Drop off day (Day 8)

Today was the day that my youngest (no, he really is, by 13 minutes) left to go to the big state school two hours away from Boston. After spending the last week thinking through what he needed to pack--it's funny how much he thought was going to be supplied for him--we finally closed up the big suitcase this morning and loaded it into the backseat. His older brother--by 13 minutes--was going to come but decided the two hour ride would be too much, so it was just me, my husband, and our youngest.

My husband and I did not cry or get emotional, but it was probably clear that we were sad. Which was maybe part of why my son did not even want our help bringing his stuff into his new dorm. We did get a hug, though, so there's something.

We drove to a nearby restaurant to eat lunch (vegan and gluten-free, yay, but ridiculously over-priced, but why should they be different from every other restaurant?), then shivered in the car as we started looking for a charging station. (Fun fact: when you drive an electric car, you will lose mileage if you run the heat for too long. Not-so-fun fact: there are not enough chargers in Massachusetts.) Miraculously, we found one at a gas station rest stop (you know, the kind with the McDonald's) and sighed about the third child to fly the coop as we waited to get a respectable charge.

We are home now, enjoying the sounds of the final child at home. I swear to you, it seems like just yesterday that I brought two little bundles home to the hospital to meet their sisters. Now those sisters are gone, one nearby, the other a little bit further and engaged to be married in May. The one still at home is taking his very last class at community college this semester. He will most likely be home with us when he transfers for his Bachelor's, but it's only a matter of time before he's gone, too. 

I know, everything changes, and I appreciate that it would be horrible if they didn't. But I'm reminded today that sometimes it's useful to take a moment to appreciate things as they are, even if they are not perfect. And it doesn't hurt to be grateful when things are actually good.

Deb in the City

It looks different at night (Day 7)

Yesterday, I did something I don't do often: I had a cup of tea and later a (vegan, gluten-free) cookie. Thus, at 4:30 PM, after working out at home, I was still really energetic, and decided that I wanted--needed--a walk outside.

(I take that back: on Tuesday I had the same cookie as well as some matcha, but I also had a very long walk that day as well. There is a pattern!)

I didn't have a plan when I started except that I needed to be in my favorite bit of Boston's greenspace while I still had the light. But after I passed through it, my body just wanted to keep going. And so I did for the next 90 minutes, as I lost all the light. Eventually, I got tired, but I kept powering through until I got to a train station (amazingly, the Orange Line of the MBTA still works, though not every line in the system can make that claim).

I grew up in a bunch of places, particularly Cambridge, but I spent a lot of my time before, during, and after college on Huntington Avenue. It's always bittersweet traveling down that street, no matter how often I do it, taking note of what has changed and what has stayed the same. Some changes I approve of, some I mourn (and others I anticipate). 

I consider myself fortunate to have been able to have contemplated them last night on a heady walk, and then fortunate that I had a home in the present to go back to. My relative good fortune was driven home when I got to the train and someone asked to get in on my ticket. I didn't have a chance to say yes--which I was going to--before one of the MBTA attendants came out of their booth to scold the person who had asked me that they should have asked her instead. She let him and two other people who couldn't afford $2.40 for the privilege of riding a decrepit "public" transportation system. (Imagine not wanting to ask someone like that for help.) Maybe those people had a warm home with people who were happy to see them when they arrived, and maybe they also enjoyed a hot drink there as well, but home should shelter us from the elements, not the callousness of other people.

Deb in the City

Things that shouldn't happen in a rich state (Day 6)

On this date, we have families in desperate need of shelter sleeping in the baggage area of Logan Airport. If you had told me thirty, forty years ago that I would be writing this in 2024, I wouldn't have believed you. But here we are.

A few weeks ago, I participated in a rally at the statehouse to protest budget cuts to cash assistance for those experiencing the deepest poverty. In case you didn't know, those generally include children, the elderly, and the disabled. Or as I like to think of them, the most vulnerable among us.

The backdrop to this includes a tax relief plan that this administration passed--after the Fair Share referendum was voted in. The campaign to get the referendum on the ballot took almost a decade, and supporters barely had time to catch their breaths before the tax relief end run was announced. 

Did I mention that the governor in power now is a Democrat? Perhaps I should also remind you that I am writing from the allegedly Deep Blue state of Massachusetts. 

It doesn't matter.

It's hard not to contemplate parents freezing with their young children at Logan and other parents struggling to buy diapers for their children, while holding the reality of what a voter referendum is really good for, and not remind myself what the definition of insanity is. 

As I read Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-49 by Christopher Clark, it's difficult not to see the parallels between that time and now. I don't know what will spark a modern clash--and at this point I believe it can be avoided--but if those in power continue to be callous, it won't take much.

