Earth Day and Plastic Anxiety: Bad News and Practical Baby Steps

22
Apr

As if we do not have enough to be concerned about right now in our collective Coronoavirus lives, I’m here to be your unhappy little elf who comes around at night dropping wet tissues and bad news under your pillow.

I missed the memo

Did you know that…

Only like 10% of the plastics we’ve sent to be recycled have even been recycled SINCE THE 1980’s!!?
Remember how recycling plastic started getting traction when there was more plastic starting to be used? Guess who started the campaign to get people to recycle their plastics? The plastic industry.
The Twist: The plastic industry started touting plastic recycling programs so that people would be willing to use more plastic, all the while knowing that plastic couldn’t succesfully be recycled in the quantities the industry would generate.

I am not playing around; this information stopped me in my tracks and hung over my head for the next few days. You can read the main face-slapping article here. The Environmental Protection Agency has a report that details the generation of plastics along with the recycling, combustion, and composting (haha) of plastics through 2017. [Don’t forget that the EPA director just prior to the current director Andrew Wheeler was Scott Pruitt, who Tr$mp appointed and who was a former coal lobbyist and had to resign due to questionable ethics. Dicey.] One of the charts shows that 75% of plastics go to landfills, and 8% go to recycling; however, if the stuff that goes to recycling doesn’t even get recycled, that means that 83% of all the plastics generated in 2017 went to landfills. The other 17% was BURNED (with energy caputured supposedly but still, it was burned, which emits toxic chemicals into the atmosphere).

The BBC did a report that detailed the benefits and detriments of burning plastics or putting them in landfills. No great options there. We’ve been able to turn a blind eye to this problem because we shipped our plastic recyclables to China for years until in 2018 they decided they were no longer going to take care of our problem for us. So finally it’s caught up to us and we have to actually address the problem of what to do with our plastics.

How did I miss this information? It wasn’t because I wasn’t paying attention. I’ve been a dilligent recycler for years. Maybe everyone else already knew the current situation with the amount of plastic that is not recycled even though we put it in the recycling bin and it gets picked up every other week?? I certainly didn’t know the depressing specifics, but maybe others did and that’s why there’s the proposed Green New Deal and (I’m not equating these two, just giving examples) folks who knit all their own clothes and live off-grid who are willing to go extremes to get in the way of industries who are hell-bent on ignoring the impact of their actions. It might be the only way to get the attention of the general public who, like me until recently, genuinely think they’re doing their part by washing their plastic yogurt containers and putting them in the recycling can.

What the heck can we do about it?

Becoming aware of our dependence on plastic is a really important first step. When we stop and pay attention we quickly realize so much stuff comes in plastic in one form or another, either the item itself or the packaging it’s sold inside, we will realize it’s ev-ery-where. So.much.plastic.

The step that follows soon after is to ask what to do if you want to not only recycle less plastic (since *gulp* it might not even be getting recycled anyway) but use less plastic.

For example, there’s been a movement lately to use fewer plastic straws. I’ve noticed some places do not offer a straw unless you request one. Some are moving to paper straws. There are now metal straws you can buy complete with it’s own tiny cleaning brush.

What else?

We are somewhat limited because with the COVID-19 crisis we aren’t allowed to bring reuable bags to any stores, and nobody wants to let us bring in refillable containers for fear of spreading the virus.

It’s great to make our own personal changes, such as moving towards using glass or metal containers, bypassing plastic utinsels, or trying to refill bottles of shampoo by purchasing it in bulk from community co-ops (you can click here to go to a directory of co-ops so you can find one near you). But if we really want to make change, we need to make sure companies and corporations know our consumer preferences/demands. They’ve got lobbyists who are working against legislative bills that would limit plastic packaging, so you know they’ve got a stake in keeping things status quo.

This article puts forth the idea that it’s time for a revolution of dedication to sustainability and social responsiblity — a pretty inspiring type of revolution!

