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Do you ever feel like you and some of the people in your life are living in different worlds? This thought was sparked by my observations of how differently people have responded to official health guidelines during the pandemic. Now that a lot of the official lockdown measures are lifted (at least in some parts of the USA), it seems to have intensified the disparities in individual behavior.

Some people won’t even leave their homes to go for a walk. (Mostly older folks with preexisting health conditions). At the other extreme, some people are attending large in-person gatherings, flying in airplanes (even to or from other countries), going to church in person, having multi-household gatherings indoors, and so on, as if circumstances were completely normal. And of course most people, including me, are somewhere in-between.

I started asking myself, “How do I (we) deal with reality when the people around me (us) seem to be living in different worlds?”

And various answers came into my mind.

• The first one is that ultimately I am the only one who can take responsibility for my own health and for setting my own boundaries. For a little while there (til mid-fall?), I was attending very small (outdoor) gatherings (4-6 people max), with sharing of food. But now that the disparity in people’s everyday choices seems to be widening, I have pulled back on that. Now if I want to see people in person, I stay 10 feet apart and don’t share food or drink. The main thing for me is sharing conversation. Eating together is something I love but it’s not essential. (By the way, my geo-distant family and I had a lovely Christmas visit by video-phone app. I got to “sit” at their table!)

• But. Work is a whole other matter. People working in jobs requiring front-line face-to-face contact (as opposed to working home-based or outdoors, like me) don’t have the option of calibrating their social distance. With those workers in mind, too, I really try not to go inside anywhere unless I really need something. Grocery/minimart, plus (the other day, first time since pre-pandemic that I’d been inside a building other than my own house for more than a few minutes) my eye doctor for eye checkup, bank for special business not able to be done by phone or drive-thru, and bicycle shop for new helmet and other safety essentials.

The second level of answers to that question is more complicated. So, “How do I (we) deal with the people around me (us), when they seem to be living in different worlds?”

• One short answer that came to me: The same way other people deal with me when I seem to be living in a different world from them.

(To be continued shortly! I want to go for a walk while it’s still light out, and before the temp starts to dip for the evening.)

OK, I’m back from my walk. And, as sometimes happens with my posts, what started out in my head as a short-seeming post has grown a bit more lengthy. Things came to me as I was walking.

Earlier today, without my realizing it, a friend sent me the “punch line” to this post. He texted me a meme titled, “An Old Farmer’s Advice.” It was all basic sound practical advice, but the one that stood out for me most was, “The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every morning.” That’s the punch-line of this post, I realized while I was out on my walk. I’ll fill in the middle as it comes to me.

Nutshell: Judging other people’s choices is not a way to make anything good happen in the world. A very old lesson, but one I seem to need to learn repeatedly. Life on Planet Earth is always humbling.

So, other thoughts in answer to that question:

• We all live in different worlds, in a sense — even while sharing the same physical platform. People have different beliefs about health, medicine, the environment, government, and so on. So “dealing with people who are living in different worlds” is nothing that any of us is new at. It’s daily life.

• I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I’ve noticed that the best way to deal with people, period, is to care more about the people themselves than about my idea of “what’s right.” It’s tricky when it comes to, say, a pandemic, or the environment. Because I think I’m advocating for the good of everyone. But then I look into myself and see some little twisted pocket of something other than “caring for others.” Could just be me wanting to be right (always a popular feeling on Planet Me). Or (in the case of people traveling and gathering despite public-health warnings) me envying them for getting to see their families while I stay home “for the good of all.” Well, if I’m really doing something for the greater good, that envy or whatever other emotion subsides quickly; does not stick around. If it sticks around, that’s a sign I need to look into myself and correct something.

• Similarly with “self-sacrifice for the good of the environment.” If it’s really for the greater good, then I can just feel positive about my choices and not need to be judgmental of others. My job, if I truly believe the choices I’m making are best for the greater good, is to make it easier and more attractive for other people to make similar choices.

