In Ways You Never Imagined

Four years ago we made a decision as a family -- we would own only one car. Our family, at the time, consisted of the two of us and a dog and even though the death of our old dog changed our configuration temporarily, we now have a new dog and still one car.

The choice to be a one-car family was made for a variety of reasons. First, my job was a half mile away. I began walking to work and home again every day. There was no need for a second car. Next, by selling one of our two cars, we were able to pay off the loan of the other limiting our "debt" allowing us to apply for a nice big loan to remodel our house. In fact, when we met with the representative of the mortgage company, she meticulously listed our "assets" and then asked about our debts. Aside from my student loan and what we owed on the house, we had none. She looked up and said, "Really?" We nodded, surprised by her surprise and she said, "Good god, I can get you oodles of money."

The final reason we made a choice to be a family who owned only one car had to do with our commitment to the environment, our commitment to reduce our ecological footprint.

Living with one car hasn't been that difficult though it does limit some of our options. For instance, if one of us has the car and the other is at home without it, it's difficult to run errands or go anywhere particularly if the weather is bad. Yes, we ride our bikes or take the transit if need be, and we even walk 5-6 miles to get where we need to go. There have been frustrations when we both need the car at the same time for separate commitments and occasionally we've had to spend energy figuring out how it's all going to work or worse case scenario, one of us has had to cancel our commitment. Though that rarely happens it still adds a friction we didn't have when we owned two cars instead of one.

But now I've started working with a dog trainer not only training our dog, but learning "how" to train dogs in general. Three days a week I'm driving to a training session 25 miles out of town, which can take me anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours depending on traffic (the 2 hours is rare, but it does happen on occasion). This has made the dance of who gets to drive the car a bit more complicated. And so we have begun to talk about getting another car.

In the past this decision wouldn't have bothered me, but as my knowledge of negative impacts on our enviroment has increased (I currently teach environmental science), I'm struggling with the decision.

We've been looking at more environmentally friendly ideas like hybrid or even something we can run on biodiesel, but my research into these options hasn't made me feel any more comfortable with the idea of being a two-car family versus a one-car family. It's a long and complicated dialogue in my head...

...IF we get a biodiesel car, we lose the car's warranty as biodiesel isn't regulated and car companies aren't inclined to service a vehicle that runs on old vegetable oil purchased from someone's home-brewed concotions...and while biodiesel is becoming more popular, biodiesel stations are still inconsistently available. To fill a tank with biodiesel, we'd actually have to drive about 10 miles roundtrip.

...IF we get a hybrid, well, we're still using gas...less gas, but gas still the same.

But there are deeper issues...at least for me. There's the issue of class and privilege, of being able to own something most of the world cannot. There's the issue of consumption of limited resources, not just oil, used to produce a car. There's the issue of using gas in our other car and increasing our overall consumption of gas as a family. And there's the issue of choice -- and this is perhaps the most difficult for me.

Choosing to purchase another car is the proverbial choosing the lesser of two evils. The best choice, of course, is to stick with one car, or if possible, no car at all, but if I wish to continue my pursuit of becoming a dog trainer, we need at least one car and one car has a negative impact not only on the environment, it also has a negative impact on our lives -- arranging our schedules so we can get where we need to go.

I torture myself with these internal debates. Today, in fact, while I escorted my students on a field trip to see the Sockeye salmon spawn, I heard our guide talk about the evils of oil runoff on our watersheds, the contamination of our oceans from CO2 emissions, and the suffocation of salmon runs by the construction of roads and highways. When we got to the river where the salmon were to be spawning, we found only two decomposing salmon on the riverbank and about 10 or so dead salmon floating in the river. Last year when we went to this very same river, there were at least 100 salmon working their way upstream or rotting on the shore inviting bald eagles and hungry hawks to fly over our heads as we marveled at the salmon cycle.

"Last year," our guide said, "We had about 6,000 salmon for the season. This year, we'll be lucky to see 2,000 at this river."

"What are the issues preventing a good salmon run?" a parent chaperone asked.

"It's complicated, but much of what we know points to human impact with development, pollution, and destruction of the salmon's complex and expansive habitat (from the ocean to the rivers)."

It didn't make me feel any more hopeful, at the end of the day, when we all piled into our 6 different cars to head back to school and it didn't make my internal struggle any easier to resolve.

Though this idea did come to me...

...we could sell our gas-powered car for a hybrid (one with the best gas mileage and the lowest emissions) AND purchase a small used diesel car (sans warranty) to run as a biodiesel for our town driving. While we'd still become a two-car family, the impact of those two cars might actually add up to the same impact as our current gas-powered SUV.

