The Last Straw

A mouse house in plastic box--one of many I found while cleaning out my shed. One of my chipmunks is checking it out!

Stuff stuff stuff and stuff.  A shed of stuff, a studio of stuff, an attic of stuff, a house full of stuff, a mouse nest of stuff, a life of stuff. Once when my friend Fran brought  a new boyfriend over for me to meet,  I introduced myself by showing him my big green roll-out trash bin full of stuff–stuff I had thrown away while cleaning the house for his arrival. “I really did clean up for you,” I said.  ”Here is proof.”  I don’t think he thought it was very funny, and anyway, he was history a long time ago.  Somehow, though, because I work with detritus all the time, It is very important for me to let people know …. well that I throw stuff away just like everyone else.

I have been making my living as an artist “documenting the waste stream of our society” as my web site intones, for quite a while now.  I have no problem finding materials to work with.  Stuff stuff stuff.  The question for me  is usually just–which stuff?

bottle cap mandala at Exploris Museum

When I give talks about my work as an artist, and show slides of my installations, one of the first questions people always ask is “Where do you KEEP all of that stuff?”  If they are asking this question, then they are probably paying attention, themselves, to all of the “stuff” around them.  Wherever I have made an installation out of our everyday detritus, I find custodians always, always get the point.  Why?  Well they are dealing with this “stuff” all of the time–cleaning it up, sweeping it up, “disappearing” it into dumpsters. Once I was talking to class after class of elementary students as they looked at a bottle cap mandala that the high school students had helped to make.  ”Ms. Holsenbeck,” the custodian who had been watching me said in frustration, “Why don’t you just tell them to imagine how large the hole you would have to dig to bury all of this would be?”  Good question, don’t you think?  Meanwhile,  The answer to where I keep all of this stuff is something like wherever–in the shed, in the attic, in a friend’s garage–wherever.  Many of my friends have “Bryant Bags”. These are usually brown paper standup type bags with my name written on them and inside are  collections of credit cards, chopsticks, and whatever else said friend has saved just for me.  I like this community effort, and it has made my bottle cap mandalas which are made up of thousands of these lids the beautiful combinations of color and texture that they are. Let me make this clear– I am NOT a dumpster diver.  I am a collector of everyday items that we use once and throw away.  I like the history of them, the memories of their use.

stuff from my shed--on the way to the Scrap, the dump and Shannon's house.

Stuff stuff stuff everywhere, all the time.   I do not think that it is a coincidence, that since I have begun my reluctant year without disposable plastic–I do not want all of this stuff any more.  Well, except maybe for the credit cards and the bottlecaps–The tide is turning, I want less stuff around me.  So I spent the morning with the intrepid Meghan Florian, emptying out the shed in the back yard.  Bye bye shoes with pitthy sayings, bye bye computer parts and plastic petrie dishes and wooden boxes and little bits of this and that that used to make up my sculptures, or baskets or hats, or even installations.  Some stuff went back to the wonderful Scrap Exchange, perhaps from whence it came, some stuff to a friend who helps kids make musical instruments out of junk, the shoes to Ken Rumble and his gang of poets–yeah!, and the rest to the dump.

Our world is just so full of stuff.   It just is.  Anyone who has every cleaned out the home of an aging parent knows this.  Anyone who has waited in line to be weighed at the local landfill, sees this.

Earlier in the week I met with the sustainability committee of Guildford College about an installation I will be doing there this August.  Sustainability.  What does that mean?  For me, sustainability means using our resources wisely–Not buying stuff all the time–stuff we use once, stuff we don’t need–stuff that isn’t biodegraable–plastic.  Mac McBee and Jim Dees showed me the huge composter they are using for food waste at the college.  It is called an Earth Tub and it is a large insulated covered container with an auger that stirs the compost.  It looks a bit like one of those giant Disney swirling tea cups I always wanted to ride on, but bigger, I think.  For the first time, I actually saw those supposedly biodegradable corn cups–becoming compost.

Jim Dees, Guildford College Sustainability Co-ordinator, with their Earth Tub. That plastic cup is actually getting composted in there!

It was very exciting to see sustainability in action.  Composting is a full circle action.  Organic material becomes fertilizer which makes more organic materials grow. This is a simple age-old concept.  Are most of us in too much of a hurry to do this?  Is our time so precious that we cannot stop and think about the consequences of our actions?

Do you have a compost bin?  Do you have a garden?  If you don’t have either of these, do you have the time to think about what you are buying and consuming all of the time, and what happens to it once you throw it away?

Just wondering here–just wondering.