Deb in the City

Sometimes the remedy is company (Day 5)

Yesterday I was out of sorts. My husband and I finally finished a book that was due back at the library. I enjoyed the story, but by the time we were done..."oh, look at the time." I didn't have any appointments that day, but I did have things to do, and even though it wasn't ten in the morning, I felt like the day had slipped away. I was also not feeling well, a combination of something I ate and cramps.

The logical thing to do--the productive thing to do--would have been to have squirreled away to the library or a cafe and squeezed out a little work. But I did something else--I went for a walk with my sons. Though, sadly, it didn't do much for my physical symptoms, I did feel better.

When they were younger, I was desperate for time to myself to get done all of those things I wanted to get done. Well, when they were younger, I did get them done, but I have wished more than once that I had spent more time with them less focused on what I wasn't doing and more interested in being with them. But that changed; at some point I went from feeling like a glorified babysitter and teacher to someone who counted her good fortune.

Several years ago--the Before Times--my husband had a school reunion to go to. There was some confusion about whether or not he should take me (he wasn't sure if his friends were bringing their wives, he wanted a last hurrah with his high school friends, whatever). By the time he came around to deciding that, no, I should come, I had already made alternate plans: the three youngest kids and I were going to see a movie. 

That sounds like a consolation prize, right? I got to take the kids to dinner and a movie while my husband got to hang out with his old friends, some he hadn't seen in decades, in some place far from home, eating food provided by the venue...Wait, on what planet does a night out with kids sound like the lesser option?

I remember that night really well: the kids and I walked to one of their favorite local pizza places, got pizza (although I think I couldn't at that point), walked to the train station, went downtown, got movie snacks at the semi-swanky grocery store, then saw a movie I'd been looking forward to for a few months. I had a lot of fun with my kids, and at no point did I wish I were with someone else or by myself.

Not sure how well my husband remembers his reunion with his friends, but I know he regrets not being able to share that night with me and the kids.

Scenes from our neighborhood

 Yesterday was not as eventful: we returned a library book, went to the same pizza place (sadly, their best days may be behind them...), got a drink at a cafe, then got eggs and crackers on a bodega on the way home. It was just another afternoon, and I am lucky that I can still share them with my children. I felt better--I felt lucky. Productivity be damned.

Deb in the City

No, really, people should read more (Day 4)

As I've said, my preferred media is books, but to keep up-to-date, I subscribe to The Economist, as well as keep up with the Joongang Daily and my local public radio websites (and On the Media). The Economist is a much better publication than it was fifteen years ago--I will never forget their cover trumpeting the growth potential of Southern Europe, less than two years before the default debt crisis that effectively claimed Europe, but they are less filled with wishful thinking than they were before.

They also cover a breadth of topics, including science (or science-adjacent) news that doesn't always make it to national outlets. So I was not surprised to see them cover a the rise in feral boar hybrids yesterday. I was, however, shocked by the story itself.

Apparently, Canadian pig farmers in the 1980s decided to breed their stock with British boars to improve their stock, getting meatier animals they could, I presume, get more of a profit from. But when the price of pork fell in 2001, some of them released their pigs into the wild when they couldn't sell them.

My dear reader, I would have known the punchline to the story even if the subtitle hadn't given it away. Of course parts of the Canadian countryside were going to be infested with wild boars over twenty years later, and of course some of them are starting to make their way to Minnesota. This has happened before. I know this because I read about it in a book less than two years ago. Ecological Imperialism by Alfred Crosby is a classic that was published in 1986--you know, around the time the pig farmers started cross-breeding.

Like other European imports of fauna, particularly the horse and cow, pigs did extremely well when they got to the Americas, and by the 18th century there were so many that farmers released them into the wild. Fun fact: it takes about two generations for a domesticated pig to revert to a feral state, complete with sharp tusks. The colonial versions were not a joke--they're not called razorbacks for nothing. If anything, we should be grateful that these modern Canadian wild boar hybrids are relatively tame, and that their population hasn't exploded.

(This would normally be where I would post a picture, but I just can't.)

I don't blame individual farmers as much as I do local and regional governments. What did they think was going to happen to all of those pig farmers when the prices dropped?

Deb in the (wonderfully razorback-free) City

Self-help is self-delusion (Day 3)

I used to think that I could be one of those people who made everything neat and tidy, stayed within budget, cooked from scratch, and generally made everyone happy--all while saving the world--and if I wasn't getting all of that done it was because there was something wrong with me. But every time I got really into some modality that was supposed to help with even some of that, my ears would always prick up just a little bit when someone critiqued whatever I had stumbled into. Macrobiotic cooking, mind body fitness, meditation, tidying (but I do still love it), minimalism (I have never loved it), bullet journaling, Martha Stewart, raw foods--all of it. I always put it down to being a little self-thwarting, but in reality, my BS-meter just wouldn't stop working.