"You need to make an educated choice," I heard our guide say as she pointed to the housing project butting up against the edge of the salmon-free river. "The more you know, the more your choices will have less of an impact on our wild places."

I'm not sure how much our students picked up on the message or how much their "education" will inform their choices, but I know that even if what they learned today does make them better stewards, it's still not an easy road because when you KNOW that very same knowledge can paralyze you in ways you never imagined.

First Impressions

I'm listening to Norman Mailer on the radio. He's died, but his rough and goopy voice lives on. I don't know what I think about Norman Mailer or how I feel about the legacy to which the radio host keeps referring. I think I am supposed to dislike him, to find him arrogant and misogynistic. I think I am supposed to feel offended by him, oppressed by his intellect and use of big words.

But I have never read Norman Mailer. I have only heard him speak -- short snippets of interviews before I change the channel of either the TV or the radio. I seem to dislike the rumor of him. I do not like his voice and for some reason, I don't like the look of him, but all I know of him is his perceived greatness, the greatness now broadcast on the radio after his death.

I form opinions like this often and try as I might, they stick. I feel much the same way about my neighbor. Our interactions have been limited, but his aura, as it were, gives me the creeps. His wife is affable though we call her Mrs. Kravitz because of her rather snoopy nature, but he, the husband feels smarmy and unpredictable.

A few years back, Sharon lived up the street though we called her "Lulu" in reference to the odd and loopy things she did -- sitting on her front stoop in only her underwear and slippers in the dead of winter or her monthly "cleaning" of her house where she threw everything out the front door including furniture, applicances, rugs, and a TV and left it in a pile until a kindly neighbor came by to clean it up.

Last year, as I was walking home from work, a middle-aged woman stopped me on the street and thanked me for being so kind to her. "I was your neighbor," she said once she saw my puzzled look. "I'm Sharon." She looked nothing like the Lulu we'd known. Her hair was clean, her clothes were on and relatively new, and the whirling dervish I remembered of her eyes were now clear and direct. "You were just so kind and I will never forget that," she continued. I had no recollection of what I did other than call the police as I watched her beat her son with a broom handle and chase him down the street, but I bowed my head and said, "You're welcome" afraid to ask any of the questions swirling through my head (where are you living, what happened, why are you sane when I thought you were a lost caused?).

Even as she walked on up the street and I continued on home, I doubted that she'd changed, that she was as kind and as thoughtful as her words.

My first impression stuck and I couldn't shake it.

When this happens with one of my students, I do an excellent job of compartmentalizing my feelings and dealing with the kid on her level. Years later, if she were to stop me on the street I might not remember her or if I did, I wouldn't necessarily give her the benefit of the doubt.

This happened once when I was in a bar. There to hear one of my favorite bands, a young woman approached me and smiled. "Do I know you?" I asked. "Yes, I'm Elsa." And it all flooded back to me. This was Elsa. Perfect Elsa. The Elsa who asked amazing questions in my history class and wrote insightful, powerful essays on the failings of war and the exhausting struggle it took to maintain peace. I loved Elsa. But I didn't recognize her. 17 year old Elsa would never go into a sleazy bar like this one. Elsa wouldn't like this band. Elsa wouldn't be holding a shot glass in her hand and look at her former teacher a bit bleary-eyed. This was not Elsa of my first impression. This was an adult Elsa, an Elsa of her own choosing.

It didn't fit.

I do it with people with whom I work. R. at work who makes me nervous. J. who I joke with in public, but find difficult to respect as a teacher. K. who does everything to bug me, or so I think, even down to her slurpy food that she eats with her hands and spills on the table.

They are good people. They are people doing the best they can and still I keep my distance. Still I find it hard not to let my first impressions limit their potential.

Norman Mailer is now talking about sex on the radio. How sex with someone you love is much different than sex in a brothel. He is articulate. The audience laughs. The host interacts in a jovial way. And Norman Mailer coughs a phlegmy rattle, stopping the conversation long enough for there to be a moment of silence on the radio.

And from sex, he moves on to the topic of Hitler and then Stalin and finally, the radio show ends and I still feel as if I cannot like the man even in his death.

This is not me. I am a good person who tries hard not to judge.

And yet still, the judgment happens. Conversations prattle on inside my head and I argue both sides of pointless debates. My first impressions hold firmly and my kind self cannot seem to get a foot hold in the spiteful mountain of my mean self.

