Inspiration = Breathing-In

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

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.

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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

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?

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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

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.

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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

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

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.

1. 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.
2. 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

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".

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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.