The following excerpt is one of my favorite bits from Saving the Planet & Stuff. In order to create humor, I use hyperbole to ramp up the decision-making those trying to live environmentally sound lives do. But I also think this conversation illustrates a real struggle.
At least, I'm struggling.
See my picnic dish collection to the right? I've had them since 2001 and used them for large family al fresco meals over the years. I don't buy paper plates or napkins or plastic picnic cutlery. But it takes quite a while to get these things washed. Cheap plastic must hold grease. Sinks full of water go down the drain before we finish the job. But I've done the kind of thinking Nora does below and decided that my priority is solid waste, those disposable paper plates and cutlery, over detergents and water. If I lived in California right now, no doubt I'd feel differently.
Seriously, I don't live all that environmentally sound a lifestyle. People who do have to do this kind of priority assessment all the time.
"Michael? I'm Maureen Bogda," she announced.
"Associate editor," Amber reminded him. "Don't ask what that is. I was here all of July and August last year and never figured it out."
"We have something we'd like you to take care of for us. We need you to go out and pick up a few lunches," Maureen said as she handed Michael several orders with cash clipped to them and explained how he would find the restaurant.
Amber caught Michael's eye. "Speaking of sucky work—"
"Oh, no!" Michael objected. "I like buying things."
"I'm glad to hear that," Maureen said, "because Nora asked if you would stop at the little grocery store on the corner to pick up some soy milk and eggs. She wants the free-range eggs from chickens that have never lived in cages, if they have them this week. However, she says that if they are packed in a plastic package to please check and make sure the package is either number one or two plastic because that's all we can recycle in this town. If they have the free-range eggs, but they're packed in the wrong kind of plastic, don't get them. Get regular eggs, but make sure the regular eggs are in a cardboard package, not Styrofoam, because Nora doesn't buy Styrofoam."
"Uh … just a minute. I'd better write that down," Michael said as he started to look over Amber's desk, hoping to find some paper.
"Nora did it for you," Maureen replied as she handed Michael another piece of paper and some more money.
By the time Michael Racine reaches the Vermont border with Walt and Nora, he has figured out that spending time with these two isn't going to be more of the same for him. After his first meal in their solar home, which he thought was chicken parm until he realized they were vegetarians so God only knew what he'd just eaten, Nora takes him upstairs to what will be his room for the next month or so. She was unprepared for a guest, and Michael was unprepared for what he found.
There were two small, horizontal windows crammed between two narrow closets and above a set of built-in drawers on the exterior wall across from him ("Built-in furniture provides extra insulation," Nora explained). Michael barely noticed them because he was so busy taking in the bed, the floor of a closet—its door couldn't be shut—a little table with an arrangement of cobweb-draped dried flowers, and an armchair with a matching footstool, which were all covered with … stuff.
"I'm afraid we've collected a few things over the years," Nora said apologetically.
"Wow. You collect bags of Styrofoam beans," Michael said, pointing to four bags filled with them.
"They aren't biodegradable, so we didn't want to throw them out when the town still had a landfill. We use them as packing when we want to mail something," Nora explained.
Michael lifted a roll of used bubble packaging off from the bed. "I guess you don't mail stuff very often, huh?"
Nora took the roll from Michael. "I keep meaning to take them into the office. They'll get used there. Maybe we could bring them with us tomorrow."
The rest of the room's contents would not be as easy to dispose of. There were a couple of bundles of brown paper bags, and plastic sacks filled with more plastic sacks. There was a pile of very ratty bath towels, a half dozen decorative tins of various sizes, partially burned candles, empty cardboard boxes, a variety of canvas satchels stamped with the names of various organizations, two partial sets of dishes, stacks and stacks and stacks of magazines, three …
"You see," Nora began awkwardly, "we're trying to control waste by diverting materials from landfills—which are reaching capacity in a lot of places, you know—and the regional incinerators that are replacing them. We did an article in The Earth's Wife on that in, I think, June of '98."
So they're diverting materials from the landfill to their spare bedroom? Michael wondered.
Okay. So this is kind of autobiographical. I don't so much try to divert waste from the transfer station, which is what our community has now, as keep it from going there for as long as possible. I hold on to things like Nora does so I can use them again or find a way to pass them on to some unsuspecting soul. It's kind of like the Schroedinger's Cat thing. So long as these things are somewhere in my house, they have the potential to be either useful or solid waste. It could go either way.
Here, for instance, is my most recent bubble wrap collection. I have used hoarded bubble wrap for mailing packages, though I'll also admit that I dumped some during a time management clean out binge. The wrap you see in this picture all showed up in
one order that was shipped in
four different boxes this past month. It's as if these people sit down and think of ways to generate waste.
And here are two different views of our box collection. Yesterday a house guest told me she was leaving me a gift box for my collection. I particularly like gift boxes, and she knows it, so it was a touching moment.
Like Nora, I have a bag collection...
...and a decorative tin collection...
...and here are my back issues of
Yoga Journal.