Okay, I'm not mean. I don't actively hate anyone or go out of my way to do mean and spiteful things to people who make me uncomfortable. In fact, I am an avoider choosing to remove myself from possibly confrontational situations even if my judgment of them is visceral. I do kind things too like help the old lady with her groceries at the store or open doors for those in need or smile at the neighbor who sits on his porch watching the world go by.

Still, if I could wipe away my gluey first impressions what would my world look like then?

Dear Tampax

Women all have their stories of when we first used your product. Mine began later in life when, at 25, I ventured to use my first tampon. Up until that point, I used only pads -- saddles in my underwear. My housemate, at the time, helped me insert my first tampon and then later that day, my other 3 housemates came into the bathroom to share their techniques. My first tampon was uncomfortable, but not unbearable. It was, as you advertised then, freeing not to be restricted to the side of the pool during those "times of the month" but now, almost 25 years later and thousands upon thousands of tampons disposed of, I have a complaint.

What the hell were you thinking changing the shape, length, AND WIDTH of the "new" tampon? They hurt, they leak, and when pulling them out, it's much the same feeling as I experience during my yearly pelvic exams. OUCH! I wish I'd known you were changing your design for I would have hoarded as many of the old style tampons as I could have possibly fit into my storage cabinets. I would have hauled away one of those slatted wooden pallets straped high with boxes upon boxes of tampons from Costco. As a pre-menopausal woman, my time left in the purgatory of your recent invention should be relatively short, but still I cringe at the thought of another year or even another month dreading both the insertion and extraction of this medieval device you dare to call "feminine" let alone hygenic!

Alas, I am left with only one option: I am sending out an ad on Craig's List calling all post-menopausal women to scour their cupboards for half-full or perhaps fully stocked boxes of the old-style tampons that have gone unused since the blood stopped. I will pay any price though currently the outrageous cost of any tampon cries out for revolutionary action. Who invents these things? Certainly it is not women. Certainly it is not middle-aged women who've been using your product for 25 years and have grown accustomed to the absorbent structure and the cardboard applicator. Certainly it is not women who, during that 25 years, have literally carved out a "niche" for one particular type of tampon.

For if women of my generation, my size and shape had been part of your research and development team, we would have cried FOUL. We would have stormed the board rooms swinging tampons by their strings over our heads like Xena the Warrior Princess weilding her spiked mace at drooling enemies. We would have bled on your fine boardroom chairs, soiling your white carpets as we raced around your typing pools.

So much for "freeing" me...I now feel enslaved by one little white plug slowly slipping out even as I write.

I no longer want to be a part of this story. Change it back!!

Signed,

Tampooned

Cook a Homo

It's been awhile since I've had a chance to sit down and just write. Between teaching all day long and the 3 classes of dog obedience 3-nights a week, I feel like I've been doing at least 2 jobs and not one.

And in between there's been some interesting fillers:

Last weekend, for instance, we went to a friend's party put on by her financial planner as a "thank you" for she and her partner's business for many, many years. (I'm sure it helps that this friend of mine is rather well-off...) We felt honored to be invited though the announcement of the event made me a bit nervous...

Vegetarian Cooking Class

I am not strictly a vegetarian. I enjoy vegetables and I don't enjoy red meat much (anymore...after a long time of not eating it), but I will eat chicken and a good bratwurst (the German side of me) as well as occasionally much on some bacon, which technically isn't red meat...right?

Vegetarian sounds like a good idea, but I've never been enamored with much of the food or the amount of time it takes to prepare things or the funky texture of tofu (like the slime on the bottom of swimming pools) and so I am often at a loss about what to cook and how to get my proteins and so I stick to my regulars -- Boca Burgers or Garden Burgers or pasta with some kind of sauce.

Boring.

I was intrigued by the idea of taking a cooking class, but worried that I might not like any of the food and therefore be hungry and I don't do hungry well.

But I've lived to tell you that IF you know what you're doing, and have the menus that we had, vegetarian food can be damn good.

But it wasn't the food that was the most interesting. Rather, it was the chef. A small, Italian man with a very heavy accent assumed, I think, that everyone in the room was straight. There were 6 men and 6 women, hence, as most of the world might presume, 6 x 2 equals 12, but he got the twos in the wrong pairings.

No one corrected him. In fact, I don't think any of us really paid that close attention, though it was rather obvious to me when he called all the women "sweetie" and slapped all the men on the back. At one point, as I was cooking with my gay male new friend, Mark (an Episcopalian minister), when the Italian chef, named of all things Tiberius (though he insisted we call him "delicious") asked if Mark and I cooked together at our own house. Mark and I just stared at each other and continued chopping onions and basting eggplant. "Yes" was the answer though "our house" was a separate -- his with his partner, Mike, and mine with my partner Ann, who were, ironically, also teamed up together for this class.

