imagine1community

Parsing Disability

2012-01-27T12:23:00.000-05:00

Monday, I ran 2.5 miles. Wednesday, I biked nine, and lugged my bike up and down stairs in train stations. Thursday, I failed the Stairs Test coming out of a subway station. (The Mate: "Hurry up, we're going to miss the light." He looked back, and realized I was having trouble getting up the stairs That's how suddenly it came on.)

The ADA doesn't list medical conditions. It defines disability, thus:

An individual with a disability is defined by the ADA as a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a person who has a history or record of such an impairment, or a person who is perceived by others as having such an impairment.

What is a cane, a walker, a wheelchair? Sign? symbol? marker? indicator? signifier?

I got on a bus yesterday, panting as I struggled up the three steps in. It was full. Aside from the fact that I was clinging to a pole and gasping for breath, I apparently appeared able-bodied (whatever the hell that might mean) to the people sitting at the front of the bus.

Above their seats, signs glued to the windows: "Please give this seat to an elderly or disabled person." One of the letters, I can't remember which one, is replaced by a heart, whose cuteness at that moment was too precious.

The sitters all looked pretty able-bodied to me, but who knows?

Nobody stood.

Is walking down the street a major life activity? Climbing a set of stairs? I think so. I'm impaired in my ability to do these things, today. Doc is on deck for this afternoon, which means two more bus trips, each punctuated by a change of buses, so four buses in all.

On the outbound leg of the trip (retrieving The Offspring from Hebrew school), the bus had been empty, and I had a seat. I wondered: if someone came in with a walker, a cane, some other physical object denoting impairment, would I be obliged to give up my seat? I moved farther back in the bus to avoid the problem.

Impairment is impairment, whether temporary or permanent, whether caused by illness or injury. I've had to invoke the ADA in order to obtain accommodations in my working conditions, in the past.

I feel sort of fraudulent about it: two days ago, I was riding a bike; today I'm flattened. But two days ago I knew today might come. And today, I don't know how long this will last, how weakened I will be before I can ride a bike again.

Wrestling. Despair comes, but I can feint, or beat it away with my fists. The wrenching of sense of self that comes when I think of myself as disabled... more difficult I started the first draft of this post with a reference to "crip days." I tried to fling out the clipped term for humor, defiance, denial. Didn't work.

Stereotyping, Anyone?

2012-01-26T12:08:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, am New York ran a photo of some buff actor with a little blurb saying he had severe asthma as a kid, and now look at him.

(I pitched the issue in the recycling bin in exasperation, and I can't remember what actor it was or for what movie he's been photographed in something resembling a loin cloth.)

What DO we think asthmatics look like? Emaciated and sickly? Overweight and wheezy?

Try sprinter Jackie Joyner-Kersee, swimmer Mark Spitz, marathon runner Paula Radcliffe, football star Jerome Bettis, crazy basketballer Dennis Rodman, English-Channel-swimmer Allison Streeter, Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich.

And maybe the person in front of you on the jogging path or the one next to you at the gym. Open your mind.

Car as Cocoon

2012-01-24T15:43:00.000-05:00

Today, I drove to campus for the first time since the beginning of the year. After taking the train regularly since the start of last semester, it felt like a bit of a novelty to be able to stay dry, control the temperature, control the soundtrack (no hockey fans or NJ Transit announcements), control the air quality (nobody pretending they didn't notice the no smoking signs).

I can understand why so many people prefer the comfort of their own little cocoon rather than having to face the indignities of public transit.

At the same time, I will be glad tomorrow to be back on my bike and, yes, back on the train, thumbing my nose at the elements, enjoying my solitary ride along the river at the ends of the day.

And the contact I do have with humans -- pedestrians or other cyclists along my route, train conductors, other random people along the way -- is not mediated by a pane of glass or two.

My Bike Doesn't Take Space Away From Your Car

2012-01-23T19:52:00.000-05:00

Every time I take a trip on my bike, I'm taking my car off the streets and/or my butt off of a seat in a bus or a subway. I'm not widening the potholes in the city streets, or cutting you off at an impromptu merge in Houston Street construction, or fouling the air you breathe with my car's emissions.

Non-bikers regularly tell me that "they" break the rules of the road. It's true: we run red lights and stop signs. In some cities, law allows cyclists to treat stop signs and red lights as yield signs, because of the mechanics of riding a bike. (It's harder to get going than to keep going.) It's also true: some cyclists ride the wrong way on one-way streets. They're more of a menace to themselves and to bikers going with traffic than they are to motor vehicle drivers.

Hey, guess what? Cars also run red lights and stop signs. A few months ago, I yanked Zeke out of the path of a van careening through the intersection of 1st Avenue and 34th Street against the light. He never saw the van: "Ow, you hurt my arm. What did you do that for?" The what-ifs still give me heebie-jeebies.

And take pedestrians. If I had a nickel for every time a pedestrian stepped right in front of me while I was making my way legally through an intersection with the light, I could retire right now. I'll take a dime for the ones who lead with the stroller, and half a dollar for the ones so hypnotized by their texting machines that they never noticed I laid rubber squealing to a stop to avoid crashing into them.

Most bike lanes are carved out of streets without reducing the number of lanes allocated to motor vehicles. On the few New York streets where a bike lane replaces a traffic lane, it also reduces danger to pedestrians, and the number of bikers that aren't driving a car or taking a ride in a cab probably reduces the traffic enough to make up the difference. Because one car takes up as much space as six to eight bikes.

Maybe four bikes, if it's a Smart Car.


http://smartcarvs.com/archives/54

Jogging in Freezing Rain

2012-01-21T19:47:00.000-05:00

I went for a run this afternoon. The snow had given way to stinging freezing rain blowing into my face. The East River, a color somewhere between lead and Joyce's snot green sea.

I used to go outdoors and do stuff year round. Through the winter, I'd be out biking and hiking and jogging. But for the last several years, winter exercise has all but disappeared what with one lung infection after another for two or three or six months. Spring and summer, attempting to claw my way back to fitness before the next bout of enforced inactivity.

I have no idea why I'm healthy this winter. I'm fairly shocked by it. Occasionally I'm annoyed that circumstances mean I can't take good health for granted, but mostly I'm grateful to be aware of what a gift this is. And I'm out getting exercise -- because I can. Today, though, trying to keep my eyes from being pelted with little bits of ice, I had a new thought.

Maybe this is nuts.

East River in the Morning

2012-01-19T14:08:00.000-05:00

Back in the days when I used to ride recreationally, 19 degrees meant DON'T GO BIKING. DO SOMETHING ELSE. Go hiking, maybe. Or stay inside and read a book.

Now that I'm commuting the work by bike and by train, 19 degrees means DRESS WARMER.

That said, biking used to mean getting up on a Sunday morning, riding 20 or 30 miles, grabbing a bite at a deli, and then riding back home. Going out for several hours poses different challenges in terms of staying warm than a fifteen-minute ride to the train station.

Still, it was cold. But also, it was nice to be out, watching the sky get brighter as I rode south beside the East River.

SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-17T21:45:00.000-05:00

There's information on these two bills, on which the Senate is supposed to vote next week, on Wikipedia. But if you're reading this on Jan. 18, you won't be able to follow that link, because Wikipedia is participating in an on-line strike against the bills. You probably won't be able to follow that link, either. Google has announced it will support the strike with information on their home page, so if you want to know more, you could try going over there.

Some Facebook and Twitter users are avoiding those social networking sites tomorrow in solidarity with the internet strike. I'll be joining them. See ya the day after tomorrow.

East River at Night

2012-01-16T09:54:00.000-05:00

It's not exactly quiet. There's the thump of traffic on the FDR overhead, the clatter and rattle of trains on the East River bridges, and the occasional thwack of a helicopter taking off.

But ending my day biking next to the East River in the dark is, somehow, incredibly peaceful. I'm alone, or close to it -- a state seldom possible in New York City.

I check the temperature on the Watchtower building and shiver a little; I glance up at the stream of light flickering its way across the Manhattan Bridge, I pedal along mesmerized by the constantly shifting colors reflecting off the water in the river.

Spring will come. Days will lengthen, temperatures will rise, the joggers and the fishermen, the lovers and the loiterers will return. I will appreciate not having to bundle up against the cold, not arriving home with chilled ears and fingers and toes. But I will miss that solitude. Right now, I find I am enjoying the winter.

Every Little Bit Counts... Right?

2012-01-15T09:53:00.000-05:00

I reached the tipping point. I've been driving to work so little I realized I should change my car insurance. So I spoke to a very nice fellow at the agency to let him know that I'm no longer commuting 55 miles each way in my car, and that my anticipated annual mileage will drop correspondingly.

This will, it turns out, save me $4.68. Every six months.

I think you can buy a Starbucks coffee confection for that.

Ah, well. I added up the costs of commuting by car versus by train last year. The train ride wins out hands down, even when you factor in the time spent riding the rails.

Chocolate and Child Labor ... Still

2012-01-10T18:30:00.000-05:00

I've barely recovered from the onslaught of post-Christmas sale offers that hit my in-box, and it seems people are already thinking about the next frenzy of consumption: Valentine's Day.

Did you know that Hershey is lagging behind the other major chocolate manufacturers in its labor practices? Most of the world's chocolate comes from West Africa, and Hershey has refused to take decisive action to end child labor, forced labor, and trafficking in humans.

Buy chocolate with a Fair Trade label:

That way, you know it wasn't harvested by little kids, and in fact you know that the farmer got a fair price for the raw materials. Bonus: look for a brand that's also organic, and take a minute to write to Hershey headquarters and tell them to get a conscience.

Thanks!

Stuff Control

2012-01-05T11:00:00.001-05:00

One of the things that keeps coming up on my radar lately: recommendations that we simplify our lives by divesting ourselves of stuff. Postconsumers and Leo Babauta tell you how to decide what to toss. A Guy Named Dave has thrown down the gauntlet with his 100 Thing Challenge.

Getting rid of stuff is important. More important, I think, is not acquiring stuff in the first place.

Let's say, for instance, I decide to purge clothing: give a bunch of stuff to charity, keep just enough clothing to get through half a week or so. In a year or two, the clothes I have left will be worn to shreds, and I'll need to replace them with new stuff.

I think it makes somewhat more sense to stick with the clothing I already own, and make the commitment not to buy anything new until what I have has become unusable. Better yet, make a commitment to reduce by, for instance, buying a new item only when two items can't be used any more.

The purgers say you should get rid of stuff if you haven't used it in six months, or maybe a year. Also important, I think, is to avoid buying stuff (on impulse?) that won't get used regularly.

On the other hand, I own things (camping and hiking equipment, mostly) that I used to use regularly, but when The Offspring was a wee thing, that stuff saw the light of day very infrequently. By the six-month or even the twelve-month rule, a lot of those things would have gotten tossed out -- and now, if I could afford replacements, I'd be buying new camping gear.

In fact, I'm glad I held on to it all.

Same goes for kitchen utensils, bath towels, and all other stuff around the house. I don't see the point of purging perfectly good stuff, if there's a reasonably good chance you're going to be able to use it in the future, just for the sake of owning less stuff.

(I do realize there's another side of the argument: the problem with owning so much stuff that you end up moving to a bigger apartment or house just to store it all. That's for another day.)

2012

2012-01-04T13:57:00.001-05:00

Goal 1: Cut back on driving. In Fall of 2010, my goal was to take public transit to work once a week, and I made it through the whole semester. In spring, bronchitis and then pneumonia meant I couldn't handle the bike rides at each end, and I went back to driving. In Fall of 2011, I took the train at least twice each week, and at one point went a whole month without driving my car to work.

This semester, I'm going to aim for fewer than five car trips. For the whole term. Plus the two weeks before the semester starts, and the week of Commencement. Eighteen weeks in all. I'm glad it's supposed to warm up a little tomorrow, because riding when it's below freezing can get a little ugly.

Goal 2: Pack more lunches. Health benefit, from avoiding cheap Chinese food or student food court fries; environmental benefit, from avoiding all that plastic packaging.

Do you do resolutions?

I'm Not Sick

2012-01-03T21:43:00.000-05:00

I went for a run this afternoon. Yes, that's right. It's January, and I went out for a run. I don't know how many years it's been since I haven't been laid low for much of the winter by pneubronchashthmitismonia.

And I don't know why it's different this year. Maybe it's because of the vitamin D my new doc put me on; maybe it's because The Offspring hasn't been sick much, and we had only a few nights last fall interrupted by asthma attacks. Maybe summer's Lyme Disease somehow knocked the socks off my immune system.

The wheeled briefcase I use on "crip days" is gathering dust at the back of the closet. I haven't been to the doctor in months. Regular exercise, good food, lots of sleep -- I'm gathering strength and energy. And I'm trying to avoid wondering when luck will run out, Fortuna spin her wheel, thrust me back down to earth.

I'm trying to be grateful for being in good health right now. I can see this as a gift of awareness, the ability to savor good health rather than taking it for granted until suddenly it's gone. Rather than the fear of what might be around the corner, I'm trying to focus on that gift -- today.

Just One Appliance?

2012-01-01T19:03:00.000-05:00

I'm hearing on Twitter from a lot of entities to which I do not subscribe. Now that the semester and the holidays are over I'm going to have to figure out why this is so and what to do about it. Meanwhile, Sears wants to know: "What's the one appliance you couldn't live without?"

I suspect what they really want is to encourage people to buy another appliance. But I like the idea of living with just one appliance. Maybe none.

On the other hand, I have eleven appliances in my house, and I'm not in a hurry to get rid of any of them. The most recent acquisition is a dishwasher. What a relief. If I had to give up all but one, I'd have to say that's the one I'd hang on to. (Is it cheating that I'm assuming I'd get to hang on to the washers and dryers in the basement of my apartment building?)

The dishwasher is the only appliance we use daily. Every week, often multiple times: toaster, rice cooker, crock pot, blender, coffee grinder, spice grinder. Maybe once a month: mixer, cuisinart. Less than once a month: waffle maker, 12-cup percolator. (No, in fact I don't own a hair dryer.)

It's a long list, especially if you've recently read a book like Little House in the Big Woods.

In my defense? Most of these are once-in-a-decade purchases, if not less frequent. The percolator and the cuisinart are hand-me-downs; the crock pot came out of the trash (with a note on it that said, "It works"). The mixer was a wedding present; I bought The Mate the waffle iron before The Offspring came along, so it's been around for quite a while. The blender jar broke a few months ago, and a couple of weeks ago I finally replaced it -- with one made of stainless steel, that should last longer than the motor in the blender.

