‘ello, Guvna!

This afternoon, I sat at a small table with five other people and chatted with Deval Patrick, the Governor of Massachusetts.

The Governor was on his way to a town hall-style meeting in the next town over, so this was just a pop-in to meet with a few Joe Citizens. (My friend, Rebecca, has campaigned for the Governor and invited me to come say hello.)

There were no prepared remarks and, other than the security guys standing in the back of the room and the photographer from the local paper, there was not a lot of hoopla. I didn’t really say much, but mostly because the conversation was flowing and I wanted to hear what the Governor had to say.

The good news is that it was interesting. Gov. Patrick has an air of confidence, intelligence, and geniality. In response to comments about the endless push-and-pull in our town (and probably every town), the Governor talked about his last campaign, and the powerful grassroots feeling of that time. He said that one of his biggest lessons thus far has been that we must figure out a way to retain that feeling of “We’re all working together towards a common goal” AFTER the election is over. His words were, I believe, “We need not just grassroots campaigns, but grassroots government.”

And with that, I think the the Guvna hit the proverbial nail on the head. There is a total (cheesy word alert) disconnect between regular people and their lives and what is going on at the state and national level. I may even call the New York Times and let them know about it.

Let’s take me, for example. I consider myself a Good Citizen. I pay taxes (I=David in this scenario), I care about my neighborhood and town. Just this week I made a small donation and became a Friend of the Library (I know: Yay, me! My $25 will save everything!). I know the Mayor and, in fact, will host him at my house tomorrow evening for a “meet and greet” with some neighbors. I held signs on election day. I have a child who will, possibly, be in the public school system in town. On paper, I seem to be exactly the type of person who would get more involved and maybe volunteer for a committee, or something.

Which brings me to the bad news: I’m probably not going to.

Why? Well, for starters, because I look at Government, whether it be local or state or national, and what I see is a machine. I see decent people who want to make changes, and who think they will actually be able to make changes, and then they just get demolished by the machine. Even the Governor today said that the problem with getting things done in Massachusetts is not a Republican versus Democrat issue; he thinks it’s all about who you know or don’t know.

I read the local paper online and, when I am feeling particularly masochistic, I read the comments. Seriously, it’s enough to make me want to move to – where? I don’t know. Sweden? – immediately. And I am told I live in one of the most progressive states in the country! Under an editorial in today’s paper on the topic of our particularly contentious library issue here in town, some idiot has written “Kommie Kezer and his Klowncil cannot be trusted, period.” (Our Mayor’s name is Thatcher Kezer.) There are retorts and replies from all sorts of wackadoodles and, honestly, I can feel my blood pressure rise as I read it. Yeah, there is no way I could be in the thick of it on a daily basis.

Bleak stuff, eh, Guvna? Now I’m talking myself down from the edge. Trying, desperately to end on a high note…Oh, wait, I’ve got something.

I just remembered that I sat down with Deval Patrick today. And I’m hosting the Mayor tomorrow. (And then there’s that 25 clams I gave to the library!) Maybe I’m not as jaded or apathetic as I think? So I’m not going to run for school committee – but I did sign someone’s papers today so that she can run for school committee, and it was someone I actually know and could call up with an issue. It’s all feeling downright grassrootsy!

How we could ever replicate that feeling on a state or national level is beyond me (yes, I am aware I can email and fax my representatives)…(silence). But giving up is not the answer either. It is also very likely that I will end up on a Libertarian recruitment list soon, but I just took their online quiz and they are, ultimately, not going to want me.

In conclusion and for the record, I liked Deval Patrick. Sorry to bust out this harebrained word, but he had a good vibe. His obvious intelligence and personality remind me of another elected official, someone a little higher up the food chain, someone who may also need to start asking, “How do I get the groovy grassroots love back?”

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Countdown to the New Me

It is just five-and-a-half weeks until my big trip to the West Coast where, along with the beauty of San Francisco and the drive down the coast to LA, I will also be seeing friends I haven’t seen in many, many years. I am so excited! And, also, nervous. Thinking about seeing friends from college makes me think about college, and me in college, and how I looked in college and the ensuing years in NYC. And then that makes me think about how, somewhere along the journey from 20 to 40, things changed and Me now does not look like Me in my twenties.

Apparently, I have “aged,” but whatever – the point is this: I have 38 days to get everything back to the way it was 20 years ago.

I will need to start by losing 10-12 pounds. To that end, I have cut back on my wine consumption, which I have identified as the black cloud in the otherwise clear sky of my diet. (Truly, as far as meals go, I do pretty well. Yogurt and fruit for breakfast, grilled meat and fresh veggies for dinner. We all know I have a wicked sweet tooth but if you tell me that a couple tiny Ginger Snaps from Trader Joe’s at 10:30pm is my downfall, I will…well, I probably wont’ do anything. Yeah, I’m actually certain that I won’t.)