I’m still very new to this so it’s easy for me to get disheartened by my own consumption and culpability. But I love the quote from Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” I think that’s a perfect motto for this new awareness of plastic usage. And on Earth Day, it seems like a perfect motto to help make a start.

[As I find resources I will pass them along. And if you have practical ways you’ve reduced your plastic consumption, please feel free to share your practices here.]

Snow Days for the Record Books (or the Epic January 2019 Polar Vortex)

31
Jan

It’s been a crazy week of snow days here in the great tundra of Minnesnowta. Yesterday it was so bad they actually cancelled mail service. The US Postal Service, whose unofficial motto is: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” CANCELLED the MAIL because it was so cold.

That’s sayin’ somethin’.

(By the way, you can read some of its history here — just remember, we’ve had four snow days, so these are the things one does when granted four consecutive snow days with inhuman windchills so nobody can even go outside to enjoy the snow we finally got. We research the motto of the post office.)

We do other cool stuff too, such as:

That time we made snow from boiling water.

That time someone else tried it in their skivvies and it didn’t work out as well.

And games. We’ve played so many games. We played Battleship and we played Risk. We played card games like Garbage, Kings Corners and some card game my kids claim is real called Sandwich (I’m not convinced).

One of the sweetest things we did was make some hot chocolate, put in some of that special marshmallow creme, get a cozy spot in the sunny living room, and read from Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World. I had those kids in the palm of my hand, I tell you. My husband and I both remember loving that book, so this was the perfect opportunity to introduce it to the kids. They’ve all read BFG by the same author, so when that concept made it into Danny the Champion of the World the theories and speculation went wild. Which book came first? Did the author put it in this book and then decide it was a great idea so developed it? Was it put in as a plug for his BFG book which needed some more interest from readers? We have yet to satisfy our curiosity on this matter, but I’ll let you know what we find out.

Sometimes these little moments are ones you’ll return to in your memory. At least I will.

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When the kids had full stomachs and a chance for some screen time, I made some time for art. Here are a couple recent pages I’d love to share with you…

Please tell me you saw that giant moon about a week ago? It was fantastic. I made this soon after, and added some writing this week. The writing says “I speak the language of the moon”, and includes some yummy iridescent ink on the moon to make it shine.

This one’s all about texture. It’s a bit hard to see without having it right in front of you, but there’s quite a bit of texture and the play between the dark and light helps convey some of that winteriness we’ve experienced this week.

I’ve got one more to share, which is not even trying to pretend it’s holding back…

That was a joyful exploration of slow and fast inspired by my friend Divyam, who’s beautiful work you can check out here with the slow being the line on the lefthand side, and the fast being the explosion of color on the right. Sometimes you need some color to brighten up your winter whites!

I’d love to hear how you handled the weather this week, since the cold was forecasted to attack so much of the US. Even my southern friends were uncomfortable (we smile knowingly at them and try not to pat their heads too patronizingly since they are not prepared to deal with temperatures lower than they’re used to, temps in which we’d still be wearing shorts and flip flops).

Read any good books? Start any previously unplanned projects? Tell me all about it in the comments below! Stay warm, friends!

Essential wholehearted Humanness

14
Nov

It can be instinctive to try and make sense of situations, to look for connections between things so we can identify with what’s happening around us.

However, for some people that comes with more difficulty when faced with unfamiliar situations or world views. They might shut out people rather than looking for that point of connection.

It’s important to remember that while there are vast differences in backgrounds and beliefs, there are some characteristics which are universal.

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I have a tutorial up on the Get Messy Art Journal website today, and it’s all focused on living wholeheartedly. Human development theories tell us some of the things which are desired at the core of all people, such as connection, to be known, and to be loved. More recently, Brene Brown has studied what it looks like to live wholeheartedly, and in my mind her work goes hand in hand with the season of ubuntu.

Here are a couple pics from my tutorial on wholeheartedness (and from the past couple weeks)…

Another couple pics not related to the tutorial but circling the idea of ubuntu and our connected humanness.