It's an interesting idea. If you had to live with just one appliance, what would it be?

Texting Here and Texting There...

2011-12-21T19:02:00.000-05:00

...texting almost everywhere.

At the intersection: the crossing guard, after the kids have all gone by (and only after, I hope)
In the coffee shop: people at the same table texting other people instead of talking to each other
At the beach: the dog standing ankle-deep in water watching the guy texting, waiting for him to play
At the wheel of the car: driver swerving into one lane or the other, or drifting forward at the red light
At the wheel of the stroller: mom or dad pushing with one hand, or in suspended textimation, not having noticed the light has changed.
In the synagogue we didn't end up joining: teenagers everywhere
In the classroom, particularly in the first few weeks of a term: students, until they get the idea that I really mean "no texting"

Greenest Christmas Tree

2011-12-06T12:18:00.007-05:00

Okay, I give; this is an easy one for me since I don't celebrate Christmas. We have two menorahs; one comes from The Mate's family and the other was a gift to The Offspring several years ago.

A few years back I bought a package of window-cling Hannukah decorations because The Offspring was glum about the lack of Hannukah glitz to be seen in a city full of Christmas decorations. Yeah, they're plastic -- but we're not eating out of them, and we've been reusing them now for at least three or four years.

Recyclebank wants you to know about the pros and cons of live, cut, and artificial trees. They make a couple of out-of-the box suggestions; those are what I'm intrigued by. Decorating a tree that lives out in your yard is a possibility if you have a yard with a tree in it.

Decorating a house plant intrigues me the most. It would need to be a fairly hardy plant in order to tolerate stuff hanging off it; I think attempting to decorate any of the plants clinging to life in my own apartment would be the end. But if your thumbs are greener than mine, would you consider making miniature ornaments and carefully decorating, say, a ficus or a cactus?

What about decorating a hat rack, or putting some branches in a vase and hanging decorations off them? Or get the Charlie Brown Christmas Book and Tree kit, and begin an annual holiday tradition of decorating that tiny tree:

Am I clueless? Let me know what you think.

The Offspring's Pick

2011-12-05T10:13:00.000-05:00

I was trying to figure out how to divert to good works some of the money usually spent on holiday gifts to The Offspring, and (I'm slow) eventually it occurred to me to talk to him about it.

First he wanted to know if he was still going to get some presents. Yes. Then he wanted to know what charities I had in mind, and I told him about Toys for Tots and the Heifer Project.

"The ASPCA," he said.

Okay then. That's where that's going.

I'm now thinking that the same conversations with other usual gift recipients might be the way to go, rather than trying to choose on their behalf.

---

Also: check out this good article from Treehugger on connections between household budget and sustainable living. The most important point, I think, is that actions on an individual level (switching to CFLs, forgoing the cheeseburger, even buying an electric car) are not going to be enough.

We need to work toward systemic change, toward changing the ways that everything from local governments to international businesses work.

Holiday Shopping

2011-12-04T11:35:00.000-05:00

Jenny The Bloggess and Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times have some suggestions for places to make donations instead of giving gifts.

Jenny writes that she buys a bunch of toys every year and takes a picture. The toys go to Toys for Tots and the picture goes to her parents. I love that idea.

My own parents have been making donations for several years now to a school in Nicaragua and to the Heifer Project in the names of various family members.

Ecology And Time

2011-11-30T23:02:00.000-05:00

It's that time in the semester when I have no idea how all the work is going to get done. I have a half-day meeting to organize for next week, classes to teach, papers to grade, an article to revise for publication, exams to write and eventually to grade.

I'm going to be seeing a lot of the very wee hours between now and December 27, when final grades are due (at 6 a.m. -- are you kidding me?!?), and there's a good chance I'll end up pulling at least one all-nighter. And let me tell you, it takes a lot longer to recover from staying up all night working when you're pushing fifty than when you're barely out of your teens.

Unfortunately, the time crunch means my environmental commitments slip.

Yesterday, breakfast home fries came in a styrofoam container; the coffee to go with it was definitely not fair trade. My lunch? beans and rice on a paper plate, but salad in a plastic bowl; both got thrown away as soon as I was finished eating.

In the afternoon, I was flagging after getting only four hours of sleep. I bought a Hershey bar at the student commissary for some extra energy, despite the fact that Hershey refuses to stop using child labor to pick cocoa beans.

When I got home last night, I made a commitment to try harder. This morning, I fixed myself coffee and breakfast. Still ate both lunch and dinner out of plastic take-out containers, but since it was a 12-hour work day, I'll cut myself a break for now, and try again to do better tomorrow.

I'm also going to do some better planning and shopping this weekend to give myself better options for packing meals to take to work.

Anyone have any good ideas for me?

Can You Avoid Holiday Shopping?

2011-11-28T19:12:00.005-05:00

Patagonia's message on Cyber Monday: "Don't buy this jacket."

The email message I got earlier today enumerated the liters of water and pounds of carbon dioxide produced in the production of the jacket -- even though it's made out of 60 percent recycled material. Only when you really need a jacket, the message said, should you buy one.

So what about all those people you exchange holiday gifts with? Herewith, some ideas:

Socks. Everyone needs socks, we all wear them out. Buy your loved ones a couple of pairs of really nice socks.
Food. Ditto; we all eat. Fancy mustard? Stinky cheese? Smoked fish? A basket full of stuff beyond the usual budget that will get eaten and won't clutter closets or go to the landfill unused can make an ecologically sound gift.
Soap, bath salts, oils and emollients. You know what your potential recipients will actually use; not much ecological sense in buying stuff that will sit around unused for a couple of years and then go to the landfill.
A gift to charity. Preferably one both you and the recipient think is a worthwhile cause.
Something home made. Jam, chocolate confections, miniature carrot cakes or banana breads if you're a cook; a scarf or hat if you can crochet or knit; a framed photo or piece of art.

Or reduce gift-giving with a family round-robin, or agree to give up the gift-giving altogether, and go volunteer in a soup kitchen or other charity in your community.

Other ideas for home-made gifts? Other ideas for reducing gift-giving? What do you do with kids? Let me know.

Oh, Right: Cain's Supporters Don't Like Women

2011-11-13T15:14:00.000-05:00

I keep looking slack-jawed at the poll numbers for Herman Cain, because it appears he's gaining support in the wake of allegations of sexual assault, followed by jokes about Anita Hill and calling Pelosi "Princess Nancy."

I finally realized: I shouldn't be surprised. Cain's support is increasing not in spite of his demonstrated antipathy toward women, but because of it.

Those who would vote for Cain are the same people who write and vote for legislation that would deny a hospital the ability to save the life of a dying woman, that would limit women's access to birth control, that would allow health insurers to pay for Viagra but not for contraception, that deny a woman access to abortion even in cases of rape or incest.

These people have been assaulting women legislatively. It should be no surprise that they would support the presidential candidacy of a man who has so thoroughly demonstrated his disrespect for women.

Getting Away With It

2011-11-08T21:45:00.000-05:00

If I said I was sexually assaulted last week, would Herman Cain call me a liar?

If I said I was sexually harassed 25 years ago, would he say it was because I was living in sin with The Mate? Financially unstable, racking up debt while finishing graduate school? Would any of that have anything on earth to do with it?

If I said I was sexually assaulted 30 years ago, would he say I was making it up? Trying to get attention? Making a big deal out of some little thing?

---

This situation is making me more and more furious. It's hard for me to type those words up there, hard for me to talk about the assaults, the words, the threats behind them. It makes me feel sick to remember.

It makes me feel sick to see the attacks on the women who have come forward to say Cain assaulted them. It makes me feel sick to see Gloria Allred, a courageous and smart attorney, attacked for helping one of the women Cain assaulted.

All week, I've been silently cheering on the Shayne Dejesus, who kicked and slapped the guy who groped her, and then took his picture. He's been arrested. I've been wishing I had the presence of mind to snap a photo of the guy who grabbed me ... because he could ... and got away with it.

---

Police? Sure, I talked to police. Didn't see the guy's face; wouldn't have been able to identify him beyond white, middle-aged and balding. Not a damn thing they could do.

Some of My Favorite New York Place Names

2011-11-02T22:27:00.000-04:00

Sheepshead Bay
Utopia Parkway
Hell's Kitchen
Neptune Avenue
Dead Horse Bay
Spuyten Duyvil

Also: Did you know that the Belt Parkway, also known as the Shore Parkway, is also also known as Leif Ericson Drive?

I'd Like To Be Blogging

2011-10-23T18:43:00.000-04:00

... and I have many things to tell you about. But the paying job calls, and calls again.

Instead, A Piece of Pie

2011-10-17T13:30:00.000-04:00

I missed International Blog Action Day. It was yesterday. I've been swamped with work and haven't had time to blog. I chose the topic of food, and was planning a serious post about food production as big business.

Instead, I give you a piece of pie. Pumpkin pie, to be specific; pumpkin pie I made last night and ate a slice of for lunch today. When chatting with other parents in the neighborhood recently, I've been struck by the fact that several have apologized for their pie. "Well, I made the filling, but I used a crust."

My grandmother taught me how to make a pie crust, probably 40 years ago. Whenever I'm cutting margarine into flour, or adding ice water a teaspoon at a time, I remember spending time with my grandma when I was a kid. Summer air, coastal Maine, rhubarb from the garden, the company of a gentle soul.

Plus, I like the fact that making a pie crust takes a few ingredients and turns them quickly into something real.

(Most of my work deals with words. My words, students' words, scholars words. Pixels on screens, easily imagined as ephemera, non-real, non-concrete, not significant. But that's a subject for another day.)

Maybe it's important that I was around seven years old when my grandma taught me to make a pie. Because making a pie crust isn't difficult. But it seems that by selling pie crusts in the supermarket, food manufacturers have slipped into the minds of the adults of America the idea that Making Pie Crust Is Hard.

And so people buy pie crusts instead of making their own. Which means Big Ag makes more money selling a prepared product instead of four everyday ingredients (flour, butter, salt, sugar). And with that prepared product: more packaging, more processing, more chemicals, more preservatives.

As a representative sample, Pillsbury's pie crust has partially hydrogenated lard, whey, sodium metabisulfite, BHA, BHT and two kinds of food coloring in addition to flour, salt, sugar, and baking soda. It comes in a disposable tin foil pie pan wrapped in plastic.

There's a lot we can make from actual ingredients that takes, if anything, only a few minutes longer than using a prepared product (though it may take preparation time in advance). Idea to leave you with for today: think about the prepared foods you buy, and see if there's one item you can, instead, make from scratch. Any ideas?

Commuting Costs, Part II

2011-10-05T12:31:00.000-04:00

I live in New York City; I work in suburban New Jersey. The round trip by car is 110 miles. There are many people who think I'm nuts, and people regularly tell me I should move, but I have reasons that seem reasonable to me.

Still: it costs. The costs are mitigated by the schedule, which allows me to work at home a lot: I'm on campus three or four days a week during the semester, once a week most of the rest of the time.

I wrote last week about the economic costs. I also pay in time.

A round trip in the car takes around 3 1/2 hours; a round trip on the train, five. Assuming I drive half the time and take the train half the time and average three and a half days a week on campus, I spend almost 15 hours a week in transit.

It's not all dead time. In the train, I get around 3 1/2 hours to work (or doze or just stare blindly out the windows), plus a cumulative hour of exercise at the ends of the trip. In the car, I learn Greek from CDs or catch up on the phone with friends and family (yes, of course: hands free). But it's not free time, either.

It makes the days long. Yesterday, I left home at 7 a.m., got home at 4:30. That's a short day; this morning I left at 8, and I'll get home around 8:30 tonight.

(That's assuming the trains run on time. Don't ask me about last week. Or the week before that.)

Next week I'll tell you about the psychic costs of commuting. Or about my apparently reasonable reasons.

October Unprocessed

2011-10-04T10:00:00.001-04:00

I've signed on to the pledge at Andrew Wilder's blog, Eating Rules, to avoid processed foods for the month of October.*

Andrew has some thoughts on how to define "processed" and "unprocessed." Basically the test is this: could you make the food in your kitchen (even if you don't)? Then it's okay.

Sugar, corn syrup, hard liquor: No. Coffee, chocolate, beer: Yes. Oils and salt are on the border, and nut butters and bread require a look at the label.

I already eat a diet that's pretty close to the ground, and most of what I eat would be reasonably recognizable to my great-grandmothers, or at least somebody's great-grandmother. But when I found out about October Unprocessed at the very end of the month last year, it got me thinking.

I don't eat fake meat much, but I use fake dairy products all the time -- soy milk, soy cheese, soy margarine, soy yogurt. I could make soy milk and soy yogurt at home. but cheese and margarine? No way.

I've already given up margarine, and discovered I don't miss it between the toast and the (home-made!) jam. Andrew has me thinking about giving up the soy cheese. I could do it in cooking by using more herbs and spices instead of cheese, and on sandwiches by substituting nut butter or hummus.

I could make tofu at home, but whole beans are probably healthier, and I've been eating them more often, since last October. Another advantage is I've been using a variety of different beans and legumes, rather than eating tofu several times a week.

I've been thinking for some time about getting a soy milk maker for home use, and then using home-made soy milk to make my own yogurt. Besides the reduced cost, there's a major advantage there in reduced packaging.

---

* I'm not forcing my family to join me, in case anyone is worried about The Offspring having to give up his soy milk or his tofu pups. (Soy milk because he's allergic to dairy; tofu pups because we're vegetarian.)

Some Good Stuff My Institution Is Up To

2011-10-03T12:14:00.000-04:00

My employer, Monmouth University, has been doing some good work in environmental terms.

The University's Community Garden has donated more than 1000 pounds of fresh produce to social services agencies in the community. Read more in the Asbury Park Press or on Monmouth's web site.

They've already installed a bunch of solar panels and are planning to install more; and they've developed a new interdisciplinary minor in Global Sustainability.

They're letting me teach a 200-level course on environment and literature, and I'm in the process of writing a syllabus for an interdisciplinary 400-level course on environment and literature that also brings in history and archaeology.

All this is great stuff, but I also have a list of things I'd love to see the University taken even more initiative on....

I wish the Student Center would stop selling food in plastic and styrofoam plates and containers. I've talked to the folks in charge about selling a reusable food container analogous to a reusable coffee cup, or at least switching to paper. So far, no uptake, but I'll keep trying.

