Just another fabolous house… ”the winner is”
As we walk in to our 6 month in Berkeley, it is hard not to be amazed by the beautiful architecture that surrounds are neighbourhood. Having my brother over visiting for Christmas and NYE, he was given the impossible task to photograph his favourite house. 50 houses later, no single favourite, and oh do I agree with him. So this goes out as a tribute to Berkeley architecture, with just another Normandy village house..
Today is also time to really consider the trends happening for this NYE. Watching the Oscars gala yesterday, I noted once again (prev. Golden Globe) that indeed fashion at this situation has been a while and still is changing. Artist wear more re-used and different versions of environmentally (more) friendly clothing. Joaquin Phoenix (spoiler alert) received his Male Actor award and discussed behaviours of the fellow community of Hollywood stars, not criticising specifically but talking about change. Let us see, if anything goes longer than talk in the community where people tend to fly to sit at a gala and receive no prices but to be seen etc. Perhaps after all, they are also humans (no surprise) and indeed like me found it way easier to talk about the importance of ecological highlight and work against climate change rather than fully going all-in-efficient as individual (i.e cutting down on your full behaviour and live on below 3 tonne CO2-equivalents per person per year). Is this behaviour to be criticised? Perhaps a little bit.. but I actually do think, we are not by nature individuals and that the talk is important to help us all do the walk. We often do act as the flock, way more than we tend to admit sometimes? At the moment none of the powerful leaders in our business or political world want to lead the flock in this direction. Therefore we need people in any surrounding and environment to do the talk. It will show rings on the water and spread, if not through shame which is completely overrated as tool for change in my opinion, but through people slowly thinking:
”this extra cars I have, do I really need them?”
”this flight I am taking on Thursday, can I use train or bus instead?”
“Maybe I also could skip meat like 4 days a week?”
If we as individuals start questioning parts of our lifestyle and some of our choices, we will make Mother Earth happy, and ourselves happy too. We can cut down on many things before we feel the pain, and as we do so, the flock will adapt and all will be better. It is hard work, and it is needed, might not always feel like what is said is “the right thing” and it might feel like when we talk we are the “complaining people in the room” (only me who feel that the response on Phoenix from the crowd was like “here he comes again that weird guy who always nag about change”) NGOs can relate! But it is time to let environmental awareness and acting with caution be the “elephant in the room” that must always be addressed and brought up. The discussion should be made in all forums. No matter if you are at 40 tonne CO2 or 7 tonne CO2 per year.
With that said, the trend for all these galas this year was that the food was vegan and vegetarian. Somebody decided to at least starting walking the walk, Phoenix and Greta Thunberg also does the talk. Thunberg obviously to an enormous extent, but Phoenix as one of the flock speaking up against. We can make a change, in time. Let us not turn Phoenix into a paragraph or someone who “has caused so much damage already” that he cannot be part of the movement, he is one of the obvious persons we need to get on the change-train. Let us see who else joins?
Normandy Village in Berkeley