Seriously, have you been watching the midterm elections here in the US? What’s up with that , meaning with the barriers to people having their registrations purged, with closing polling stations, and with trouble counting the votes?

Bringing it in closer to home, a friend of a friend had an almost unthinkable tragedy happen recently and I just can’t wrap my head around what things must be like for her right now. Working it out in my art journal gives me a good place to focus my thoughts.

The words on the left side say “you are not alone” which I feel is so important when walking through a very dark time. This is a difficult month for our family, with difficult anniversaries and birthdays and mile-markers of those who are no longer with us, and we grieve them deeply. Knowing we are not alone in that grief makes it a fraction easier to bear, and as you know if you’ve ever been there, a fraction is still significant.

Then finally, just a parting thought of love to you. Maybe you need to hear it today, so just know that your presence in the world matters. We should all keep chugging along, doing the next right thing, sharing love with those we come in contact with, and slowly things will change for the better, if only because we have become more wholehearted in how we approach the world.

If you want to see the whole tutorial for the wholehearted page, it’s on the Get Messy site. To see it you need to be a member, which is just fantastic fun. Click here to get started. And as always, thanks for visiting!

Ashes and construction-paper hearts

14
Feb

Most of us have those childhood experiences of a beloved pet dying (or in my instance discovering that your dog has love-licked your sister’s gerbil to death), we try to nurture that seed in a plastic cup only to see it shrivel from our exuberant watering. The example can be closer, say an elderly grandparent passes away, or a difficult diagnosis threatens our sense of health and well-being.

At what point of human development do we become aware of our own mortality? And does that awareness serve us or subjugate us?

…most of us attempt to escape from death concerns by avoiding life. This defensive denial of death has profoundly negative consequences for each person’s life.

Most people spend their lifetime without a great deal of self-awareness, living lives of emptiness and drudgery based on their early programming. They rarely reflect on their circumstances but rather are addicted to a lifestyle of form and routine. Few develop a life plan or project that gives value, substance or meaning to their daily lives. Humans are a meaning-seeking species, and when this experience is limited or excluded, they are deprived of their human heritage. – Robert Firestone, Ph.D.(Click here for s ource article.)

Thank you, Mr. Firestone, Ph.D., for being a beam of happy warm sunshine sent to brighten our day. Oy.

However gloomy, Mr. Firestone’s got a point. There are those folks who want to avoid thinking about death so badly that they disengage from true living.

That’s not to say a fixation on our ultimate end is a healthy strategy either, but an awareness of death as a part of the natural flow of life is a sure way to squeeze more living out of each experience we have the privilege of, well, experiencing.

And here we are, on the day when we remember that we’re all just a fleeting moment, that we are made from dust and to dust we shall return.

Andplusalsotoo, it’s Valentine’s Day, grand holiday of paper doilies, candy hearts, and expressing appreciation for special people in our lives. Or as The Princess Bride would suggest, Whatcha got that’s worth livin’ for

Isn’t that timing of Ash Wednesday and Valentines Day this year just a perfect analogy for the tension between an awareness of our own finite nature AND the full living — friendships and romantic relationships — we all wish to do?

Maybe there’s more here to deal with but for now I just wonder if you’d be willing to reflect on your own attitudes towards mortality, and also on love. Then, if you’re so inclined, report back on your discoveries. We’d love to hear from you.

Peace in Troubled Times

15
Jan

Exhibit A

The snow was supposed to hold off, hit someone else. What showed up was no predicted rain shower, and now the town is slushy and surprised.

Required machinery was still being tuned up and serviced, yet to be pulled out of hibernation so we were all left on our own. Normally we would do this with grit and pride, but this caught us unawares, our thick skin not built up after months frolicking in the water and sun. It was as if we were trapped in a snowstorm wearing flip flops. How humiliating.

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Unable to avoid the things a normal day requires, you navigate doctor’s office, library, hospital, post office, grocery store, trying to get it all done in one outing.