So, yes, I have cut back! The decrease in intake may be subtle – it may even be what some people call “negligible” – but I’m going for it and I’m enthused and expecting results! Any day now.

I also, as you may have read on Facebook, went jogging a few days ago. Jogging is something I do every 14 years or so, just to make sure that I can. It usually works out okay – I jog a mile-and-a-half or so, and then once I’m feeling confident that I could run on a regular basis if I wanted to, I stop and don’t do it again for the next 14 years.

You know when brides-to-be decide that they will use the wedding as the reason why they will finally lose that extra 10 pounds? Yeah, that never works. So, you know what? Screw it. if I haven’t lost the ten pounds in the four years since I had a baby, I’m not going to lose it before this trip. I will just buy bigger clothing.

Since I’m not going to lose weight, I should really concentrate on these wrinkles. I have significant wrinkles all around my eyes which I swear all appeared during just this last year (that actually makes total sense and is not at all shocking) and I am guessing I will need some really expensive eye cream to fix them. Expensive eye cream is a great example of Something I Would Have Bought a Year Ago, when I had a job and cash (other examples would be, uhm, hard cover books, clothing from Anthropologie, and frequent massages). (Hey, remember when people had cash and went out to dinner and bought stuff? I miss that. That was fun.)

Okay, so screw it, I’m not going to order some stupid eye cream that probably won’t work anyway, so I’m going to just go with the wrinkles and I can wear some of those big-ass sunglasses (speaking of big ass – wait, no, we covered that). So I’ll be a little chubby and I’ll have the wrinkles. But you know what I can do? I can whiten my teeth.

I know some people do the fancy teeth whitening at the dentist or the salon. I’m not one of those people. I am talking Crest Whitening strips, which I will probably forget to do until the night before the trip, which is actually fine since no over-the-counter whitener is going to do anything to counteract the red wine and coffee that I drink daily. When you get right down to it, I’m sure you’d agree that I shouldn’t even waste my money.

I did make an appointment to get a hair cut and color a few days before the trip. And I will sneak in a pedicure and brow waxing, too. I don’t need to worry too much about the hair situation because I have a great hairdresser who I’ve gone to for years and there was only the one “Pat Benetar” incident, and that was so many years ago, I’m certain that nothing like that will happen on the week of my very big trip. As for the brow waxing, really, what could possibly go wrong there?

So, West Coast friends, when you see me in August, please look down at my toes, which will very likely look just as they did twenty years ago.

What’s that you say? You, too, are less taut, with, perhaps, a vein here and there on the leg and a bunion from time to time? What once was up is now down?! This is excellent news! I am so, so excited to see you all soon.

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Foreign news. (Hey, get back here!)

During the recent, post-election unrest in Iran, I noticed that several of my friends’ status updates on Facebook addressed the situation – certainly not with the frequency of, say, complaints about the abysmal weather in New England or cute things said by kids (for the record, I’m guilty on both fronts), but frequently enough for me to take notice.

It brought back to mind a question that I have pondered (yes, I do ponder from time to time) in the past:

Why do Americans seem, overall, disinterested in what’s going on in the rest of the world?

Before you think I’m up on my high horse with this one let me ‘fess up: Like most Americans, I do not spend much time seeking out foreign news coverage. I rely mostly on what makes it to the front page of the New York Times, or into The Week magazine’s international section.

So…what is the deal here? I am smart, my husband is smart – we listen to NPR and read The New Yorker, like good smart people are supposed to do. (Okay, I also watch Weeds, which isn’t even a good show any more, never mind smart, and David sometimes watches these sketchy extreme fighting shows that annoy the hell out of me and then I go drink wine and cruise Facebook. But we’re still smart. We are. NPR: Woo-hoo!)

At any rate, I have some theories.

Theory #1: We are all trashy, loathesome swine. Certainly some light has been shed of late on Americans’ disgusting habits of consumption – the McMansions, the SUVs, the brand new giant-screen TVs in houses where no one is employed, and so on. Is it possible that we honestly just want to amass a boatload of crap, and we don’t give a flying turd about things like people living in extreme poverty, or in refugee camps? As long as we don’t have to see it, we honestly just don’t care?

Wow, that is so, so depressing.

Theory #2: It’s a failure of the education system that we are not taught, as young children, about the rest of the world and our connection to it. As we get older, events in places with weird names – Yemen and Bolivia and Congo – just seem so far away, so removed, that none of it has anything to do with us anyway. What are you talking about, some people don’t have a toilet?! Ewww!

I can honestly say, sadly, that I never felt part of anything “global” when I was growing up. Even in high school, when I took a History of the Middle East class, I don’t recall it being made clear to me how any of it could possibly have any impact on “my world.”