There are a handful of bike racks on campus, but the surrounding community isn't very bike friendly, or for that matter pedestrian friendly; I'd like to see the university work with the town on increasing public transit transit, creating bike lanes, and making sure sidewalks are kept clean and in good repair.

And smoking isn't allowed indoors anywhere, but outdoors it's not really restricted. Limitations on smoking within 25 feet of doors aren't well enforced, and in effect push smokers to well-traveled pathways outside buildings.

All in all, though, I'm proud to be part of an institution that's done so much already in encouraging sustainability and environmental stewardship.

Commuting Costs

2011-09-29T17:22:00.001-04:00

Round trip by train from the World Trade Center PATH station through Newark to Long Branch: $26.

PATH train: $4.00
NJ Transit: $22.00

Some recent expenditures for my bike:

new headlight: $20
new reflective vest: $4.99 at IKEA
spare inner tube: $7
tire patch kit: $1.99

Round trip in the car: $29.07

Tolls: $18.60
3 gallons gas: $10.47

Or, round trip in the car, 110 miles at 55.5 cents per mile: $61.05

Recent car expenditures:

Inspection: $37.00
Registration: $60
Hubcaps: $41.00

There are also psychic costs. More on those another day.

2011-09-26T10:02:00.000-04:00

Mark Bittman wrote an interesting piece about the price of junk food in the Times this weekend. He went to the McDonald's near his office and found:

a typical order for a family of four — for example, two Big Macs, a cheeseburger, six chicken McNuggets, two medium and two small fries, and two medium and two small sodas — costs, at the McDonald’s a hundred steps from where I write, about $28.

He further writes, and I don't doubt he's correct:

You can serve a roasted chicken with vegetables along with a simple salad and milk for about $14, and feed four or even six people. If that’s too much money, substitute a meal of rice and canned beans with bacon, green peppers and onions; it’s easily enough for four people and costs about $9.

He acknowledges that if you don't have access to a supermarket, this becomes more difficult:

There are, of course, the so-called food deserts, places where it’s hard to find food: the Department of Agriculture says that more than two million Americans in low-income rural areas live 10 miles or more from a supermarket, and more than five million households without access to cars live more than a half mile from a supermarket.

When we lived in Washington Heights, we lived four-tenths of a mile from a supermarket, in a fifth-floor walk-up. I'm in good shape. I've run a marathon, I've done triathlons, I've done a lot of backpacking. While I didn't maintain that level of conditioning after my son was born, I did continue hiking regularly, walking a lot, biking, and jogging.

But going to the supermarket to do a week's worth of shopping was impossible. I can carry two bags of groceries reasonably comfortably nearly half a mile and up four flights of stairs.

That's enough food for a couple days, maybe three. So somebody in the household has to go shopping two or three times a week.

Now add a toddler. Does the toddler walk? Too far. Does the toddler ride in a backpack? Probably; add two bags of groceries and it becomes quite a strain. Does the toddler ride in a stroller? Sounds like a great idea: walk efficiently to the store, load up the stroller, roll it all home.... and how do I get everything up the stairs?

And the quality of the produce at that supermarket was terrible, by the way. We occasionally paid the premium to shop from FreshDirect, we joined Urban Organic and had a box of good fresh produce delivered once a week, we shopped in other neighborhoods whenever we had the chance.

But still we ordered in or ate out regularly.

Before that apartment, we lived in a ground-floor apartment around the corner from a supermarket. Shopping regularly and carrying home enough for a few days was feasible, and we ate our meals at home. Now we live in an elevator building around the corner from a supermarket. We shop, we eat in.

How many families living in the lowest income quartile live in apartment buildings without elevators? How many of those buildings are even a quarter of a mile away from a decent supermarket?

Mr. Bittman needs to try carrying enough groceries for a week even a quarter of a mile and up several flights of stairs and then revisit his analysis.

Some Things You Can't Do At The Mall

2011-09-23T10:08:00.000-04:00

Get shoes repaired.
Get a watch repaired.
Buy an organic apple.
Buy any kind of apple.
Buy any kind of fresh vegetables, whole-grain products, or pretty much anything healthy to eat.
Look at the view.
Unless by "view" you mean the window display at Victoria's Secret.
Sit under a tree and read a book.
Breathe fresh air.

Bike of the Week

2011-09-22T10:00:00.000-04:00

Parked in the East 70s, caught my eye with the color combination and the painted tires.

Liking The Mall?!?

2011-09-21T20:20:00.000-04:00

I drove to work instead of taking the train today because... well, because I'm tired. The beginning of the semester is already kicking my butt, and I couldn't wrap my mind around biking, and getting wet, and biking in the dark, and schlepping up and down stairs, and sitting for hours in a train, with no control over the temperature.

(I think I'm fighting a cold.)

And on the drive in, it occurred to me I had time to stop at the mall and buy a watch to replace the Timex Ironman that got wet in the rain and went belly-up a few weeks ago, following the Swiss Railway and Swiss Army watches that have failed me in recent months, and that I don't seem to be able to find time to get repaired.

And once I thought of the mall, I thought of all the other errands I need to do.

And in one stop, I was able to buy a watch, some birthday presents for The Offspring (eight next week), the basketball I promised him months ago and the lap desk I promised weeks ago, Offspring-sized underwear, a cup of coffee, and a handful of other items I've been needing. AND a lot of it was on sale.

In the city, this would have required several errands, or a single trip encompassing several bus and/or subway rides, or a long loopy multi-stop journey by bike. In my mall-less home town, it probably would have required a drive to the next town, and maybe a couple of different next towns.

I've always thought of malls as horrible places, earth-destroying in their sprawl and soul-destroying in the homogeneity of their ostentatiously manufactured indoor environments. But today I experienced the mall as a place of personal and environmental efficiency. In fact, had I not run out of time, I could even have gotten more errands run.

Worth thinking about some more....

Recalibrating Goals

2011-09-21T08:47:00.001-04:00

Lunch today: home made baked beans, home made applesauce (thanks to The Mate), organic carrots (cooked), organic celery (raw). Dinner: chinese take-out (bean curd and broccoli with curry sauce; no extra charge for the hair).

I've been trying to bring my own lunch to the office. Less salt, less fat, less money, less throw-away plastic. But I've decided not to beat myself up if I don't succeed every single day.

I've also been trying to work a weekly swim into the schedule. Ha! I've decided to try to swim once this month. If I can do that, maybe I can do it again next month ... and maybe eventually I can work up to twice a month.

I've been trying to take the train and the bike to work as often as possible, to avoid the various ecological and personal stresses of driving 55 miles each way to work. Yesterday was a long day; The Offspring is sick; I'm tired. I can't get my mind around carrying the bike up and down all those stairs at the PATH station.* I'm driving.

In other words, I'm lowering my horizons, reducing my aspirations, giving in to overwork and over-scheduling. And I'm trying to cut myself a break about it.

-----

* There's an elevator, and escalators, from street level to turnstile level at the WTC PATH, but I haven't found one from the payment level to the train platform. Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough -- I can't really imagine that it's actually not accessible. Actually, I can, but I don't want to.

Could I Live Without A Car?

2011-09-20T10:00:00.000-04:00

Last week I worked from home on Monday. On Tuesday morning I drove to the office; I then commuted back and forth by bike and by train until Friday afternoon, when I drove back home.

Over the course of the week, I spent twelve hours in PATH and NJ Transit trains; biked 27 miles; and drove 110 miles.

I averaged just under eleven hours a day away from home. Twenty-four hours in the office, 14 hours working on the train, three hours biking, an hour waiting for trains, and nearly four hours driving.

I got up early every morning to check my email, and checked it again after I got home, to make sure I hadn't missed anything important or interesting during the time in transit.

Downside: it was tiring. Given that I was pulling ten-hour days, including time spent working on the train and time spent checking email morning and evening, it's probably no wonder.

Upside: I got ahead on reading and writing assignments for my classes, so when the papers start to come in next week, I'll be ready for them.

Foraging and Farmers' Markets

2011-09-19T10:37:00.000-04:00

At the farmer's market yesterday I bought some concord grapes to share with The Offspring.

When I was a kid, on the footpath to school, there was a crabapple tree, and a concord grape vine had twined itself up the trunk and along a branch. In late fall, I'd climb up there, slide out along the branch -- I wonder if my parents even know this? -- and, suspended eight or ten feet off the ground, eat the grapes.

We've spent enough time hiking where blueberries, blackberries and raspberries grow wild, and picking strawberries and peaches and apples at farms and in orchards, that The Offspring does know how to forage.

Eating grapes, even concord grapes, on a bench in a playground in a park in New York City, just isn't the same.

Is "Vegetarian Friendly" the Same as "Vegetarian"?

2011-09-18T20:09:00.004-04:00

Burnham and Morrill have been making beans in Maine since 1867. Recently, The Mate came home with this can:

Wait, what does it say in that little green strip?

That's right, "Vegetarian Friendly." Is "vegetarian friendly" the same as "vegetarian"? I hope so. Here's the ingredient list:

The B&G Foods web site doesn't include this product. I wonder what "spice and color" are made out of. I've written to them to find out if the product is vegetarian, or, in fact vegan. I'll let you know if they tell me.

Blogging While Thankless

2011-09-14T06:54:00.000-04:00

My friend and inspiration Julia wrote about thankfulness over at her blog, Lotsa Laundry, the other day. She wrote this:

And so I am struck by this irony: for all the times I've cried, I need a break! I still do not appreciate the respites when they happen. I take 'normal' days as entitlements rather than as answers to prayer.

I have that problem when it comes to illness. I was finally able to get out for a run the other day -- first time in eight weeks, after Lyme disease followed by a cold that turned into bronchitis.

Lyme disease has, of course, nothing to do with chronic illness; that I caught it was just a fluke, or a cosmic joke, or an accident, or something. And after two weeks of antibiotics, I was starting to feel well enough for exercise again. And two weeks of down time isn't fatal to an exercise plan, even if it's an exercise plan with a half marathon at the end,

Where I got bogged down was with the cold, that left me short of breath on its own, but then turned into bronchitis, which left me really wiped out.

And that run left me with a big dose of bitterness. Shouldn't I be thankful that I'm able to run at all, to cover a distance of 2.5 miles, albeit with lots of walk breaks? Shouldn't I be thankful that I'm not worse off?

Instead, I'm angry. Angry that after gaining fitness for the first half of the summer, I'm back to where I was in the spring, coming off all the winter illnesses. Angry that I won't be able to do that half marathon -- not this year, and maybe never.

And afraid of what the winter will bring, yet again. Somehow, I had hoped that being well conditioned would help stave off the winter illnesses. Not only did that not succeed -- I came down with a "winter illness" in August.

I'll conclude with Julia's closing question: "Is that normal?" Yes, I suppose it is. But I wish I could muster something different.

Irritation Is Not The Right Word

2011-09-14T06:50:00.000-04:00

My environmental commitments collide with my lungs every time I take a ride on New Jersey Transit. (That's okay; don't try to picture it.)

I have to stand around on the platform waiting for a train, and almost invariably, some other passenger lights up. And smokers are a particularly suggestible bunch, so as soon as one lights up, others follow. Sometimes I point out they're not allowed to smoke, or ask them if they're aware that smoking is not permitted. This is always a mistake: they get hostile, they keep smoking.

Other passengers peer at me. I can never tell if they think I'm a jerk for challenging other people's liberty to pollute the air whenever and whenever they want to, if they're worried that I'm going to go postal next, or if they secretly agree with me but they're worried the smoker is going to go postal.

Sometimes I tell my impromptu audience that I have asthma triggered by cigarette smoke. This is also a mistake: the smokers get hostile, they continue smoking, and they insist that it can't possible be harming me. Meanwhile, I feel like a jerk for standing around telling everyone about my health.

I'm taking the train because I want to reduce my environmental impact, and the fact that I ride my bike at each end of the journey is good for my health.

Inhaling cigarette smoke is not good for anyone's health, but it's particularly not good for my health, because it sets off constrictions in my lungs that make it difficult to get oxygen in, and through to my muscles and my brain. It's not just an annoyance.

Try explaining that to the person puffing away under the "No Smoking" sign? Nahhh.

Another Thing About Public Transit

2011-09-12T09:16:00.000-04:00

Another thing I've discovered I really like about commuting by bike and by train is it forces me to think about what I can carry back and forth, and about what I can accomplish en route.

When I drive a car back and forth to work, I tend to pile in everything I think I might need at the other end. I end up moving huge piles of stuff home for the weekend, or to the office for the day, and then end up cranky because I didn't have time to deal with it all.

On the bike ride, there's a real limit to how much I can manage, especially since I need to fold the bike up and carry it, and whatever I'm carrying on it, up or down stairs at various points on the journey. I can't comfortably carry more than about 45 pounds (including the bike) up and down stairs. 25 pounds of bike; 20 pounds of books, papers, water, food, repair tools, waterproofs, helmet, lights and reflectors.

So I take time to think: what can I do on the train? How much time will I have to get work done at the other end of the train ride? What's most urgent among the pile of stuff I have to get done? And I've been getting my work done more efficiently and with less guilt, because I have to think very hard about what I can get done and what needs to get done next, rather than shoving everything I might want into the car.

(The people who tell you how to manage your time want me to have asked myself and answered those questions years ago. And I'm generally fairly good at prioritizing the things I need to do. The problem is I tend to haul lots of extra stuff in case I get the other stuff done more quickly than expected. Then, see "cranky.")

The bike/train trip takes just over two and a half hours. Five hours, round trip in a day: seems like a brutal commute. (If I drive, it's three to four hours, round trip.) But nearly an hour of that is biking, broken up into four nice little chunks at either end of the train ride. A half hour is waiting for trains and making the transfer from PATH to NJ Transit or back. The other three and a half hours is work time. Uninterrupted work time, with no internet access, no phone calls, nobody coming to my office or my desk at home to ask me for things.

Good work time.

I Buy Too Many Bags

2011-09-11T21:47:00.001-04:00

I buy too many bags, backpacks, messenger bags, purses, waist pouches, computer bags. I always think the next one is going to be the perfect combination of weight, comfort, storage capacity, and organization options.

Francine Jay, also known as Miss Minimalist, has an idea I think is finally going to get me off that treadmill: One in, one out. She's written several books, and the one I got my ~~hands~~ Kindle on is called Inspiration to Downsize, Declutter, and Simplify.