The unplowed piles between lanes makes your car joggle and pitch, and almost with maniacal glee the piles slide you into curbs and oncoming cars.

While you wait at a turn signal, in the middle of the mundane, a short moment of stillness within the storm,

Witness a miracle.

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Peace in the Midst of Chaos

A person travels along the sloppy sidewalk in a wheelchair, I kid you not. On a day when no one wants to be out in their cars, this person ventures out in an automatic wheelchair. As I sit at the light, running through the list of things still to do, I watch as he nears the corner and much too late I realize there’s little chance of navigating the mess that’s accumulated there.

He sits there, appearing to access the situation, and his dangling feet softly paddle at the edge of sidewalk, as though at the edge of a pool, at the edge of danger, at the edge of the isolation.

Blink

Truck stops, not afraid to block traffic.

Blink

Two men jump out of truck, one reflecting in fluorescent yellow, one in thick tan Carhart, walk upright on functioning limbs,

Gently so gently lift the stranded dabbler,

As though they’re the biblical friends who lowered the man on the mat through the roof,

Blink

They wait, traffic waits, the sky waits, we all wait as the hooded person zips across the street and on with his day.

Blink.

If we blink we might miss it, this miracle of connectedness.

Peace, just Breathe.

Exhibit B

Dreams coming true at the ice rink, our youngest starts her first session of Saturday ice skating lessons. She slowly, almost imperceptibly wiggles across the rink — no actual skating yet — to meet her class while I take my place in the heated stands, my heart aching at the difficulty she faces even getting over to her group.

Class underway, I prepare to read or daydream for 30 minutes, until I see a scene unfolding at the entrance to the rink.

The woman wears a white head scarf and waits at the edge of the ice.

The high school boy, shaggy hair sticking out from under his baseball cap (surely a fashion statement that would accommodate a hockey helmet equally as well), huge hockey gloves on his hands, black and white CCM skates on his practiced feet.

He comes to her and offers his hand, she on hard ground, he on the ice which to him is just as stable but to her is fraught with potential injury.

She takes hold of his armored hand and enters the arena gingerly, testing the conditions, the slip factor, the slide of her skates.

They slowly tour the ice, hand in hand, one shuffling, one gliding, partners in motion.

At an invisible signal they return to the top of the rink. She steps back onto solid ground, releases his mitt — or did he release her? — and and he, upon her safe delivery, turns back to his other hopes and diversions, she to her dreams and responsibilities. The world continues on its path.

The following week they are both back at the same time and place.

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There are too many things going wrong, too many offenses, too many breakdowns. People who should know better, seem not to know anything at all. People make offensive statements and are insensitive or calloused to the impact of their words.

It makes the world seem dark and off-kilter, on it’s way to self-inflicted oblivion. It’s too easy to proclaim all hope as lost, our society at an impasse.

Those observations are not wrong. Things are a mess. They’ve always been a mess, but now we’re (un)fortunate enough to have access to ALL the mess ALL the time.

However,

There is always glimmers of hope,

Evidence of love,

Occasions of joy,

And moments of quiet peace.

We just have to remember to zoom in and find them. We have to be willing to go out and create them.

Finding Joy in the smallest Places

23
Dec

Finding joy used to be like looking for sugar in a candy store, finding wonder and happiness was like stumbling through a daisy field looking for a flower. Without trying there was just so much happy to notice, and so much excitement that punctuated every day.

Sugar! Flowers! Yay!

Some of that was due to my natural temperament, some of it was probably connected to being younger, some of it was undoubtedly due to the unearned privilege of being insulated from the hardships that so many people face on a daily basis. It wasn’t that everything was constantly smooth or went according to plan, but those glitches felt like the exception and were fairly easy to recover from.

If I had to write about joy at that point, it would have been no problem.

It’s a little harder now, though not impossible. It’s a matter of perspective.

Last year I tried to write about joy during Advent, and even tried a couple art journal pages to work it out, but none of them were quite right. Here’s where you can check that out. There I mention a difference between joy and happiness.

