Transition to nowhere

My, but it's been awhile. It's hard to summarize the last two weeks, but I'll give you the quick and dirty:

• 6-month internship in DC ended mid-August
• Flipped out over trying to decide what I'm doing next
• Decided to move to Greensboro, NC
• Bought train ticket to Greensboro, NC
  
• Decided against moving to Greensboro, NC
• Parents saw me flipflopping around like a fish out of water and offered the townhouse in DE for a bit
• Decided to visit NC instead of moving there
• A week after my internship ended, finally started relaxing
  
• Somehow still have a boyfriend and a family

So, the beau and I in North Carolina, having a not-quite vacation. It's almost like a vacation except we're both unemployed and have no specific prospect of employment at the current time, plus we neither of us have outstanding amounts of savings. Anyway, life is more fun that way.

Thus, I have not written. But there have been many discussions about eco-living in this state of being between the beau and I. So hopefully, I'll write about that.

I can, at least, make a recommendation about something you can watch that might change your life. My friend Steve in Greensboro lent us this DVD, The Corporation, and now we can't stop thinking about it. We may watch it again. I'd say it's biased, except that they also interviewed folks who work for large corporations and they were quite proud of their statements regarding the exploitation of various resources, including the environment, sweatshop labor, and the American public. It was an in-depth and unique take on the impact of corporations, and it's honestly totally convinced me that one of the best things I can do for the environment is to avoid supporting large corporations at all costs.

If you're curious, the movie site is here and you can view the full documentary on Youtube in 23 chapters.

I hate cars, but they do stuff.

My life has been foiled again by my lack of car ownership.

Actually, I lied. My life is great. I've been car-free for a few years now, after I ditched Grandma's old Buick Regal.

I'm willing to admit that my hatred of cars could stem from this particular car. It got me where I needed to go, and it held up fairly well for several eight-hour excursions between home and school. However, the thing was a boat. A tank. A beast. That, and it broke down a bunch. The alternator, for example, when I was driving home from work one night. Simultaneously, the coolant hoses sprung a leak, so my lights grew progressively dimmer as the fog rolling out from under the hood grew progressively thicker.

Then there was the time when the coolant hose came detached from the engine. I am in no way a knowledgable person when it comes to automobiles, but I understand that the engine is a very important, technical, and heavy part of the car. This particular problem meant that the engine had to be taken out temporarily in order to fix the hose. I got the thing towed to a very nice mechanic who gave me a massive discount -- he only charged me $400. Also, he gave me a free pen.

Despite the free pen, I became pretty much disenchanted with cars. I have a life, you know, Car. I'm not made of money, and I don't enjoy the mechanic's. That guy was very nice (free pen!), but he was out in some very sketchy part of town that I think only exists when you need it to exist. Like the room of necessity in Harry Potter. Only crappy.

Now... I know. I know what you're going to say. Oh, but, see, if you buy a nice car, and take care of it, and don't bother with your Grandma's hand-me-downs, and buy it only nice gas, and pet the dashboard and fold your hands toward the warmness of your heart and chant "Ohm" three times, you'd be fine.

Not to be flippant, but yeah flippin' right.

I refuse to be convinced that a car will not be expensive, or deadly, or require lots of maintenance (translation: time and even more money), or whatever. Try as you might, I won't budge on this. The way I see it, you can own a car, go wherever you like, and spend a lot of time and money on the thing. Or you can not own a car, go almost wherever you like, and spend not so much money. Either way, you will be inconvenienced, so you just choose a preferred method of inconvenience. I prefer to miss out on some things rather than own a big fossil-eating time-stealing polluting death machine.

But that's just me.

(I don't care if you own a car. I just care about me owning a car. You do what you gotta do. I ain't judgin'. Unless you drive a Hummer. In which case, I am.)

Anyway, back to my life. Turns out I have this opportunity to go to Harper's Ferry on Monday for work, just to ride around and... see an actual national park during my internship with the National Park Service. (Though the medians and random block-sized parks in DC technically belong to the Park Service, and therefore technically count as units of the National Park System.)

Basically, I can't go because I don't own a car. There's even a train station there, but there are no trains that run during times that allow any reasonable person to make a day trip from America's capitol. Despite the fact that there is a pretty sweet commuter train service apart from Amtrak that runs several times a day... they never run at the times one would need them to run. I could rent a car, but I'm not 25 yet, so they charge me extra for that. It's just enough to push the price beyond my cheapskate purchasing power.

Now, if I belonged to Zipcar, I could probably swing it. Zipcar is pretty cool. It's not car-rental, it's car-sharing. This means that you become a member, pay some up-front fees, and then you can rent for just a few bucks every hour. Apparently the gas is free, the insurance is already taken care of, you just call and tell them what you want, when you want it. Then you use a magical little Zipcard and the car opens for you, and only you. It's honestly a very snazzy thing, and I hope to Jeebus that it opens up in more cities. It's great for people who feel like owning a car is a big scam don't want the responsibilities that come with car ownership.

But guess what, I'm dumb and I'm not a member. Also, I move soon, so no Zipcar for me.

And no Harper's Ferry. I mean, there are ways I could make this work. If I really really really really really wanted to go, I could bite the bullet and pay $70 to go out there. It's not impossible, it just forces me to consider if I really really really really really want to do something. Which is probably not a terrible thing.