• Sometimes the “person living in a different world” is right there in my own head. An opposing faction of my own self, who rebels against my higher judgment. For example, she wants takeout food even though she knows the server will be putting on a fresh pair of plastic gloves just to prepare her order, and will then throw those plastic gloves away. (Ugh. I’d be happier to take my chances with someone’s bare hands than generate that awful single-use plastic.) Or she wants chocolate even though she just read that children are kidnapped to work on cacao plantations.

• To a vegan who grows all their own food and never orders takeout and doesn’t have a sweet tooth, I am one of those “people living in a different world.”

• “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Words of enduring greatness. The Lord’s Prayer is my favorite readymade prayer and I say it pretty often.

• At Thanksgiving, I was worried my friends would get mad at me and never speak to me again, when I said I wanted to visit but outdoors at a distance and bring my own food. They understood; they celebrated in their way; I got to spend time with them later in the way I felt was safe; and we are all still speaking to each other.

• Many of us at one time or another have done things that were bad from a public-health standpoint. When I was young I’d go to work sick, and not even think about other people! When I went to live in Japan in 1990 and saw people on the trains wearing masks, I thought it was because they were germophobes. I found out that, in fact, the mask-wearers had headcolds and were trying to protect other people from their germs. That mind-set was a major revelation for me. I’m not one of those people who were born naturally thinking of others before themselves, and I’m still not naturally that way, but with a little voluntary evolution I have become a bit more that way at least sometimes.

• When I first got seriously into environmental activism (in the mid-1990s, when I moved back to the USA from Japan), I’d get filled with anxiety about the state of things and wonder how the human race was going to survive, given how some people were living. At that time, I was also getting into long-distance road-cycling (both doing it for recreation, and watching professional races on TV). I learned about a kind of time trial called a “team time trial,” where no individual can win. There’s no prize for an individual who shoots way ahead and gets the best time of anyone. The way that a team gets the best time is by everyone working together — drafting off each other, etc. Seeing this, I realized that human life on this planet is one big team time trial. Except instead of competing against other teams, we’re all in it together.

Further Reading:

“Why Travel During Pandemic?” (Opinion piece by Robert Pawlicki in Daytona Beach News-Journal 12/30/2020.) “… the person who has chosen to travel has a belief — typically a very strong belief — that their physical and safety needs are being managed and therefore their need for family deserves attention. … During this period when we are so divided, we may not condone or agree with each other’s thinking. It may be useful to at least understand the rationale of others.” Interesting piece; goes into Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Some of us hate the heat; others can’t stand the cold. I’ll do a post for the heat-haters later. This post here is dedicated to people like myself who feel like crawling in bed and staying there all day when the weather turns chilly. There are lots of ways to instantly feel warm. Like, build yourself a sauna. Or install a nice hot Jacuzzi in your backyard and submerge yourself up to the neck in it from about November through March. But I’m trying to focus on cheap, practical ways here.

• Do a task, any task: Sweep or mop a room. Rake leaves. Even the small exertion of pumping up a bicycle tire, I notice, makes me feel much warmer right away, and the effect lingers for a time after the activity is done.

• Cover your head and neck. I’ve read that 25% of our body heat dissipates through our heads. Great in hot weather; not so great in cold. Hats and scarves help a lot.

• Take a walk. Even just a lap or two around the block. If it’s a sunny day you’ll get the additional boost of vitamin D.

• Cover your feet. Socks make all the difference! When sitting out on the porch on a night that turns cool, I’ve found I can greatly extend my cool-tolerance by putting on socks.

• Cover your middle! For some reason, I feel disproportionately cold (and cranky) if the bottom of my shirt fails to overlap the top of my pants or skirt. That gap is lethal! I’m a huge fan of high-waisted tights and haramaki. (I’ve often made my own “American-style haramaki” by cutting the top part off a stretchy shirt, leaving just a stretchy tube to pull over my middle as a super-warming layer.)

Oh, and all of that said: If you can get away with crawling in bed and staying there on a cold day, you have my full approval! Now, more than at any previous time in history, there’s a staggering amount of productive activity you can accomplish without leaving your quilt-burrow. Writing, online banking, paying taxes, social-media tasks, and attending Zoom meetings, to name just a few.

