Ben will be reading at Book Passage in Corte Madera at 7 p.m. tonight night (Tuesday, May 15). In his quiet, self-deprecating manner, Ben calls himself a 54-year-old debut novelist.

MW: Can you tell us about your new book?

BF: It is generally speaking about football, cheerleaders, the Iraq war, capitalism, family, sex, death, and the general insanity of American life. Specifically, it’s about a group of eight American soldiers who are in the United States for two weeks doing a public relations tour to boost support for the Iraq war. The book takes place on the very last day of their tour. They’re guests of honor at a Dallas Cowboys game. And after that they go right back to Iraq, back into combat.

MW: Were you in the Iraq war?

BF: No.

MW: How did you research the book?

BF: I read lots of soldier memoirs, lots of reportage. Every magazine article that I came across I would put in the file, and after three or four years or research I had four or five big, thick files. I got to know a couple of vets of this war and had conversations with others. But there were two main relationships.

MW: Is your protagonist based on one of those relationships?

BF: No. Bits and pieces, but the main character, Billy Lynn, is really someone from my own head.

MW: So you spent three to four years researching before you began writing?

BF: Yeah, I was writing other things. So when I would read at night or on vacation, I would read something about the war. I was working on a novel called The Texas Itch at the time, which crashed and burned.

MW: Why?

BF: It wasn’t good enough.

MW: What wasn’t good enough about it?

BF: It took too long to get going, and the plot relied too heavily on arcane matters of law, at least according to my editor.

MW: And before that you wrote a collection of short stories?

BF: Correct. It’s called Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, the stories that I wrote between 1999 and 2004. I started writing in 1988, and I wrote for a good ten years before I started writing work that really pleased me. So all the stories in that book came after I’d been doing this for ten years.

MW: Who are your favorite authors?

BF: Robert Stone, Joan Didion, Walker Percy, Norman Mailer. I think Mailer went as far as any writer I’ve come across in trying to figure out the American Psyche—along with Joan Didion and Robert Stone. I think Fitzgerald wrote the Great American Novel.

MW: The Great Gatsby.

BF: Yes, which I didn’t like for many years. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I really appreciated it. And now I read it every few years, and I’m more and more ravished by it.

MW: What is it about it that ravishes you?

BF: He got it all. In one sense, the essence of American life in that love and identity are so bound up in money and also the idea of reinventing the self on the basis of money. And it’s a heartbreaking love story and a wonderful love story.

MW: What is your writing routine?

BF: Five days a week I’m at my desk by 8 and I work until lunch, say noon, and I read The New Yorker while I’m eating lunch, then I’ll lie down on the floor by my desk for 20 minutes, then I’ll get up and write for a couple more hours—so between 5 and 6 hours. And then I’m done. So I’ll go out and try to sweat at that point—run or ride the bike or work in the yard. I also like to work on Saturdays, but I’m not real hard on myself on Saturdays. I’ll work for half a day and make notes.

MW: Do you have goals during the week for how much you want to get done in those 5-6 hours?

BF: No, not as far as words or pages, no.

MW: You mentioned at lunch that you’d written one other novel.

BF: There were two. I worked on the Haiti novel from ’91-’96 and then there was The Texas Itch that we talked about.

MW: What happened to the Haiti novel?

BF: I got an agent for it, and we got respectful responses from the big publishers and the small publishers, but nobody would take it. It just wasn’t good enough. It was a very labored piece of work. It was very much an apprentice piece of work.

MW: How so?

BF: I didn’t know how to skip steps back then. I thought everything had to be spelled out, and everything had to be in its own dedicated scene. I hadn’t figured out how to go straight to the heart of it when that was called for. There was lots of bloat in that book.

MW: Was it long?

BF: Yes, it was about 600 manuscript pages.

MW: What did you do differently in your new novel?

BF: I’ve gotten better at knowing what to leave out and maybe become a bit more skillful at leaving it out. But the words that are in there carry all that weight. I suppose something I’ve gotten better at is compression and concentration, getting as much bang as I can out of each page.

