"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
Charles Darwin
Photo heading off for the Los Angeles Memorial Day Weekend Getaway.
As this blog suggests, a permanent getaway from Los Angeles is what above photo screams.
(My last home was a few blocks from here in Brentwood.)
Seven months before I boarded Alaska Air Flight #467 from Los Angeles to Victoria, Canada, I was offered two clean air advocacy jobs within 24 hours.
I wasn't looking.
Rather I was chasing clean air, fighting for stricter ozone standards, and renewable energy and hybrid-plugin electric cars when the director of the American Lung Association of California (ALAC) asked me to lunch at an Italian Bistro amidst honking cars and trucks on Wilshire Blvd.
We walked to the bistro breathing exhaust, as he commented with a chuckle that studies say living in Los Angeles is like smoking a pack or two of cigarettes a day.
I quit cigarettes at age 24.
He asked if I'd like to be the Communications Director of the American Lung Association of California--and commute downtown.
No, thank you but I might consider it if I could tele-commute from a clean air location.
No, that's not how we do things.
You could do things differently.
He shook his head, No.
Next day, I sat at a round table at a Health Impacts of Air Pollution Conference in Carson near two oil refineries and the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach where approx 30,000 diesel trucks move goods on our local freeways, and I was asked by a team of three men if I'd consider a lobbyist position with the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD).
SCAQMD and ALAC headquarters are located in toxic hotspots, according to their own experts.
Except for the fact that the job would be a two hour morning commute along a diesel-truck laden freeway--and occasionally a 45 minute commute when I'd visit the mayor (also a toxic hotspot) or a four hour commute when I visit Sacramento--it sounded great.
The SCAQMD job started at 7 a.m., and if I recall correctly, people work until 6 p.m. and then crawl back in traffic.
So when do you work out I wondered aloud?
Three funny expressions looked back at me.
I was serious.
When?
(My body is my temple not a toxic repository box. And yours?)
My telecommuting and video conferencing suggestions fell on deaf ears and old habits.
If I were a lobbyist, I'd push for mandates for people who can get their work done from home or a local community office, to do so.
I'd allocate more funds to transportation infrustracture like monorails, subways, and trains, and mandate plug-in electric cars and trucks.
As an activist, I push for the same in hearings and writing but as a human being I'm experimenting with new places and ways to live because I don't want to spend my whole life fighting a system that half the time doesn't want to do what's necessary to grow and change.
I rather change on my own.
So today I chase clean air, and blog and work from Vancouver Island.
Change is good.
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