Rereading this post–It occurs to me that I should sign off with the first part of the message from the Hopi Elders which I began my last post with.  But first, I need to say that I am feeling grateful for the amazing people I meet and talk to everyday who are all working hard to figure stuff out  all the time.  Just to start the list means Ann  and Phoebe, Julia and everyone at  the Scrap Exchange, Mac, Jim and Theresa at Guildford College, Katherine and her “no single use plastic” Beaver Festival–The list goes on and on and on…

Okay-here is how the Hopi Elders began that prayer I started with last time:

“You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour,

now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour.

Ann and Phoebe posing for me in front of the Scrap Exchange. The Scrap reycles and reuses stuff stuff stuff.

And there are things to be considered:

Where are you living?

What are you doing?

What are your relationships?

Are you in right relation?

Where is your water?

Know your garden.

It is time to speak your truth.

Create your community.

Be good to each other.

And do not look outside yourself for the leader.”

Saturday shopping

“This could be a good time!  There is a river flowing now very fast.

It is so great and swift that there are those that will be afraid.

They will try to hold on to the shore.

They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly.”

“Know the river has its destination.

The elders say we must let go of the shore,push off into the middle of the river,

keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.”

—The Elders Oraibi
Arizona Hopi Nation

This week I have felt like I have been riding such a river, flowing very fast.  Everywhere I am, I am becoming surrounded by information, images, facts and figures that tell me that I am right to be paying attention to this over-abundance of throw-away plastic which surrounds us.   I am listening, looking and learning as hard as I can and it does feel like sometimes all I can do is keep my head above water as I ride this rush of information which is swirling around me, like the Hopi Elder said.  What was I doing this time last year when I did not see single use plastic everywhere, all the time, as a huge and thoughtless waste of our resources?

Here is how the river flowed this week

On Saturday, April 10, I saw “Waste Land” by filmmaker Lucy Walker at Full Frame Documentary Film festival here in Durham, NC.

In this amazing and poignant documentary she chronicles Brazilian artist, Vik Muniz, as he works with the  ”pickers” of Jardim Gramacho landfill, the world’s highest-volume waste management facility, located in Rio de Janeiro.  Vik photographs some of the workers and then with their help and using the materials of the landfill he makes transformative art out of “stuff” that people just throw away, blindly all of the time.  In this amazing film you literally see people riding the waves of the garbage as it flows into the landfill, picking out the bits and pieces of recyclables that have been tossed away by the rest of us.

On Wednesday, I got to see part of Ian Connacher’s film, “Addicted to Plastic.” In this film he travels all around the world talking to manufacturers and recyclers of plastic. He travels to  landfills across the globe and  to the Pacific gyre, one of the 5 huge ocean sites where much of our plastic is ending up breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces of floating bits, all of which is attracting pollutants and being eaten by wildlife.

Next, my friend Amy Kellum emailed me a link to an article entitled: First, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch; now the Great Atlantic Patch. If you would like a verbal description of how the plastic detritus of our lives, plastic bags, broken toys, old water bottles, plastic silverware and toothbrushes, buckets, chairs and who knows what are ending up in our oceans breaking down to smaller and smaller bits of floating plastic, making a huge “soup” in our oceans, then read this article.  80% of the stuff out there comes from us mainlanders. jackson browne says this is a threat to our health and safety greater than global warming.

And finally, speaking of jackson browne, I  had the great pleasure of seeing him receive the Leaf Award from the Nicholas School of the Environment on Saturday. This award is “Given to an artist whose work has lifted the human spirit by conveying our profound spiritual and material connection to the Earth and thereby inspiring others to help forge a more sustainable future for all.” I went because friend Meredith Emmett sent me a notice about this award and I had heard from friends how he urged people to use non-disposable water bottles at all of his concerts and was simply intrigued.  What I found was an amazingly intelligent poet of a man who has been looking at how we have been wasting our resources and urging us to pay attention, graciously, in song and speech, for many years.  Here is what he told us in his acceptance speech.  Single use plastics leech chemicals, collect in our seas, gather toxins around them, become ingested by wild life and are uneconomical as well.  I am paraphrasing here, but I was stunned by his clarity.

For many years I have been talking to school children about plastic, saying stuff like it is not biodegradable.  Discovering over and over that most children do NOT know where plastic comes from.  When I ask them, “trees” is the answer I often get.

So, since January 1 of this year, I have been looking for alternative, plastic-less ways to live my life.  I have been using a lot of glass jars to store food in and to carry stuff around in.  ”Oopps,” I often think, “I know why people like plastic–It doesn’t break when you drop it.” I have to be careful.