MW: How did you develop that skill?

BF: By writing. That’s the only way to do it.

MW: You mentioned at lunch “keeping it simple?”

BF: Yes, it helps if you aren’t very smart to keep it simple, and that’s where I’ve come out.

MW: What are you working on now?

BF: I turned in the final version of this book in mid-January. That was on a Friday, and on Monday I started this new thing. I didn’t know if it would be a long short story or a novella or something in between. It was just something I wanted to write, and I thought it doesn’t have to be anything because I just finished a book, but it seems to be developing into a novel. It starts in Nicaragua and ends in Haiti.

MW: Are you using any of the research you did for your first Haiti novel?

BF: Well, I continue to go to Haiti. I started going in 1991 specifically for that novel, but I’ve been going there twice a year since then. So I’m drawing on all of my experiences there—twenty years’ worth.

MW: Why do you go to Haiti twice a year?

BF: I’m connected now. I’ve got two godchildren there. I’ve got a lot of friends there.

MW: How much time did you spend in Haiti when you were researching your first novel?

BF: I was going two to three times a year for two to three weeks at a time. But then I would have a specific agenda. Now it’s much looser. I get to see my friends and just see where things take me.

MW: How important is it for writers to read?

BF: I think it’s really important. Maybe there are certain times when you step back from reading anything serious. I’m sure there are writers who don’t read much of anything, but for most of us, if nothing else, it’s a great pleasure. It’s one of the pleasures of living, so why not.

MW: How much do you read?

BF: I read The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, and I’ll skip around in Harper’s. Lately I subscribe to The Paris Review. I think really interesting things are happening in there. And books. I try to keep a French book going and a poetry book going.

MW: Do you speak French?

BF: I read it, but my speaking is pretty bad.

MW: What is your last favorite book that you read?

BF: This will sound kind of snobby, but René Depestra is a wonderful Haitian writer. I think he should get the Nobel Prize. He wrote this wonderful book of short stories called Eros dans un train chinois. It’s hysterical and wonderful and tender and full of humanity. At the back of it, he has a glossary of slang terms for the male sex and the female sex, and it’s hysterical. That’s worth the price of the book.

MW: Is it translated?

BF: No, it’s in French. My last favorite thing in English is Of A Fire On the Moon by Normal Mailer. It’s his reportage on the Apollo 11 moon shot.

MW: What do you think of the changes going on in the publishing industry?

BF: I think everyone’s running around looking for their ass. Nobody really knows what’s coming. Borders is gone, that was a huge part of the bookseller market. B&N seems to be hanging in there. I think the e-book revolution is really turning things upside down.

MW: Do you have an e-reader?

BF: No. I’m not really a gadget person. I like books. I like the way they feel and I like the way they sell. E-books, as far as I can tell, have no smell.

MW: You don’t have a website.

BF: No.

MW: Why not?

BF: It would be another thing to take care of. I try not to look at e-mail until the afternoons. It’s hard enough to do this work without having a million distractions coming at you. And plus I’m just not that interested. Instead of doing a website, I’d much rather be reading.

MW: Is it possible to make a living as a full-time fiction writer?

BF: For me, for the first fifteen years I would have starved a thousand times over if not for my wife. Now I’m making enough that I could pay rent, pay for groceries. Paying for health insurance would probably be beyond reach.

MW: But you’re not interested in teaching?

BF: I like teaching, but for me it takes a lot of time and energy, and I’m very wary of any kind of path that would have me teaching full time.

MW: Because it would take away from your writing time?

BF: Yeah. Writing time and energy. It’s what you walk around with in your head. Are you walking around with your story in your head or sixteen students’ stories that you’re trying to do justice to?

MW: Do you think it’s important to write every day?

BF: Everybody’s got to figure out their own way. For me it’s important to write five or six days a week. I’m pretty slow, so that’s the only way I’d get anywhere.

