What if I Don’t Want to Ride the Mother F'ing Drive?

The City of Madison had this “brilliant idea”. Why not close down a bunch of roads and seem mega progressive to our towns’ people? We will let them take their adorably progressive children and ride their bikes down the roads we won’t let people drive on. A great plan! Let’s do it on a Sunday because that is a day of rest (and riding a bike is more restful than driving a car…kind of).

Even better yet—let’s just not tell anyone who lives on the streets that we are closing them. Most people that live downtown are progressive too, progressively hung-over on Sundays that is. They probably won’t even notice.

This is the thought process I am assuming led to my stressful morning on Sunday. I woke up to find that there were dozens of annoying bikers clogging up my one way street and that there were barricades on both ends of it. I had heard they were shutting down the main road near my apartment and had planned an alternate route—but driving the route of course required leaving my driveway (onto a closed street). Annoyed, and now late for a family gathering an hour away, I called the Madison Police Department. This was after I checked the website for the event and found no contact information or information for people living on the closed streets. I was then transferred, twice, both times by people that said “I don’t think you can leave” when I asked. To this I replied “just watch me”. They then let me leave a message for an officer that was conveniently not there and didn’t call me back.

I will never let someone trap me in my own apartment and walking fifty miles didn’t seem very doable at the time. Finally I donned a serious face and marched down to the barricade that was blocking my way. There was a woman there who said she’d move it for me. (Couldn’t someone have just told me that from the beginning?) At that a cop pulled up and asked if I was “The woman from [my address]” when I said yes he told me I could leave. Well, thank you. I have now been granted a basic freedom by a police department that doesn’t even solve crimes. Now I know what they have been busy doing—closing down streets to let bikers ride. Murders can wait—Madison now is your time to RIDE THE DRIVE.

When Will Enough REALLY Be Enough?

I sit here wondering about what it will really take. As most of you already know I am reading Derrick Jensen’s Endgame Volume 1. The book touches on a very real question that I am ashamed I cannot answer in any way that makes me proud. Jensen asks what it will really take for people to take action to preserve the environment and change the way we live. He then starts to list all of the horrible things that have already happened to the environment and are currently happening—all of the devastation has not been enough as of yet. His premise is that the collective whole of society will not willingly change their way of life to a more ecologically friendly one. I have to agree with him.

I look at myself, for instance. I am prepared to be harsh here to make a point. I consider myself an environmentalist. I talk about the environment every day, how bad of shape it’s in, and how to save it. I dream of living in the mountains off the land and having no contact with the outside world. As you saw in my last post I could “pull a Chris McCandless” without much hesitation, yet enough isn’t enough for me yet. I know that the planet is struggling; I know how bad things really are. I read books and watch shows and talk about it all the time. Yet I haven’t been pushed over the edge to actually DO something. If someone as far gone as me hasn’t been pushed, how can I expect others to be?

I feel that this culture has so corrupted us that even I, someone who refuses to be blinded, am. I wince at the thought of dammed rivers and clear-cut forests yet I smile at sales online and order shoes I don’t need with little hesitation. I talk about conserving threatened fish yet don’t speak up while out to dinner when someone orders something I know is struggling to survive. It would be “improper” you see, to do so. When am I going to say “to hell with what is proper” and start making a difference? What will it take? I think I’d have to cut all ties with this society and go live on that mountain for awhile first. Otherwise I’d just keep getting sucked in by emails talking of free shipping and restaurants with a classy client base.

If I took all the time I spend preaching about recycled toilet paper and spent it actually contacting the press and companies that are clear-cutting for fresh pulp, maybe I’d make more of a difference. Or, perhaps, chaining myself to a tree is the only way. I need to change the way that I live if I expect people less ardent about this than I to do so. I need to stop living the life of a hypocritical dreaming hippie and start being the revolutionary I am in my heart.

I need to actually say Enough is Enough and start living my life like I mean it. Maybe then people will listen to me and things will change. Or maybe not.

Supertramp

I was walking down the sidewalk with a friend the other day, musing over the beauty of our state capital when I saw a squirrel skittering across the walkway in front of us. I slowed to a mere crawl and relayed a story about how I had to do the same thing earlier in the day.