Her suggestion for managing the accumulation of stuff is that if you're going to buy something, it actually has to replace something that's already in the house, and that will leave the house when the new one comes in.

In other words: Is the bag I want to purchase superior to something I already own? Is there a bag in the house that I'm willing to get rid of, if this new item I'm contemplating purchasing comes home?

It doesn't sound particularly revolutionary, but in fact it's a whole different way of thinking about stuff. We tend to think in terms of constant addition and accumulation, with the idea that we'll always just keep getting more stuff (and then a bigger house or a bigger storage facility so we have room to keep it all). Capitalist economy and culture depend on constant new purchases.

Miss Minimalist suggests, though, that we assume that we can own only a finite--and relatively limited--amount, and purchases need to replace things we already own.

The idea has served me well this week. I own two pairs of shoes that are old, beat up, and uncomfortable, but I've kept them around for way too long with the idea that I might want to wear them some day. Some day came, and now I have sore feet. So I've just bought a new pair of shoes, and not one but both are now on their way to the recycle bin.*

Still need to work on the bag problem, though.

---

*Yes, the recycle bin. On Sundays, you can take your old clothes, towels, shoes, sheets, and other textiles over to the Greenmarket at Tompkins Square Park. Other Greenmarkets in New York City** also accept textiles. If the items can still be used, they'll be sold; if not, they're recycled for rags, car seat padding, or insulation.
**Don't live in New York? Check your area for clothing donation bins and keep your unused clothing and shoes out of the landfull.

Remembrance

2011-09-10T21:18:00.003-04:00

I will never be able to forget. For me, that day was lived in real life. A mile away, a building with a hole the shape of an airplane. A sudden cloud of dust and smoke where a moment ago the building had stood.

Silence. A stream of silent, shocked witnesses walking uptown. Military helicopters overhead. Cars, buses, subways, el trains, cabs, planes -- everything silenced.

Phones dead, internet dead (it was all dial-up, then) and no one knew; would electricity go next? water? Rumors flew. I lined up with hundreds of others to give blood for which, it turned out, there was no need.

A day later, my university reopened, and I had to leave the city. Carrying a small backpack, I walked to Penn Station -- no buses, no trains running. All the bridges and tunnels closed. New Jersey Transit was running out of the city, but not back in; I didn't know when I'd be able to return.

Eventually, I tracked down news of various friends and family members. In personal terms I was lucky, because no one I knew died, but that sentiment is no good to those who did lose loved ones. I had a student whose father was one of the 343 firefighters. I read about him in the paper. Somehow, she made it through the term.

Today, I know it's an important commemorative weekend because of the police boats on the river and the helicopters overhead. A red seaplane taxi-ing around on the East River near 30th Street. Police cruisers with lights on parked at odd spots all over the city.

I didn't have television then; I don't have television now. Then, I became obsessed with the news; these past few days, I've been carefully avoiding it. I don't want to see the pictures and the videos, I don't want to relive that day and the days that followed.

I will never forget, I can never forget, the images that remain seared against the backs of my eyeballs. Do I wish I could?

I Had To Take A Cab!

2011-09-09T12:39:00.001-04:00

I thought I was thoroughly kitted out for biking to and from work in any conditions. Lights for front and back of the bike; waterproof jacket and pants, gloves, helmet, reflective vest.

And then yesterday I was on Fulton Street on my way to the World Trade Center PATH station, and my front tire felt squishy. And a moment later, it was flat. And a moment after that, it was most definitely completely flat, entirely out of air. Fortunately I was close enough to the station to hop off and walk, and still have time to make my train.

On the train, I dug out my glasses and checked the tire, and found several pieces of brown glass still wedged into it. Thanks, whoever tossed a beer bottle onto the pavement.... One good sized gash in the tire told me there was no way the tube was going to hold air.

And I have no spare tire, not even a patch kit, and no tire levers on me. And no time to walk the two miles at the other end of the train ride. I had to take a cab to campus.

Back at home, I bought a new patch kit from the bike shop around the corner and dug out the tools. First time I've ever needed glasses to see what I was doing while patching a tire. Also the first time I've needed six patches to fix one blow-out. (Next time I'm down to the rims, maybe I'll hop off the bike faster.)

Summer By The Numbers

2011-09-08T12:01:00.007-04:00

1 family reunion
1 night camping on an island
1 tick bite
1 wedding celebration
1 expired passport
1 article accepted for publication
1 conference proposal turned down
1day at Coney Island
2 articles finished and sent out
2 marmots eating carrots and peanuts out of The Offspring's hands
3 suitcases ~~lost~~ misplaced by the baggage handlers at Heathrow
3 countries
4 nights camping next to a field of sheep
4 weeks of antibiotics
4.5 weeks of vacation
5 gondola rides up Swiss mountains
5 days without luggage
6 European cities and towns
8 hours flight delay
15 train stations
20th anniversary
82 assorted relatives at the family reunion
3 million Borrelia (give or take)

All in all, a good summer, despite the unexpected developments.

Cyclist of the Week

2011-09-07T12:01:00.000-04:00

This is Andrea Diodati of electric love light. I asked her if I could take her picture because I loved the way her dress was billowing out around her as she rode along Bleecker Street. She told me that her bike has been her primary mode of transportation around the city for the past five years.

I also love these awesome platform shoes. Just wish she had a helmet ... maybe she'll design one to match.

Ride safely, everyone!

Props to the Commish

2011-09-06T17:59:00.002-04:00

At the beginning of the summer, I rode my bike from the Lower East Side to the New York Public Library -- the research branch on 40th Street and Fifth Avenue. It was a hair-raising ride accompanied by aggressive cab drivers, city buses disgorging passengers going in all directions, and in fact vast numbers of pedestrians doing all kinds of crazy things. I kind of felt lucky to get home alive.

So I emailed the Transportation Commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, to tell her the city needs more bike access to midtown. Since she was appointed to the position by Mayor Bloomberg in 2007, she's been a huge advocate for cyclists. Eventually, between responding to criticism of new bike lanes, she had a chance to get back to me with an email message that was mostly boilerplate about how many new miles of bike lanes the city has installed in the past half a decade, but concluded by acknowledging that Midtown ... needs work.

On the plus side, I recently cycled from 181st Street all the way down to West 10th Street. The last time I did that ride, there were parks along sections of the river, but between them, you had to go out into the street or through a parking lot, or you could choose between street and a dirt path a couple feet above the water.

Now, it's a wonderful, uninterrupted path from one end of Manhattan to the other. What a great ride.

Aftermath

2011-09-05T15:25:00.000-04:00

Turns out it was in fact an even dozen trees that came down near us during Irene. Seven in the courtyard between the next building and the FDR drive; two in the sidewalk just north of the courtyard, and three more in Corlears Hook Park, across the street to the south.

Those would be historic bricks, the remains of a dockyard on the location until the land was cleared for park space at the end of the nineteenth century.

Part of the fence by 455 FDR Drive. The workers cleaned up the bus shelter nearby with a shovel -- the glass was pulverized.

This one was 75 years old, give or take.

There was a bench here. Thankfully, there weren't any people under any of those trees, and given the number of trees down and the amount of flooding all up and down the eastern seaboard, it's a wonder more people weren't hurt.

Back to School Un-Shopping

2011-08-28T13:28:00.002-04:00

Junk mail, advertising, email alerts. Everyone is telling you that you need to go shopping to stock up for school.

But do you really need everything you think you need?

Kids outgrow stuff, it's true. But you know what? Last winter's clothes still fit The Offsrping, so that's what he'll wear until the next overnight growth spurt. (I bought the next size up on sale last spring, so worry not: he won't have to go to school in high-waters until I catch up.) Last year's backpack and lunchbox are still perfectly functional.

And yes, they need school supplies. We're lucky: our school has a program where all parents are asked to contribute a fixed fee, and the school buys everything in bulk, so we don't have to go schlepping around Staples in August.

They also need supplies to do homework. The easiest thing would be to go through The Offspring's room and throw away everything to buy new stuff, rather than sorting through broken crayons and dried-out pens and locating the pencil sharpener and the scissors and the ruler. But I'm going to spend an hour doing it that way. I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to buy a couple new glue sticks, because I know I used one up making a photo album a couple months ago, and it might be time for a big-kid pair of scissors, as he's going into third grade -- but that's probably it.

The Mate and I are also both on academic schedules, which might imply we need back-to-school wardrobes. But he's a filmmaker, and teaches his classes in jeans. I go more formal, but I buy clothing that will last for a long time. I did make one new purchase: a pair of bike-to-work pants from Betabrand with reflective fabric inside the cuffs and back pockets.

Question for the day, then: Will that item actually get used if you buy it and bring it home? Corollary question: do you already have something at home that will serve the purpose?

Hurricane Conditions: Park Closed Today

2011-08-27T21:32:00.000-04:00

The East River Park, that is. It's in Zone A, as is the FDR drive, which runs about 250 feet from my apartment building.

But I'm a dumb cluck, like so many of my fellow human beings, so I ignored the sign and went into the park anyway. The rain and the wind were at a lull at the time, plus the dog likes his routine.

Things of note:

It was just past high tide, and the water was very high, and running very fast; faster, I think, than I've ever seen it. It's not going to take much to push it over the low points in the city's seawalls at tomorrow morning's high tide, after a night of heavy rain and wind.

It's quiet out there. No subway roaring over the Williamsburg Bridge overhead, no ferries on the water, no buses creaking along the streets. I heard, then saw, one lone truck cross the bridge; otherwise, just a handful of cars.

A bunch of them were police cars, though. With lights flashing, in a hurry to get someplace. Wonder what's up.

The construction workers involved in the unending project to renovate the East River Park have loaded a bunch of extra equipment onto Uncle Leo, and parked him four feet or so away from the sea wall. Somehow, this doesn't seem adequate. But I have to assume they know what they're doing.

Also: the gulls. I noticed during the big snowstorms last winter that the gulls would come in astonishing numbers to take refuge in the East River Park ballfields. This evening, they are circling, circling, low over the water.

The wind picked up, and the rain resumed, and I was glad to be able to go home and get dry.

Disaster Shopping

2011-08-27T08:25:00.001-04:00

In the face of worst-case-scenario planning from public officials up and down the eastern seaboard, people are shopping like crazy to stock up in case they run out of power. And I wonder: how much of that stuff is going to get used? How much is going to go straight to the landfill after the storm passes?

The mayors and governors aren't wrong: they need to plan for problems. But do people really need to buy that much stuff to prepare? Are people's kitchens and refrigerators really completely empty? Or am I the rarity, in that I have a large kitchen cabinet full of food?

Yes, I'll cook today, in case the power goes out later. A big pot of soup, maybe some rice, maybe some grits. An extra pot of coffee, in case the I can't boil water tomorrow morning. I've already filled several containers with filtered water; I'll fill the tub later after everyone has showered.

We have plenty of candles and matches in the house, and a handful of flashlights of one sort or another ... but it's not far from midsummer, and there's going to be plenty of daylight, too.

Disaster planning should involve making good use of what's already around one's home -- which includes, first and foremost, the brains inside our heads.

Getting off the Plastic Wagon

2011-08-26T12:40:00.002-04:00

I'm a little obsessed with plastic, as I might have mentioned once or twice.

In recent months, I've made some progress at getting plastic out of my life, but there's still work to be done.

On the down side, Tom's of Maine made the switch from an aluminum toothpaste tube to plastic this year, and I've been looking for an alternative. For one thing, the tube is made out of plastic, and for another thing, the fact that it's made out of plastic makes is more difficult to get all the toothpaste out of the tube.

Ideally, I want tooth powder (no need to ship water), and fluoride is important* because I want to keep The Offspring's teeth healthy, and so far I've struck out. I bought a package of toothpaste from Burt's Bees today, in the hopes that it would be aluminum (the box was glued shut, so I couldn't check) but no dice.

On the up side, Burt's makes a deodorant to which I'm now devoted. Powered by sage, so no potentially toxic chemicals; totally works even if I ride my bike around with layers of clothing on; packaged in an aluminum can.** Only the pump mechanism is plastic.

Also on the up side, I've gotten more in the habit of putting food leftovers in glass instead of plastic containers. I looked at some lovely stainless steel lunch containers at Whole Foods, but the price put me off. Maybe next year on those.

I'm washing dishes with bar soap, specifically Dr. Bronner's citrus-flavored one. I keep it next to the sink in a metal soap dish. Nice soapy water collects under the drain section, and this is handy, though I can also just rub the bar of soap on a sponge or directly on a dirty dish, if I need more power.

I haven't yet persuaded The Mate to make the switch from liquid soap packaged in a plastic bottle; I'll keep working at that one. Maybe when we run out of the liquid he'll give it a try.

-----
* I know, I know, there are those who think fluoride is irrelevant, harmful, or a liberal conspiracy. I would welcome comments, however, from anyone who knows where I can get toothbrushing powder.

** In case you're wondering, here's the full list of ingredients: alcohol, sage extract, lavender oil, lemon oil. Yes, that's it. Full stop.

The Kindle Update You've Been Waiting For...

2011-08-25T15:52:00.004-04:00

... with bated breath.

I've been using Kindle quite a bit; I've uploaded numerous books for The Mate, The Offspring, and myself, including some essays for an academic article I'm currently writing and a couple of things that might be helpful in teaching and advisement.

I find reading the "digital ink" screen very soothing to my eyes, and I like being able to customize the type size and line spacing so I can cram quite a bit of text onto a single page. (I read fast. Very fast. Having to turn the pages really really fast in the "page-turner" section of Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves was a cute little joke, but it also got kind of annoying.)

But I'm also still buying hard copies of books.

Yesterday I biked over to The Strand to pick up some half-price books. On for The Offspring, two for The Mate, and one for me: a pre-release copy of Laurie R. King's newest book, The Pirate King. Most of the rest of the world has to wait until September 6 to get it in hardcover or on Kindle, but I started reading my copy last night.

Right now, a box containing most of the books in the Redwall series arrived from Better World Books. The Offspring will tear into it the minute he gets home.

Why Kindle? Why "real" book?

It depends on two things: availability and price. Redwall, the first book in that series, came out in 1986, and you can't get it on Kindle. The series is being reissued in a fancier paperback version, but I got the backlist used at $3 a pop. Given the speed with which The Offspring reads, price is not insignificant.