But writers are busy. Some are too busy to take my classes. So they ask, “Can I hire you to do my social media for me?” My answer is no. I will be happy to work as your social media coach. I will be happy to set up your website and your blog, to build your Facebook page, and to get you started tweeting (I did this with a client this morning). I will be happy to add all the bells and whistles to your blog and sit down with you to compile a long list of topics that you can blog about. I will be happy to show you how to improve your SEO (search engine optimization) and how often and when to tweet. But I can’t do it for you. For one thing, it would cost a fortune. For me to write your blog posts and post updates to Facebook and Twitter every day as well as respond to blog and Facebook comments, retweet and @reply people, and follow (or not) people back on Twitter would take several hours per week—at $75/hour. Do you really want to spend $300+/week, or $1200+/month, for someone to do your social media networking for you? We could cut the cost down a little by posting one short blog post per week and simply sending that to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ in addition to advertising your readings and publications. We could skip responding to blog comments, reading and commenting on other people’s blogs, retweeting and @replying people—but you wouldn’t gain many followers that way. And you certainly wouldn’t make any friends. The whole point of social media is to connect with people, and the more strongly you connect with them—through regular correspondence, online interaction, or, better yet, in-person interaction—the more likely they are going to champion your book when it comes out—to retweet that article you wrote for Salon.com, or congratulate you when you win that PEN award. Your readers want to connect with YOU, not with your social media coach. They want to hear YOUR opinions on writing, they want to read posts in YOUR style of writing, they want to learn more about YOUR life.

If you’re a company with a product to sell, or if you’re famous enough that simply having a web presence is all you need to win friends and influence people, then by all means, hire someone to blog and tweet and post status updates to Facebook for you, so you can spend more time selling products or writing. But if you’re a midlist author, a beginning author, or an unpublished writer hoping to connect to your audience, you’re not going to do yourself any favors by hiring someone else to do it for you. You can hire a coach to get you started and guide you along the way, or to help you take your game to the next level if you’ve been doing social media for a while, but then it’s up to you to take the helm and steer your ship—off into the social networking sea.

What about you? Do you know authors who hire other writers to blog for them? Tweet for them? Post to Facebook for them? Would you ever consider hiring someone else to do your social media networking for you?

Our local bakery sells Irish soda bread, but this year we were out of town, so I called my sister and got my mom’s recipe from her and made it myself for the first time ever. It is SO easy and SO good. And you don’t have to wait until next St. Patrick’s Day to make it! Our bakery sells soda bread all year ’round. So here it is:

4 c flour
1 1/2 t baking soda
1 t salt
2 T carraway seeds (optional, but I love them)
3/4 c sugar
1 c dried currants (or raisins, but I prefer currants)
2 T butter, melted
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 c buttermilk

1. Mix the flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl
2. Add the carraway seeds, sugar, and currants
3. Stir in the butter, eggs, and buttermilk

Plop it on a greased pan (I used a round cake pan; the bread will also be round). Attempt to cut a 1.5-inch-deep cross-cut using a serrated knife. Don’t worry if the dough sticks to the knife and your cross-cut is barely visible.

Cook 45-60 mins at 350 degrees (Mine took 50 mins). Take it out, let it sit 5-10 mins in the pan, then remove it to cool on a rack. Eat while warm with butter. Wash down with Irish whiskey or Guinness—or better yet, a cup of tea.

Enjoy!