I had been running on a bike path in my often progressive city when a squirrel decided to cross in front of me. There were two people walking in the other direction and the squirrel became “trapped” between our two groups. I stopped in this situation to let him reach his tree without a heart attack.

After I relayed this story my friend looked at me, frowned, and said “I worry about you sometimes”. Now I have friends that are far from progressive, couldn’t give a shit about a squirrel, and would have been laughing at me. This friend wasn’t like that though, so I was thoroughly confused. When I asked for clarification he told me that he was afraid one day I would “pull a Chris McCandless” and just disappear. I don’t think he appreciated my response “I’d be happy doing that, why is it a bad thing to go off like that?”

I would obviously not seek the outcome of McCandless’s adventures, but what is so wrong with having some of my own? Revolutionary Road did a great job showing a more run-of-the-mill crowd what can happen when dreams are crushed. I refuse to wake up when I’m 50 and realize I never did go off on my own for a year or two, travelling the world—or what’s left of it.

So perhaps I will “pull a Chris Mccandless” and I’ll be happy to say I did.

"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."
— Chris McCandless

Disgusted by Passivity

I have been meaning to check into the recycled content of the toilet paper at my workplace since I started here. I have told myself to research the brand over and over again, but have just been too lazy to check into it (and now it’s been over a year). Finally, today, I did. I was surprised and impressed to find out that it is incredibly Eco-Friendly paper and isn’t just marketed that way. They use 100% recycled pulp in the paper. This made me feel better for not doing anything for so long. Then I realized feeling better is the opposite thing I should be doing. My passivity on the issue disgusted me.

I consider myself an environmentalist. I read Derrick Jensen like his works are the books of the Bible, I preach up and down about the problems in our society and in nature. I talk constantly about it. Yet, I don’t DO much. I do not do a hell of a lot of things. I don’t drive much. I don’t leave my computer or TV plugged in when I’m not using them. Sure, these things are good. But when’s the last time I researched a company on my own (without the work done for me by Green Peace of the Sierra Club) and contacted them about their harmful practices?

I have wanted to email the restaurant Egg Harbor about their Styrofoam to go cups for over a year. I have meant to email the Sheraton about their use of Kimberly Clark products. (I waited so long on that one that Kimberly Clark has actually pledged to stop clear cutting before I sent an email).

That is the problem with the environmental movement. We are all too damn passive. We have been sucked into this society like everyone else and although we see the problems, we refuse to step out of the cave. How scary would it really be to get our feet wet? I preach about conservation yet work a full time job on a computer. My company isn’t the worst when it comes to environmental practices but it isn’t the best either. Yet I do nothing, because I must pay the bills. I refuse to admit that there would be far less bills if I lived in a place where I didn’t have to commute and could grow my own food.

I don’t know what it will take, a question that Derrick Jensen asks, to get people to actually do something about the destruction of our planet. Forests cut to the ground, global climate change, widespread starvation—none of this has been enough for me. Maybe I just need to admit to myself how bad it has gotten. Perhaps I need to travel to the forests that can no longer support even plant life because their soil is ruined by clear cutting. Perhaps I need to embrace a wolf pup and try to explain to it why there will be no supper now or ever because his entire family was shot dead from an airplane. Perhaps I need to leave the protective bubble of the 9-5 grind and get out there.

But that would be hard wouldn’t it?

Rape Culture

I know that every blog writer claims they will start posting again and that they never do. I am going to make the same claim and try to hold myself to it. There really is no excuse for me not to post at least every other day throughout the work week. This post is going to be in response to an article/blog post I read here: http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-do-we-live-in-a-rape-culture/?obref=obinsite

I understand that the target reader of The Frisky isn’t necessarily the most intelligent of folks, but this article seems to touch on a concept the writer hasn’t known about previously and then uses a poorly made YouTube video to prove the point.

Rape Culture? There are numerous books and essays about this very concept that touch on societies that DIDN’T have rape within them. Why not mention those? How about you actually do research before writing a response piece?

Here’s some good reading material on the concept (or that touches on the concept) that the writer of this article should have read before posting and trying to sound enlightened and intelligent.

The Culture of Make Believe-- By: Derrick Jensen

People of the Deer—By: Farley Mowat

Rape And Society: Readings On The Problem Of Sexual Assault --By Patricia Searles

Strange Piece of Paradise—By Terri Jentz