The Rage Diaries

107 in 2007: How I did for the year

Every year when I make this list, I print it out and tape it to the inside of my day planner. This was to remind me of the things I wanted to do, and to help me keep track of what I had done.

In April this year, one of my lunch containers exploded all over the inside of my bag and turned my planner into a soggy mass of post-consumer-recycled paper. I recycled the planner. I didn't print out the list again -- and I think that explains why I managed to stick with some big things, but a lot of the little things got lost.

I am still a bad online citizen -- and am thinking about just abandoning the stuff in myweb.yahoo.com entirely, since I obviously didn't use or miss that mass of bookmarks -- and I let a lot of fun experiences slide into the "not done" column while I worked on the house. However, in reviewing the list now, I have to wonder ... a statistics class?

Anyway, here is my reckoning for 2007.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: The Final Check-In

This is the last post on reduce-reuse-recycle. I'd love to know how all of you did this year -- what habits stuck and what behaviors you're still trying to change.

I know for me personally: My cyclamen found new pots and doing fine, my gifts went out in tins or with reusable tags; my brother and mother's packages were assembled in the same boxes they sent to me (Dec); we went light on the foil and carried a lot of necessary kitchen supplies to Florida instead of buying what we needed once we were there (Nov); I rehung some old shelves in the garage, and although line-drying the towels didn't work, it's fine for tea towels and kitchen linens (Oct); I cannot remember the last time I nuked a frozen meal, my Sigg water bottles go everywhere, and I'm re-using the same plastic baggie for my daily allotment of Kettle chips (see this post); my wonderful husband has hopped on the Tupperware lunch wagon (Jul) and the hardware cloth did save my pumpkins from a summer suntan; I use the water from the shower-warmup to keep my plants happy and hydrated, and the only items in the house that have corn syrup now are the ones we bought before June 1 -- we've even managed to avoid corn chips and popcorn since then (Jun); although the porch demolition didn't take place for another three months after my May vow, we did indeed recycle the materials the porch was made of -- it's just too bad the person who was supposed to pick up our bushes flaked (thanks, Craigslist!) and they ended up dying within a week after our hasty re-planting (May); I have the water bottles and I do use 'em, although I can always do better (Apr); I haven't had a Lean Cusine since early March, and my little cloches did protect my spinach seedlings -- the only March setback was with those sweaters, which I am still trying to reuse somehow (Mar); I haven't used a Swiffer since February (and unloaded the sweeper at a yard sale) and have been refreshing and revitalizing the soil in my containers all year (Feb); and in an amusing call-back to the January post ... I have not had a single Diet Coke since June 20, and I have not had any caffeine at all since June 23. It is sort of amazing how that changed the amount of litter/recyclables I was generating, so it just goes to show ... you can reduce anywhere.

Also, inspired by you all, I have been using fewer paper towels in cleaning and fewer wet wipes; my sponges and tea towels are getting more use and re-use. I'm a tote-bag-totin' fool, and most of the time, I'm telling the cashier, "I don't need a bag for that [book/gift card/ bottle I can slip in my purse]." I'm planning to keep the R-R-R credo alive and going in 2008.

Now tell me about you: what did you do this year? What stuck? What would you like to try next?

Chris Rock agrees with us

We were in the car the other day, discussing the assorted Democratic and Republican candidates running for the presidency, and I was struggling to explain some of my reflexive reaction against Hillary Clinton's candidacy. There's the question of experience, of course. There was my misgiving about playing the gender card -- in my opinion, voting for someone because they're a woman is no different from voting for someone because they're not a woman. Finally, I blurted out, "She's not as qualified as many of the other candidates. I just don't like the idea that she gets the party machine working for her because of who she is and who she knows. A party popularity contest is terrible for the country! That's how the GOP picked their candidate in 2000, and look how that's turned out."

Phil was quiet for a moment before concurring: "Hillary Clinton has a lot more in common with Dubya than either one of them would want to admit."

And then we sat around and agreed that our little insight would never gain traction in a wider marketplace of ideas. Then I read today's NYT piece on Chris Rock, "Hard at Work on New Year's Eve," where he says:

“I love Hillary Clinton,” he continued, “but to me she is the Democratic version of George Bush: someone who is running, and the only reason you know who this person is is because of their name.”

Mr. Rock, who has made a career out of speaking the unspeakable, decided to go there and then some.

“She has much more in common with George Bush Jr. than she does with Oprah Winfrey,” he said.

So who knows? Maybe that little idea has some traction in the marketplace.

In defense of the zoos

Last month, Phil and I went to the Lowry Park zoo in Tampa. It was uncrowded the day we went, what with it being the Monday after Thanksgiving and all, so we had much of the place to ourselves. We were the only ones in front of the white tiger habitat. The mother padded around on paws as big as dinner plates; you could see the muscles under her coat rippling, smooth and powerful as waves under whitecaps. The cubs were gangly, but their thin limbs still contained a promise of menace.

