Garment Factory Safety

I just unsubscribed from Banana Republic's email list.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that this was hard to do.  A significant percentage of the clothing I wear comes from them, because their tall sizes fit me really well.  But I won't be shopping there again until they commit to improving conditions in the factories that supply them.

Most of the huge US retailers have refused to sign the agreement, though it has been signed by a number of European retailers.  In the US, Walmart is a predictable hold-out, along with JC Penney and Gap, Sears and LL Bean.

The exceptions are Abercrombie and Fitch, of "we don't want your business if you're fat" fame, along with Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger.

So where will I be shopping, in the future?  H&M, based in Sweden, has signed.  Patagonia and REI are committed to social justice and have created their own procedures to make sure factories are safe and don't employ children, but without oversight, you have to trust their internal mechanisms.  American Apparel manufactures all of their clothing in the USA.

Thrift shopping takes you a step away from the conditions in which the clothing was made.  Do people justify shopping for more clothing because they assuage their guilt by giving castoffs to Goodwill? I have no idea, but the "one in, one out" school of clutter control points in that direction.

I'm also always trying to commit to not shopping at all.  Do I really need another new item of clothing?  Probably not for a long time. Shoes, however, are another matter: with all the walking I do in NYC, I do go through them.

Next up: figuring out where to find responsibly manufactured running shoes.

Ten of Tens: Fail

The plan for the year was to try on a new ecologically sound habit during each of ten months, giving myself a pass for November and December because they're so dark and dismal and it's difficult to do anything new.  I'm almost halfway through the ten months and I can't say I'm impressed with myself.

In January, I tried to eat more local food.  That's not such a major challenge in the summer, when we participate in Community-Supported Agriculture (pay up front, get a share of whatever grows) and the farmers' markets are full of fresh produce, and biking to them is a nice outing.  In January, when biking requires ten minutes to put on outerwear and the markets' offerings are thin anyway, it's not so easy.  So maybe that wasn't the best challenge for the month.  Fail.

I did, however, cut way back on take-out, avoiding all the single-use packaging.  In February, I tried again to go more local, again with the most limited of results, but I kept away from take-out food.

I also started doing yoga for a few minutes every day.  That habit has stuck -- I've missed only a handful of days in the past very busy month, and have paid for every one of them.  It's not specifically ecological in nature, but who knows where it might lead me.

In March, I set the bar really, really low and tried to take shorter showers and use less water while washing dishes.  I managed.  I continue to do a little better in that area.  Like I said... low bar.

The plan for April was to get serious about reducing clutter, going through all the closets in the apartment, pruning excess, recycling and donating to thrift shops.  I made one trip to the textile recycling booth at Tompkins Square; I gathered up some toys that The Offspring is finished with, but didn't manage to get to the Salvation Army to drop them off.

May?  I didn't even set an intention.  And I backslid wildly on not eating take-out, stopping at least weekly for Chinese take-out before getting the train home and even ordering in from the office.

I did, though, have the wild idea of starting a Facebook group for medievalists interested in ecocriticism.  It wasn't on the original list, but that list was intended as a way to try out a few environmentally sound habits in the hopes that some of them would stick, rather than as a rigid road-map. 

Eating at home, or packing meals, has been the only one with any traction, and despite the recent fall off the wagon, I'm energized to plan better and recommit to that.

So... I'm officially giving up on May. And for June?  I'm having minor surgery on May 30 so I'll plan to spend the recovery time reading Ecological Economics to educate myself better on both economics and ecology.

Bike To Work Day

Tomorrow is Bike To Work Day, the middle of Bike Month, and I'm going to walk the walk, or roll the roll, and do it -- though it means leaving home at 6:15 a.m. to get to a 9:00 meeting by way of my crazy bike-train-bike commute.

It means I have to set the alarm for 5:30 a.m.

I'm not a morning person.

Setting an alarm for earlier than 6 a.m. makes me feel like it's barely worth going to bed in the first place.

However, by the time I'm out on wheels ahead of rush hour, I know I'll be happy.  And I'll be even happier when I'm on my way home via bike/train/bike and the roads into New York City are clogged with traffic.

How about you? Can you swing a bike ride to work tomorrow?

Bike Question

No time for blogging, so just a quick question about how you keep your pant legs away from your bike chain:

stuff them in your socks?
roll them up?
use a strap or other doodad to corral them?

Small Commitment

A couple of months ago I decided to start doing yoga every day.  I needed some way to address the anxieties surrounding a car accident last year, a persistent asthma episode, and a bunch of other issues having to do with family members -- not my stories.

I've kept it up, even if it's just ten minutes before I collapse into bed at the end of a long day.  (Are there any other kind?)

I started off with the goal of doing a couple of sun salutations every day, and mostly I've kept that up, and I've also found myself drawn to forward bends and pigeon pose.

