Friends who’ve known me for awhile, know that James and I have been undertaking removing as much plastic from our lives as we can. It began as a way to reduce plastic waste because recycling wasn’t good enough (mircoplastics) and food wrapped in plastic often has plastic in it. We’ve been pretty successful. When our plastic coffee maker died, we got a ceramic French press that had zero plastic on it. When our coffee grinder died, we replaced it with a wood and steel non-electric grinder. We no longer purchase synthetic clothing. And, most of our food comes from a csa and the produce and bulk aisles at our co-op, or it is in a can or glass container. There are some things we have no choice about, like tofu. But, there has been some fabulous plastic reporting in the last couple of weeks that has kicked us back into figuring out how we might get rid of more plastic in our lives.

Some might say there is nothing to worry about, just recycle the plastic. A recent report published by the fossil fuel accountability advocacy group Center for Climate Integrity, reveals that the fossil fuel and plastics companies who have been pushing plastic and recycling (and if plastic isn’t recycled it’s our fault, not the company that produces all the waste in the first place) have known for decades that plastics recycling is uneconomical and not a solution to plastic waste. Is it any surprise we’ve been lied to?

So our plastic waste ends up polluting the ocean, or being shipped to poorer countries to be dumped in a landfill out of sight, out of mind, except for the people whose lives are made shorter because of the pollution. Even in the United States, plastic producing facilities are located in poor, mostly Black and Brown neighborhoods. These production plants are frequently cited for spewing out dangerous chemicals into the air and water, yet we allow them to continue doing it because it is not in our backyard.

But as these things go, the danger doesn’t stay in one place. Some recent scientific studies found plastic in every one of the 62 human placentas tested. Microplastics were also found in 17 human arteries tested, suggesting that plastic might be clogging arteries and blood vessels. So now in addition to cholesterol clogging our arteries, we have to worry about plastic too. While we can do something about cholesterol, what can we do about plastic? Not much, since plastic has even been found in clouds.

Consumer Reports tested a variety of foods in a variety of packages and found 99 percent contained sometimes shocking amounts of phthalates and bisphenols. Both chemicals come from plastic, and have been shown to be endocrine disruptors with links to insulin resistance, high blood pressure, and reproductive issues. Concentrations of these plastic chemicals were found in foods like Annie’s Organic Cheesy Ravioli, Wendy’s Crispy Chicken Nuggets, Cheerios cereal, Del Monte Sliced Peaches, and Chicken of the Sea Pink Salmon. You can see the full list of foods tested and how many phthalates per serving they contain, at the Consumer Reports website.

While James and I don’t eat any of the food on the list, that doesn’t mean the food we do eat is free of poison. Anything packaged in plastic will likely end up having some plastic get into the food. And so we’ve decided to make our own tofu. We are currently trying to track down someplace locally from which we can get supplies–wooden tofu press and mold, gypsum for setting the tofu. We tried our co-op last weekend and they had nothing. There is a huge Asian food market about 4 miles from our house that we’ve been to before for some obscure Winter Solstice menu ingredients. James has tried calling them a few times to inquire whether they have what we are looking for, but they have yet to answer their phone. We’ll keep trying to get them on the phone, and if all else fails, we’ll bike over sometime when we are out and about on errands.

I had a lovely conversation with a coworker the other day in which I mentioned that if I could do anything I wanted and didn’t have to worry about money that I would have a small farm. He asked me if I would have an emu, and then he shared this video with me

Don’t choose violence today Emmanuel! Think about it, make smart choices!

I don’t have a farm or an emu, but I have chickens and they are out enjoying the warm sunshine today. It’s so warm I have sheets drying on the clothesline. We were going to prune the apple trees, but the wind is really gusting, making pruning from a ladder a risky task, even if someone is holding the ladder. So we put that off until next weekend.

However, we did make some small repairs to the chicken coop roof and a bit of garden fencing. And I planted Eduardo’s jalapeño seeds in starter pots. I asked James how many plants he wanted and he said six. So if they all do well we’re going to have a lot of jalapeños for making fermented hot sauce. Yum!

I managed some pruning on the hazelnut yesterday. I also took my trowel out to the sunchoke patch to dig up a few roots to transplant to the chicken garden fence and start a new patch since the mulberry is going to be taking up part of the current sunchoke patch. The chickens got excited when I started digging and all rushed over to help. We all ended up disappointed.

In spite of the warmth, the ground is still frozen two inches below the top. At first I thought I kept hitting rocks, which seemed kind of weird. Then it dawned on me. Oh, it’s only the very beginning of March, and even though this has been our warmest winter on record, the ground still froze. Digging the sunchokes will have to wait a few more weeks yet.

Reading

• Essay: From the Book Waiting to Be Read on Your Bedside Table by Sue D. Gelber. “Hey, girl, it’s me. The book at the bottom of your “To Be Read” pile. I thought maybe tonight we could hang out. You can slip me out from under this stack, slide between my pages, and get to know me better.” This is bookish humor at its best.
• Book: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. This was a re-read. I first read it back in the 1990s and after reading it again I realize how much I didn’t understand. It is the story or Shevek, a physicist from the anarchist moon called Anarres. He is getting pushback from his society for being too individual. Also, he is on the verge of creating the ansible, the instantaneous communication device that will work across lightyears of space, and the closed Anarresti society find it a threat. So Shevek goes to Urras, the nearby planet of “propertarians,” to complete his work. But he soon learns they are trying to buy him for their own power and wealth with no interest in sharing the technology with any of the peoples from alien worlds (Terrans and Hainish). What I really liked is that though Le Guin herself was anarchist, she is quite clear in this book that even an anarchist society has faults and dangers that must be constantly worked out in order to keep moving towards ideals of wellbeing for all. Great stuff!

Listening

• Podcast: Planet Critical: The Cognitive Dissonance Crisis. A really interesting discussion with Oxford University researcher Sarah Stein Lubrano on why Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic (WEIRD) countries have higher rates of cognitive dissonance than other countries. The theory is that it all comes down to our belief in a fixed and unchanging self.
• Podcast: Team Human: Brian Merchant. A Chat with Brian Merchant author of Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. I’ve read the book and will get around to writing about it eventually because it is an excellent history of the Luddites. Merchant connects the Luddites’ struggles to worker movements today.

Watching

• Movie: Poor Things (2023). This was such an incredibly good strange movie. I’d like to read the book sometime.

Quote

You cannot take what you have not given, and you must give yourself. You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed, page 248

James’s Kitchen Wizardry

One of the best discoveries we have made in the last few years brought on by an over abundance of butternut squash in our fall csa, is how to make cheese sauce from the squash, and thus a very yummy macaroni and cheese dinner with some kale and homemade seitan thrown in for greens and extra protein. The original recipe calls for cashews but we use sunflower seeds.