Here is what jackson browne says:

“You have to be careful, because glass can break

You have to be careful because the planet can break….”

jackson browne

Page from HOUSE BEAUTIFUL, 1947

Come senators, congressmen

Please heed the call

Don’t stand in the doorway

Don’t block up the hall

For he that gets hurt

Will be he who has stalled

There’s a battle outside

And it is ragin’

It’ll soon shake your windows

And rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin’.

verse from “The Times They Are a’ changing by Bob Dylan

Yikes–That is such a good song.  Riding to my studio yesterday, thinking about what was on my mind, I thought I might entitle this Post “Between the Idea and the Reality” with a larger part of TS Eliot’s the Hollow Men at the top, but Bob Dylan won, hands down.  I have linked the verse to Bob singing this song at the White House recently.  It is a beautiful version of his classic song. I hear in his voice sadness and hope.  For all of us that woke up in the 60′s and 70′s–we are all still here and we are all still changing.  For you younger folks, if it is making a difference that you are working for, then let’s go…we do not have time to waste.

Anyway, in case you didn’t read Time magazine this week, It has an article entitled the Perils of Plastic by Bryan Walsh.  The only big surprise for me here is that Time is writing about this.  Very long and very complicated story short, it seems that we should be regulating the chemicals in plastics like we learned to regulate pesticides and other such toxins–This is such a good idea, so important and complicated to pursue.  Here is a quote form the article:

“As scientists get better at detecting the chemicals in our bodies, they’re discovering that even tiny quantities of toxins can have a potentially serious impact on our health — and our children’s future. Chemicals like bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates — key ingredients in modern plastics — may disrupt the delicate endocrine system, leading to developmental problems. A host of modern ills that have been rising unchecked for a generation — obesity, diabetes, autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder — could have chemical connections. “We don’t give environmental exposure the attention it deserves,” says Dr. Philip Landrigan, director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center at New York City’s Mount Sinai Medical Center. “But there’s an emerging understanding that kids are uniquely susceptible to environmental hazards.”

Next, and very interesting–have you seen Annie Leonard’s The Story of Bottled Water? If you have 8 minutes and are the smallest bit intrigued here, check this out.  Did you know that we pay up to 2000 times the cost of tap water when we buy bottled water?  And–

Seeds and Plants--2010 How will my garden grow?

when tested, often the water in these bottles is not of as good quality as the water coming out of our very own American taps…huummm.  And why is it that we are drinking all of this bottled water?

A) Convenience?

B) Habit?

C) Because we have been sold the idea that bottled water is good for us?

D) All of the above?

I see two things happening here.  First, we are beginning to publicly acknowledge that plastics residue which is coming to us through food packaged in said material may be harmful to us and that we need to do something about regulating these chemicals.  Second, maybe some of our habits of using plastics all the time might need to change for us for the earth–whatever.  We do have choices here.  I see paying attention to what we are eating and drinking and what it is packaged in is a big one.

Okay–enough said here.  Back to personal.  This week I made a huge batch of Cousin Monty’s granola and of course, yogurt which is so easy and so good from scratch. Realizing that most annuals that I want to plant in my garden come in those plastic packs, I am busy planting seeds and curious about what will come up.  Fortunately, I have lots of perennials in my garden.  I hereby proclaim this as the year of “Pass Along Plants”.  I have plenty if you live in Durham NC and need some.  I see Dogwoods, Azaleas, Columbine, Spring Beauty, and if I am lucky, a Jack-In-the Pulpit in my immediate future.  I wish the same for all of you.  Happy Spring!

back door--The Atlantis--the ocean is just out there......

“The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea.” Isak Dinesen

“Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much… the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons.” Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

plastic stuff from the beach arranged on the ledge of my deck.

I have been staying at the Atlantis Lodge here on the NC coast for the past few days.  I hear the ocean wherever I am–it is a constant.  My feet are cold from a morning walk along the oceans’ edge.  Earlier this morning I was in the office answering my email, and generally checking up on business, when I overheard one of the employees talking.  “Yes, Fred and Ethel are back–I just saw them in the pool.”  Asking her, I learned that Fred and Ethel were a pair of mallard ducks who had mated here last year and nested in the shrubbery near the motel sign, next to the road.

It is early spring along the NC coast.  I have seen lots of geese flying over and  pelicans gliding along the surface of the sea.  Except for Monday evening, the water has been quite calm.  Around 10 or so each night I have watched a full moon wax and wane, reflecting a river of silver on the ocean, as far as the curve of the earth and beyond.

For the previous 3 weeks I had been doing residencies with school children in Wake and Johnston Counties here in NC.   I have talked with at least 500 children, and with about 200 or so of them, have made “wild animals” out of string, scrap fabric, wire, and ubiquitous plastic bags.  It is rare, for children to know where plastic comes from.  I have brought my lunch everywhere, as I know all cafeterias are full of styrofoam.  I keep thinking about the reaction of a young woman in one of the schools.  When I was talking about plastic, asking about what they knew about where it came from, what we could or could not do with it, etc., she just shook her head and said, almost to herself, “I can’t worry about that, it is just too much.”