Joy seems to be consistently connected to a spiritual state, a grounded connectedness to ourselves, those around us, and a higher spiritual purpose. …Happiness is almost a consumable good; joy is more durable.

These days finding joy is more difficult. There are so many things that seem to be going off the rails, globally and locally. Here’s a summary of sound bites from this year, and when listening it’s no wonder it can be hard to feel joyful. It’s been a helluva year and our political in particular continues to be intensely disturbing. Sex scandals, election tampering, a gag order for scientists, undercutting environmental safeguards, it’s all overwhelming and disheartening.

However, at what point could we ever have looked at things in the world on a large scale and feel joyful? There’s always been something going haywire, some despot wreaking havoc, some natural disaster displacing whole communities. You’d think we’d start to notice that “desolation” is humanity’s default setting.

Okay, I’m not saying we’re quite like that movie, but you get the idea.

According to the Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, desolation is one of two states humans move from and into. Sounds dramatic doesn’t it? The opposite of desolation is “consolation”. Consolation is used to describe moods of harmony and settledness, desolation is used to describe moods of inner turmoil or disconnectedness. (Click to learn more.) It is assumed that people will move from consolation to disconsolation. People won’t stay in one or the other indefinitely, which is important to remember so we have hope and appreciation.

Hope and appreciation.

I think those are both tied to joy.

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The thing I’ve discovered is my joyfulness improves when I adjust my perspective from being focused on large scale things down to smaller scale things:

The sound of my boys together downstairs practicing crazy loud music on their instruments, and actually being able to make out a tune.

Watching someone open a door for a stranger, and the stranger respond with gratitude.

The confidence of having a full tank of gas in a car you trust to get you to your destination.

Waking up one of your kids and having one of their first statements be, “I love you, Mom.”

These small moments remind us of our humanity, remind us of our smallness, and help restore out connectedness to others around us.

When I pay attention and take time to notice these things, I do better. I discover joy, that warm feeling that buoys us through hard times, that quiet confidence that there is good in the world if we’ll only remember to call it out in ourselves and others.

Joy can be a choice, and we have agency in cultivating more of it.

This is not joy that disregards the facts, this is joy that searches out the positive, the good, the things that tie us together as humanity and elevate us to our better selves. This is joy that seeks the details, the secret acts of good will, the quiet gestures of connection and celebrates those. This is calm noticing that settles down into the smallest moments, and then acknowledges their energy and the positive force they ripple out into the world. This is no flimsy pollyanna cliche. This is a brave act.

Original art by TC Larson

I really do wish you a joy-filled holiday season and believe you can help create that by deciding to choose joy. Go get ’em tiger.

Blue: Everybody’s Favorite Color

12
Jul

While the title of this may be hyperbolic, if you ask people their favorite color, the majority will pick blue. Blue is calming, versatile, and depending on the shade it can even function as a neutral.

PC: Morguefile @JessicaGale – That’s a beautiful winter sky.

Blue is associated with a complex myriad of things. It can be connected to creativity, self-understanding, and loyalty. It has been proven to lower blood pressure and heart rate, and promotes calm.

Of course, we’ve got to let is also be associated with “being blue” or feeling down. This is the happiest song about being blue I can think of. Plus it includes yodeling, which is a skill I admire and pretend I have.

Blue is also connected to the throat, a lapis, and a crescent moon or a circle shape. (I don’t totally understand why, but that’s the way it goes with associations. They can be hard to pin down.)

In a flukey spooky coincidence, a friend of mine published this blog post and mentions a few things that have been popping up in my life lately, so I thought it would be fun to mention it here. Think all things blue.

If you want to play a little game, join me on Instagram. Use the hashtag #colorfun and show us your favorite colors!

Vivid Meaningful Color

6
Jul

Summer is a great time to appreciate color. It’s all around us, and not just green, although we should be sure to sing the praises of green especially so we remember it well once we’re in the long white-coated months of winter. Flowers come to mind first, but plants in general are beautifully colorful in the summer. People are open to more colorful clothes, and even our skin tends to move toward deeper color despite our application of sunscreen.

