Waste Not, Want Not

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_waste

My grandfather told me everything I needed to know to live well: how to do what needed to be done, when to do it, for how long or by how much, and why for. Between he and my grandmother, there wasn't anything that they couldn't cover with their accumulated knowledge base over the years. It's also how I know when their remaining family are totally full of shit: because they told it to me first. It's freaky how often their skills come up in my life, like besting a cashier at the grocery store in, what is to me, a simple game of sorting shapes and sizes that allows me to expertly pack bags that they can't. See? Like that. You do your job like that.

It's not really a contest between us, is what I'm saying to you. Together, we packed up cars to go to the Jersey Shore with the diva belongings of every over-packed (and over-shopped) drama queen's stuff nestled perfectly in the back (just in case one of them, you know, actually got off his/her fat ass to interact with a living breathing human who did not give birth to them and/or nurse them daily), because if we didn't manage their belongings expertly, we'd have to sit on the hump in the middle sandwiched between their ill-bought fantasies. We've all been there with family like that, haven't we? Healthy people in sick families have their brilliantly exciting lives pushed aside by the sick, when they are the ones in the margins of life, looking at us from the sidelines while we excel behind their deliberately turned backs. Convenient timing, isn't it?

But like my fathers sayings, my grandparents never really died in me, and they're here with me now. I don't mean allegorically, like some overblown Off-Broadway "dramedy" with sighing ghost-rattled chains and showily exaggerated moans of disbelief, but actually embodied in my living faith that's theirs as well. What began (and ended) with your brief encounter at thrifty living during seventh grade  "Home Ec" class became the ethos we need(ed) to survive your major economic downturns, the very same that fill the sanitariums and rehabs with the many afflicted among us who cannot cope with change. FYI, I bought rice and beans during the last "economic downturn". When we need(ed) to save on your utility bills, we turn(ed) off the lights and looked for apartments on the cheap with large, tall windows that bring in the natural light of day, hated as that may be for cretinous behavior.

We're saying that we know your waste is manufactured to foul the earth deliberately and that it stops today, because we made laws (furtively and secretively behind your back....kidding! It's on the books because we made them, and like, wrote them out and stuff). Besides, your total dipshit ways aren't working anymore, or ever. From now on, restaurants and other food distributors will be penalized ($$$) every time they're caught throwing out food that can be used legally, without excessive spoilage, for human consumption. Ditto for all restaurants, food trucks, sidewalk carts, and other fine purveyors of foods. 

My grandfather often quoted a Barese saying at the beginning of each meal as "mangia tutta casa", which in direct translation means to "eat the house" but in actuality meant "take all you want, eat all you take" as in "don't eat us out of house and home" with your rampantly unchecked and aggressively compulsive eating addiction, yo. Because my grandparents raised themselves, their sick families, and their children's children in times of great depressions, they knew (like me) exactly what family members with severe addictive disorders do, in addition to what all those other highly toxic and deeply anti-social behaviors do to the rest of the members of a family: they unfairly tax those who of us who can control their consumption unchecked unlike say, a watcher of weight addicted to junk food. In the excellent words of my grandfather if you "waste not, (you) want not" and that's how we feel about life, because that's how we live it: without waste. Nothing goes to waste in our happy homes. Welcome to the New World Order. You're welcome, by the way!

http://www.usda.gov/oce/foodwaste/resources/donations.htm

Hecho en Mexico

Ever since the beginning of Donald Trump's campaign, the media has made much out of his Mexican immigration comments, like he exposed his genitals on live t.v., or something horrible like that. You may not like that he's blowing the lid off of your illegal $9/hour worker scam (because your basic business model sucks), but you have to see it from a native New Yorker's point of view. The nanny who raises your kid for you, so you can commute to some dull generic job, has no real stake in your child's future, because you can't even feel enough compassion to pay her health benefits, while she stuffs money in her bra on the sly to send to her poor extended family back home.

We have a wonderful recycling program in the city and state of New York, one that has created a false Banana Republic economy out of picking through our trash. The afflicted and addicted on my block are so bad about lifting bottle and can deposits from the county's recycling containers, that I have to use a separate indoor garbage can for just those types of returns, because I don't want some violent fucking drunk using the money from my garbage as an excuse to continue drinking. That's not what reusing our natural resources is about. 