"That poor silly magician never had a chance," I murmured appreciatively.

Last Friday, Phil and I took our younger nephew to the Oakland Zoo. We arrived not long after it opened, so the animals were still lively, relaxed in their unexamined state. We passed the tiger habitat. One tiger was bounding up and down, pouncing on branches and amusing itself; the other flopped on its back and began arching and wriggling appreciatively. It was almost like watching a cat -- except it's obvious to anyone with half a brain that the tiger could take you out with a well-aimed cuff.

This week, I have been reading all about the terrible tragedy at the San Francisco Zoo ("Tiger Kills One San Franciso Zoo Patron, Injures Two Others," SFChron, Dec 25, 07).

The terrible tragedy I refer to is the destruction of the Siberian tiger Tatiana. These animals are rare, and the emerging accounts suggest she died because she acted like what she was ("SF Zoo's Tatiana Acted Her Part As An Alpha Predator, Experts Say," SFChron, Dec 27, 07) once she had been goaded by someone or several people ("Trail of Blood Apparently Led Escaped Tiger to Victims," SFChron, Dec 27, 07).

One of the more infuriating side effects of this whole thing has been to listen to the vox populi natter on about how this proves zoos are bad things and animals are better off in the wild, yada yada. To which I say: balderash, bosh and buffaloshit.

There are bad zoos and mediocre zoos, but there are also very good zoos, and the one thing all these zoos do is sustain the possibility that someone will look upon an animal utterly unlike anything they're likely to run across in everyday life, and they'll decide, "Yes -- I think it's worth giving a damn about a living being, even when it doesn't affect me directly." Zoos impart an important truth, early on: we are not alone on this planet, and there are marvelous creatures that can live and do things we can't. But the one thing we can do is be aware of how precious every species is, how vital to others -- and to preserve what we can. Zoos reconnect us to the primitive fear and wonder our ancestors had; they reconnect us to our roots.

And zoos are often responsible for keeping animal species going when they'd die in the wild. I'm currently reading Alan Weisman's The World Without Us, and he mentions that the Korean DMZ has become an important -- albeit inadvertent -- ecological refuge for species that are losing their homes across the rest of Asia. This narrow, uninhabited slice of Korea is all some species have left.

Safer in the wild? Only when man's not around. Consider the terrible casualties that war has visited on gorilla populations. Or consider what's happening on America's rural roads: bears and people die when the former get in the way of the latters' cars ("As Cars Hit More Animals on Roads, Toll Rises," NYT, Dec 22, 07).

Zoos are keeping some species alive and thriving. If the accounts in the Amy Sutherland's Kicked, Bitten and Scratched are to be believed (and I see no reason why not), zoos don't do this because they like subjugating animals to human whim. They don't do it because they disrespect animals. They do it because they respect what different species are, and can do, and they want them -- and us -- to thrive by the virtue of their existence.

So -- go, zoos! Take time soon to go to your local zoo soon. Support it. Without it, how can we understand what else lives on this pale blue dot? Or how they make us more fully human?

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Give up the post-holiday report

The ho-ho-ho: We gave a lot of gifts in reusable tins, bought gift certificates, magazine subscriptions, zoo animal sponsorships and hockey tickets in lieu of giving people more stuff (none of the kids in our life got toys), and composted every last scrap of paper and waste from the Christmas feast.

The coal in the stocking: I still used wrapping paper -- actual, bona fide wrapping paper -- on some presents. Although I got rid of some of the guilt by forgoing the usual schmancy additions and tacking on a brightly-painted, wooden stocking as a name tag, the guilt over the wrapping paper, she lingers. And then there's the e-commerce question: because we have many far-flung friends and relatives, I did some online ordering and let the merchants handle the shipping issue. But that's not exactly green, is it?

Overall, I'd give our efforts a C -- we did adequately, but there's always room for improvement. How about your holiday?

The bravery of kindness

"The Exchange: Kindness for Rudeness" (NYT, Dec 23, 07) is sticking around in my head; the lump in my throat that arose for one of the people in the article won't go away either. To wit: the author is a skinny, 21-year-old snot who, due to poor planning and plain entitlement issues, systematically blows her food budget and eats the food of Karen, her roommate whom she holds in contempt.

The author treats Karen with complete bitchery, despite Karen's repeated displays of a brave kind of compassion. During a miserable Christmas in London:

I took a bunk as far as possible from Karen’s. I think she assumed we’d hang out together, but my roommate from college in the United States flew over, and we ran around going to art films and looking for cool record stores.

If Karen was disappointed, she didn’t let it slow her down. I remember her in her puffy ski jacket and hand-knit wool hat and mittens, lumbering back from sightseeing. She’d seen the Rosetta stone! She’d seen Lewis Carroll’s original manuscript for "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland!" Her cheerful self-sufficiency drove me crazy.