The article I'm writing is about blogging and academic identities. I'm reading a lot on my computer for this project, as usual with academic writing, though I've downloaded a few reports from Harvard on identity and new media to Kindle. Oddly enough, the book Uses of Blogs: Digital Formations is available only in hard copy. It came out in 2006, though, which in blogging history is pretty much light-years away.

It is theoretically possible to download pdf's to Kindle. I haven't tried it yet; I usually just use the computer screen for those. I assume the Kindle software must reconfigure pdf's for their screen, but I just keep imagining tiny, tiny pages.

The other issue is annotations. I've tried the annotation feature on Kindle, but the keyboard is, well, there's that word "tiny" again. Also, when I read articles while working on an academic project, I have a couple windows open at a time so I can take notes in one while reading in another. I'm going to have to take notes off these articles in Kindle soon, but I anticipate it's going to be awkward.

The other issue is cost of documents. It seems utterly reasonable to me that as backlist gets more distant from publication date, the cost of the eBook should drop with the cost of paper copies. But (so far anyway) that doesn't seem to be the case.

That said, there's plenty to read for free or cheap. Amazon offers links to gazillions of free "classics" (running the gamut from Jane Austen to Zane Grey, Aristotle to War and Peace). I could go the rest of my life reading just books I can download for free.

Don't Blame The Bikers

2011-08-24T20:13:00.006-04:00

Some obstacles I encountered in the bike lanes on an outing this evening:

a double-parked car
a taxi taking on a passenger
numerous jay-walkers going various directions, variously multi-tasking
a jogger, going the wrong way
several bikers, ditto
another double-parked car, this one with a bike rack on the back
a Prius making a left turn on red (!)
a young fellow on a skateboard, also going the wrong way
another taxi, another passenger
a man sitting on a milk crate
half of a mini-van trying to get out of a tight parking spot
a big puddle and some even bigger potholes
another double-parked car
taxi number three

Yes, I was once run down by a cyclist going the wrong way on a one-way street. Far more frequently, while cycling or walking, I've narrowly avoided being hit by cars. I've had run-ins with pedestrians not paying attention, with pushers of strollers and Halal carts, with rollerbladers and skateboarders, and other near misses beyond memory.

This is a busy, crowded city; everyone (except maybe the occasional tourist or toddler) is trying to get there (wherever "there" is) as fast as possible.

Unfortunately, there's a culture of blaming the biker. All I'm asking: remember the chaos that is this city's glory and its grit, and negotiate it lightly, recognizing the varying elements that contribute.

Light in August

2011-08-24T13:49:00.002-04:00

It was pretty out there the other night.
I wasn't the only one snapping away with my cell phone.
Are they ever going to finish rebuilding the park?
This barge (named "Uncle Leo," though you can't tell that from this photo) has been floating at one point or other in the East River water for years, while the contractors do a little work here, then a little there, all the while putting off repaving the road, which is growing dangerously pot-holed.
The anticipated completion date keeps getting put off. Last I checked, it was Fall 2011. It does not look at this time as though that is a reality, unless by "Fall" they mean "December 19."

Thinking About Words

2011-08-23T17:24:00.003-04:00

To "expire" is to breathe out, but also to breathe out one's last; i. e., to die.

To "inspire" is to breathe in, or to strike with an intellectual or artistic or emotional idea.

Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.

Most of us, most of the time, take inhalation and exhalation for granted. I'm having a little trouble with them today; a lingering cold has left deposits of gunk* in my lungs, and getting air around it has caused a couple of head-exploding coughing fits today.

-----

Is "invalid" the opposite of "valid"? If you haven't already, put the stress on the first syllable. I hate that word.

I spent the better part of a day in a wheelchair, about a month ago, in transit in two airports. I was felled by Lyme disease, and the airline wanted $2200 to postpone our flights, so we traveled anyway, and I nearly collapsed at JFK.

In New York, there was hollering. "Wheelchairs don't belong here. I've been telling you all day, no wheelchairs in this line." The hollerer was mysteriously removed, and I proceeded through the line.

In New York, there were also starers. Most of the children were well beyond toddler age, and should (I opined to myself) have been taught better. What can I say about the adults?

In London, there were no starers, adult or child.

But the wheelchair to which I was assigned for the duration of my six-hour stay at Heathrow operated on the same principle as a luggage cart, with an automatic brake accessible only from the rear, making it impossible for the person occupying the chair to move the thing.

Making the attempts of the user to move the chair invalid.

-----

*Yeah, that's a technical term.

Claiming a Token, or Tokening a Claim?

2011-08-23T13:55:00.002-04:00

I've been asked to write an article for an academic audience about blogging. Usually it's the other way around: I blog here about issues in which I have academic interest, because I can be more explicitly political than I can either in the classroom or in a peer-reviewed journal.

I started researching blogging, because that's what we academic types do when it's time to write an article, and learned my blog should be listed among Technorati's 1,277,952 other blogs, to claim my space in statistical analyses of blogging or maybe drum up some more traffic, or something like that.

In order to verify that I actually exist, I have to put a particular code (sorry "claim token") in a blog post. So here you go, Technorati: 9PP5HZ4QHU9C.

Faithful readers, have you any idea what this means? I feel a bit as though I'm making a blind leap off a dock into some very muddy water of unknown temperature and filled with who knows what manner of physical obstacles or biting creatures. Who is (or are) technorati, really?

Birth Defects, Anyone?

2011-08-18T18:18:00.003-04:00

If you're in the East River Park, you'll be warned against smoking...
... and against littering, in three different languages each.
But if you don't read English, you won't find out that the city recommends against pregnant women and children eating the fish.
I made a phone call to the parks department some months ago to point out that the majority of those fishing the East River are speakers of Chinese or Spanish, and that they ought to add signs in those languages warning about the dangers of eating the fish.

No reaction.

Today, I spoke to a couple of parks employees; one of them saw the point and said she'd talk to the superintendent. Do you think they'll do anything about it?

Why Biking Is Better

2011-08-16T17:42:00.003-04:00

The discomforts of riding a bike are physical, and somehow more tangible than the discomforts of driving a car, but the car-driving discomforts are real just the same.

This morning: set off on the bike, got wet, dried out on the train, got wet again, dried out in my office.

This afternoon: flat tire (fixed it with kit The Mate left in the trunk). No rain, not too hot, got the car far enough off the road not to worry about getting run over.

The discomforts came later. Tailgaters, aggressive lane-changers, stop-at-green-lighters that made me irritable, and then irritable enough to honk, and then even more irritable, enough to make regrettable gestures out the car window.

This morning, the wet stuff dried out within half an hour or so. The afternoon's irritations, on the other hand, persist: somehow, I'm still irritated at all those aggressive and just plain lousy drivers.

This is the important part to remember: the physical discomforts seem more important in the anticipation, but in fact they fade rapidly, while the emotional discomforts linger.

Multi-tasking: on the train, I got some work done on a syllabus; on the drive home, I got to talk to my folks. Beneficial adjunct activities both. But there's always work, and if I drive several hours a week, I run out of people to talk to.

Office Stash

2011-08-15T15:52:00.003-04:00

Middle drawer on the right side of the desk. Here's what's in it:

a four-pound bag of almonds, a little more than half eaten
a bag of Walgreens menthol cough drops
a few Lipton black tea bags
"personal supplies"
menus for two Chinese restaurants that deliver
shoe polish
toothpaste
but no toothbrush
forks, knives, spoons, chopsticks, napkins
a bowl

What's in your desk? Link in the comments if you wanna play.

Kindle Pro and Kindle Con

2011-07-25T11:55:00.003-04:00

Yes, I bought one.

And then Borders announced they'll close the remainder of their stores. Commentators said this is related to the rise of on-line retailing, of which eBooks are fast becoming a significant portion.

I have very mixed feelings about all of this.

I was buying most of my books used, before I bought the Kindle. And since I bought it, probably 99 percent of the books I've put on it were either free or 99 cents. So it's not clear that moving to Kindle, for me, has impacted the paper book market (yet).

One Kindle, though made out of plastic and powered by electricity and probably bound in (environmentally toxic) leather, is probably still an environmental lightweight in comparison to printing and shipping the 3500 books it is supposed to hold (and theoretically unlimited books, if you remove books from the device as you finish reading them).

I can see that as technology evolves and improves, I'll be able to upload, read, and annotate books, pdfs, articles, whatever, rather than printing everything out and scribbling notes in pencil and hoping I'll be able to read them a week, or a decade, hence. (No joke: the tiny notes I wrote in books I read in grad school? Today, I need a magnifying glass.) I won't need yards and yards of bookcases to store the books I've read, and I won't need to dedicate living space to book storage. These are also environmentally beneficial aspects of the Kindle.

But browsing for books in an actual store -- holding actual copies of books, leafing through them, reading portions -- is still, for me, a far more satisfying experience than searching for books on an on-line retailer's web site. For The Offspring, it's up there with visiting the library, though after a trip to the bookstore he's likely to own a book, frequently paid for out of his saved-up allowance.

I suspect by the time The Offspring is an adult, eBooks will be fully integrated into his reading experience. But what might the unintended consequences be?

On the Parkway

2011-07-19T20:23:00.002-04:00

The North Haven service station on the Merritt Parkway has recently been renovated, and they put in dual-flush toilets and solar panels.

According to the Connecticut DOT, they've also used better insulation and more energy-efficient heating and cooling units, and the goal of putting in a Subway is to provide healthier food. (So why is there also Dunkin' Donuts? Just wondering....)

Apparently, the plan is to do similar renovations along the Merritt Parkway and on I-95 through Connecticut. All good stuff.

Environment and the Presidential Pledge

2011-07-08T17:00:00.003-04:00

Michele Bachmann has signed The Presidential Pledge. Want to read the whole thing for yourself? Check it out here.

The Washington Post reported some of the most offensive passages. They missed the reference to "vulnerable women ... and the rights of fathers," and references to "anti-scientific bias." Then there's this:

...robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to US demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial security.

Uhh, no. Robust reproduction is not beneficial, not to the United States, and not to the rest of the world. Back in the 70s, people were actually trying to promote Zero Population Growth by encouraging two-child families in which each parent would be numerically replaced.

Since then, the world's population has nearly tripled.

More people means more food, more transport, more greenhouse gas emissions, more global warming. Why do I suspect that the anti-scientific bias of the people who wrote the "Pledge" would lead them to insist there is no such thing?

Inspiration = Breathing-In

2011-07-07T20:49:00.003-04:00

Wheelchair Dancer challenged me the other day. She challenged me to find the joy in disability.

My first reaction: NO WAY.

The emotions that cascaded over me as we sat over coffee included emergency-room fear, frustration with the process of getting back into shape from zero yet again after another winter of difficult breathing, worry about what the future will bring and the family I support, despair over the knowledge that illness will recur, though I don't know when.

Today, I went out for a run after sitting in traffic for 2 1/2 hours on the way back from the office. (It's my disability off-season. The lights are dark, the performers are elsewhere.) I started out slow; my back was stiff and my legs felt heavy.

As usual, I noticed the gimpy, the asymmetrical; I saw those who were struggling for whatever reason. Here or there eye contact; a small nod of recognition.

And I found, for just a moment, the joy. Today, I can do this. The weight room has given me strength, running has given me stamina; my back loosened up and my legs found lightness and I was, simply, running, a runner, wind off the East River cooling my face, my body meant to move across the miles.

Thank you, Wheelchair Dancer. Thank you for inspiration.

From Bare Feet and Brennessel

2011-07-06T19:35:00.005-04:00

I am from bare feet in the summer, from a Volkswagen squareback and from tunnels dug through snowbanks.

I am from the tall white house set back from the street, pine tree out front leaving pitch zwischen meine Finger, on my knees, in meine Haare, on my clothes; I am from the quiet house above the sea, und aus dem Garten mit einem Kirschbaum.

Ich bin aus der Brennessel, the tiger lily, the crack of Donner on a hot August afternoon promising relief from the heat; from the pigweed, the Pusteblume, the trickle of snowmelt in mud season.

I am from gathering Steine and reading too late into the night, from Paul and Gisela and Ruth and Erika.

I am from travelers and from wandern im Wald.

From more than one way to skin a cat, from use your noggin, and from Übung macht der Meister.

I am from fire und singen und skepticism; I have found home among people of the book.

Ich bin aus Ostpreußen und England and Maine, from lobsters und Königsberger Klöpse.

From family stories: the teenager who listened to Harriet Beecher Stowe reading from Uncle Tom’s Cabin and went off to join the Union Army; the mother who passed children through the windows of a crowded rail car and then begged the soldiers to let her in with them, from fighting, from the tank that exploded on a land mine, from the shoe factory, from stories edited and burnished and just plain made up.

I am from Auburn and Harpswell and perhaps an archive somewhere in Deutschland, yellowing pictures curling from walls, librarians charged with remembering, moldering details buried for the forgetting.

-----

This is from Magpie Musing, and she says you should go to Schmutzie to link up yours. The template/prompt is here.

The Value of a Digital Edition

2011-07-02T15:24:00.007-04:00

Julia over at Lotsa Laundry recommended Sheena Iyengar's The Art of Making Choices. And when Julia makes a recommendation, I listen, because chances are it's intelligent, thoughtful, and wise. (You don't get all three of those for the price of one very often.)

So I went over to Amazon to check out the availability, and found this:
The screen shot is a little fuzzy, I know. So here's my problem: the paperback is now available for $8.61, but to download the Kindle edition, it's still $9.99. And if I wait a year or so for used copies to flood the market, I'll be able to get it for under five bucks from Better World Books. (Yes, the library is another option.)

I can understand the $9.99 Kindle pricing (Nook is the same, by the way) when the book first comes out in hardcover. But once it's out in paperback, shouldn't the Kindle be available for less, reflecting the fact that the publisher doesn't have to pay $4 or so per copy for printing and binding?

Horror of horrors: does the digital edition now have greater market value than the book?

-----

This morning, I said to The Offspring, "Close the book and come to the table." He objected: "I'm not reading a book, I'm reading Kindle." I maintain it's still a book, even though the format has changed. What do you think?

Postconsumers

2011-06-30T18:03:00.002-04:00

Postconsumers.com is an interesting site with an odd twist.

The site provides educational content to help readers become more frugal, act with greater environmental awareness, and move beyond material consumption toward something more meaningful.

Recently, they put up a post urging readers to unsubscribe from all those newsletters that promise deals -- but end up persuading people to buy stuff, thus spending money they wouldn't have spent if they hadn't gotten the message in the first place.

Good point.