Ditto with that tiny little lady pushing a shopping cart, stringing five kids along with her. Sure, she looks small and vulnerable, and you feel sorry for her, but do you really think "The American Dream" for her and her family should be taking our trash as a full-time job? Her children will never see us as equals, or treat us like friends, family, and neighbors. They see "white people" as money, which is laughable, since I see her as a desperate single mother of EUROPEAN descent that's Spanish-flavored, which definitely does not make her a minority. The numbers don't add up to her sense of self about stealing from our garbage.

The media is just as bad at holding up this phony sense of self, to make money off of us, because it's blatantly untrue that Hispanic Americans are some small poor underclass. One t.v channel did this whole piece on some music teacher in Paraguay who uses garbage to fashion instruments for his students because THE PEOPLE OF PARAGUAY decided that it's appropriate for their own people to live in filth. Did we do that to them?! And you know what they want, more than anything in this world? To leave their country ASAP for America. That's right, they want to come here instead of cleaning up the trash in their own community, because apparently they're too good to do what you and I do on any given day. So, I guess it's OK to come here illegally and riffle through our trash than pick up your own garbage? Does that make any sense to you?

The people in these shadowy underground networks adopt the same arrogant attitude as some stateside Chinese: they disdain learning English to favor their own language (something my grandparents didn't have the luxury to do, because they had to work in the city as minors to feed their families during The Great Depression), nor do they pay taxes, or take their children to our schools, just so they can feed off of our cast-off bits and pieces, without ever giving back to the very system that gives them life. They do not fund our hospitals, or vote in our elections, or work in our businesses, all because you want a cheeseburger for $5, a five dollars that will never be adjusted to current inflation rates, because you can't deal without your creature comforts.

Since I've been back in Rockland County and openly encamped in town, not once has that cute little Hispanic lady with five kids—the one who canvasses the block every week during recycling day with her shopping cart piled far above the rim with can returns—ever waved at me, or said "hello" to me, or acknowledged my existence in any way, shape, or form, because to her, I am nothing but a dollar sign. I am not human to her and her family. I am nothing but money to her.

The Mexican Wedding Dress: my mom bought it on a family trip to Cozumel many years ago and never wore it once, so she gave it to me. I love it!

Blood for Oil (Fuel-Mad Americans)

http://bzfd.it/1GUWZmk

The one weapon worldwide that warring people always reliably count on against "evil" America is our supposed lust for oil and petroleum products. Speaking as someone who walks downhill daily as part of her commute, I can assure you that there is no such person, at least not how it's portrayed overseas as an excuse for violence and murder.

Americans use transportation regularly because one of our states, that land called "Texas", may be the size of your entire country and then some, which is difficult to envision if you've never been. When I lived and worked briefly in Germany, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a newly-elected Californian governor. The next day, my studio-mates in the atelier tried to use it against me, which was baffling, because I lived in New York City. I tried explaining it to them, but without an illustration like the one you see below, it's almost incomprehensible to a Euro.

The distance from Berkeley to New York City is 2,900 miles—driving time of 42.5-48 hours.

It felt like my time in Denver, when I tried (in vain) to explain to the designers and editors around me how many people we watched die, live on t.v. during the 9/11 attacks, because they also tried to dismiss it immediately. America is so vast, it is a state of mind that's much bigger than other countries on the globe, which makes it unknowable to anyone who hasn't seen it or tried to travel across it. Freedom, like being American, isn't a state or ethnic group; it's a choice.

When I explained to my German co-workers that I would have to fly on a plane (or two, or three, depending on fares and airline hubs) for SIX HOURS just to reach California from New York, I could see an "Aha" moment spreading through the group, which was solidified later on in  my trip when an editor and I blithely mentioned we were driving to Amsterdam for the weekend. They were shocked and scared beyond belief by such a journey as ours (and by beautiful women, too!), until we once again mentioned that we could drive for hours in New York and still remain in our home state. 

To us, driving a mere 2-3 hours to be in another country is so easy and ridiculous a hurdle to accomplish, we cannot imagine NOT doing that regularly. Same thing with the English language: if you had to fly for 10 hours just to get to another country, you'd probably use less languages, too, Euro. Trust me on that. Anyway, English has become the lingua franca for world business and trade, which makes sense to me, because New York City is the capital of the world. 

Writing that is still no excuse for gluttony, just because you may like shiny new things. I love good design and classic American cars as much as the next person, but to pull ourselves out of this mess, we have to buckle down and conserve. This means you! I really liked the German system of limiting car usage and petrol to orderly days of the week divided by neighborhood, like so: on Mon-Weds., these streets conserve fuel and cannot drive, so my co-workers biked as part of their daily commute instead, to a train equipped with bike racks. 