Theory #3: Most of the news is difficult so we become overwhelmed and shut down. Obviously, there isn’t some big news story saying, “This just in: Everyone in Ecuador is generally satisfied!” That’s not what news is. But I’m recalling a theory that talks about how it is easy to process a story that involves, say, under twenty people, but after that we start to shut down and just think of “them” as a number instead of individuals like ourselves.

So, if, for example, six children are in danger we will do anything in our power to rescue them; meanwhile, there are untold numbers of children living in camps, malnourished and sick, being beaten and raped…but they have become numbers to us, not individual people. And anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it, right? It’s too enormous, and way out of our control. We can barely handle getting the kids to school and paying the bills.

Theory #4: We would care, if we had the information. This is the “chicken and egg” theory. Is there a lack of foreign news because of a lack of desire, or is there a lack of desire because of the lack of coverage?

Due to cutbacks in funding so many news organizations have simply given up on the coverage of world events. And we’re busy people – we don’t have time to go searching for information. So, if the news is pushing a story about a kitten that was abandoned in a mailbox (Cambridge, MA, last week), then that’s what we’re going to absorb. (Don’t worry, someone adopted the kitten the very next day. That also made headlines.)

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

I’m going to briefly pause the theories to confess that another reason this whole issue has been on my mind is because of two friends I saw recently, Jason Maloney and Kira Kay, and their non profit international news organization, the Bureau for International Reporting (check them out at www.thebir.org). Along with being friends of mine, they are also award-winning, international journalists who have reported from over 25 countries. I knew they would have some thoughts on the topic. So, I bring you Theory #5, which takes into account some of Jason’s opinions.

Theory #5: – In order to engage people, stories need to be well told, and they’re not.

A recent example of what can go wrong? The Nightline report of Salma Hayek visiting Sierra Leone. Now, I did not watch this show and I did not read specific coverage of this show. But somehow, somewhere, I heard that Hayek had nursed someone else’s baby. I didn’t even hear where she was or what she was doing there! For all I knew she could have been in a mall in Dallas. So, issues of health in Africa be damned – the story became about a Hollywood star’s (sizable) breast in not-her-own-baby’s mouth. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is our news from oversees.

On the other hand, would the story even have been possible without her participation? Would we have watched it? How can we get the stories that are somewhere between “celebrity do-gooder takes a trip” and “amateur reporter makes a YouTube video?”

I could go on and on and on – there are so many questions. As for answers…yeah, I don’t have any. I think it’s a combination of all of the theories, actually. I do know that I am going to make it a point to pay more attention to what is happening world-wide, and to talk to my four-year-old about other countries and cultures on a more regular basis.

See? I am working on Theory #2 so as to never be the person in Theory #1.

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Ball of Ecoconfusion

I found myself wondering yesterday, as I folded what seemed like 680 cloth napkins in the clean laundry pile, whether our switch from paper napkins to cloth was actually the environmentally friendly act that we meant it to be.

Sure, we are throwing away less paper, but we are also using more water and detergent to clean the cloth ones on a regular basis – and that is with me sometimes re-folding them and sneaking them back onto the pile after dinners that I deem  ”pretty clean.”  (Don’t worry, I always make sure guests have a newly laundered one.)

I realize that I can get a little over-thinky about stuff like this so I was urging myself to “Let it go,” (I actually spend a good portion of my life urging myself to “Let it go”) until I realized that it is one of many questions that I have contemplated recently, on the topic of supposedly environmentally friendly practices. My conclusion?

I am eco-confused.

On a positive note, I can say without hesitation that I care, which puts me near the front of the pack. Here are some of the good things I can say, confidently, that I do to be eco-friendly:

Having said that, there’s also a lot that I could do better. Remember when Sheryl Crow told everyone that they should use, like, two squares of toilet paper per sitting? Without getting too personal, let that be first on my list:

I could go on, but I’ll leave it at that. I’m starting to look bad, which seems ridiculous since this is my blog.

So, back to my question about the cloth napkins. Perhaps you’re thinking that the cloth vs. paper napkin issue is so small that it doesn’t warrant a whole blog post in the first place, and maybe you’re right. But, on the other hand, until people start caring about little choices like this we’re going to be stuck on the tip of the (rapidly melting) iceberg when it comes to this whole movement.

One last question: Is the extra freezer that we bought for the basement, which we use to store meat for grilling and lots of Trader Joe’s frozen items, worth the electricity? Our thinking was that it would save money on gas, and time, for all those frequent trips to TJs, but now eco-confused me is wondering whether a large and constant electricity sucker is doing more harm than good.

I’m pretty sure what Sheryl Crow would say. Then again, I don’t really care what Sheryl Crow would say.

Here’s what I have say: I’m thinking yes to the cloth napkins, but the freezer is debatable. But I want it, so can I keep it if I promise to start turning off all the lights in empty rooms? Or am I fooling myself and unless we get solar panels, and hybrid cars and start collecting our rain water, all our changes are worthless?

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