I went through my email trash and unsubscribed from several of those newsletters. I kept only Landsend, because they send messages with actual good deals that I use a few times a year to keep my quickly-growing son in clothing. (I can, and do, get him used shirts, but pants are hard to come by because he needs slim sizes.)

The other places offer free shipping or some other fairly insignificant promotion to get me on their site, or they send deals that have to be used in a store, where I'm unlikely to find what I was looking for but fairly likely (having made the trip) to buy something I wasn't looking for and didn't think I needed until I found it on the rack.

A few days ago, there was a piece about how to cut back on air conditioner use. Their recommendations include closing shades/curtains where sun is shining in at midday; using fans to move air; and turning off all possible appliances, because they all emit some heat.

I also sip ice water continuously in very hot weather, and if possible, I avoid cooking during the day -- I wait until late evening after it's started to cool down and then cook things up to eat cold the next day.

We have yet to get our portable air conditioner out of the closet, though we were tempted that week early in June when temperatures got close to 100 degrees for a couple of days. Rather than blocking several windows with a/c units that cut off air circulation and provide easy temptation to just turn them on, we have a single portable unit that can go in different rooms at different times of day or night.

---

The postconsumer twist? It appears that the whole site exists to sell their "interactive guide" or their book about how to cut back on material consumption. There's a button that says "start your assessment now at no cost." I clicked on it, entered some information, and then got to a page where I had to give them money to get any output.

Grrrrrrrr.

Another One of those New York Things

2011-06-30T07:45:00.005-04:00

Grace Church, Bach at Noon on Wednesdays. Took the Offspring yesterday, now that school is out for the summer. Half an hour of keyboard music for a meditative pause at midday.

I was enjoying the cool calm, when I felt and then heard the subway rumbling along below. A fairly faint vibration, not enough to disturb the atmosphere within, but I almost laughed out loud.

I've been in churches in New York City before, but seldom. I think of churches in rural European tourist contexts, and the juxtaposition of church and rail took me by surprise.

And I remembered the sauna at the Chinatown Y, where, lying in a different kind of meditative calm, one hears the F trains rumble by.

Afterward, Offspring and I stopped at the Strand, and he browsed the outside cart of children's books and picked himself out yet another tale of dragons and fantasy. Odd juxtaposition there: books for children mixed in with books for parents, some not remotely suitable for children's consumption. (And now, of course, I can't remember any of the titles.)

The Problem With White

2011-06-27T21:21:00.004-04:00

I feel as though I've been really slow to figure this out, but it's dawned on me that white clothing (and towels, and pretty much anything else) is a problem.

My black t-shirts last pretty much forever. White ones, though, get stains in various places from various sources, and I end up throwing them away because they look god-awful long before the fabric itself has worn out.

Decision, then: When the whites I currently have reach the point of utter grubbiness, I'm going to do two things.

Try dyeing them, and see if I can get them to a color that hides the stains and leaves me with a few more years of wear.
Stop buying white clothing, hand towels, napkins, and so on. Look for sources of unbleached cotton, linen, and/or hemp clothing, and use darker colors more of the time.

That's all for today, folks.

Little Ag in the Big City

2011-06-22T21:34:00.001-04:00

Last night, we picked up our weekly allotment from the Grand Street CSA. We paid for the crop year in advance, and each week we get a share of what Woodbridge Farm produces. Local, sustainably grown, seasonal produce. Right now, there are lots of greens, plus rhubarb, strawberries, and some herbs. Later in the season there will be squashes and beans; in the fall, potatoes and pumpkins and apples.

After we weighed our greens and garlic scapes, we sat down to stay for a concert by the string quartet Ethel. The Offspring got to hear a bunch of fairly recent music, some composed by members of the quartet, and to experience a performance of John Cage's 4'33".

-----

This morning, I dropped off two bags of compost at the bins maintained by the Lower East Side Ecology Center at the Union Square Farmer's Market.

Some nice stranger clued me in a couple of years ago about keeping compost in the freezer so it doesn't get stinky -- a big improvement over keeping compost on the counter if you don't have a place to dump the stuff every day.

Why compost? It keeps a lot of garbage out of the dump, where it might take a few centuries to decompose. No Impact Man did a year-long zero waste project a few years ago, and others are attempting to follow his example, but even if you don't want to go that far, reducing the amount of stuff you send to the dump is a good thing.

How does composting work? You collect carrot leaves, corn husks, egg shells, apple cores, coffee grounds, tea bags, grain products, food scraps -- pretty much any vegetable matter. If you have your own yard, you dump it in a bin and let it turn into dirt. (More on what you can and can't compost: here.)

Depending on your composting philosophy, you might just move the pile every year or so, maybe toss a little dirt over it when you move to a new spot, or you might get a fancy bin and add ingredients in careful proportions and turn the mixture every day.

If you're adventurous enough, you can get a worm bin and compost on an apartment windowsill. I am not that adventurous.

There are other places in the city to take compost if you're not anywhere near Union Square. When we lived in Washington Heights, there was a neighborhood group that accepted compost on the stairs at Pinehurst Avenue and 181st Street. Poke around the community gardens and public parks in your neighborhood and ask around.

If you know of composting locations in the five boroughs and beyond, please leave them in the comments.

Water For Chocolate

2011-06-21T16:05:00.006-04:00

Something else to consider about making ecological choices regarding food consumption: how much water does it take to produce?

Some scientists from the Netherlands wrote a report on the issue that includes this chart:
I know, I know, the print is tiny. I was shocked to discover that the item with by far the highest water footprint is ... chocolate, at 24,000 liters of water per kg.

The comparisons between items might be slightly more meaningful if they were organized by serving size rather than by weight, but still, after chocolate, meats are most of the the biggest consumers of water. In decreasing order:

Beef 15,500 liters/kg
Cheese 5,000 liters/kg
Pork 4,800 liters/kg
Olives 4,400 liters/kg
Chicken 3,900 liters/kg

Coffee, I'm relieved to discover, requires only 140 liters of water per 125 ml cup -- very low in comparison to meat and cheese (but how much per kilo?) but still nearly five times the water footprint of tea, at 30 liters per 125 ml cup.

I feel the need for more information, but I will be considering this information next time I'm contemplating a chocolate bar.

Green Ink

2011-06-17T14:37:00.003-04:00

This is Johnny Collado.
Johnny wears his environmental commitments on his sleeve:
... and on the back of his leg:
The tree is an oak, and on his arm he wears bamboo, because of its versatility and environmental sustainability.

Pretty cool, eh?

Russell and the Gigantic Fish

2011-06-15T15:29:00.001-04:00

Every once in a while, Whole Foods gets a really big fish.
Russell was also photographing this particular Big Fish. He's here to help with perspective: otherwise, how do you know it's not a really big picture of a little fish?
I guess somebody must buy this stuff. Or do they just put it out, and end up fileting it the next day?

A Moderately Successful Hike

2011-06-13T09:17:00.002-04:00

There was rain in the forecast, so we decided to stay low and relatively flat, walking over some old Revolutionary War trails just south of Bear Mountain. We were getting pretty close to Doodletown when The Offspring stepped in a patch of wet leaves hiding a hole between a root and a rock and went down, twisting his foot.

We applied Advil and an ace bandage, Mom shouldered his pack, Dad helped him limp along as we turned around for the walk back out. The trail runs close to the road for a while, so when we reached the point of convergence, Offspring and I cut through the underbrush to the road while The Mate went to get the car and meet us.

The foot is still aching today, but the injury is fairly minor and should heal on its own soon. The Offspring said as soon as it's better, he wants to do the hike again and make it all the way to Doodletown. He discovered some of his own strength in pushing through pain on the way out, and he's learned that an injury doesn't have to ruin an outing.

Other bonuses: Mountain laurel was riotously in bloom in the low-lying areas. I don't recall ever seeing it like that, because by June we're usually up on the ridges, looking for breeze and a view into the distance. It didn't rain, despite the forecast, but because of the forecast, parking was easy and we had the trail to ourselves.

Also: we found, and harvested, some rhubarb growing wild. It turned out to be too tough and bitter* to eat, but the farmers-market rhubarb and strawberries we picked up on the way home made a really tasty pie.

Which, as I was eating it for breakfast this morning, made me think of my grandmother, who was a gentle, loving, kind person, and though not much of a cook made delicious rhubarb pie from a patch of rhubarb growing behind her house in Maine.

-----

*"Only by the wildest stretch of the imagination can rhubarb be included in this chapter [Fruit]..." -- Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, Joy of Cooking.

Paint on the Sidewalk

2011-06-12T17:06:00.001-04:00

Two Bikes. No, Actually Three

2011-06-11T13:44:00.002-04:00

A guy with a Brompton towing a trailer with two kids:While I was living in Cambridge (the English one) a few years ago, I regularly saw people, usually women, with two and sometimes even three kids on a bike, using some combination of front-mounted seats, rear-mounted seats, and trailers pulled along behind.

When I lived in Shanghai, many years ago, it was quite common to see a whole family on the bike at the same time, frequently also with the day's groceries. Dad would be pedaling, Mom sitting on the rear rack carrying a child, and a second child might be sitting on the top tube in front of Dad. Bags of vegetables or or a chicken with its feet tied together would likely be dangling from the handlebars.

The third bike? There I am with my Brompton, reflected in the glass behind that orange cargo bike.

Precycling

2011-06-09T07:50:00.004-04:00

The Guardian has an article this week on reducing one's garbage by "precycling" -- making choices about purchases based on the volume of packaging they come with.

Cutting back on packaging, and in particular packaging that can't be recycled -- is partly about different choices at the supermarket -- some manufacturers use more layers than others, and it's usually possible to buy some of the fruits and vegetables without adding any packaging at all. (You don't actually need to put loose apples or oranges into individual plastic bags for the convenience of the check-out clerks, unless maybe you're buying dozens of each at a time.)

But any serious reduction of waste requires lifestyle change: changes in decisions about what to eat and where to shop. Buying ingredients and cooking at home, rather than buying prepared food, limits packaging. It also extends beyond food: purchases of clothing, kitchen gadgets, home decorations and anything else need to be treated as permanent acquisitions.

The reality is that stuff wears out and has to be replaced. But what's needed is a shift from buying with the idea that things will be discarded soon, to buying with the idea that any given item -- a frying pan, a pair of pants, a candle holder -- is likely to last for a long time, and then caring for stuff to maximize its useful life.

Lifestyle change doesn't have to -- and in fact shouldn't -- be sudden and drastic. The only way to make stuff stick? Change one thing at a time, stick with it until it becomes habit, and then move on to another thing.

Me? I'm still working on reducing plastic packaging. Anybody out there know ... can you buy hair conditioner, or dish soap, in bar rather than liquid form?

Update: Some surfing when I should be working led me to a post over at Life Less Plastic about using Dr. Bronner's bar soap to wash dishes, and to the website of Lush, where you can buy bar conditioner. The Offspring's blond locks need conditioner, so we'll be giving that a try soon. And why didn't I think of good old Dr. Bronner? I've used it for everything while backpacking.

Memorial Day

2011-05-30T17:35:00.002-04:00

There's not much literature about peace, is there? The Mate, who makes movies and teaches people about writing screenplays, says it's because conflict is what makes a narrative. Some lyric poetry, maybe? It's hard to come up with much.

(There's literature that's not about war, per se, but that's different than literature devoted to peace as a narrative or thematic focus, and often war still lurks in the background, as for instance in characters who bear military titles or the scars of war.)

A lot of people in the United States are remembering the soldiers who have fought and fallen in the US armed forces. Apparently, the holiday began as a day of remembrance for the fighters who fell in the Civil War -- on both sides, and after World War I expanded to include those killed in other wars.

I think it appropriate to remember, today, the dead of all nations. Those who died fighting against the United States, or in wars in which the US had no part, have still left behind shattered families and scarred communities.

I Was Curious...

2011-05-28T16:24:00.003-04:00

...so I put potato chips, corn chips, and plaintain chips to the test. In the chart below,

K=Kettle Brand Krinkle Cut Potato Chips with Sea Salt
U=Utz White Corn Tortilla Chips
V=Vitarroz Sweet Plantain Chips

In other words, junk food is junk food. There's no real difference, except for the absence of salt in the plantain chips -- and it's equally possible to buy salted plantain chips. There just don't happen to be any in the house right now.

Thus far, the sugar industry has managed to keep the people who make up these "Nutrition Facts" to define a limit for how much sugar people should consume, which is why there's no percentage of your recommended daily intake following those numbers.

Tomorrow or the next day, more fascinating programming may return. Stay tuned....

Biker Chronicles Resume

2011-05-27T10:38:00.003-04:00

I bought ten one-way tickets for the New Jersey Transit ride between Newark and Long Branch on February 3, and used the last one the day before yesterday. Five round trips in four months—a fairly lame follow-up to the fall, when I took public transit to work at least one day each week. And it felt even more insignificant given that I was hoping to double my public-transit ridership in the spring.

But in the spring, I ran headlong into the major drawback of that plan: the fact that it takes two and a half hours to make the trip—each way—on public transit. Compared to an hour and a half in the car, that doesn’t seem all that bad, but add to that the fact that trains run only once every hour, and if the end of a class or a meeting means I’ve just missed the train, that means it’s three and a half hours before I can get home.

Fine, if I don’t care if I ever see The Mate or the Offspring. The hour saved by driving, and up to an hour saved because I don’t have to wait to start the drive, means getting home before the kid goes to sleep.

Plus, add five hours of commuting to a work day, and then try to turn around and do it again the next day.

Other than time, most of the advantages belong to the trip on public transit. The train ticket is a whole lot cheaper than driving the distance if you include the cost of owning, maintaining, and insuring the car on top of gas and tolls.

The train ride gives me time to work, read, or just sit and look out the windows. Yesterday I saw an egret and a red-winged blackbird in flight, in addition to various ducks and geese, along the route.

The train trip includes a bike ride at either end, and if you include the time spent schlepping a 25-pound bike plus a 25-pound bag through the stations at either end and in the middle, it adds up to an hour of exercise. My Brompton, while not inexpensive for a bike, is far cheaper to run than a car.

On sabbatical a few years back in Cambridge (the English one), where it can rain at any time, I learned to carry waterproofs and keep rolling if it started to rain, and I’ve generally maintained the same attitude about weather back in New York (though one ride with the temperature in the teens was, admittedly, a challenge). I have some washable blazers for days when the weather is really threatening, so I don’t have to worry about ruining clothing.

