Solar Power

Pagans generally want to weave their value system into how we live our lives and we generally see things as more interconnected than non-Pagans. This combined with the recent presidential election and the state of our economy has caused me to chase worldly, but oh so connected, things..... like Solar Panels

By the end of the month of October 2012 (instead of September as orginally planned due to delays related to Hurricane Isaac) my house was generating its our own Solar Power.  The Federal tax credits for this expire in 2016.  If you own your own home, don't wait.  Do it now.  Yes it does take investment dollars from you. BUT you can get ALL of the dollars that will be reimbursed from the Feds (and your state) can be financed for 0% interest for 12 months.  The company I used Solar Universe does all the hard work. They connect you to the lender, complete all the paperwork; all you have to do is file the forms with your taxes.   With the Federal and State rebates we  had to come up with less than 20% of the cost.  With "netmetering" this will annually ZERO out our power bill.  My carbon footprint goes WAY down and I am living more lightly on the earth, woven into the web of life, even if this weave is using technology and involves plugging into our city grid.

Ok so how do you come up with 20%?  Assuming that you have a job/provable income, find a local bank and refinance your house.  That's what I did.  And along with the refinance we got what was needed to put Solar Panels on the house. 
I know. I know.
Not everyone can do this. The economy sucks and some people are upside down on their mortgages. BUT if you can, it perfectly aligns with pagan value system.

Another thing to think about. Our mortgage was with one of the large, national corporations that provide mortgages to most Americans.  And I figured that it would be easy to re-finance. After all they had watched me pay the bills (even through the chaotic aftermath of Katrina) for years. All they did was waste my time. So in July 2012 I ended up working with a local bank and the refi (at not quite 2% less interest than the mortgage I had) went through in a month.  A month! It took almost that long for the big corporation to tell me what they needed from me. And here is the ultimate irony. These days, even if you do the refi work with a local bank, they are going to "sell your mortgage" (Yep!) to one of the large corporations that provide the bulk of mortgage lending in this country.  Weird.  But true.   Yet at the local bank I spoke to a person, who walked me through the paperwork and made sure the timing (I was leaving town for 2 weeks) worked out.

This is only one of the physical, practical, grounded things that I kept me busy in 2012.
But I'm glad I did it because Solar Power fits my Value System.