All these things can be used again, so there's no reason for them to be trashed. Except for the
Yoga Journals. That's a really fine magazine, which is why I hold on to them, but I am planning to weed through those things because you can't really use them
for something the way you can those tins, bags, boxes, and bubble wrap rolls. To be truthful, though, I'm three months behind reading the new issues, so it will be a while before I see any progress on the back ones.
Unlike Walt and Nora, I do not have all this stuff spread over a spare bedroom. But I like humor that comes about when two conflicting thought processes/world views come together, and a little hyperbole is very helpful in creating that.
Additionally, though, with scenes like this one I wanted to illustrate the effort and attention to detail that goes into an attempt to live anything approaching an environmentally sound lifestyle.
If any readers are Noras and have collection of useful items they are keeping from transfer stations, feel free to share in the Comments.
Here are more delicious rhetorical devices to add to your prose spice shelf.
Epizeuxis repeats a word in a sentence or clause for emphasis.
It was a long, long night for them both.
Hyperbole uses deliberate exaggeration. It can be funny or sarcastic. Use it sparingly.
Jane was so tired she could have slept for a year, maybe four.
Hypophora is similar to a rhetorical question, only the question is answered. Often the base clause or sentence poses the question and the modifying phrases answer it. In dialogue, it can be provocative if the character asks the question then answers it for the other person.
Jane turned to Dick. "So you want to slay the ghost, by yourself? No, no, I get it. You're strong; I'm weak. You're fast; I'm slow. I'd just get in your way. Fine, see if I care."
Isocolon stresses corresponding words, phrases, or clauses of equal length and similar structure.
Never had Dick promised so much, to appease so many, to benefit so few.
Litotes is an understatement that denies the opposite of the word the reader expects. It can use no or not. It creates confusion.
Jane was not a little angry with Dick for leaving her.
Metaphors can add richness and texture if used wisely. Metaphors compare two different things without using like or as in sentences and paragraphs. Not every simile is a metaphor, but every metaphor implies a simile. Dead metaphors and similes are often cliché, so it's important to cut them or change them up when possible. The biggest offender is the mixed metaphor in which the second proposition is inconsistent with the first.
Dick was able to shed some light on the text. (light = understanding)
Jane stared through the window at the black velvet sky. (sky = black velvet)
Oxymorons connect contradictory terms. You can find extensive lists on the internet. If you look for them, kill them whenever possible. They are hard to spot because they are so frequently used. Most readers won't recognize them as such.
A few examples include:
- act naturally
- active retirement
- almost exactly
- approximately equal
- blind eye
- born dead
- clearly confused
- controlled chaos
- deafening silence
- exact estimate
- found missing
- larger half
- old news
- open secret
- original copy
- seriously funny
- unbiased opinion
- virtual reality
Next week, we will contine adding spices to your prose shelf.
For the complete list of spices and other revision layers, pick up a copy of:
by RudyG
gentry - the qualities appropriate to a person of gentle birth; upper or ruling class.
gentrification - the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often replaces earlier usually poorer residents. [definitions: Webster's Dictionary]
So, some gentry "of gentle birth" are renewing, rebuilding and replacing all over your barrio. Should you let the coraje get to you and start making bilingual picket signs and petitions?
One common belief is--Simón, ese! The price of local pizza will go up, tamales-by-the-dozen will become rarer than a Chicano jogger, your favorite cantina will be remodeled into a vegiburger or starbucked bistro where one item can cost more than a dozen tamales, and your neighborhood school will be turned into a more exclusive charter factory that features maybe a dozen chicanitos. But that's such a shortsighted, narrow and "poorer" view, it might be better to take a longer, broader and "richer" perspective on the phenomena.
Based on decades of scattered, sometimes sober, observations of Northside Denver's gentrification, as well as hundreds of hours drinking Negras on Friday afternoons out in my front yard with my untrained perro Manchas, I've discovered undiscovered value to these invasions. It's not all floating caca under the bridge, but our "usually poorer residents" can benefit from this "influx of middle class or affluent people" and even climb the economic-advantage ladder to almost becoming "upper or ruling class." Here's how I see it:
Signs when a barrio gets gentrified | Benefits for barrio gente |
1. When the forecast calls for "surf's up" on the beach or mountain snow, gentry's trash & recycle bins hit the curbside days before scheduled pick-up, encouraging burglaries. | Since gentry obviously aren't home, this gives you time to search their bins for aluminum cans and junk to sell at your biannual yard sale, if you simultaneously watch your casa. |
2. Yards that never had gardens are suddenly filled with lush plants, tall green trees and expert landscaping, making yours look like a monte with a barber-college haircut. | You won't have to nag your esposa to cut the lawn or weed the garden anymore because there's no way yours can ever look as suave or verde as theirs. |
3. On the other hand, that deceased viejita's rosebeds are pulled up and replaced by formulaic gentry-landscapes that produce a few small flowers with little maintenance. | Your d-i-y landscaping is the most unique around, and scrawny roses you transplanted when everybody was at the viejita's funeral make gentry think you got a green thumb. |
