We Are Microbes

This is a satellite photo of the Mall in Washington during the inauguration. Click to enlarge.
Source: http://www.popsci.com/content/inauguration-day

Words Not Spoken in the Inaugural Address

gay

lesbian

transgender

civil rights

equal protection

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/01/president-obamas-inaugural-address.php

All the Single Ladies Forgot to Put Their Pants On

Gotta Get Dirty

This is a dishcloth, knitted out of organic cotton yarn, unbleached and undyed and therefore fully compostable once it reaches the end of its dishcloth life. Trouble is, now I can't bring myself to dunk it in dirty dish water. Don't even dare get it wet. This is a higher hurdle to leap than the hanky thing. Something about sewing machines versus knitting needles, maybe. And what if it unravels once I start using it? Ack! Must... soil... dishcloth...

Hanky Update: Demand and Ye Shall Receive

So you've soiled your hanky to the point where you haven't any realistic alternative but to give it some R&R in the laundry hamper. What to do now? Simple: tell Mom you need more hankies, FAST. Behold the result! It's a beautiful thing, a hanky for every day of the week. Gives you a feeling like you can handle anything, no matter what kind of tempest the sinuses might throw at you.

I Love My Hanky

Sal gave me this starry scrap of fabric on the condition that I blow my nose with it. Note her hand-embroidered J which stands for JoJo's Boogers. Well, it took a week and a half, but today I finally managed the feat. Don't worry, I'll spare you the "after" photo.

But all that week and a half I've been thinking about disposability. The amount of trash we generated over the holidays kept shocking me, again and again. Plastic packaging, paper plates, pizza boxes, potato chip bags -- every one of those scraps is a piece of the planet that I judged and found wanting, worthy of a landfill and no better. It made me feel a philosophical dissonance: if the planet is sacred, then so is everything that's part of it, animal-vegetable-or-mineral. Or, in other words, if paper plates aren't sacred, then nothing is. Same goes for boogers, which fully warrant the kindness and respect of being deposited in a lovely hanky.

Each piece of garbage also represented a failure of imagination. Dumb ones, too. Would it have killed me to wash a bunch of ceramic plates? Or to make homemade pizza instead of ordering out? See, it's not that I don't know better; it's that I'm lazy. But not too lazy to honk my schnozz into this pretty washable cloth instead of into tree tissue destined for the trash bag.