Delicious floated around the room at a frenzied pace imploring us to "cooka on higha, yes?" because it would get done faster and to "justa do ita like thees" skipping whole steps in the recipe and ending up with a finished product that tasted pretty damn good.

But the highlight of the evening was when Delicious thanked us for our interest in his cooking school and for our enthusiasm in the kitchen. "I hope this will inspire you to cooka homo!" And with the clap of his strong hands, he made his exit.

We all sat in silence for a moment and then laughed out loud. "Yippee, we now know how to cook a homo!"

Who knew vegetarian cooking could be so fun!

Tuesday night of this week was the only night I had to just relax. With dog classes on Monday and Wednesday nights, usually Thursdays and Fridays are free as well, but this week as well as weekend, was filled to the brim.

Thursday night we went to watch the UW women play volleyball. This may not seem that interesting, but since I made my athletic career playing volleyball and running track at the UW, it was an intriguing venture back into my past. A parent of one of my students gave us the tickets and we sat in the student section feeling old and behind the times sans a cell phone or some such device with which to text message...as everyone around us was doing just that between the volleys.

The game has changed. It's faster, more powerful and the rules are radically different. Who knew that when the served ball hits the top of the net and still makes it over it's still a ball in play? The players are taller (at 5' 9" I was one of the tallest players on my team) and if at all possible, the uniform shorts are shorter...and the women much, much skinnier.

We had a great time watching, though at one point, I had to turn my back on the parent who gave us the tickets as I was unintentionally party to her conversation with another mother sitting next to her. It was appalling how they vied for position..."well, my daughter went to camp for two weeks there last summer"...."well, my daughter did their survival camp there last summer for a month!" and on and on..."I can't believe that lot is so small...only 15,000 square feet, and the house, well the house is a good price at 1.5 mil, but I worry about that small yard."

The joys of teaching at a private school.

Friday night was again rubbing elbows with the wealthy, but we also rubbed elbows with some of the geekist scientists I've ever met. My dear friend Janice at the Seattle Aquarium got us tickets to hear one of my idols speak. Sylvia Earle is a dynamo at 71 years of age and I would have stormed the doors to hear her speak, but luckily we got complimentary tickets for 7 o' clock at the Aquarium.

There is a great deal to say about this event, but I shall hold my tongue. In the end, it was an event of great irony -- we arrived at 6:45 for a 7:00 start time only to be escorted into the touch tank area where we were served appetizers (nothing with seafood, mind you...it would have been too weird eating salmon by the salmon tank) and milled around amongst the governor's staff, the weatlthy benefactors, and these pods of geeky scientists who hovered around the appetizers like gulls around a fishboat.

Finally, at 8 they let us into the auditorium where we were seated, finally. I was tired. It was Friday night after a long, long week and the last thing I wanted to do was stay out until 11, but Sylvia Earle did not come to the podium until 9. Ahead of her were the many "big names" at the event -- state officials, Billy Frank, Jr. (elder of the Nisqually tribe), and Aquarium sponsors. By the time Sylvia made it to the podium, I was exhausted.

She is a very small woman, hunched with osteoporois (deep water diving?) and spoke in a deep, sultry voice about the fate of the planet. "They say that the new red, white, and blue is green, but I say the new green is blue..." She flashes up the picture of the earth taken from space and yep, it's blue, blue blue.

(Sylvia Earle in 1988)

More blue pictures unfolded as she applauded all in attendance for "getting DC to listen, finally, to the warnings we've all known for years...the ocean is dying and when it dies, we will die as well."

Not an upbeat message, but from her mouth, it was a call to action. "90% of the big fish in the ocean are gone. They are not coming back, but to feed the hungry mouths of humans, we are now catching fish from the middle of the food chain and selling it as a delicacy. You want to know how to kill and ecosystem in seconds flat? Eat from the middle of the food chain!"

I have been struggling with this dilemma since I began working with the Aquarium. Each spring we take our students out to learn to be Beach Naturalists and the more I learn, the more I feel compelled to make a change in my life in an attempt to save the oceans. Ann thinks I'm ridiculous, but I've limited our fish intake dramatically and have even considered going back to eating red meat. "Cows aren't wild," Sylvia Earle says, "but fish are. Eat the cows, eat the cows. We've learned to grow them like wheat. They are a replenishable food source, but the fish are not! You're clearcutting the ocean forests and no one seems to care!"