First, here’s what’s in my bins:

1. A change of clothes, including shoes, socks, underwear, rain jackets and warm jackets, for everyone in my family. I have to update my kids’ outfits every 6-12 mos as they continue to grow.
2. A tent, pads and sleeping bags
3. Our camping cooking gear: stove, fuel, pots, plates, utensils, etc. (These stay in their own bins next to our disaster bins)
4. A hand-crank flashlight
5. A hand-crank radio
6. Emergency telephone numbers and the address of our nanny in case she has to take the kids back to her house with her
7. A first-aid kit
8. Ten gallons of water (They sit outside of the bins, and I change them every six months. We should really have 1 gallon/person/day for two weeks; which, in our case would be 42 gallons!)
9. Food: cans of beans and corn, canned tuna and chicken, dried pasta, jarred pasta sauce, rice, a huge bag of Costco gorp, some cans of soup
10. Work gloves, duct tape, a can opener, a sharp knife, matches, dust masks
11. Toilet paper, paper towel, tampons
12. Pull-ups for my daughter (And you should have diapers, baby food, and formula if you have a baby)
13. An ax and a shovel in case we need to dig anyone out (these are also next to the bins)
14. Some cash and an extra credit card in case we lose our wallets

All of this is stored in two locked RubberMaid Action Packers (we have one 48 gallon bin and one 24-gallon bin, but I wish we had bought two 48-gallon bins) covered by a tarp to keep it dry.

A few things I need to add:

1. Photocopies of documents like our passports, our driver’s licenses, the deed to our home, a proof of address, and our birth certificates).
2. Extra set of house and car keys
3. Games and activities for the kids
4. A deck or cards or other entertainment for the adults
5. A whistle
6. A flashlight that can be stored somewhere outside so I can get the bins open in the night if I have to run outside without a flashlight

I also have:

1. A notepad, pen and chalk in our mailbox so we can notify each other as to our whereabouts. If the notepad is wet or too difficult to use, we can use the chalk to write on the pavement or on the house.

2. An out-of-state contact to check in with because it will be easier to call my sister in Michigan than to call each other if phone lines are clogged (and it will be easier to text). We have two meeting places—first the backyard, then my mother-in-law’s house (that’s where the notepad/chalk will come in handy).

3. A Red Cross backpack with emergency supplies for two in my car (and should probably increase it to four). I know where the gas shut off is on the outside of the house (You want to shut it off if you see the dial spinning rapidly because that means there is a leak), but we should have a wrench on it.

4. A couple of working fire extinguishers in the house

5. A wind-up flashlight on my dresser where I can easily grab it as I’m running out of my bedroom to grab the kids. I should have another in the kitchen.

What about you, Californians? Are you prepared for The Big One? Have you taken any emergency response classes? (I took mine so long ago that I really need a refresher if anyone wants to sign up in Berkeley with me.) Are there things in your disaster bin that I’ve forgotten?

So I googled shelters in Berkeley. I found the Berkeley Women’s Shelter, and I called. I asked the director if my list of items would be useful (Yes, she said, and added a couple of items). Then I sent an e-mail out to friends asking for donations. Many of them dropped bags of toothbrushes and shampoo and wash cloths on my porch over the following week. One friend enlisted her other friends to make donations, and we quickly had two toys for each child at the shelter. Then Sunday of this week I spent the day making soaps (our latest family craft project obsession) and English Toffee. My son helped put twisty ties on the snack bags and dropped one in each gift bag. He was more excited about this project than I expected. He asked me to “give him another job,” so I handed him a bag of travel-sized conditioners and shampoos and asked him to put one of each in every one of 28 gift bags. He was very proud that he could tell the two apart (“The conditioner has the black top and the shampoo has the white top”). He took his job very seriously and asked for another as soon as he had finished. He was disappointed that one of the kids was going to get Transformer toothpaste when he is stuck with Sponge Bob, but he was excited to donate four of his (least favorite) spaceship soaps to the kids.

Thursday we will deliver the bags. I plan to take the kids with me (or at least my son because my two-year-old daughter has no idea what’s going on and will probably drop half-eaten oranges into the bags before we drop them off). Dropping them at the office won’t be as gratifying as hand-delivering them, but I don’t think we’ll be allowed access to the residents. And that’s what charity is all about—giving without receiving anything back. It’s more fun to see the smile on your daughter’s face when you give her that doll house, or the excitement of your son when he rides his new bike for the first time, but we have to imagine what it means to people who get nothing on Christmas Day (or for Hanukkah, or whatever holiday they celebrate), who can’t just go out and buy whatever food they feel like eating for dinner every night, who don’t have a room of their own let alone a house or a car or a computer.