Then the author catches the flu. And -- get this -- Karen tends to her, generously and without question. Afterward, the author writes:

Back in Ireland, she never said another word about me scarfing her leftovers, while I was maybe less snooty but still aloof.

And the piece ends not long after, with the author admitting that years later, she finally realized how kind Karen had been. And -- pow! -- I was undone. Not for the author's mingy epiphany, but for Karen. It is soft and easy to be kind to people who are nice to you in your hometown. This college girl was thousands of miles from home,  and every day, she made the decision to be kind to undeserving snots in a place that wasn't home. Can you imagine the courage that must have taken, to extend consideration in the face of repeated rejection?

I hope to God that now Karen's got a life that runs over with generosity and kindness. That kind of quiet heroism deserves rewards.

Would you like to destroy my sweater?

Pull this string and I'll walk away ...

Now that I've planted that song in your head (you're welcome!), let's talk holiday sweaters.

I will admit to love-love-loving holiday sweaters in the 1980s and even in the very early 1990s. What was more festive than a red sweater with snowflakes knit into it, I ask you? And even now, I keep a red cashmere tee around just so I can look festive on December 25.

So I'm sort of amused by the irony-laced regard with which people are now tackling these sweaters -- witness Buzzfeed's roundup of ugly holiday sweater parties. And I am sort of in awe over the thought that goes into generating holiday sweaters:

Most of the sweaters at Coldwater Creek do not speak to a specific holiday, like Christmas, but are more generically seasonal. This way, the designs are more inclusive of different faiths (apart from a few that show trees decorated with tinsel, described online as “festive”).

And they can be worn well beyond the season’s usual expiration date of Dec. 25.

They should be both denim-friendly and spiffy enough to be worn over black velvet pants for a holiday party. They should be conscious of volatile weather patterns and overheated rooms, which is why there are so many more cardigan styles than crew necks.

-- "Behind that Merry Sweater, Some Holly, Jolly R&D," NYT, Dec 20, 07

It seems a lot more sound than the research logic employed at the Quacker Factor, if this clip is anything to go by. (That's their fiber optic-lighted holiday sweater illustrating this post, by the way.)

Where do you stand on the festive-sweater issue? Is this the kind of thing where old people and little children get a pass? Is it appropriate in some regions but unthinkable in others? (I like to speculate on whether or not Hawaiian people debate the merits of Santa-themed shirts.) Or will snotty tastemakers pry your snowflake sweater out of your cold dead hands?

Does this color say 2008 to you?

According to Pantone, "Blue iris" is the color for 2008, as it "brings together the dependable aspects of blue, underscored by a strong, soul-searching purple cast. Emotionally, it is anchoring and meditative with a touch of magic."

I'm not making this up. See "Pantone's Color of the Year Is ..." (NYT, Dec 20, 07) So what do you think? Is your soul stirred?

That said, the article has some interesting things to say about when we associate specific colors with specific brands -- the luxury connotations of robin's-egg blue, the red that Target, Coca-Cola and Cartier claim, and so on.

Romeo and Juliet, Sid and Nancy, Theresa and Jeremy?

What is it about dead couples that captures the imagination? Is it the idea that some people's love lifts them out of autonomy -- and that can be both transcendent and terrible? Is it pondering the ease with which people can slide from selflessness to self-destructiveness?

Whatever it is, there's been some ink devoted to the suicides of artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake. She took her life on July 3 this year; he followed a week later. Their friends are still groping for an explanation -- something about shared paranoia and conspiracy theories. The New York profile is a good start -- "Conspiracy of Two" (Aug 20, 07) -- and for those of us who remember when CD-ROMs and videogames for girls were cutting-edge, it's like a sobering footnote to the dot-com boom years the same magazine covered in "Silicon Alley 10003" (Feb 28, 00).

Vanity Fair follows with their Jan 08 piece, "The Golden Suicides," which echoes the New York narrative: Los Angeles' entertainment industry culture was rough on the couple, who had been riding high after a decade in which they were lauded as gaming-industry pioneers and included in the Whitney Biennial. VF also includes a link to the film Duncan made that was included in the Biennial.

Those two pieces take a decidedly East Coast-centric view, blaming Los Angeles for wreaking havoc on the delicate psyches of two gifted artists. It's unsurprising that the L.A. Weekly's "The Theresa Duncan Tragedy" (Aug 1, 07) has a different perspective; in her take on the whole situation, the reporter argues that Duncan and Blake didn't develop demons in California; they had been there, sleeping, all along.

In any event, I think watching how this story was covered -- first by the nimble weeklies, then by the local publication, then by the national glossy -- demonstrates the staying power that the doomed-lovers trope has for storytellers and readers alike.

Why we are re-upping our subscription to HBO

Right here, baby.

All of y'all need to be watching The Wire. Get the back episodes on NetFlix if you must, but get schooled before January 6, 2008.