In addition to this assorted burst of pigments, colors in themselves have associations, meanings we ascribe to them if only subconsciously. That’s why hospitals rooms are painted certain colors while restaurants are painted others. But why are we attracted to certain colors and repelled by others? How much of that is based on our own personalities and how much do we owe to the way color is used in interior design and even advertising or the media?

Over the next few days (ok, let’s be realistic, it might be weeks) I think it would be interesting to look into different colors and their meanings in Western culture. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it brief and it will deal in generalities so we don’t lose the folks in the back who just peeked into the room because they heard voices.

So I hope you’ll check back here and join in. I’d love to hear about your favorite colors and why they’re you favorites. Maybe we’ll even have a little play-along fun over on Instagram and post ourselves wearing colors that make us feel good, even if we don’t know why…yet. Let’s use the hashtag #colorful or tag me @tclmn so I’m sure to see what you come up with!

The Red Handkerchief

13
Jun

Hi everyone! I’m excited to share that I have a piece over at The Mudroom today. I’d love to have you stop over and see it there. Here’s an excerpt to get you started…

In the story The Giver, they had a phrase “precision of language”. This was an admonition when people used an irrelevant term, something their culture didn’t believe in anymore. We have antiquated words that don’t serve us or even offend us now, and we have phrases whose etymologies are hard to trace.

You can read more of it, just click here.

Items needed for optimum writing

Maybe I’m not the Future

6
Jun

My kids are at optimum summer camp age. You know the age, that magical sweet spot when they want to go away to camp, they can swim, they’re potty trained even at night, and they consistently tie their own shoes. Okay, they’re a little more advanced than just tying their own shoes, but they are those kids who go to camp and throw themselves fully into every game, every activity, every challenge. Their cabin leaders are gods, the camp staff are living like kings, and everything about going away is a dream come true.

We visited a special camp recently, one my husband attended as a child, one I worked at one summer, one my father attended as a child, one my grandparents helped support and build when it was first established. Even with all the changes and improvements, I felt as though I had been on staff just recently, say…three summers ago. In reality, I was on staff for one single summer, and that summer was almost 20 years ago. How can that be? I’m just barely 30 (in my mind) so I must have been the youngest staff member EVER since I would have had to be 10 for that math to work out.

Seriously, how can that be?

Here I am, barely out of my ~~20s~~ (~~30s~~…okay I’m in my 40s…but please note that’s my early 40s), and somehow I have children who want to go to camp, one of whom will attend YOUNG TEENS.

And all these tiny babies think they run the joint. They just learned to walk last week so how in the world can they think they can run a camp? They still have to have two naps a day and just started being able to grip a spoon to feed themselves, and they think people are going to entrust their children to their care??

Photo Credit: Morguefile @kakisky

Actually, they are glorious. They are all golden and fresh, thinking they’re the first ones to ever think their thoughts or breathe their air. Their attempted maturity is endearing. That’s not to say they haven’t had experiences or lived through difficulty. But so much is out in front of them, so many directions their lives can go — almost any direction if they’re willing to live on ramen noodles (do college students still scrimp by on ramen noodles?) and have cardboard boxes as furniture.

As they floated by with their backpacks and minor sunburns, I remembered being them. I remembered being sure I could do it, sure I would probably work there full time one day, sure my ideas would work, sure I would impact the future of camp, sure I’d make a difference in the lives of the campers who came through. I was the future.

Now I’m not the future anymore. I’m not sure what time period I am (present? past? imperfect participle?).

Even if I’m unsure, I’m happy to simply be here now. “In the now” is the phrase, right? Here is good. Now works. I’ll take it.

Did you ever attend or work at camp? I’d love to hear about it. Did you know I’m writing a novel that centers around camp? It’s true! I’m more than halfway done, and I think it’s a really fun story (and real, and hard. You know, like life.). I look forward to being able to tell you more about it soon!