Here are a few ways you can help someone in need this holiday season:

1. Like I mentioned above, Heifer International is a fantastic organization. Their website seems to be down at the moment, but last year $60 bought half a goat, and lesser donations bought chickens.

2. Donate a new, unwrapped toy to Toys for Tots. Our local YMCA has donation barrels as do all Toys R Us and Babies R Us stores around the nation. But hurry, our local Toys for Tots campaign ends tomorrow, December 21, and doesn’t begin again until next October.

3. Your local supermarket. Our local supermarket has $10 bags of food we can purchase at checkout to be donated to the county food program as well as people out front collecting food and toys for another organization. Check your local supermarket. There are likely people collecting food or cash donations this time of year.

4. To donate used children’s books in Northern California, check out Books for the Barrios. They ship thousands of books, school supplies, puzzles, athletic gear, computers, and more to the Philippines every year. If you’re not in Northern California, you can donate money.

5. The Red Cross is always in need of donations. Check out their Holiday Gift Buying Catalog.

6. Habitat For Humanity is a great cause. For $10 you can donate a box of nails to help build a house for someone. For $50, you can buy a low-flow toilet.

7. Kiva has $25 gift cards you can give to a friend or family member that allows them to choose an entrepreneur to support through a microloan. Or you can support someone yourself.

8. Call your local homeless shelter and ask what is on their donation list. Most shelters have a list of specific items they need. Find out what yours needs and make a donation.

There are many ways to give! What is your favorite?

You’re undoubtedly wondering how we survived the onslaught of Hurricane Irene, so I wanted to give you an update.

First and most important—we made it, bowed, perhaps but not broken. The experience was, however, horrific.

Once the storm had passed this morning, we emerged, blinking at the unfamiliar sunlight, to survey the damage. The destruction we witnessed was, well, devastating. In our yard alone, I counted at least three—maybe four, it was hard to tell—twigs lying on the lawn. As I looked down the street, there was literally not a single house that didn’t have dozens of leaves scattered across the lawn. The leaves were literally ripped from the trees by the terrible winds that bore down on us. Everywhere, flowers were bent over in their pots, a few having even lost some petals to the merciless rain.

The water damage was on a whole different level. Grass was matted down where the downspouts emptied their torrents onto the lawn. Low spots where during normal storms small puddles would form instead sported large puddles. And everywhere—everywhere—the ground was wet. If you were to walk anywhere on the lawn in your socks, they would literally be very wet.

But the crushing aftermath was a relief compared to what we endured throughout the course of the storm. The rain lashing at the windows, combined with the howling of the wind, produced such a noise that we literally had to turn the TV volume up somewhat to hear the show clearly. With Twitter, non-stop coverage on all channels, internet-based weather services, and iPad apps our only links to the outside world, it was difficult to tell what was happening with the storm, and the anxiety was unbearable. Then the ultimate, crushing blow—the power went out. We had been watching a movie and as we sat there in the dark, the panicked questions raced through our minds: How long until our frozen food melted? Are our iPods charged? What shows will the DVR miss recording? Mercifully, the interminable waiting ended, and power was restored, a full 50—maybe even 60—seconds after it went out. Of course, it took probably four times that long before the projector was able to recycle and start, but so relieved were we to finally have the electricity back on that we didn’t mind the wait.

Of course, there have been other natural disasters that also have been tough for some—Katrina, the tsunami, the Northridge and Loma Prieta earthquakes—but as we all know, this one happened on the East Coast and so dwarfs all those in importance. We’re just grateful we survived and while it’s not an experience we’d wish on anyone, we know our children will long remember it and will have grown stronger for having lived through it.

