘the girls’ make as they dive head first into their mash. It is just a chore and one that I enjoy.

So, I leave you with that. I am alive. I am happy. I am beginning to hear some thing from God and I just want to relax into them. I hope life is well with you too!

Today was a bit of a sobering day for Barnesville, Georgia.

One of the oldest businesses – Davis Cooper Ford – not only closed its doors recently but today removed the sign from both the pole out front and the side of the building. I got to the auto lot just as workers were stacking the letters against the wall.

Through the years I have taken much delight in posting images of my personal workspace be they at home or in an office. Well, now that I am a 9 to 5er, my desk is not that great. It is junky, has coffee stains, very little elbow room, and sits next to the draftiest door I have ever felt. Whatever the case, here it is now (looking a whole lot more interesting than it really is).

download death race 2 film high quality

I was just remarking to Pan ¹ yesterday that I am tired of this and I am tired of that and before barely a minute had passed I realized that I sounded very disparaging. Within the last 15 months or so I have become very aware of my own tendency to become pessimistic or negative. Pan continued to tell me how she warded off the unfortunate parts of her life and I began thinking that I needed to continue my quest for simplification. With that said, I have decided to write a short list of 5 things I make me wildly giddy.

• Taking a long exposure image on a tripod and realizing that your centerpoint remained perfectly still
• Doc Martens
• No one telling me I should shave
• The little, white, $9.99 coffeemaker I have
• Patting my hair when I have a stick ‘em up² from sleeping weird on the pillow the night before

²You can see the hair sticking up and out to the left of the image.