The truth is, sometimes, I think that too.

Last weekend, I spoke with art teacher, Joanne Andrews, who teaches in Durham at Rogers Herr Middle School.  She was telling me about how she and her students had been working with recycled stuff and how excited and interested they had been.  She told me about some famous Albatross photographs.  “It is complicated,” she said.  Her students were quite troubled with the images of these dead birds with their stomachs full of plastic.  “Why is this stuff out there, and why is it not biodegradable?” were two questions on their minds.  These are certainly the questions on my mind as I travel here and there in my daily life trying to dodge plastic.

same stuff from the beach rearranged

When I have walked the beach here, kicking shells, looking at the surf, I always see plastic stuff.  This morning, first thing, I picked up a tattered plastic bag shimmering in the wet sand.  I picked it up, thinking how it would blend in the ocean and be easily swallowed by sea life.  Three  minutes later, on my way back I found another bag almost in the same place, along with a few empty plastic creamer cartons.

While doing a residency on the Outer Banks last fall I met a local woman who told me that every morning as she walked the beach she collected plastic–over and over, again and again.

We are not going to stop using plastic.  It is too much a part of our very lives.  I feel it every time I walk by a vending machine full of captivating junk food.  I want to buy the candy inside, and this time last year, I would have, and been delighted with my purchase.

We are not going to stop using plastic.  I know this and am grateful for the plastic tubes for oxygen that my friend Lori used in the last year of her life.

We are not going to stop using plastic–It is embedded in our lives.  It is an “Inconvenient Truth” and we enjoy the benefits and conveniences of it every day.  Can we be more careful,  More thoughtful,– about this resource we have been given?  As I sit here in the friendly office of the Atlantis Lodge on a sunny afternoon at the beginning of spring on the last day of a quick vacation,  this is my heart’s desire, my wildest hope and  my life’s work.  And now I am going to take a nap or read a book–I can’t decide which.

I know this as well, I am going to continue this year–THE LAST STRAW–A reluctant year without disposable plastic.  And I hate to admit it–I really really miss plastic drinking straws.  All the time.

Photo below taken by Chris Jordan

Lori's studio

Mindful

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

~ Mary Oliver ~

My friend Lori Kerr died on Wednesday.  I was lucky enough to have had a studio next to Lori’s for the past two years.  Our friendship was about our art, which if you think about it, which I don’t think we did, is about life.  It usually took me until mid-afternoon to get to my studio and Lori was always there working thinking working making.

After I had been in the studio for a month or so, Lori arrived one day, with an oxgen canister attached to her nose.  She told me, “I am not getting quite enough oxygen, the Doctor said.”  Lori did not miss a beat.  For the rest of the time I knew her, she used oxygen.  When she came into my studio, she attached herself to a long plastic cord which went to the oxygen  tank in her studio.   Our lives there were about making art which we encouraged each other about daily.  With Lori, I did not think about that long plastic cord, I thought about animals and materials and ideas and just life.  Lori was one of the most creative people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.  She was a wonderful and loving mother to her children,  and a good wife as well.  She was an excellent friend.  One day she asked me to go on an ” Urban Chicken” tour.  I did not get to go, but I know her friends that did had a fabulous time.  The thing is, Lori was so busy living, loving and creating that I did not think she had time to die.  On Wednesday, March 3, 2010, Lori Kerr decided to take herself off the ventilator that was  keeping her alive.  I am deeply saddened by her death.  More than that, I am grateful for my time with her, her eye for animals, her creative mind, her living of each moment with curiosity and joy, her love for all of us humans and animals in this world.  Thank you Lori for living so well.  Your friends, your family, the lizards, the hedgehogs, the crows, the rabbits, the chickens, all of us–we love you and we miss you.  You are shining star.

Some of Lori's work in her studio. One of my crows stands guard.

Main Entry: plastic

Function: noun

Date: 1905

1 : a plastic substance; specifically : any of numerous organic synthetic or processed materials that are mostly thermoplastic or thermosetting polymers of high molecular weight and that can be made into objects, films, or filaments
2 : credit cards used for payment —called also plastic money

from Merriam Webster on line

My family cooking out in the back yard late 1950's. Note my father in his "Bermuda shorts suit." He was known to wear this (as well as the green or orange golf pants described below) to business meetings.