Now we turn to picking up the shattered pieces of our lives, which we hope we can do with the grace of God and substantial FEMA grants.

Thank you for your concern and prayers.

RJ and Family

* * *
R. J. Squirrel is overeducated, underemployed, and jealous of his little sister’s writing career. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife, son and daughter, six freeloading feral cats, and three regular cats.

However, plastics are also doing a lot of bad things both to our bodies and to the environment. Although plastics use a small percentage of our fossil fuels (70% of plastics in the U.S. are made from natural gas; 30% from oil), much of it from waste products from oil refineries, that rate is quickly rising as plastic consumption increases all over the world. Worse, our oceans are FULL of plastic. The North Pacific subtropical gyre is a huge loop in the Pacific Ocean nicknamed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch because of how much plastic is circulating there, but it’s more like a soup than a patch—plastic soup. While plastic bags and bottles are harmful to the ocean (fish mistake plastic bags for jellyfish and eat them), it’s the tiny fragments of plastic that are especially deleterious because they’re impossible to clean up and because small fish eat them. Then big fish like mahi mahi and tuna eat the small fish. And guess who eats the big fish? We do. Worse yet, plastics are a sponge for toxic chemicals in the ocean, so when you eat a big fish, you’re not only eating plastic, you’re eating plastic marinaded in DTT and PCBs.

Even if you don’t eat fish, the plastic in our homes gets into our bloodstream every day. It’s not enough to not microwave your food in plastic containers. It’s not enough that companies have banned phthalates and BPA (bisphenol A) from baby bottles, baby toys, and Nalgene bottles. Canned foods, soda cans, and beer cans are lined with plastic that contains BPA. Any product with fragrance in the ingredients (like all my hair products) probably has phthalates in it. The little rubber toys your kid sucks on is so full of phthalates that one researcher called it “a phthalate lollipop.” But what’s the big deal about these chemicals? They are endocrine disruptors. This means they fuck with your endocrine system. Results? Smaller penis size in baby boys whose moms have a high count in their bloodstream while pregnant—and the count doesn’t have to be that high. Lower sperm count. Possible miscarriages and infertility in women. Boys who are more feminine and girls who are more masculine (because they are synthetic estrogen). Learning disabilities, ADHD, diabetes, autism. The critical times for kids are during pregnancy, during the first year of life, and during puberty. My three-year-old son prefers playing with puzzles and games to trucks and guns. Is this a result of his being brought up in Berkeley? Of genetics? Or of the amount of plastics in my bloodstream while I was pregnant? I’ll never know. (It was found in a study done on 134 women pregnant with boys that the boys of the women with the highest phthalates in their bloodstream later preferred playing with gender-neutral toys like puzzles over more “boyish” toys like trucks.)

If you want to learn more about the dangers of plastics to both our health and our environment, I highly recommend reading Plastics: A Toxic Love Story and watching the film Bag It. You can’t rent Bag It, but you can buy the DVD or you can look on the website for public viewings in your area. There is also a plethora of information about plastics (recommended books, organizations, etc.) on the Bag It website.

Meanwhile, if you’re wondering what you can do to reduce plastics in your life, start by eliminating single-use plastic products. There’s nothing more wasteful than using something once and then throwing it away. And if you think, “Oh, but I recycle my plastic bottles and plastic bags,” remember two things: It’s MUCH better to reduce (and reuse) than to recycle. Plastic bottles can only be recycled once, while aluminum cans can be recycled infinitely. And you know what happens to the plastic grocery bags we drop off at the grocery story to be recycled? They get shipped to Asia, where women working for sub-par wages sift through them to pick out the cleanest ones to recycle. The rest go in the trash. Of the one trillion+ plastic shopping bags manufactured globally each year, only 1% is recycled. What’s especially shocking is that many countries around the world have banned plastic grocery bags, but the U.S. has not. In fact, only a handful of cities have done so. (San Francisco was the first, and Berkeley is working on it.)