"Petrol" is considered a very expensive luxury in Europe overall, which is the right idea to have, because the cost of using too much gas is a price we can't afford to pay anymore. Think about the melting of the polar ice caps, and you're already there. Same with your air conditioning running at full speed whenever you feel like it, because you're overweight and always overheated. Fuck that! Staten Island has already experienced crippling power outages and it's not even August (the hottest month here), yet.This world needs to go on a diet, and not a Texas-sized one either. We need to change the world.

Plastic

This year I got some beautiful stuff for Christmas, like floral bouquets, 
a wedding announcement from my dear cousin and his longtime girlfriend that's lovingly designed to be a two-sided keepsake ornament shaped as a pretty snowflake, and some cold hard cash (what any young publisher really needs), along with the usual tepid crap, like plastic cards.

What disturbs me most about it are the gaping vulnerabilities savvy companies use to exploit the mass consumer, and they do so with impunity. Here's a great example: on a recent shopping trip, I thought I expertly calculated my gift card usage down to cents, and I was right. In exchange for my shopping prowess, here's what I got back from my friendly neighborhood (and totally red-faced, embarrassed) cashier:

Wow....the a**hole is strong on this card!

That's right, the cheapskate asshole who designed this program for a local supermarket chain will not allow cashiers give back a mere .$36 in coinage to the consumer, you know, in case I went power drunk with my excess riches. Uh, thanks. And so, the average consumer gets tricked into giving cold hard cash to a faceless conglomerate instead putting it where it belongs: in the gift recipients' pocket. Not convinced by mere words? OK, let's do the math together.

For example: one very busy, successful store in my town (I actually LOVE it) sells about 1,000 of these cards in racks by each check out line, and after they're used, they each have a remaining $.36 on them. That's $360.00 profit for them, barring manufacturing costs for printing the card, and distribution to stores. Next up, 10,000 cards in my home county are sold throughout the holiday season. That's $3,600.00 for the company, and not you, the consumer, or your "loved one", and I am being generous with the amounts. Most folks leave a lot more on these types of cards, because it's too much of a pain in the ass to use up the $1 to $2 that's left on them. 

Feel me on this one? Good. I'm trusting that you understand the dynamic here, right? Great! Don't do it again. Bad shopper!  You're actually feeding an industry of crooks. Live and learn, folks, and then let's move forward together, conceptually-speaking. That's all is is.
Thank you.

Here's your homework: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/04/20/new-laws-mean-unused-gift-card-money-wont-be-a-gift-to-stores/ 

And: http://www.qualitylogoproducts.com/blog/secret-of-gift-cards-plastic-into-profit/ 

Loosey Goosey

When the bottom fell out of my life financially and economically through spiteful intent and malicious design, after my supposed friends and family abandoned me, I found that abandonment embodied in a ramshackle tenement, in what was also supposed to be one of the "best" neighborhoods in New York City: Park Slope, Brooklyn. By no coincidence, it is comprised mostly of white out-of-towners who ask to be resettled there through their also-wealthy realtors and big money companies, so that they can feel some sense of security living in a town with a really bad reputation, much hyped as it is on t.v. and in movies. It is not my native New York.

It should then also come as no surprise to us, as New Yorkers, that we awoke Sunday morning to a loudly trumpeted double murder and suicide luridly served up and gleefully splashed across every local "news" program, a horror that was supposedly committed in response to "racism" (a divisive concept I do not believe in, because it is a human construct that does not actually exist in our blood that flows freely), but which is actually madness in the guise of evil. I was not fooled by the gunman's racist exhortations online, a mockery to all of us during this season of glad tidings and one very special birthday, but isn't that the point, the very hell that we women relive each and every day? We give birth, only to watch men and boys kill each other (our children) in each others' name. One life is given, and two are taken away, or two are taken and one is murdered, but the result for a woman is always the same: grief, pain, and mourning, as we watch our children taken away from us, after laboring so hard to keep them alive and safe under our charge, brief a time as it is.

