Hey, It's Olympia

There we were, my nephew Ben and I, enjoying very creatively prepared food and excellent wine in a well-appointed restaurant. Like the other customers, we were dressed casually in jeans and whatnot. Today, it was more striking than usual. The waiter had on a colorful fringed hat to help with the celebration of Lakefest going on outside. Dishes from the special Lakefest menu arrived as if for ambulatory eating -- my blackened wild salmon with mango slaw arrived on a plastic plate, and I noticed a couple nearby receiving sandwiches on paper holders -- connecting us to the spirit of the fair. In reminding me not to dress up, Ben had said, "hey, it's Olympia." And indeed it is, a place where dressing up is just really not on anyone's list of things to do, but also a place where good food is an important part of what's going on.

Continuing my survey of public transportation options, I had declined to rent a car at the Seattle-Tacoma airport. Since I arrived really late, the only option was the airport shuttle, which drove the hour-plus to Olympia and efficiently dropped its six passengers on our respective doorsteps. I'm staying downtown in the middle of everything, so we can walk to many things we want to do, but when we wanted to see a current movie, a car was necessary. We can see old movies by walking. Actually, there is a good bus system, and I'll bet we could have gone to the suburban movie by bus. And since Ben has a car, we chose his favorite sushi place a little out of walking range, over the one (perfectly good, he said) right near the Lakefest and my hotel.

When I leave, I'll take the regular bus to the Seattle train station (walking to the bus station), then go by train to Northwestern Montana. Trains are supposed to be very good in terms of greenhouse gases per rider per mile. But I can't forget that I did arrive on this coast in an airplane.

I did make a contribution to the Nature Conservancy to offset the carbon emissions involved in my airplane ride from the East Coast to here, and I'm planning to do that now with all my flights. More trees can't help but be good, and maybe I'll support alternative energy, too, when I take these heavy CO2 airplane rides. When I looked into what's called "carbon offsets," it wasn't at all clear that every enterprise in the offset business was actually going to do something helpful. One commentator wrote, "let the buyer beware!" So I went with trees from a known source. The plane remains the best way for me to get to see my children, alas!

But truly, using less is what we have to do. We can only go so far with alternative fuels without alternative environmental damage. Already it's clear that wind energy is not so great to look at. And that ethanol creates a moral problem about using farmland that could be devoted to food for hungry people. Nuclear power is just as bad as it was when we thought about it a generation ago. All these are alternatives to walking more, using our bicycles, taking the bus or the train, living closer to work, that sort of thing. So let's walk. And plant trees.