The human factor is about the same, either way -- occasional encounters with bad drivers on the road, drunks and creeps (or drunken creeps) on the trains.

The upshot? I’ll be taking the train a lot more regularly in the summer, when I go to campus one or two days a week and the days tend to be shorter; and come fall, I’ll be arranging my office hours around the train schedule. And then I’ll do what I can.

Cloth Bags

2011-05-25T07:44:00.009-04:00

Yes, I have too many. But some of them carry memories in addition to food, and you can't say that of a plastic bag. Herewith, a few from the collection:

Shanghai, 1987. I had at least two of these, four I think; this one has survived 24 years already.

Switzerland, 2001. The Vaud Insurance Company.

International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, year forgotten. Uh-oh, needs a date with the washing machine.

Cambridge (UK), 2006. From the health food store Revital.

Modern Language Association annual convention, 2011. Courtesy of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Thank You, Mayor Bloomberg

2011-05-24T13:08:00.003-04:00

The Times let slip in an article about a new ban on smoking in New York City parks and beaches that 57 percent of non-smoking New Yorkers have tobacco byproducts in their blood, indicating recent exposure to second-hand smoke.

Call it "nearly two-thirds," call it "more than half," call it what you want -- it's too many. Far too many. Nearly 20 percent of adults have heart disease or asthma (that's according to the Centers for Disease Control, so it ought to be fairly reliable) and shouldn't be exposed to any second-hand smoke. Add in the folks with other lung or circulatory diseases, and we're probably up to a good 25 percent.

I'm still fuming at the guy who objected when I pointed out he was smoking under a no-smoking sign in a New Jersey Transit station, saying it wouldn't hurt me. As it happened, I was recovering from pneumonia at the time -- so yes, actually, it would.

But I hate being put in the position of having to invoke illness, or invisible disability, to get someone to extinguish a cigarette. It shouldn't feel shameful, yet invariably, it does, because of the way our culture frames the ill as culpable, or malingerers -- or both.

Grrrr. Well, I'm grateful to Mayor Bloomberg for all he's done to combat smoking in public places. The ban will be "self-enforcing" according to the Times article; I hope it works.

Avoiding Plastic

2011-05-20T14:47:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking about plastic a lot of the time since February.

Herewith, a pair of lists:

More plastic:

shampoo in a plastic bottle
liquid laundry detergent
toothpaste
cling wrap and plastic sandwich bags
canned beans
tampons with a plastic applicator

Less plastic:

bar shampoo
powdered laundry detergent
tooth powder
reusable containers; waxed paper bags
dry beans, cook 'em yourself
applicator-less tampons; Diva Cup

It's ubiquitous.

Avoiding the stuff means constant vigilance. The other day I asked The Mate why we switched to liquid laundry detergent; apparently the supermarket in the neighborhood we moved to last summer doesn't carry fragrance-free powder. I'll have to work on that. Now that Tom's of Maine switched from an aluminum tube to plastic, I'm working on tooth powder too.

Independent Filmmaking

2011-05-18T09:21:00.003-04:00

Some things that have been left around my apartment lately:

Robes of various sizes and colors
Banners with Maltese crosses on them
One smoke machine
Kippahs of various colors
Walkie-Talkies
A large container of quick oats
Renaissance-y dresses and more robes
Bags of boots
Random bits of make-up equipment

I've Lived Near...

2011-05-15T20:17:00.002-04:00

1988-1990 around the corner from Western Beef
1990-1991 a couple doors down from Veniero's
1991-1993 between Downtown Beirut and the Village Idiot (the "Rent" years)
1993-2004 down the street from The Village Voice
2004-2009 overlooking J. Hood Wright Park ("In The Heights")
2009-2010 around the corner from Katz's Deli
2010- ? across the street from Corlear's Hook

The Plant Is An Ominvore

2011-05-07T20:22:00.004-04:00

Walking the dog this evening, I ran into people completing The Great Saunter. They started out at the South Street Seaport at 7:30 this morning and were nearing the end of their 32-mile walk around the periphery of Manhattan. I'm completely entranced and want to go walk around Manhattan right now. I don't want to wait until the next event next May.

-----

I'm a vegan. I cut animals products out of my diet gradually, starting with meat and ending up with eggs and dairy, over about a ten-year period. I've been vegetarian for around 25 years, vegan for around 15. It was (obviously) a slow process, and not something I thought through in any kind of serious way as it was happening; the reasons included politics, health, and kashrut. Long after becoming vegan, I realized I felt spiritually sounder if I wasn't killing animals for my own nutrition.

-----

About three years ago, we got a dog. We did some research and determined it was safe to feed him a vegetarian diet. Then we ended up getting a lizard, an omnivore that eats fruits and vegetables but also needs live crickets and such things to survive.

And then the day before yesterday The Offspring came home from school with a Venus Fly-Trap. Now we have a plant that needs to eat meat to survive.

Cooking from Scratch

2011-05-03T08:52:00.003-04:00

The Daily Mail published an article today that says British women can't cook as well as their mothers did.

The article says some women "admit" their husbands cook, making it clear that what's really at stake is the desire for women to adhere to traditional roles. And it's terribly written -- it's not clear what they think counts as "cooking a meal from scratch." Boiling eggs?

Oddly, the author writes disapprovingly of making a meal from whatever is at hand -- which is, in my opinion, an important skill if one wants to eat locally and avoid food waste.

But here you go... here's a list of a few things I can make from scratch (no cans, no freezer) without resorting to a cookbook:

Minestrone, split pea, various kinds of lentil soups. I could probably come up with a gazpacho without consulting a recipe. I can also make a chicken soup -- starting with a whole chicken with the feathers still on and the guts still inside -- but I haven't chosen to do that since around 1988.

Stir fries of various flavors and with various ingredients. Does that count as one dish, or as various dishes? I might flavor with garlic, ginger, and jalapenos, or with thai curry and coconut milk, or with sesame oil and soy sauce.

Curry. Potatoes and chick peas, spinach and dal, various other possibilities.

Breakfast foods, which sometimes get served for dinner: eggs scrambled, fried, omelette-d; pancakes (with bananas, apple sauce, flax seed, zucchini hidden inside), french toast. Do those count as "meals"?

Refried beans with rice and fried plantains and some salad, with or without tacos. Tofu fried with herbs or curry, with one or another leafy green or other vegetable, steamed or sauteed, or over salad greens. Black bean and corn salad with cilantro and lime juice. Root vegetables (beets, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots) roasted, steamed, mashed, or fried.

Apple pie, hot fudge sauce, apple sauce. I could make jam without a cookbook-- half fruit, half sugar, boil until it reaches the right texture when dropped on a plate -- but I usually use low-sugar pectin, and follow the instructions in the box.

I don't bake much, and when I do, I use a recipe. I've made cakes and muffins and quick breads and pies and cookies, but I don't have much patience for any of that. Mostly because I don't like to follow a recipe; I like to cook with what's fresh and in season, and make things up as I go along. I read cookbooks, but mostly for ideas.

How about you?

Direct Democracy At Its Finest?

2011-04-28T09:02:00.002-04:00

A Facebook screenshot. I know, it's tiny; here are some of the groups:

"Soldiers are not heroes."
"Remove the group 'Soldiers are not heroes.'"
"Petition to remove "Petition to remove 'Soldiers are not heroes' " group. "

And also, in ALL CAPS,

"Anyone in the "Soldiers are not Heroes" group are ignorant [unprintables]."
"'Soldiers are not heroe's' is Dis-Respective"

I could make a cheap point about grammar and spelling, but what really intrigues me here is the profusion.

How did Facebook end up with five different groups declaring that soldiers are not heroes, in the first place? Was it a single person who kept creating different groups in some kind of confusion about what had or had not already been accomplished? Friends? Strangers, all coincidentally up to the same thing?

And then, four different groups petitioning for the removal of the original groups... one very offended party? Four different ones? And the person asking for the removal of the groups asking for the removal of the other groups.... one of the original groups' creators? Someone else entirely?

If you're reading this, you may object that Facebook has no connection to "the real world." But it turns out to be one tool for communicating with other people, alongside email and flyers in your mailbox and the good old telephone, all of which have superseded smoke signals and the Pony Express.

It's messy and it's often mundane, but it's also an interesting laboratory for the dissemination and exchange of ideas. There are a lot of people out there on Facebook muttering to themselves, and a few standing on soap-boxes and hollering, and somehow in the cacophony, people manage to hear and be heard.

Earth Day 41

2011-04-22T13:03:00.005-04:00

Earth Day is nearly upon us again, and I'm feeling discouraged.

Starbucks will give you a free cup of coffee if you wander into any of their locations today with your reusable cup. At the time of this writing, 2,792 members of Facebook have joined "B Kind 2 Earth Day." At Earth Day Network, you can pledge an "Act of Green" to help save the planet -- by not buying bottled water, or turning off faucets, or switching to compact-fluorescent light bulbs.

Meanwhile, since the first Earth Day in 1970, US homes have expanded from 1400 square feet to a peak of more than 2500 square feet in 2007, with a slight drop since then. Meanwhile, we've bought more and more cars: in 1970, Americans collectively owned 89 million cars; in 2008, the figure was 137 million. Climate change is picking up speed.

I'm also discouraged about my own ability to reduce reliance on my car. I've done okay on the little things, like packing my own lunch rather than eating take-out to cut down on plastic; I've made the switch to bar shampoo, instead of the stuff in the plastic bottle. But after a semester of regular train travel, I've gone back to driving more.

In other words, the little corrections we've been inspired to make every year for Earth Day do almost nothing to counteract the forces that push ever-increasing consumption. We need to get serious, all of us, about reducing consumption in big ways.

That doesn't mean (just) buying "greener" alternatives of all the stuff we're already buying. It means eating lower on the food chain and wasting less food. It means buying a whole lot less of everything, making what we already have work until it wears out and can no longer be repaired, owning less stuff overall so that we can fit ourselves and our stuff back into smaller homes.

It also means drastically decreasing the amount that we drive -- and that, in turn, requires major structural changes in the way we live. So it also means political action at the local level to make neighborhoods amenable to walking and biking, and at state and federal levels to encourage the construction of more and better mass transit.

The Department of Transportation is asking for $128 billion in the 2012 budget. The vast majority of this will go toward highways; a mere $8 billion is allocated to rails, yet state governments are rejecting even this expenditure, seeking to divert funds instead to additional highway projects.

As the feminists said back in the 70s, the personal is the political. We need to be committed, personally and politically, to change at multiple and major levels. The little stuff isn't enough.

Dayenu!

2011-04-19T20:37:00.002-04:00

Vegetarian, gluten-free seder. Somehow we managed it:
The orange on the seder plate comes in for a lot of interpretations: women in the rabbinate, gays in Judaism. In our case, it filled in for a beet, which we didn't have in the house, and which vegetarians have been known to put on the seder plate in place of a shankbone.

Last year, I made some mock-matzah out of almond flour and coconut oil. This year, papadums from the Indian store on 28th Street.

Do Nothing for Two Minutes

2011-04-18T21:15:00.004-04:00

Kdiddy at Moxiebird brought me to this website, which tells the viewer to listen to the waves and do nothing for two minutes.My sound was off. I listened to a truck backing up, and the wind gusting outside, and the dog wandering around the apartment.

After a few seconds, I found myself relaxing. Breathing. Letting go of the tensions of the day. All this is good. After my two minutes were up, I turned the sound on, and now I get to hear the waves in the background as I type this. If I listen carefully, I can hear a distant gull -- or maybe that's outside my actual windows, not inside the computerized ones.

TechCrunch sez the site is the brainchild of Alex Tew, who thinks social networking is changing the way our brains are wired. (Yep, I'm suspicious -- I wondered if the web site was spending two minutes erasing my hard drive or stealing all my passwords, so I went out and did some looking around.)

I like the site, I really do. I like the idea of taking a two-minute meditative pause out of the non-stop frenzy. But at the same time, I find the idea of simulated sea to be distinctly odd. What do you think?

Unplug Challenge

2011-04-16T13:48:00.001-04:00

I used to turn off the machine every Friday evening and leave it off until Saturday afternoon, but in the frenzy of overwork that was the end of Fall semester, I lost track of that practice.

In early March, I decided to go along with some Treehuggers who were unplugging all electronic devices, following the suggestions laid out in the Sabbath Manifesto about taking a weekly day of rest from the hurry of the week.

I still have a dumb phone, we have no TV reception in the house, and I seldom listen to radio or watch videos, so for me what that essentially means is turning off the computer. I've kept at it each week, shutting down before Shabbat dinner and keeping the machine off until after lunch on Saturday.

That first time, I actually felt a little unmoored. (I'm a little embarrassed to admit this: It should have been easy to pick up a book or a magazine.) For the next few weeks, it continued to feel a little odd.

But with time, it's starting to feel great to get untethered: no news, no FaceBook, no email, no KenKen for around 20 hours each week. And it's making it easier for me to shut the machine off in the evening and go to bed, too.

I'm in the midst of another end-of-semester frenzy, but when that calms, I'm going to push the unplugged time frame until sundown, and then try to keep it that way.

In Memoriam

2011-04-14T17:28:00.002-04:00

It's Poem in Your Pocket Day, as I learned from Magpie. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is out of fashion now among the Literati, but he was the first poet I got to know, because he's from Maine, whence my father hails, and he wrote a poem about some of my distant ancestors.

I'm tempted to post "An April Day," because it describes the lovely sunny weather we've had today. Yet my mood is bleak on this fair day, so instead, in memory of a colleague who left this world far too soon, I give you this:

A Nameless Grave

"A soldier of the Union mustered out,"
Is the inscription on an unknown grave
At Newport News, beside the salt-sea wave,
Nameless and dateless; sentinel or scout
Shot down in skirmish, or disastrous rout
Of battle, when the loud artillery drave
Its iron wedges through the ranks of brave
And doomed battalions, storming the redoubt.
Thou unknown hero sleeping by the sea
In thy forgotten grave! with secret shame
I feel my pulses beat, my forehead burn,
When I remember thou hast given for me
All that thou hadst, thy life, thy very name,
And I can give thee nothing in return.

"Green" Printer Ink

2011-04-10T21:51:00.004-04:00

I ran out of toner for my laser printer the other day. I'd already made the cartridge last as long as possible by taking it out and shaking it to redistribute the toner a few times, but finally it was really and completely empty.