And so it was with me, when I was forced into poverty and homelessness by the very people who pledged to give me life and succor it gladly in G-d's name, in His House, and standing on His alter; a move I made done in quick fear to a rotten, filthy hole of a building with horrors inside that also existed in full view of one of the wealthiest neighborhood's in the world, like a sacrilege to any who dared enter it, in the form of a roach-filled, rat-infested tenement that was the only thing I could afford to pay at the time before another corporate job started (at half the salary and below my level, you know, to fully take advantage of my vulnerable status). My labor only encouraged the tenants who lived there, beneath me in every regard, to feed off my body and blood as I worked unholy hours every day and night for them. I gave them everything: first as my money earned through my labor which is made from my honest and good hard work, my few scant hours of free time filled up with their petty tricks lies, deceits, and nonsense, all my best advice and attentions, my good wishes, all my richest and most worthy gifts freely given to them, and still it did no good. They still choose each day to waste G-d's precious riches.

The man who introduced me into his world and environment was recommended this dirty place through the local bodega, the very same place that sold him "loose" cigarettes, an unknown element to me before I came first to sleep on his floor in his sleeping bag and then, after I paid he and the super to help me empty out another filthy room adjacent to his little cell, was the same place I made clean so I that could sleep in that chamber of horrors that was padlocked with a chain instead of a doorknob before I went to work in the city, earning more for them to take from me cruelly, as they devised. 

This focal point of crime disguised as just another local bodega served as the community hot spot for criminal endeavors, because I asked my fallen friend to tell me about it. The same bodega owner who sold him cigarettes one by one in a small paper bag also took advantage of his derangement and continued poverty by directing him to an illegal tenement where he squatted, until the rich old white lady owner from Long Island found out that super was also in on the take, and kicked us out through some rich white lawyers working the city housing court system, because we hadn't given her enough to stay in her illegal building. After all my battles there were won, I actually paid what is considered "fair market value" for the privilege of staying in her squalor.

They told my mentally ill friend at the bodega (because he was new to this place that he always aspired to be, susceptible as he was: a broken ghetto kid from Brownsville) where to buy pot, and they advertised in their store window how they could illegal hack into your iPhone for a $50 fee (which was locked because you couldn't pay your phone bill) through something also unknown to me at the time that's called a "jailbreak". My friend and a neighbor had to teach me how to do it, where to go, and which man to ask for at the bodega for these services. They were that unknown to me at the time; these strange, foreign, shadowy, secretive underworld concepts that baffled me and still do, like the criminal who spends ten years plotting a crime that's over in ten minutes, never recouping his actual loss spent planning such hopeless endeavors. That's how wasteful and stupid it was to me, emotions not dulled or diminished today through the time and distance that has passed.

So the next time some carnival barker (with his obvious freckles and slick pompadour) appears on t.v., the same one who refuses to pay taxes in our home state and city where he also resides, tries to convince you that we exist in a society that's as flat and dull as any generic black and white cookie bought in a corner bodega that can easily be broken in half, remember my words here as you read my true life tale, before you rush to judgement about who is the criminal and who is the thief. Chances are that when you look in the mirror, it's you, and that this current tired rerun being played out on t.v. for sport and amusement is a phoney crusade made from fool's gold.

http://www.withsprinklesontop.net

Merry Christmas to you during His Holy Days
of Peace, Prosperity, and Love.

The Grasshopper

Grasshopper at dawn.

When I was growing up, my parents repeated a handful of fables to us as moral lessons routinely, but my father more than most. He loves slogans, sayings, homilies, quotes, and clichés, so much so, he puts his favorite ones on mugs, plaques, t-shirts, whatever.

But no matter how many times he repeated the story of the grasshopper and the ant, the moral of the story was always the same: be like the ant, not the grasshopper. It became so well-worn with time, that now all he has to do is repeat the shorthand version of it, as we say it back to him with our eyes rolling: "Be the ant, not the grasshopper." That's training for you!

And, of course, I took to children's literature like a future publisher takes to books, which means I absorbed it like it was my second skin, so tightly woven with my own personal history, that it has become intertwined with the fabric of who I am through the daily practice of it.

Grasshopper in morning light.

Now, as it grows colder and darker, the fruits of our labor take on even greater importance. Those of us from northern climates know that particularly, down to our very DNA: work hard, because winter is coming. Our animals fatten up every August and September, because that's exactly what every snow dog I've ever had does instinctively.