The books I've been drawn to, while ostensibly trying to answer the question "How do I...?" as a body finally helped me understand that I had been asking the wrong question of the wrong parties. The issue isn't that I need to hack my way through The Game of Life, but that life should not be a game. Life is, in fact, reality. 

This will do nothing for you...

The reason people have trouble managing their money isn't because they haven't found the perfect tracking system, but because wages were stagnated for decades while labor protections were gutted, and the things we're all told we should be willing to pay for--education, housing--have risen so much that they are out of reach for many without debt. The reason people are chronically, debilitatingly stressed isn't because they haven't found the meditation technique that will take them to nirvana, but because the modern world--as was the pre-modern world--is filled with stressors that reflect both immediate, life-threatening events like frequent mass shootings and slow burning but ultimately traumatic problems like a lack of access to healthy food, chronic poverty, and systemic racism and classism. The reason so many of us struggle with health problems isn't because we're idiots that don't know how to cook, but because the food industry has been trying to make us the most productive workers we can be since the end of World War II by feeding us high calorie foods...that mean we don't need to take a break from work to eat. (I am not making this up; Ultra Processed People by Chris van Tulleken discusses this.) The reason we don't get exercise is because, if we're not working the kinds of hours that prevent us from doing anything other than working and sleeping, the majority of us live in places that have been designed specifically for cars, not people. The reason you can't put down junk food, marijuana, alcohol, cigarettes, video games, porn, or your smart phone isn't because you lack morals, character, or discipline, but because those things have been optimized to be habit forming. The reason your email is overflowing isn't because you don't know how to prioritize, but because everyone thinks they're entitled to a piece of you. The reason you have too many possessions is because you have been told, implicitly and explicitly, that you will be judged if you don't have enough stuff, and it has to be the right kind of stuff, your needs, finances, and space constraints be damned. The reason we experience prejudice and inequality isn't because we don't know how to put our best selves forward, but because we live in a prejudiced, unequal civilization.

Do you really think you're going to change any of that with a Bullet Journal, a kakeibo, time-saving recipes, efficient workouts, meditation, or self-actualization techniques? You can help manage some circumstances better with certain tools, but you can't change the underlying causes. And while there are some behaviors you can change that can sometimes make a difference, there's a limit. My financial circumstances improved not because I wasn't spending money (you have no idea how little I spend on clothing, and my housing costs are low compared to other people in my state), but because 1) I could refinance my mortgage when interest rates dropped and 2) my husband got a raise. Being parsimonious meant those advantages didn't evaporate, but it would be ridiculous to say that I somehow manifested the raise itself by being "good with money".  

...but this will

The time we are spending reading self-help blogs, newsletters, and books, watching self-improvement videos, and perfecting the practice of coping systems is keeping us from the actual work we need to do. If we want to improve our lives, we have to change the systems we live in. Sure, that starts with questions about why something is the way it is, but then it's *work*. It's different for everything, it's messy, and it doesn't fit in a pithy book an eighth-grader could write. It's what you find when you study history, because shockingly, people have been able to make necessary changes, and under less promising circumstances. It's scary--and boy, can those books be long--but somehow I prefer that to the fairy-tale complacency of self-help.

Deb in the City

Out and about

When I started blogging, my youngest were almost two. They are now 19, and one has finished his associate's degree and is off to the flagship state school on Monday (*sigh*) and the other is finishing his final class at community college before he transfers to art school. Today was the first day of class, and I rode in with him to class.

Had a surprise run-in with one of my neighbors and had a lovely chat with her (the annoyed guy next to me can screw). Got my son a pastry and drink, then discovered that the nearby library wasn't open for another two hours. Good excuse for a walk through Charlestown and the North End. 

While transiting, chatted with the traffic cop (there is always construction in Boston, but rarely assistance for pedestrians). After discovering that we both lived in the same part of Boston, at least at one point, had a bit of gallows humor about still living in a capitalistic country for the next six months, then all bets are off. It's funny because it's true!

Had a laugh as I crossed into the North End and saw the restaurant window below. My husband has been duly warned. 

Still too early for the libraries in this part of town to be open, so I'm parked at a cafe, ready to get down to business. (Lest anyone accuse me of being bourgeois, please see above about intended plan for libraries.)

(Wow, this was a lot of photos today!)

In other news, looking at some of the Christmas art on Ann Wood's site inspired me to start thinking about Pesach/Passover and Chanukah. What do those holidays mean? What do those rituals mean? As someone who creates--do I dare to call myself an artist?--I think about limitations quite a bit. Like many people, I find they provide focus, and in many cases freedom. Occurred to me as I was pondering these holidays that for some things the limitations are the definition. That's not always a bad thing, but perhaps it speaks to why we need to ponder what those limitations are constantly, and redefine them as necessary. 

Speaking of limitations, time is the one which presses hardest today, so off to read some history and play with more differential equations. Until next time,

Deb in the City