As for plastic bottles, only about 19% got recycled in 2003, down from 53% in 1994. 40 million a day go into the trash. And of those that do get recycled, only a small percentage (5-10%) is recyclable. In addition, recent research has found that PET bottles, what your bottled water and other drinks come in, leach chemicals as dangerous as BPA and phthalates. One researcher even found BPA in PET bottles.

So here’s what you can do: use cloth bags when you to the grocery store. Buy five or six (or more) and store them in your car. If you forget to take them in, tell the checker, “Oh wait, I’ll be right back!” and run out to your car to get them. Seriously, I do this all the time. If you can’t be bothered, ask for paper, but try to remember your cloth bags next time. Eventually, it will become second nature. Not sure where to buy cloth bags? Hate the cheap $1 bags that fall apart or are too flimsy to hold heavy groceries? Buy this Planet Bag set of six or buy some plain ones at Eco Bags. Next, get yourself a bunch of net bags to buy produce in, and stick those right in your canvas bags, so you’ll always have them at the grocery store. You can buy Eco Bags produce bags, or you can do what I did, which is to buy these bags at Bed Bath and Beyond with some of those 20% off coupons and get three for $5-20% (They’re cheaper at BBB). I bought three sets and use them every day. Next, you can get yourself a Klean Kanteen for your water and stop buying bottled water. (Sigg bottles, btw, are now BPA-free, but if you bought one before Aug. 2008, you should get rid of it because it had BPA in the liner.) If you hate your tap water, filter it or, if you live in Santa Barbara where the tap water tastes like doo-doo, think about getting those big tanks delivered. Whatever you do, stop using throwaway plastic bottles. They’re bad for your health and they’re bad for the environment.

I’m not even halfway through reading Plastics, so I’ll have to do a follow-up post at some point, and I have a LONG way to go to eliminate single-use plastics from my life (like yoghurt containers, carry-out containers, tortellini from Trader Joe’s, etc.) but here are a few other things we can all do:

1. Tupperware is better than baggies, but non-plastic food storage containers are even better. Check out sites like Life Without Plastic and buy some nonplastic portable food storage containers. You can also use waxed paper (which is compostable) or aluminum foil to transport sandwiches.

2. To store food in your fridge, buy glass Pyrex containers (They have plastic lids but at least they won’t leach into your food) at a store like Target, glass containers with stainless steel lids at Life Without Plastic, or do what we do: reuse glass peanut butter jars, pickle jars, jam jars, etc. to store your food.

3. Buy glass bottles instead of plastic when you can. We buy glass milk bottles (I know that’s a bit extreme) because you can’t recycle the paper ones. They have plastic spouts and a plastic coating inside. Peanut butter jars are sold in glass jars, and so is olive oil and a variety of other foodstuffs.

4. Stop using plastic cutlery. If you’re having a picnic, you can get biodegradable cutlery online or at Whole Foods. If you need it for personal use—eating at Panda Express for example (yes, I love Panda Express), you can buy these awesome To-Go Ware bamboo sets. I have two and keep them in my car.

Okay, that’s enough from me tonight. I know there are many more things we can do to help both for our bodies and for the environment—eating organic foods, buying local, cutting down on water and energy use. It’s overwhelming, and I totally understand if your reaction to this post is “I don’t have the time/money to worry about the stupid fish out in some gyre in the middle of the Pacific. I’m vegetarian anyway.” But watch Bag It, and soon you’ll be washing and reusing your Zip-Locs like I do. Making changes starts with one small step—purchase some cloth grocery bags and put them in the car. Don’t let the initial investment deter you. Just do it. You’ll be glad you did.

And now you tell me—what do you think about all this stuff? Have you already eliminated plastics from your life, or do you have bags full of plastic bags stashed beneath your kitchen sink? Would you like to see a plastic bag ban in your town? Are you worried about BPA and phthalates, or do you think it’s a good thing that our boys are less aggressive and our girls more macho (I do kind of like that part of it)?