But I can't bring myself to eat red meat. Ann says I should start slowly, but it's not just the texture or the digestion of something so undigestable or the threat of mad cow or ecoli poisoning, it's the "industry" of it all, the "unknowns" of where the cow came from, how it was treated, how it was fed, how it was killed, and the fact that most people in the world do not eat meat because they cannot afford it...and all those left of liberal reasons that float around in my head.

And now they float around because of the fish and Sylvia Earle and all I've learned about our dying oceans...and ARRRRGGGGHHHH...what to do, what to do?

Despite the inner turmoil, Sylvia Earle was inspirational. She hasn't given up and she's seen it all -- plastic dumped out of dead birds and the expanding dead zones in the ocean -- and I've seen only a smidge and I even though I feel like giving up, I can't because Sylvia, all hunched and crippled, is still fighting the good fight.

And finally, on Saturday, I spend the day at Peggy's horse farm helping to run an Educator's Day when it hits me. I'm watching a teacher from Canada work with a horse and Peggy is telling her things I've heard a hundred times -- not just from Peggy, but from Dave and Becky the dog trainers -- it's your energy...where is your energy?

"Thousands of years ago, when horses roamed the plains with lions, they'd live together on the same piece of land." Peggy's story...I've heard it all before...but this time it hit home..."The horse is munching peacefully on the tall grass and the lion is sleeping peacefully by the tree. They know each other is there, but not until the lion thinks 'I am hungry' does the horse fear the lion. In fact, when the lion just touches the edge of his thought...'I am hu...' the horse has alerted the herd and skidaddled out of danger. It's all energy."

I'm standing at the edge of the arena thinking...My energy is wrong. I'm off balance. I must not think about what I can't eat, but what I can eat. I must not think I am alone in saving the planet, I must think I am one of hundreds, thousands, millions upon millions who right now are working to save the planet. I must believe it before I can see it.

Peggy tells her clients this all the time. "You must believe you can make the horse move towards the cone, then, once you believe, you must see it and every bone in your body must hold that intention."

Time and time again, people scrinch their eyes and focus their energy and I'll be damned, EVERY TIME that horse moves right to the cone, right to the place they are pointing.

Tonight we had a warm kale salad we learned to make in the cooking class with Delicious. Right next to the kale, bathed in pears, nuts, corn, vinegar and olive oil was a small piece of Wild Caught Alaskan King Salmon (on the safe list put out by Seafood Watch.org).

I am always coming back to a few lessons in my life. One of them is learning to be mindful. This week has taught me, in the oddest of ways, to be mindful of my energy. Even in training Rubin, my energy must be forgiving and patient, understanding and grounded or he will train me and not the other way around. My energy around transitioning out of teaching and into dog training must be patient and methodical. I must not rush ahead because there are important lessons to learn along the way...like how to enjoy warm kale salad and marvel at the strength and skill of young women in sport and how to learn from a wise older woman and how to cook a homo all in the same crazy, exhausting, and fulfilling week.

Fenced In

During the falling of Autumn leaves, Bob, our fence and deck man, has been working busily on our new fence and expanded deck. It's looking great, if I do say so myself, and Rubin thinks it's fantastic. He hasn't been out of the house much off-leash, but the new fence allowed him to run wild, circling the house with a big fat smile on his face.

The fence is a gift from Ann's father who died last April leaving her a nice chunk of an inheritance. Perhaps then the fence is really Ann's gift to our house, but David (her father) certainly allowed the possibility of such a massive expenditure.

Behind the fence...well, that's another story...

It's all bare and muddy...not very conducive to a puppy with an apricot coat. He's getting tired of his feet being wiped off every time he comes into the house. And still, STILL there is a dirt path down the hallway after endless sweeping and the removal of all shoes.

Nonetheless, progress is being made. The deck is now twice the size, perfect for a table and four chairs, though it will be awhile before we sit outside to dine.

Our stomach muscles hurt for a week after we spread ourselves like commandos under the deck to lay down the weed barrier. Even our 9 year old neighbor asked, "Why didn't you put it down before they built the deck?"

Duh! Why didn't we think of that?

Actually we did, but life got in the way and before we knew it, the deck was done (or almost...there's still a planter box to be built in the foreground of this picture) and we had to shimmy ourselves like slugs for 16 feet in either direction.

I am now a homeowner. It makes me laugh in some ways -- I never thought this would be my life -- but I suppose it never turns out exactly as you thought it would and if it did, that would be kind of boring, wouldn't it?

I love our home and I shall live here with Ann (and whatever dog lives with us at the time) until I can no longer make it up the stairs! Even then, it might be worth an investment in a ramp, an elevator, or maybe a big strong "maid" to carry me to and fro.

But that's in the future...for now I shall enjoy being fenced in.