Neither of these is a difficult post -- no fabulous one-armed balances requiring great strength. But they're difficult for me because I'm not very flexible. I have to accept myself in the poses as I can do them -- just be, just let go.  Let go of the ideal form of the pose, let go of tension, let go of anxiety in the various places it takes hold in my body.

Some things have improved, others haven't.  My shoulder is a little better after a cortisone shot, and I'm remembering to breathe more while driving, instead of turning myself into a string of little knots.  I haven't recovered fully from the last asthma episode, though I'm certainly a lot better.  The unbloggables haven't changed much.

But my level of anxiety is down.  Perhaps I've just gotten used to a whole new level of stress, with that curious adaptability that we humans have.  Perhaps the yoga is doing something good.

There are days I'm tempted to skip it.  But I keep at it, because if I miss one day, it is likely to turn into a string of days.  Who knows what another few weeks or months might bring?

Plastic: Escape It If You Can

I was at the office yesterday when I heard that New York City is now accepting all hard plastic for recycling.  (Unfortunately, they're still not recycling plastic bags, or toothpaste tubes, shower curtains, and other non-rigid plastics.)

I got to thinking a lot about plastic a couple of years ago and started to make a real effort to cut back on buying things made out of plastic or packaged in plastic.  I switched from shampoo and soap in liquid to bar form and from toothpaste to tooth powder (still plastic packaging, but less of it), and cut back on take-out lunches to avoid all the packaging that comes with it.

It's a constant thought process, because plastic is so deeply entrenched in our lives these days.  (Look around you: can you see five things made fully or partly of plastic? Ten? Fifty?  Just on my desk right now: sunglasses, watch with plastic band, laptop computer, iPad in case, two CDs in cases, pen, mechanical pencil, car key, cell phone, inhaler, phone charger, mousepad, photo album with flowers I pressed back in 1982 (ring bound), folder.  Seventeen items.  Oh, and I'm typing this while sitting on an exercise ball.

I wondered yesterday if my family could eat for a week without eating anything packaged in plastic.  When I got home, I went in the kitchen and took a look.  Here's some of what I found:

In the fridge: bread, mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup, tofu, tahini, cream cheese, hummus, celery, carrots.  The mustard is Grey Poupon, and I remember getting that in a jar; has the company switched over?

In the cabinets: a couple of kinds of cereal (plastic bags inside cardboard boxes), taco shells (ditto), various flours and a bag and a half of sugar, two kinds of seaweed, three kinds of oil, peanut butter, several bags of dried beans and lentils, and most of the spices and vitamins.

In short, no.  No, we can't eat for a week without plastic.  Probably not even for a day.


Want to play? Post a list of plastic items on your desk, in your backpack/purse, or in your fridge *right now*.

Just Questions

News media are saying that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is "of Chechen origin," though he was born in Kyrgysztan and lived ten or eleven of his nineteen years in the US. Wait, when Dzhokhar was a child, Kyrgysztan was a Soviet republic.

What makes identity, national or otherwise?

I guess I'm "of Prussian origin" since my mother was born there.  Hmmm, but Prussia is Poland now; it ceased to exist as a nation nearly two decades before I was born.  Also, I'm "an immigrant" as I was born in Germany.  I guess that makes me "German."  Maybe it makes me "of Nazi origin."

But I've lived in the US since I was six months old.  On my paternal grandmother's side, various ancestors came in various centuries from England, so many generations ago it's difficult to count.  (Hint: prior to the original Tea Party.)  Does that implicate me in the genocide of Penobscots and Wampanoags and Abenakis?

What shapes us, what shapes our views?

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Dzhokhar's older brother, was born in Chechyna, but the family moved to Dagestan and then Kyrgysztan when he was a child.  He recently became a devout Muslim and gave up smoking and drinking. It's said he was a fan (if that's the right word) of an Australian-born imam who has encouraged "holy war."

I'm caucasian, and I speak English "without an accent," which is to say I sound like an east-coast American.  But, wait, I converted to Judaism twenty-odd years ago and gave up Christmas and Easter. I'm a "follower" of Arthur Waskow, a Jewish activist.

What influenced those two brothers?

Ruslan Tsarni, their uncle, has been widely quoted today: "I respect this country. I love this country. This country which gives chance to everybody else to be treated as a human being and to just to be human being. To feel yourself human being."

As a nation, the United States certainly has demons in its past and skeletons in its closet.  Native peoples,  slavery, anti-Jewish propaganda of the 1920s, Japanese internment camps, McCarthy.  And I bet you can come up with more.

What, then, of our origins as "Americans"? What do we attend to? What do we sweep under the rug?

I only have questions.  I have no answers.  Maybe I'll go with Lennon: "Imagine...."