So I was ready to go off to Staples to buy a new one, but The Mate insisted on buying instead from Cartridge World. He wasn't sure if they had them in stock, or if we'd have to wait while the old ones were refilled, and I have to say I wasn't very well-behaved about it all. I didn't want to wait while he made phone calls to get more information, and I didn't want to take any responsibility for doing any of that leg-work myself, and I got crankier and crankier about not being able to print stuff out.

Today he called them. Turns out not only are they open on Sunday, and there's a location not too far from us in the West Village, but they have refilled cartridges for both our printers in stock. And he went off and bought us two refilled cartridges, and dropped off our old ones for recycling.

The box is printed with a request that users return it to the store and the admonition, "Reusing is the highest form of environmental responsibility. Inside the box, the foil bag with the cartridge in it is likewise marked "DO NOT CUT OR TEAR! Zip Top Bag. Recyclable." Huh.

So ... yeah. I'm impressed with The Mate and with Cartridge World, and a little ashamed about being so unenlightened about my printer ink purchase. (If environmental responsibility doesn't do it for you, how about significant savings?)

The Folding Bike Returns

2011-04-07T19:36:00.002-04:00

The folding bike hasn't made many appearances here lately. The Mate's schedule of late makes it harder to spend five hours in a day in transit, even if it's five largely productive hours. It just gets me home too late.

Today I tested the trusty steed as a beast of burden to get groceries home from Whole Foods. I was worried the bag on the back would fall off the first time I hit a pothole, but it all worked out fine across Houston Street and back.

I pulled up next to a guy on a Vespa at one intersection. He peeled out when the light changed, but we both cracked up when I caught up to him again at the next traffic light.

What Is It Like to Go Hungry?

2011-04-03T11:27:00.008-04:00

The federal government is proposing cuts to programs that provide food to children and pregnant women; many people are fasting in protest.

What is it like to go hungry? My mother wrote this about her experiences in Germany after World War II.

-------------------------

At the end of WWII, I was almost six years old. We lived in East Prussia, near the Baltic Sea, next to Lithuania. When the Russian Army advanced we had to flee from our home. We were lucky to make it to a small hamlet called Beienrode in what later became West Germany. We, that is my mother, our nanny, my younger sister, brother and I. We arrived there January 31, 1945 and my baby brother was born four days later. My maternal grandmother joined us a little later. We were put up in two rooms in a duplex occupied by two elderly sisters.

What we ate that winter I don’t remember for sure. My mother received food ration cards for each of us, supposedly with enough calories for us to survive. The problem was that the stores were empty. The local farmers gave us some food; I remember soups of potatoes and water, sometimes a few other vegetables if the market had some. Once my mother received a huge bag of grated turnips. The turnips had been dried to the point of being burnt. According to the Geneva Convention they could not be used to feed prisoners of war so there were given to refugees. I remember my mother boiling the turnips, discarding the water to get rid of some of the burnt taste, then cooking them again, adding a few potatoes. We ate them thankfully – we were hungry.

Our village had several stores: a bakery, a butcher, a fish store and two small grocery stores. My mother or grandmother went to the stores every day to try to buy food. Some days word would get around that a store had received food – or flour for the bakery to bake more bread – and the women would rush to the stores, waiting in long lines hoping there would be food left when it was their turn. As the oldest child I would often accompany my grandmother on shopping trips.

Somehow we got through that 1945 winter.

Things were a little better when spring came. There were announcements about which plants that came up were edible such as stinging nettles that tasted like spinach when cooked. We children were told to go into the meadows and eat the blossoms of primrose flowers. We also sucked the lilac blossoms for the bit of sweet nectar that was in them. One of the fields was divided up into small plots and we could grow our own food to eat in season and to be canned for next winter.

In the summer we went into the woods to pick berries. We pulled a wagon with the two little boys in it, plenty of containers and some food for lunch. We were told to eat as much as we could while we were picking. It was fun.

In the fall, after the harvest of the grains we went into the fields, gleaned what was left behind and threshed the grains out. After the sugar beets and the potatoes were harvested we went into those fields and dug up what had been missed. From the sugar beets my mother pressed out the juice and cooked it into molasses. When the beech nuts had fallen from the trees we gathered them and peeled them, Each beechnut had a sweet nutty kernel on the inside. We also gathered acorns and peeled them. They were bitter. We ground them, my mother boiled them and discarded the water. They were still bitter, we couldn’t eat them.

Some nights my mother and the mother next door would go out into the fields of farmers to get food. She told me later that sometimes they were caught by a guard the farmers had stationed by their fields. My mother and our neighbor would plead, saying they had children at home who were hungry and the guard would let them take the food, saying, “but go to another farmer’s field next night”. The guards knew we were hungry. Many had children, too.

Some mornings my mother would get me up before sunrise. We would take our little wagon and go out of the village into fields that were further away to get food. We hoped no other traffic would be out this early. My mother would get as much food out of the field as possible: cabbages, carrots, turnips, potatoes, beans, peas – whatever was available at the time. I had to stand guard to call her if a horse wagon came by. I always was so afraid – I hated it. When we had enough my mother would cover the food with a blanket and we’d head for home.

Once on our way home one of the two local police men came along on his bike. He looked at us and our wagon. My mother said later that she looked into his eyes. He knew what we had and she knew that he knew. He looked away and went on. Most people during that time were very compassionate. We were lucky we lived in the countryside were the food grew. People from the cities came by bike or by foot begging for food.

We kept a few chickens and each Saturday evening we each had an egg with our supper. After rains we were told to gather earthworms to feed them to the chickens which we didn’t like to do. Instead, we tied strings on the chickens’ legs and led them out on the dirt road in front of our house to get the worms by themselves.

I was supposed to start school in the summer of 1945 when I turned six. However, there was no school anywhere all over Germany. There were no teachers, no books, no supplies and the school buildings that had not been bombed were used to house the homeless and for soup kitchens. Eventually there was a soup kitchen in our little village and we children were given delicious soup. We took along milk cans and if any soup was left we were given some to take home.

My mother and grandmother were creative cooks. For breakfast my mother would stir some flour and water together and drip it into boiling milk, a real treat if there was some sweetener to put on top. We would have fake “liverwurst” made with cooked cream of wheat to which had been added salt, pepper and herbs. Our “whipped cream” was milk cooked with flour to the consistency of cream, then cooled and whipped with vanilla and sugar. The first time we had real whipped cream we wouldn’t eat it. We declared that it was face cream.

In spite of all of this I had a wonderful childhood. We didn’t feel deprived because we didn’t know that this was not normal. We had no games, no books, no playgrounds. Every half-way decent day was spent outside roaming the fields and woods and constantly foraging for food.

Things gradually improved year by year after the war. However, to this day I cannot bear to throw away the smallest scrap of food. Every bit of leftover food goes into a container in the freezer to be used for soup. The saying in my family about anything goes, “Mom can make a nice soup out of it”. I have been lucky to have had enough food for my family and myself most of my life. My heart goes out to the people who do not have enough.

Peace and Health

2011-04-01T12:44:00.002-04:00

The news lately, local and global alike, has felt like a constant barrage. Last night I dreamed a massive barge was moving slowly and inexorably toward me in the East River, bearing another shipment of Bad.

This morning The Mate and I walked the dog along that river. Raw, wet wind flung sleet against our faces while the lead-grey river at its high tide churned and swirled beside us to set a metaphorically appropriate mood.

But there's an interruption to the flood of current events. My colleague Chris Hirschler spent his spring vacation in Guatemala working on public health projects with students and local residents, and he made a video you can check out here.

I sit around at home writing about the environment, trying to get people to think about their own habits and encourage them to make change, and to let that change ripple through community. Meanwhile, Chris and his students are out there doing concrete good -- and I'm inspired, and heartened.

Watch all the way to the end to see marshmallows get toasted like you've never seen before.

Staying Away from BPA

2011-03-31T09:46:00.005-04:00

Earlier this year, I wrote about the problem with tin cans: they're lined with plastic containing BPA. A friend just sent me a link to an article with more information on the problems with the chemical -- used as an additive to make plastic softer and more pliable -- and recommendations for how to avoid it.

According to the article, it should be easy to avoid drinking bottled water, eating with plastic utensils, or storing food in plastic containers; moderately difficult to switch to French press coffee and avoid microwaveable meals; and hard to stop eating food out of cans.

I found the difficulty ratings curious. Bottled water, plastic forks, French press -- check. (I also like the French press because there's no filter to throw away, and after breaking a few glass ones, I switched to a stainless steel one that will last forever. Why wouldn't using one be easy?)

But I don't own a microwave, and when I did for a couple of years recently, I was using it to reheat leftovers (in glass containers), bake potatoes, warm up coffee gone cold and, memorably, attempt to bake a couple of beets (they caught fire: not just smoke, actual flames). I can't imagine wanting to eat a microwaveable meal. (Do they make vegan ones? Maybe that has something to do with it.)

I've been cooking my own beans lately (right now, there are black beans in the fridge and pintos cooling in the crock pot) and have been working toward avoiding cans altogether. There's still some canned coconut milk and one stray can of chick peas in the larder, but I'm getting closer.

But avoiding plastic containers? I've been having trouble with that. I have some stainless steel containers in the house with lids that don't fit well, and some glass bowls with plastic lids as well as plenty of empty canning jars, at this time of year. But the glass sits at the back of the cabinet unused, and it's the plastic containers I go for, time after time -- because I know it won't break.

It's The Stoop, And I Like It

2011-03-27T11:59:00.007-04:00

I was having coffee with a friend the other day. I'll call her "Anne" We were talking about using on-line fora to create virtual communities with students and colleagues, and I said that one of my reasons for joining was to try to foster community among students in my department's MA program.

Anne asked what Facebook is about, and here's the explanation I came up with: it's the stoop. Anne and I met years ago when we were both graduate students and lived in adjacent buildings in the East Village. Whenever the weather allowed for it, after a day of teaching a learning, reading and writing, we'd emerge to hang out on Anne's building's front steps.

We'd greet people, dogs, children who walked by. Sometimes just a nod, sometimes a wave to someone on the other side of the street. Some people would stop for a brief chat, others would sit and join us for a while. We got to know the people in the neighborhood.

And it struck me, talking to Anne the other day, that Facebook is a virtual neighborhood. For me, it brings together old friends, more recent friends, and family members. In a much earlier time, all of these people would have lived in the same neighborhood, and we'd see each other regularly, mostly for a wave or brief greeting, sometimes for a longer conversation.

Lawrence Buell writes in The Future of Environmental Criticism that the spaces we inhabit have become like an archipelago, with spaces where we live and work, where we went or our children go to school like islands in a sea, no longer connected, and the people associated with each activity also now distinct.

Facebook brings them back together into a single virtual space. On my way to work, or on my lunch break, I can nod to an old friend or chat quickly with a cousin in a different state or on a different continent. I can send a message to a colleague who lives thousands of miles away.

Sometimes it turns out that friends from vastly different parts of my life know each other. On Facebook, I've become acquainted with a friend of a friend who knows my aunt in a different state.

Anne wondered about Facebook and privacy, about what it means to be "friends" on Facebook with colleagues or students. I pointed out that we don't sit on the stoop or walk through the neighborhood in our underwear. We choose the personae we show the world, whether in "real" life or in a virtual one. People have more freedom in a virtual universe to re-invent themselves, but most of the people I know who are also on Facebook don't do so.

(Yes, there are villains on Facebook, and like the "real" neighborhood, it has various dangers and pitfalls. But that's a whole other post.)

We need neighbors. We need community. In an increasingly fragmented world, in which we carry around a variety of different identities, Facebook does something to bring all of those selves together.

My Mis-Spent Middle Age

2011-03-24T16:31:00.003-04:00

You know what makes me crazy about plagiarism? The burden of proof is on me, as instructor, to document it.

That time going painstakingly over a paper and, for at least the first several pages, checking every passage I think has been "borrowed" inappropriately and tracking it down, is such god-awful work, and that time would so much better be spent in so many, many other things.

I simply fail students who cut and paste big chunks of text from a web page and passed it off as their own. But when the plagiarism is more subtle, there's substantial institutional pressure to give the student another chance.

Which means I then have to read another draft of that student's paper, and check again to be sure that the corrections have been thoroughly made.

And yes, I do understand that learning to write and to document sources appropriately and well is a recursive process, one that takes a great deal of practice. Yet I can't help but wonder how it's possible that an upper-level English major or a graduate student hasn't gotten the hang of it yet.

I will never get that time back. Will the student learn enough out of the experience to make that worthwhile? I have no idea.

Somebody Else's Problem?

2011-03-22T16:38:00.004-04:00

At the gym yesterday I was subjected to some more enforced television viewing while I warmed up on the treadmill for a weight workout. This time, it was the news. Shootings, fires, other kinds of violence exemplifying the "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality.

Plus a lengthy discussion of food and radiation. A lengthy discussion of the steps the US authorities are taking to make sure that food exports from Japan aren't radioactive.

And it went on, and on, and on, and on, with no reference to the people of Japan, those left alive to cope with this massive disaster, those many thousands who have perished and their hundreds of thousands of friends and family members.

I've been reminded a lot, in all this reporting about the earthquake and the tsunami and the aftermath, of the reporting of the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 -- an event far less catastrophic than what has struck Japan.

The most gruesome of images, played over and over, feeding and stoking an almost salacious interest in the tragedy, the tragedy of others. And lately the constant forwarding of videos of the tsunami with comments like "awesome" seems to me to structure this new tragedy as something that doesn't belong to us, that happened to a different people in a different place and now we can forget.

I was lucky, back on that sunlit day. I was a whole mile away from the towers, looked from a mile away at the airplane-sized hole in the north tower, watched from a mile away as a tower dropped to the ground. I was able to stay in my home as the city fell silent, as cars and buses vanished from the streets and planes and helicopters from the skies above. I did not have to walk miles to get home, as several friends and family members did, and I did not lose a loved one, as did numerous acquaintances.

Yet for months afterward, after the world was finished ogling the images of destruction and death and had moved on, the residents of lower Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn continued to breathe the smoke as the fire continued to burn. Nearly ten years later, a new tower finally rises at the site, but the gashes and scars in the earth -- and in the psyches of many victims of that tragedy -- remain.

Today the people of Japan have barely begun to cope with the disasters that tectonic plates and human greed have wrought. But America has moved on to worrying about our imported nori and fish and rice, completely oblivious and apparently indifferent to the years of pain and work it will take to rebuild homes and bodies and souls.