Composting article

Wendell Berry is the old guy on the edge of your consciousness who says, “would it kill you to make a little compost pile with some egg shells and carrot tops, huh?!”

A nice lady at NYT is super-excited to tell you about her compost!

Crayon lipstick, Uber, and Sustainable Cat Herding

Note, I wrote this about three years ago to talk about my breakfown and eventual resignation from my job at a library. I’ve edited it because, even at that time - this was probably in 2016 maybe? - I was still not taking ownership of my own crash and burn at this position. I’m finally, finally coming out of this hopelessness I’ve felt for years after quitting - hopelessness in not believing I could learn from this and do better next time; in my mind, there was no ‘next time’ for me because I had lost the courage to persevere. I’m still struggling but, for some reason, since the Covid-19 quarantine went into effect I’ve been more optimistic about my future prospects:

Here in my little eco-bubble ("Alachua County: a blue dot in a big, red sea), things are pretty nice (trying not to use "chill"), however; three years since my nervous breakdown I am feeling stronger and (hopefully) wiser, attaining a deeper understanding of how things went all to hell.

I own my part in the demise of my library career, and as for how I was treated by people I had worked with for 10 years, I forgive all of them.  There is no reason to hold onto anger or the notion of revenge, no matter how insignificant. It's the nature of the beast in a high-stress, high-profile position (yes, believe it or not, I had discovered the most stressful library job [which, to many in and out of the profession, will recognize that this is a contradiction in terms]). I am reminded of the phrase, "Forgive but never forget," and there's evidence that not forgiving is okay (I know because someone on the Internet said it).

I'm moving a lot more slowly these days - some of this is from finally realizing how crazy my life was at the library, and taking time now for home and hearth.  I'm glad to be home more right now; I'm 51 years old and, frankly, I'm kind of semi-retired at this point. I work part-time at a survey center (more and more I realize how many times surveys have intersected with my life, and so maybe there's something to that). Also, I messed up my right leg and am hobbling around in a boot.

Having crawled out of the trainwreck that was my life and career, I'm back to square one in a sense. I am leaning more towards trying to get back into school and finishing my masters degree in library science. I really, really, miss working in a library and understand that even while librarianship is my path, my fervor is tempered by the new awareness of my ability to juggle many tasks does not mean I should juggle at all.  Physical evidence is knowing that slowing down has improved my health.

Unsalted Butter for baking

I know there are probably a kajillion cooking sites and channels that tell people to use unsalted butter in baking to reduce the overall amount of sodium. I know this, okay?! Can’t I just make the observation - okay, two observations - about butter?

The first is, if you do use salted butter in a recipe that calls for salt, just omit the salt because the butter already has 90g of sodium per tablespoon for goodness sake, so why would you add more salt on top of that?

Is that too naive or facil? I thought it was rather astute as I used my last stick of salted butter to make cookies today.

The other observation about butter is that Land O’ Lakes brand finally stopped using the Indian maiden on its packaging. I’m not going to call it iconic, the image has always been an affront to indigenous peoples, and its about time they stopped using a charicature of an American
Indian.

At least they didn’t promote this little bit of cringe from the 70’s:

I

Happy Friday!

National Thrift Disco*

*With thanks to James Wesson

It has occurred to me intermittently that there is going to be a f*k-ton of donations being made when some of the restrictions for the coronavirus are lifted to allow donations to thrift store and consignment shops once again. I am both gladdened and nervous about this; as I write, people are going through long-forgotten boxes, closets, sheds - it boggles the mind how much crap - and therefore treasure - people will be unleashing into the reuse stream after we go back to “normal” or some simulacrum.

I’m doing this along with everyone else - my albatross possessions are a blurry mix of my childhood, my son’s childhood, and the constant inflow and stoppage of everyday detritus we bring onto the property. My usual strategy is to create a bolus of things to go to Hospice Attic and when it reaches a certain enormity I take it to the donation area. You’d think that system would make my house a spartan landscape but you would be wrong. Like I said, I am literally shoveling out crap from my son’s childhood.

I have ultimately failed as an environmentalist by buying my child every Nerf gun in existence and then letting them rot out in the carport. And that’s just the name-brand plastic! My task the past month has been to go through and fill contruction-sized bags of plastic debris - it’s mostly broken Nerf guns but there’s also things like LEGOs that can be legitimately returned to the use stream. Mostly, though, it’s junk that is headed to the landfill and did I say it was mostly plastic?

Living Small

Courtesy of Geek Out Huntsville 

Been thinking about the enormous misery Americans are going through right now. Despite your belief in the validity of the pandemic, we are still in a spiral - emotionally, physically, environmentally - and the coronavirus or COVID-19 is going to be with us even after the number of new cases diminish.

Now is the time to have that heart to heart you’ve been wanting to have with yourself but can never seem to find the right moment to bring up the topic of how will life change after the pandemic is over. Today, Bette Miller on Twitter quoted Arundhati Roy who is telling us that we are going to have to rethink what normal is for most Americans. The sudden halt to commerce, travel, immigration, public spaces - all this is going to have to be rethought moving forward. It’s a disaster but people are waking up to some hard truths about American society that we’ve obfuscated for generations, and have dismantled over time, like the concept of equality for all. People who had steady employment are now laid off like they don’t exist - this many people out of work is unsustainable. We will implode if this continues.

In other news, there’s going to be a huge food giveaway tomorrow morning at the Alachua County Fairgrounds and I volunteered to help with the distribution. I was advised to bring a mask but not gloves because the CDC hasn’t recommended it, which is a ridiculous reason for not letting people bring gloves.

In the time of Coronavirus

I miss Marineland.

WTH, people?! I go away for a few years and now the worst has occurred- coronavirus, Covid-19. Through a hilarious series of mishaps and literal fumbles, our dear leaders let several windows of opportunity close and now we’re all apparently doomed.

How’re things going? Social distancing is hard, even for an introvert (I’m not talking about myself, per se)! But in all the humanity-related miseries we wake up to each day, there is a silver lining; humanity’s breather from destroying the earth has shown us just how resilient the earth is, actually.

We used to see stories about how, now that Chernobyl is uninhabited by humanity, the natural ecosystem is flourishing and thriving like never before. Now, with the reductions of thuggish humans along the canals of Venice, the water is a beautiful, clear, Mediterranean blue from lack of boating activity. That’s just one of the many stories and I’ll update at some point with more links (if you’re into that positivity thing).

From this article on the NatGeo site, it says there are now “animals thriving among human quarantine” spate of fake news stories. But then Snopes pops off with “it’s a mixed bag of truth and BS.” Who are we to believe?!