I graduated from college a year ago, and I've been hitching rides on the Student Conservation Association. I'm just about to complete my second internship with them. It's been a great way to see different parts of America, try different jobs in conservation, and meet different people. A little bonus, for me, is that the SCA provides housing and such wherever you go, and they let you know if you're about to apply to an internship that doesn't do well for carless folks.

As I said, I'm about to be turned loose on the world again (eep). By a mixture of fortitude, prayer, and helpful parents, I've managed to avoid car ownership. Part of me wonders how long it will last, and the other part is expounding constantly on the evils of automobiles. I'm led to believe that one of these personas may be perceived as more "mature" than the other. (Guess which one it is!)

The possibilities for my post-internship life are just about endless, and thinking about them all makes my head spin. Some of the possibilities involve me owning a car. I don't like these possibilities very much. I'm looking at it like I'm looking at a marriage proposal: should I really be making a commitment to something I hate so very very much? Or am I already considering divorce as an option for later on down the road? It could work out. It could. I could be a very nice person with a nice job and a nice place and not moving anywhere because of the job I need to pay for the car expenses.

But I'd hate it.

The dump in the Pacific

CNN has an article today about the plastic problem in the Pacific. If you haven't heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, you might want to have a look-see.

Very basically, all the trash out in the Pacific gets swept out to this vortex where the currents collide. Turns out there's a lot of trash. Some scientists estimate that this patch is approximately the size of Texas. Probably, if I were Texas, I'd be getting garbage-patch envy from all this comparison.

But you're not going to go out there and find a huge raft of plastic bottles. You'll see ocean. You'll see the occasional piece of solid trash. The devil is in the details; when scientists scoop up the ocean water, they find tiny pieces of plastic. Everywhere.

Of course, there are other pieces of debris out there, like fishing nets, which tangle up wildlife and cause considerable damage. The plastic is a problem because of the tiny creatures at the bottom of the food chain. They don't exactly have the brainpower to decide that plastic is not good to eat. Even seabirds have been found dead with their bellies full of plastic. Unlike you and me, some species in the world just eat whatever looks good. They don't spend exorbitant amounts of time deciding what to eat that day, or scrutinizing the expiration date on the milk.

This will become a problem, obviously, because everything feeds everything else. Apart from the fact that we are overfishing like crazy, depleting the middle of the food chain, now we're hurting the bottom of the food chain. Um... I know we're proud of being at the top of the food chain and all, but one link maketh not a chain.

On the island in Alaska (oh no, here I go with 'on the island...'), we had a stretch of beach, which came in handy when we loaded and unloaded two months' worth of supplies. Every high tide would leave a different assortment of trash mixed in with the strands of bull kelp. Plastic lids. Soap bottles. Tupperware. It's a wildlife refuge, dangit, not a trash heap!

But I know, when one goes to the beach, or downtown, or to the highway, one just looks past all the trash. Trash is not going anywhere. Trash will live forever. Our trash will outlive us. I just don't think trash should be allowed to do that. I'm already shorter than my younger sister. I don't want to decompose before my trash does.

My approach to the situation is to try to avoid generating trash in the first place. I'm doing pretty well, if I may say so myself.

• I avoid takeout and/or fast food (weird waxy cups, plastic lids, styrofoam/plastic containers, wrappers)
• I avoid buying products packaged in non-recyclable containers (plastic, food wrappers)
• I carry my water bottle everywhere (plastic one-use bottles)
• I buy Tom's of Maine, which makes toothpaste in aluminum tubes (though I may try to create my own paste soon)
• I only use bar soap (generally, packaging can be recycled, and sometimes you can even find locally-made soap. Failing that, Dr. Bronners FTW)
• I don't wash my hair (... I haven't washed my hair in over a month, but I managed to keep it a secret 'till now. I rinse daily or every other day, and to be honest, my hair feels quite healthy.)
• I don't shave (mostly on principle that I have better things to do with my time than be in the bathroom, partially because what the heck is in that shaving cream, anyway?)
• I wear my glasses instead of my contacts (no more saline solution bottles, no more fretting about putting them in and taking them out)
• I use re-usable feminine products
• I buy from the farmer's market, bulk foods from the co-op, bring my own bags, and re-use plastic bags I already have (this saves a TON of trash)
• I don't buy crap I don't really need, and repurpose as much trash as I can
• Of course, I recycle, but this is not something I want to rely on. The true benefits of recycling are widely debated. Certainly, it's better than putting anything in a landfill, but even better than recycling is reducing one's overall waste output.

My current struggle is teeth. Toothpaste, I may begin to make on my own. I've begun flossing again, but I haven't decided what is the most eco-friendly way to go about it. Ideally, I want something that will decompose in a composter, but I also want something that doesn't need a huge amount of energy to produce. If anyone's got any thoughts on this, please hit me up. Also, toothbrushes. They're meant to be disposed of, unfortunately. I've seen toothbrushes with replacement heads, but will they clean my teeth?

I didn't start all of these things at once. I did them one at a time. This is really more of a process than a total lifestyle makeover. Start small. Pick something easy. Later on, pick something else. That's all there is to it. I know that I have gone into areas that other folks frown at (the hair thing, the shaving thing, I know, I know), but the important bit is to decide what is right for you, personally, in your own life. That's all.