It was just one of the many things I thought about this morning when I first saw this lingering grasshopper in the dark light of dawn, because I was already up at 6:30 a.m., (before the alarm I set the night prior goes off, because I've trained myself to do that, so as not to disturb the rest of the household), placing our county receptacles by the curb for recycling pick up. Work, work, work, and then work some more, and always give back. That's what real communities do to make it through the tough times. À bientôt!
   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ant_and_the_Grasshopper

 

The Vintage Tee

Still looks fresh!

Back when I was a kid, "vintage" did not apply to fashion trends like denim jeans and old prom dresses. "Retro" was not yet the Bettie Page hipster living in Williamsburg off daddy's dime, working a cheap, low-level design job. Antiques were things our parents bought from old barns upstate, found in dusty attics, or buried in basements with years of wear and tear on them that had to be lovingly and patiently removed. Same thing applied to my clothes. They were mostly hand-me-downs from my older brothers, because my parents bought me clothes a few times a year: right before the new school year started in fall, at Christmas time, and for a December child like me, it was also for my birthday. If I grew a shoe size during the interim, we may have made a special trip to Sears or Buster Brown's, a chain that made Mary Jane's and Oxfords for kids; not exactly "hip" by any means, but such were the times. I did not wear pricey Gloria Vanderbilt jeans in the 80s that became a huge trend almost overnight, because my parents argued that it was a complete waste of time and money to buy something we would outgrow so quickly, and they were right. 

Can't touch this!

So now, when I go through lean times (like the phase I'm currently in), I know what exactly to do, and that does not include tightening the belt on a pair of $500 jeans. Thrift becomes a habit, just like it was for my Depression-Era grandparents with their survival skills, as does the art of searching for what you need among the things you already have. I read an absurd tag line for an article some weeks back that said mending and tailoring old clothes is now back in style in England. Ha! When I was forced through economy to spend some time last year with a family member, I did so with my typical aplomb, along with my inherent sense of style. 

Lo and behold, there among my mom's old stuff in a musty, dark, drippy basement (which I cleaned for her, under her supervision, for a few days straight, wearing plastic gloves as I sorted through the mildewed cardboard and rotting wood), was a box of our old clothes from childhood, and then, like a flash of sunny daylight in the dank depths, there it was: the first ever MTV birthday t-shirt from 1982, celebrating their first year on air (and yes, I did see the first very first MTV video, The Buggles "Video Killed the Radio Star" with my brother after school one afternoon, in total awe) that our dad, who worked in the city for Time Warner Cable, brought home, along with promotional mugs, trade show tote bags, and the latest movie posters. And guess what? You can't buy it anywhere, you fucking hipster.

The Yoga Mat

The yoga mat.

Every Monday, me and a group of retirees (I'm the youngest attendee so far, surprisingly) do an entire hour of basic yoga FOR FREE. That's right, free, at our local library. I'm pleasantly surprised by the exercise, but also grateful. As a middle-aged athlete who is also currently un-insured, I have to be very careful. At the height of my brief dojo career at two big name gyms in the city, I often rolled BJJ and sparred MMA with 20-somethings who practiced various forms of these extreme full contact supports without any health insurance whatsoever. When I asked them what they did when they got injured, they often shrugged their shoulders, and said "Just wait, I guess. And heal."

And so it happened to me, except I was still covered under the policy I was paying for. I found out that, in addition to the two pins put in place years ago after a knee surgery that was the result of an injury I got when walking my dog, I tore my ACL and also had a medial meniscus tear, along with bone, ligament, and tendon bruising. Well, at least I didn't fracture anything this time, I guess.

The yoga mat and me.

I decided not to have expensive (and somewhat risky) ACL surgery, because I did not have the ability to undergo a lengthy PT process while I struggled to keep my head above water in these uncertain times (and because no one can do the work I do with my own hands), so since then, I've had the dubious challenge of staying physically fit while enduring fits of employment coupled with lingering fears about homelessness and starvation. Quite the potent cocktail.

Last year I found a cut rate Tai Chi class that met outdoors, and then went up gradually in price as the teacher felt she could get away with. Understandable, but also, not my thing. I get bored with Tai Chi quickly, and I still have a lot of energy. So, it's now yoga, the tai chi form I learned last year, with a lot of walking thrown in for good measure, and right now, it's exactly what I need. Many of the stretches we do in class are the same ones we do in martial arts during the warm up and cool down phases, anyway.

Plus, I've met a great group of people who I share a lot in common with, something that's always occurred between me and the generation above Baby Boomers; blessings all to me. Stay fit, America. We need our strength, now more than ever. Have a great week.