My father was a textile engineer.  One of my earliest memories of him is when he took out a magnifying glass and showed me what his suit jacket looked like under magnification. Under the hand held-glass, the scratchy grey fabric was a jungle of color and twisted fibers–another world–right there on my father’s arm.  Years later, I remember him bringing home a coil of nylon rope from work, or “Caprolon” as Allied Chemical was calling their version of “Nylon” at that time it.  “Look,” he said, showing me a tightly round shinny white loop of rope, the rope itself no bigger than my young index finger in diameter, “Look,” he said, “This rope could pick up a car!”  When I thought of the clunky black ’58 Chevrolet Impala in our driveway, and looked at that seemingly dinky stuff–I thought–“ummm, sure Dad, are we talking miracle here or what?”

My father, who was on the road weekdays traveling to New York, South Carolina and Virginia visiting Allied Chemical offices and factories, was always arriving home with something new and peculiar.  One spring Friday he came home with nylon golf pants–2 pairs–one a shiny  neon green and the other an incredible reddish orange.  This was the late 50’s and early 60′s when the bravest thing I had ever seen a man wear was a pair of madras shorts.  One Christmas we covered our tree with “Nylon” angel hair–so different from the spun glass stuff.  Words like safe, non-toxic, and wonder-product were used.  I think it was my junior year in high school when my Dad’s New York secretaries make him a red nylon Santa suit, stretchy with white nylon trim and a cap to match.  That Christmas Hip Hop dudes had nothing on my father.  With this  red outfit–saggy, shiny and tight all at the same time, draped over a portly balding middle aged guy who had been called “The Head” in college because of the size of said feature–he toured the neighborhood and then the larger expanse of town crying “Ho Ho Ho and nuts and fruits and candy for you”  to friends and neighbors, strangers and the world.

This is a story about my Father, but it is also a story about  the development of polymers in the world, especially after WWII.   This synthetic combining of materials bringing us  such things as  nylon hosiery and carpets, polyester suits, and plastics galore for use everywhere to make everything cheaper, cleaner, neater, purer, lighter, easier, was where it was at–and still seems to be for most of us.  I googled Caprolon and the page that comes up is about chemical properties, has headings like “Caprolons modified with fullerenes and fulleroid materials.”  To a non-scientist this is Ancient Greek and I glaze over looking at the page.

This I understand: I sit at a desk made of extruded wood covered with white formica.  I type on my plastic encased laptop  plugged into my plastic encased hard drive and printer.  On my desk are stacks of (plastic) CDs and DVDs related to art and life.  This morning I am wearing blue tights made stretchy by some wonderful polymer inspired something–the same goes for the cover of my down vest and the warm boots I am wearing, inside and out.  I sit in comfort,  at my naugahyde desk, wearing my vinyl fake-fur boots, able to communicate with the wide world from my mostly plastic computer.  Truly, this is a miracle.

This year as I attempt to dodge disposable plastic in every way possible, I have been pleasantly surprised again and again by people.  Last night I spoke with long time friend Beverly McIver.  When I told her what I was doing she said, “You know–I never, ever use styrofoam–I just don’t.”  I am seeing on some very fundamental level, people want to pay attention. We are all benefitting from the progresses of the world, what plastic has done for us, yet, mostly, once we notice its excess, we want to do something about that as well.  I never know who will give me a good tip as to where to find food not wrapped in plastic–Thank you, Rebecca, for spotting those coconuts at Whole Foods.  In fact, just as my Dad brought home the miracles of plastics in the 50′s, perhaps our new generations of Moms and Dads are bringing home solutions to our unnecessary use and abuse of it.  We are beginning to pay attention.

Check out this from the Sierra Club about plastic bags—about the the problems they cause.

Making a mandala with the community in Deer Isle, ME 2009--sponsored by Haystack Mountain School of Crafts

February 15, 2010

“It’s logical to say that what I do is an act of faith.  It came to me and I worked it out.”

–Walker Evans

In1999 I made my very first mandala out of bottle caps and jar lids.  It was part of a show entitled Hello Again curated by Susan Subtle for the new Tryon Center for the Arts and was in the Bank of America atrium in Charlotte, NC. When Peter Richards, the artist director of Tryon Center at that time, came to my home along with Susan for a studio visit looking for North Carolina work for the show, I made a small mandala out on my back deck to sell them my idea.  Peter looked at it and said softly, “It needs to be big, really big.  Can you make one 20 feet across?”

“Yes, Yes, YES,” I replied.  And my work began.  My undergraduate degree is in Sociology, not Art.  For several years I had been collecting all of the caps and lids I used, along with those of helpful friends and neighbors. I kept thinking, each one of these caps or lids is a mark of food eaten, or something consumed, and they are NOT (at least the plastic ones) biodegradable. And all of this has happened in this century I.  By the time Peter, his wife Sue and Susan Subtle came to my house, I had already collected  and was ready to make my first mandala and they gave me the opportunity.  I have not looked back.