4. Newspapers on gentry's front yards pile up because they all have wireless IPods & IPads and don't read print--or went skiing--but have too much disposable income and don't cancel their subscriptions. | You don't waste money anymore on subscriptions; you just take your dog on his customary, new, morning walk, nonchalantly pick up your free copy and your esposa compliments you for getting up off your fat nalgas. |
5. The viejitos who struggled along with their walkers don't come by anymore to help improve your pocho Spanish, and the young, fit güera/güero joggers never stop, unless they need a translator. | Young, fit, güeras (or güeros, if that's how you jog), jogging--paint your own picture and also see #6. |
6. New, monolingual neighbors have replaced the fluent Spanish-speakers who stopped by on Fridays to chat and help you improve your pocho bilingualism, so now you always converse in English-only. | Your status rises when your pocho Spanish makes you El Primo Translator of the block, and you now translate for landscaping, drywall and roofing vatos redoing the barrio, and they envy your English fluency. |
7. Your neighbors' pure-breds are fully trained, bark less and live inside more than your mongrel, targeting you for nuisance-dog complaints. | When robbers check out your block, they stay away from your casita and its unsocialized, barking mongrel, making you look smart to la esposa. |
8. New, shining, MPG & GPS-equipped silver cars sit in gentry driveways, increasing local car thefts and making your old troca look like it belongs to one of the roofers. | There's more neighbors with working cars who you can ask to boost your worthless troca's battery on sub-zero mornings, if they're not skiing. Plus, see #7 above. |
9. Gentry breweries and cafes have replaced your dive bars and cheap taco joints, forcing you to drive miles on Fridays for tus traguitos and some refritos con green chile picoso. | You save chingos by buying six-packs and bags of chicharrones, while spending more time training your mongrel out in your front yard, waiting for translation requests and Benefit #5. |
Of course, this list is incomplete and La Bloga readers are encouraged to add to it. There could be thousands and thousands of ways for our "usually poorer residents" to benefit from the "upper or ruling class" takeovers of their neighborhoods. Qué no, gente?
Es todo, hoy,
por RudyG
Is Alec Greven now the world's youngest author? Frankly, I've lost track. Anyway, Greven has written a text called How To Talk to Girls. (Do 9 year old boys talk to girls? Or want to?)
In any case, you simply must follow this link to read the final paragraph in the AP piece. I won't reproduce it here as the short article tells me, "This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed." But, please: Head on over and read. You'll thank me for making your day.
In a fit of chronic I-haven't-got-the-time-and-frankly-I-can't-be-bothered-ness, I tried an experiment with our weekend loaf. Normally I make a 'sponge' by mixing about one third of the flour with roughly half a pint of yeasty water and whatever else I'm adding, (olive oil, sea salt, sunflower seeds, whatever). It bubbles up nicely and later I add the bulk of the flour and adjust the dough to the right feel, before kneading for the prescribed ten minutes. Actually I don't time myself anymore as I can tell when it's ready. But I did wonder what would happen if I simply mixed it all up and let it rise, adjusting the flour and NOT kneading at all, finally letting it rise again in the loaf tin. So I did. And this is what emerged. No, not two fat ginger cats...
A perfectly acceptable loaf, which did taste a little different (more cakey, Andy said - more yeasty, I thought). It was a bit sloppy in the tin, but has a nice crust.
Later I Googled 'no knead bread' as I was sure I wasn't the mad inventor of this, and found that there is indeed a very famous method, as practised by certain Mr Jim Lahey in New York. But you know, I've read through it, and compared to mine, it sounds a bit complicated...
We had a weekend visitor - he turned up unnanounced in the kitchen.
He didn't seem to like his water tub accomodation though, so after having his picture taken we popped him into next door's pond. I can't remember the last time I saw a newt. I don't know whether to feel joy at having seen one again, or despair that they seem to be so scarce. Let's stick with joy, shall we? After all, it is Monday.
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And here is is without the typo: Where I live we have a barrio with pretty gardens and shrines to the Virgen de Guadalupe a few blocks from a house with fake guard tower complete with a rifle-totting mannequin and an YOU CAN TAKE MY GUN WHEN YOU PREY IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD FINGERS sign. The gentry seem to afraid to come here, but the African immigrants like it. ¡Viva Arizona!
My childhood neighborhood was puro fenced-in dirt, except for the Benta's next door. They had the only manicured lawn for blocks around. Of course, our dogs preferred to poop there causing endless friction between them and my grandpa, who lived up front. Our house was in the back of the lot. He sat on his front porch every day in warm weather, smoking a pipe and talking to his parrot, but the problems with the Benta's continued. He ended up creating a barrier of found wood and metal between his yard and theirs so he wouldn't have to see them when they pulled into their driveway. Theirs was the only attempt at gentrification I remember. I hope they remember him and our dogs fondly.
Rudy, this certainly brings back memories of my own dusty, poor neighborhood when I was growing up in South Texas in a little town of 20K people. Few folks had grass in their yards, with no professional landscaping, no hired gardeners, lots of dust swirling on windy days (which was frequent), and a caliche street, with huge chunks of gravel. I was pretty grown by the time our street finally got paved in asphalt. The neighborhood now, more than 40 years later, still looks pretty much the same. Thanks for your good sense of humor!