I.
If there’s anything that can be gleaned from a thoughtful survey of the public discourse it’s that the word freedom cannot be defined one way for all people.

II.
A bit less than twenty years ago, the then-boyfriend and I and two friends went to an exhibit of fledgeling virtual reality technology, considered at the time so far out there that the exhibit station was gathering dust until we arrived. The artists had long since gotten bored and wandered away; there was no one to question about possible uses for VR. The guys I was with tried on the helmet and glasses and futzed around with different movements. I chose not to try walking and leaping because I could already walk and leap, but what I really liked were the ideas I had immediately for what could be done with VR tech. Right off the bat: wouldn’t it be fantastic if heterosexuals could switch bodies and learn what it was like to get sexy in – as opposed to against – the bodies of their lovers? Wouldn’t we learn everything worth knowing if we could learn to feel what other people feel?

What if men could feel for themselves what pregnancy and childbirth feel like? What if doctors could feel what patients feel? What if wealthy legislators could feel the anguish and helplessness of children who go to bed hungry? How different would we be if we could see life through other people’s eyes and could learn from their experiences?

As time passed and commercial technology developed, mostly it’s been used for video games in which white alpha males kill brown people. Indifference to suffering is desirable; nothing useful has been learned. Nothing has been contributed to the Common Good.

III.
It’s shitty timing to refer to a big blogger, seeing as how it’s Blogroll Amnesty Day, but Digby posted this video that set me off this morning.

One way to define freedom is to learn who you are and what you stand for. I want you to suspend for a moment your political cynicism and try out a new idea: what would happen if every Sunday talk show, every campaign stop and every speech included someone – maybe you – asking the question, “What does your proposal contribute to the Common Good?” What if you expected someone to ask this question, and what if you expected an answer? What if we all expected an answer? What if consideration the Common Good were what we expected from public discourse?

No one stands up on Sunday mornings and asks the audience why it’s watching Bill Kristol talk about endless war instead of the Common Good, but someone should. The pundits have lost their minds about deficit reduction, which will do nothing for the Common Good, but no one says mentions it. But what if you could? Because you can. Picture yourself standing up at a speech, standing up to say, “You keep talking about cutting domestic spending, but that will detract from the Common Good. What do you have to say for yourself?” Or: “This Pentagon budget fattens the wallets of defense contractors but contributes nothing to the Common Good. You will have to rewrite it.” What a day that would be!

Picture reporters asking questions about the Common Good because it matters and when we forget that, bridges fall down, hospitals fall apart, garbage collection fails, children don’t learn to read, fire departments close, neighborhoods empty and fall to ruin, food banks and soup kitchens close, homeless people sleep in the streets. The politics of selfishness have brought us to the brink of ruin as a country; poverty is what happens when we fail to consider the Common Good. Give this some thought, then: what if you asked politicians, “What does this proposal contribute to the Common Good?”

What if you deserved an answer? Consider this: you do.

I drag around a buttload of stuff on my bike, but this is amazing.

On any given day in Northampton, Massachusetts, you might see something that would raise eyebrows elsewhere: Someone on a bike, pulling a giant trailer heaped with trash. You’ll see this in rain, snow, or heat and humidity; on residential streets and on Main Street; even going uphill in traffic.

Since late 2002, the Pedal People have picked up and hauled more than 341,000 cubic feet of trash, recyclables, and compost, replacing big loud fuel-burning garbage trucks with…bicycles (at prices competitive with the trucks). It’s not a viable model everywhere, and nobody’s getting rich doing this, but it’s the sort of carbon footprint-reducing business we should look at as a model for the places it would work.

You might think a bicycle hauling business wouldn’t be viable everywhere because of weather – that it would only work in extremely mild climates. But Northampton gets snow in the winter and has real summers, and the Pedal People rarely delay pickups due to weather.

If there’s a town small enough for this service, it’s the microdot on the map I live in! But wait – Northampton’s not the only steamy composting hotspot.

The Pedal to Petal process is a closed cycle, from food to compost to soil and back to food again, all without the use of fossil fuel dependent vehicles and machines.

Pedal to Petal members are involved in the creation and maintainance of organic edible landscapes throughout the city of Victoria. The compost created through this project will feed the soil and feed the city. An increase in locally produced food will mean a decrease in the amount of food imported from off-island. This further reduces the amount of fossil fuels being used in the course of providing ourselves with sustainance. Not only that, but small-scale organic agriculture has far less of an impact on the environment than farms that rely on the use of heavy machinery. We turn the compost piles by hand and use a method of cultivation that eliminates the need for roto-tilling. Once again, a vast reduction in fossil fuel use.

This is such an exciting, sensible idea. If I were an enterprising, underemployed bicycle owner with a big yard, I’d go into stinky business for myself. Some composting afficionadas go big and get a truck.

EARTHGIRL COMPOSTING will provide you with a five gallon bucket. We will pick up your full bucket weekly, biweekly or monthly, leave you an empty clean bucket and deliver your waste to Vermont Compost Company and/or Intervale Compost Products.

YOU DECIDE how often and we will do the rest.

When you compost with EARTHGIRL COMPOSTING you are making a difference.

All waste is delivered to Vermont Compost Company and/or Intervale Compost Products.

Vermont Compost Company was founded by organic crop growing professionals to meet the need for high quality composts and compost based living soil mixes for certified organic plant production. Vermont Compost Company recycles over 400 tons of food residuals annually and relies on bio-fuels, non-toxic lubricants, and plant-based oils for all of the equipment on the farm.

Intervale Compost Products supports our community and sustainable agriculture by turning waste into compost and selling that compost to organic farmers, gardeners, and landscapers.

Startling use of capital letters aside, that’s a wild idea come to efficient fruition. Check this out:

We provide participants in the compost program with their own post-consumer, recycled compost bucket, free of charge. Each bucket comes lined with a completely compostable cornstarch bag.

On the appropriate collection night, participants place their buckets on their front porch. We empty the contents of each bucket into our collection truck, replace the bag, and put the bucket back on the participant’s porch, ready to receive another week’s compost.

The collected compost is then taken to a city composting site, managed by the Department of Parks and Horticulture, where it is processed for re-integration into the ecosystem. The following spring, we deliver finished compost from the site to participants in the program, free-of-charge.

Montreal returns compost to participants, which is either great or a great threat. Weren’t expecting buckets of nutrient-rich compost on your doorstep? Surprise! Goo for you! Were you to, say, Google compost services, you would find such services listed all over the place.

I’m not saying you should consider this an investment opportunity, but I am saying that in 2010, there is money to be made in dirt that can clean up your karma.