Mandala close up--plastic and metal lids...Please note the METAL Duke's mayonnaise lids...yum

Over the past 10 years or so, I’ve made close to 20 installations of my collection of caps and lids.  At colleges and universities, museums, schools, in a mall and once even in a synagogue, I have made them.  I have installed them as far away as California and Maine.  I always make them with the help of community members.  My friends and neighbors have helped with the collection and I must have over 100,000 caps and lids by now.  Most, I keep stored in a kind neighbor’s shed.  I use the same lids over and over again.  In a way, you could now call me a bottle cap expert.  I know that white is the most popular color for lids.  I know that the most common lid used is the white plastic one with the blue interior off of soda and water bottles.  I have a hunch this might be changing to a clearish color which most water bottles now carry. Sorting and using the lids, I have seen changes in what we consume, how we eat.  These are subtle but they are there.  I have seen brand designs change.  I now see many more orange sports drink tops than I ever saw 10 years ago. Many caps which were once metal have changed  to plastic.  Mayonnaise is an example.  The south’s favorite mayonnaise, Duke’s, which has a lovely yellow and black cap and used to be in a glass jar, now only comes in plastic–both the jar and the lid.  When will all my lovely metal Duke’s lids become collectables?  I wonder.  One thing I can say for sure is–in the past 10 years, I see fewer and fewer metal lids.

A week or so ago in yoga class, when I told my friend Marcy how happy I was to have discovered a toothpaste which came in an aluminum, recyclable tube, she said, “oh but the top is plastic.” Yes, it is, and I expected nothing less. Even a lot of glass jars with metal screw lids have that hidden clear plastic seal around the lid to make them tamper proof.

Plastic is everywhere.  I know this.  It just is.  This year, I am learning this over and over again.  Sometimes my choice is, if I am going to live any sort of enjoyable life at all (which, yes, I sure am),is  to do the best I can–to choose the way with the least amount of plastic possible and then proceed.

Being on the road which I was last week, is the hardest.  I have learned my steel water bottles are a necessity. Thank you Subway for vegetables and sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper.  Most school cafeterias are impossible. Styrofoam, Styrofoam, Styrofoam.

I have been living THE LAST STRAW life for 6 weeks.  I have more questions than answers, more curiosity than frustration.  My life is not plastic-less, it cannot be.  It is a life with much LESS plastic in it.  And for that I am happily grateful.  As my friend John Morrison says, and probably others before him, who knows, “It is better to do the best you can, than be paralyzed by the pursuit of perfection.”

Now isn’t THAT true?

Special thanks in this post goes to poet Kate Greenstreet whom I was lucky  enough to hear read at David Neede‘s house the other night.  She gave me the Walker Evan’s quote which begins this post.  If you get a chance, here is her blog.  You will not be disappointed. “http://www.kickingwind.com/”>

Saturday Shopping--the Durham Farmer's Market, Stone Brother's and Whole Foods

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Thomas A. Edison

This past week has been an up and down journey in my quest to live without disposable plastic. It seems my job is to figure out how to do this and have a normal life as well. In short, I want to do this without letting it rule my life.  Meanwhile, there are books to read, movies to see, walks to take and friends to visit and laugh with, and if I am honest–way too many dishes to wash.  More on that later.

I have not been on the road, or in a school this week, so I have had the time to shop and cook.  Even so, some days are frustrating.  Below is a list of my week’s successes:

Making yogurt was easy with a hot pad and a meat thermometer! (I will tell how at the end of this post)

All  toothpaste made by Tom’s of Maine comes in aluminum tubes.  All but the top is recyclable!

You can make your own brown sugar (yes, the bought stuff is all packaged in plastic) by adding 1 tablespoon of molasses to 1 cup of sugar.

In the same vein–powdered sugar can be made by adding cornstarch to white sugar and putting it in a blender.  This I have not tried as I  don’t know yet how cornstarch is packaged.

My Arm and Hammer unscented clothing detergent works very well for washing dishes–now really–who would have thought…..

I made excellent chocolate chip cookies by chopping up a bar of Swiss Chocolate from Trader Joe’s.

My special thanks this week goes to Portia McKnight of Chapel Hill Creamery who cheerfully wrapped some of their excellent Hickory Grove cheese for me in wax paper.  All it took was a phone call, and it was waiting for me at my local Saturday’s farmers market.

As I said in my last post, I am only just beginning to realize how inundated with plastic we are. Interestingly, many problems, which have seemed overwhelming at first, have been solved relatively easily.  And once solved, the answers have often been, so clear, so upfront, and it often seems, already known by many others, that I keep saying now, why did not I already know or do that already. Tom’s Toothpaste in aluminum tubes, or making my own brown sugar are two examples.

