APRIL 22, 2009
i I
I THE MEREDITH HERALD • Educating Women to Excel | VOL XXVI • ISSV^A^
mmmiE
M Girl Craft
e & Technolog tr
■ OMC K LOL
Ml F Jill
^ *'v-'.
»%ife
Green Tip for
the Week of
April 22
Using the washing
machine and dish
washer only when
they are full saves
water and energy.
During the 2008-09 academic
year, Meredith College’s cam
pus theme is “Sustaining our
Environment: Developing
our Greenprint.” To help the
Meredith community make
daily choices that are ben
eficial to the environment,
Angets for the Environment
have compiled a year’s worth
of tips for greener living.
To view green tips from
previous weeks, visit www.
meredith.edu/campus-theme/
environmental'tips.htm.
ECONOMY
Suzanne Britt
Staff Writer
The word “economy” has lately signaled impending
doom, lost jobs and sudden foreclosures on the dream
homes of average citizens. Economy is the main word
screaming from the side of a box of laundry detergent.
Economy is what goes on at Target. Economy is the glib
pitch of a used-car salesman or the deceitful promise of
a soon-to-be-elected politician.
Ours is the wasteful society, full of want. What we
can’t use or abuse, we dispose of. The word “economy”
has a bad connotation. To be economical is to be stingy,
puritanical, compulsive, dreary, downbeat, and grim.
1 would like to restore the definition of economy to its
original beauty, grace and nobility. Economy is balance
and harmony between humans and the natural world.
Economy is more than cautious moderation. Economy
never starves, stuffs, hoards or acts compulsively. It
chooses what it wants and needs, sharing the rest.
Many people scoff at economy and insist on
viewing it in its narrowest sense. To be economical is to
penny-pitch.Peopleofeconomyleaddrabexistences,tight
and small as the pious pronouncements of
a fundamentalist.
But the practitioners of true economy know better.
They see that being economical is a way'of life, a style,
approach, a quiet philosophy.
My grandmother, who lived to be 92, was a person of
economy. She'used life like a swimmer uses water, of
fering the minimum resistance and using the maximum
buoyancy. Always generous, she was nevertheless sav
ing. Nothing would be wasted; everything was usable.
Spring
2009
Trends
(SEE PAGE 2)
Adversity taught her to endure. Suffering brought her
patience and courage. Hunger sharpened her enjoyment
of food. Anger made for humility- and forgiveness.
I do not exaggerate, and she would not want me to.
People of economy hate a lie. What my grandmother
understood, without putting it into words, was the sound
principle of economy. Her life was a process, not a set
of rigid notions. Every action had its appropriate and
equal reaction. Every chore had its inherent pleasure.
Every conversation had its measured silences.
Grandmother used the cool early morning to weed
her garden, when the dirt was moist and offered the least
resistance. For her, the laundry was an opportunity not
for cleanliness alone but for building muscles as well.
She squeezed each towel or sheet in one long, steady,
effective twist of the arms. And she was strong-armed,
doing what needed doing.
But at the end of the day, when she was tired, she
didn’t dally or deceive herself. Off went the one tele
vision show she allowed herself to watch and up the
steps she went, holding the railing but moving surely,
one foot after the other, and so directly to bed.
Grandmother was no self-flagellating ascetic. The
Krispy Kreme doughnut place was just up the road, and
every couple of weeks she just had to have one. And
she loved to recite the menu of a good rich meal. But in
between she often cut an apple into halves and scooped
out the pulp with her spoon, one spoon for her, one for
the mouths of waiting grandchildren.
See ECONOMY, PAGE 2