I was slow to focus on climate change and the environment.

I always believed climate change was real – you can’t live on a farm and not see it happening – and I did the simple things I was recycling and planting trees.

But I didn’t really get that I had to go much deeper into my life before I could begin to come to terms with it and make any kind of difference.

A nasty and strident ideologue jarred me awake by writing snarky and self-righteous messages about Mother Earth, and I read Pope Francis’s powerful encyclical on the subject.

The earth is our sister, he wrote, and she is bleeding.

As a regular reader of the Kabbalah, I was touched by God’s passion for protecting Mother Earth (Shekinah too) and by his warnings that he would leave us to our own self-destructive devices if we didn’t preserve and protect the wonderful world he had (allegedly) created for us.

If I were a deeply religious person, I might think that was already happening.

I’m also getting older and maybe my perspective is deepening. I embrace change, I don’t hide from it.

This year, I decided I would live this moral obligation more, and not just talk about it. I am a conservative person in many ways.

I am wary of extremes, I stay away from the left and the right, I like to live and walk in the middle.

So I stopped buying plastic bottles and started drinking out of aluminum and recyclable water bottles. I use them over and again myself.

When my 11-year-old car started breaking down, I took advantage of the Pandemic and bought a small hybrid SUS, which I love very much.

Getting 41 miles to the gallon not only saves money, it can help the planet.

Today, an even bigger step towards environmental ethics and responsibility. Contractors came to set up the platform for our new solar panels, which are coming in just under two weeks.

About 80 percent of our electricity will come from these panels, and most of the year, I’ll get no electric bill at all.

If the panels draw more power than we need, as they usually do, they will automatically be shared with my neighbors, whose electric bills will go down.

I like this new way of thinking. I am giving a lot more thought to what I buy, what I eat, what everything I buy is made of, how it is packaged.

I have a long way to go, and I will get there perhaps more slowly and thoughtfully than some would wish me to do.

Maria is totally supportive of this move, she has already gone farther than I have.

Together, we will do a lot more. I’m proud and excited to have this panel, it is right out there in the pasture for everyone to see.

Maybe it will spawn some other solar panels. Thanks for sharing this with me, and for your encouragement.