Again–I keep getting surprising clues and affirmations.  While waiting for Crazy Heart to begin at the Carolina Theatre on Saturday night, I began talking with a friend whom I had not seen in many years.  Upon hearing what I was doing she told me that she and her husband Bob had been working hard not to store any of their food in plastic for several years.  This after hearing a program on the Peoples Pharmacy about Bisphenol-A.  She thought she remembered that Joe and Terry Gradeon do not buy any food packaged in plastic.  Who knew…  Here is the link that she sent me–http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2008/04/13/how-hazardous-a/ Thanks Nan.

So in the sprit of Thomas Edison, I am continuing my investigation into this world of plastic.  I have listed my recent success, which at one time seemed like huge obstacles, or at least irritating bumps in the road.  I am leaving to do a residency in Jones  County in a few days.  The owner of the B&B where I will be staying assures me that she will not be giving me any water in plastic bottles.  All this to say, that I am happy to find the world an accommodating place, as long as I remember to ask. Right now, I am off to try some Hickory Grove Cheese  from Chapel Hill Creamery .  Portia says it makes a terrific grilled cheese–I am so ready.

YOGURT MADE EASY  (Or yogurt with a heating pad)

Heat 1 pint (2 cups) of milk to 180-190 degrees.  If you do not have a thermometer–this is when the milk starts to steam and tiny bubbles begin to form.  Let milk cool to around 115-120 degrees.  The milk will seem very warm to hot.  Stir in one tablespoon of live yogurt–either from your last batch or borrowed from a neighbor.

Put this mixture in a clean warm glass container, wrap in a towel and place on a heating pad turned to low or in an oven with a pilot light.  Ignore all day, or for at least 4 hours and then voila–you have yogurt.  I have done this twice, once with whole milk and once with 2 %.  It was delicious both times.  Also, I put this off and put this off, but it is VERY easy.  I like a recipe that you can ignore most of the day–

recipe extrapolated from THE CURIOUS COOK by Harold McGee

There is no enlightenment outside of daily life.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Bar-b-que sandwich from Hog Heaven and hush puppies yes they were good!

February 1, 2010

The title of this entry sounds Buddhist to me, or slightly like  something one of my elementary school teachers might have said to her class in frustration, “Pay Attention.”

Paying attention is what I have been trying to do when I get near any sort of commerce.  The minute I forget, it seems, then voila, I get some plastic I did not bargin for.  And there are always, always, surprises.

A few weeks ago, when I exited the highway, very close to my home, on my way back from a day on the road, tired and hungry, I spotted my local bar-b-que joint (no, I am not a vegetartian), and thought my life would be complete if I could only have a good ole NC Bar-b-que sandwich with cole slaw and hot sauce.  “No problem,” I thought, as I waited in the drive through.

I would be fine ordering the sandwich wrapped in wax paper,  and I knew not to order any wonderful southern sweet tea, as that would surely come in a Styrofoam cup, complete with plastic top and straw.  So when I reached into the white paper take-out bag, imagine my horror when I pulled out one  of those stryofoam clam things, with another plastic container of hot sauce inside, plus, a plastic covered plastic fork.  I felt like a fallen woman, a true sinner,–“How could I have been so dumb?”, I kept asking myself.

It is about remembering, paying attention, to what is in front of me.  Perhaps, if I had gone inside and spoken with the young woman taking orders she would have obliged me with leaving all of that plastic out of my order.  I am pretty sure she would have thought me a bit demanding, or at the very least, peculiar, and one day I will find out.

As I write this, I am safe and warm in my own home, the world outside covered with at least 6 inches of snow.  Being snowbound has been such a luxury.  I made yogurt for the first time–delicious, and I made 2 batches of crackers.  One batch was amazing, and the other like 100 or so little sawdust hockey pucks.

When I took that innocent walk in the woods last fall, and had the small epiphany about trying a year without disposable plastic, I really had no idea of the complexity of what I had chosen for myself.

Earlier last year, as I had begun the basic attempt of always bringing my own bags to the grocery store, a young cashier said this to me, when once again, I had forgotten my bags–“Mam, whenever I forget my bags, I always go back to my car, or home and get them. That way I trained  myself to remember.”  His voice is one I have carried with me.  This 18 year old young man is paying attention and so should I.

I quickly trained myself to bring my own bags to the grocery store, and have been good at spotting styrofoam and plastic silverware before I come in contact with them. What I only slightly understood last fall when I made this commitment to myself was, how totally saturated we are with plastic packaging.  At that time, I had not noticed that the bags inside of most boxes of cereal, cookies, sugar–whatever, are plastic. I had not noticed that almost all cleaning products come in plastic bottles. The list continues and so far I am still enjoying the ins and outs of figuring my way around most of this stuff.   Some days I feel like Sisyphus and somedays I feel the joy of discovery.  And I am making new friends along the way.  All of this for trying to pay attention to the plastic around us.

Oh, and on this paying attention thing, for some reason, I have begun observing the beautiful forms of the trees around me.  As I drive here and there and find myself at a stoplight, or when I open my front door, I have been looking up and noticing the branches of the trees against the sky, their beautiful graceful forms.  When I do this, just for a moment, life stands still.  Nothing more or less.  Just that.

I found this image on the web. It is in India. I am wondering if these signs might be a good idea on the NC coast.

Reconnaissance

This week I have been traveling to Raleigh early each morning to work at Raleigh Charter High School.  On the way home, I have stopped at stores to look for food without plastic around it.  ALDI’S where stuff is cheap and you have to pay 25 cents to use a shopping cart was a complete bust.  I bought an avocado and some very bad ice cream.  Trader Joe’s was not much better.  There were some apples and eggplant and bananas with out plastic coverings  and I was able to find a good deal on some maple syrup in a glass bottle.  Also, the young man who I asked about chocolate not wrapped in plastic was way helpful.  He found me some Swiss chocolate wrapped in paper and aluminum foil down on a bottom shelf somewhere.

What is becoming very clear is that my year without disposable plastic will be possible mostly because I live in a town with a very good year round farmers market and a Whole Foods and the wonderful Weaver St. Market www.weaverstreetmarket.coop

Weaver St. is a co-op with 3 stores in my area within driving distance.

Mostly, I will be eating locally–before the plastic wrap gets on the food.  Thank you Barbara Kingslover for your excellent model.   If you have not read her book, ANIMAL,VEGETABLE, Miracle, then I would say, drop what you are doing and read it now.  She chronicles her family eating local food for one year…

When people ask me how I am doing in my year attempting to get rid of disposable plastic in my life, I tell them “grumpy, but determined.”

Last spring I was in Elizabeth City, NC driving back and forth each day for a residency at Currituck High School on the outer banks of NC.  Each day I enjoyed views over esturaries and marshes and sometimes glimpses of our beautiful Atlantic ocean.  One afternoon, I was standing in the middle of a huge box store which seemed recently planted in the center of a marshy green field.  I was in search of sewing needles.  As I stood in the middle looking right and left and up and down through plastic lawn chairs, Styrofoam coolers, and much more, looking for the correct isle, I thought to myself, “this store, most of it, in fact almost all of it, is not biodegradable.  The stuff we buy here will not decompose.  The chairs will crack and break, the dishes will fade and get lost, the clothes will end up in bales of polyester sent to a 3rd world country –the packaging around most of the toys, tools and food will get tossed in an instant, and if we are lucky, all we can hope is that all this plastic will end up buried in a landfill, and not floating in an ocean somewhere. “

Later in the week, I stopped at a small park to  walk out onto a wooden pier .  I had seen people fishing here every time I passed and it looked like a great place to view a sunset.  So I parked in the small gravel access area and walked out to the end, past cypress roots entwined with Styrofoam cups and beer cans and shredded plastic bags.  The big view was of sky and water; the close up one was of us and our thoughtlessness.

This fall I was back on the coast in Manteo NC for another residency.  Since the spring, North Carolina has passed an ordinance disallowing stores to give plastic bags to customers on the barrier islands.  Yes, there is a Walmart in Kitty Hawk, NC that gives you paper bags instead of plastic.

This is a small answer to a huge problem, a tiny step.

Perhaps,this week, you have heard the news about Bisphenol-A, a toxin in all most all plastic we are using to cover our food in the United States.  Yikes–Europe outlawed this stuff long ago.  How have we allowed this to happen here ?   My friend Barbara, a wonderful nutritionist who works for my local Whole Foods, sent me this link about what they are doing to monitor and change this. Here it is if you are interested. http://blog.wholefoodsmarket.com/2010/01/the-fda-changes-its-tune-on-bisphenol-a/
“

Okay–here is the good news.  My friend Rebecca Currie (don’t miss her blog–Less is Enough) is stil working on helping me find a way to make my own dish detergent, and I have found a local source of toilet paper which is not  wrapped in plastic–Brame office supply!  It is nearby and I can buy toilet paper for 65 cents per roll–no plastic anywhere near!. This weekend, I AM FINALLY GOING TO MAKE ME OWN YOUGURT!  Soon, I hope to have a few good recipes for you.

On the way to the Coast, right after Christmas, 2009--plastic in the water all the time everywhere.