I hope these tips help my fellow cold-haters enjoy winter more. They’ve definitely helped me! What else would you add to this list?

Someone on Zero Waste, Zero Judgment just asked for sites/channels of eco-minded folk who are not white, cis-gendered, or vegan. (Not that the person is against white, cis, vegan folk; just that she is wanting to hear viewpoints from people beyond those categories, which seem to make up the majority in eco groups.) Here is a list of suggestions from the comments. (Not clear which are YouTube, which are Instagram etc. — suggest just googling to check them out.)

• A Sustainable Mind podcast
• Green Girl Leah
• Manuela from The Girl Gone Green
• Biologist Imogene “actual wildlife biologist, talks a lot about personal impact (shes white, Hetero, non vegan or vegetarian I think, but I included her because she is a scientist by trade and she is a pretty good ally)”
• NatureChola, she’s funny and wholesome
• HowNotToTravelLikeABasicBitch- “She mostly is travel focused, but she’s got an environmental soft spot too”
• Simply by christine
• Kamea Chayne- host of Green Dreamer podcast
• Zero waste cutie
• TheEcoGoddess
• Climate Diva
• Queer brown vegan
• Sarah’s Tips for Preparedness (PuertoRicoWriter.com)
• PattieGonia
• Naturally Mermaid
• JHANNEU
• Hey Ashley Renee
• Thrifts and Tangles

This poem just hatched out of nowhere. It is not specifically about me or anyone else.

(Update Christmas morning: Well it actually didn’t hatch out of nowhere; it hatched out of grief I was feeling last night.

(This morning, Facebook served me up a sweet Christmas memory from 2008: “is digging a perfect Christmas with my loved ones; testing my lil bro’s theory that absinthe will re-activate my urge to blog 😉 ” Our parents were still alive; this was the second-to-last Christmas we were all together.

(This Christmas I really feel I did the responsible thing by not traveling. But, I really miss my brother, sister, brother-in-law & nieces, and wish I could have been there with them today and yesterday.

(Everyone says this, such a cliché but it’s true. Cherish your loved ones, tell them you love them; enjoy whatever times you can share.

(Also, sometimes memories may be all you have, but memories can be so rich. Also, grief can be channeled to offer so much comfort to others. AND last but not least: Technology used wisely is a great thing! We can and should use technology to stay connected, and even strengthen our relationships, even when circumstances make it difficult or unwise to meet in person. Yay for picture-texts, Zoom and all that, including the good ol’ voice-phone!)

This poem is a message in a bottle, floating across the sea of the internet to any of you who are spending these times alone (and don’t want to be), or maybe you’re not alone but still you’re dealing with loss or separation of some kind. Maybe because you lost someone over the past year. Maybe a favorite person or animal crossed over; maybe a friendship ended; maybe there was a misunderstanding that led to permanent disconnection. A lot of you have lost someone very dear this past year or two, and this is to share in your sorrow and let you know you are not alone.

Christmas, Old Style

Back in those days there was no internet
no Facebook
no Zoom
There wasn’t even any phone picture texting

So I told myself tonight, as I sat by the river (eating a convenience-store hotdog and hatching plans to open a bottle of discount eggnog later at the house):

Hey!! I have an idea!
Let’s pretend you’re not really gone!

Let’s pretend we’re just doing
Christmas old style —

And that, therefore, some days or weeks after tonight, I’ll get a cheery letter in the mail
or a scribbled postcard: “Had a good Christmas but missed you, all is well!”
and maybe even a photo or two. (Photos were expensive, and printed,
and a big deal
and not so commonplace
back then)

And just from seeing the envelope, I’ll be able to smell the resiny tree
and feel the warmth of the fireplace
and see the candle-lit faces of everyone
and hear the tiny golden notes
of that old candle-chime spinning
of so many Christmases past
that I took for granted.

“Let’s pretend we’re just doing
Christmas old style!” I said out loud.

And I sent that thought to you just now
across the country
across time
across wars
across the seas
across a pronouncement from a white coat or a blue uniform
across the veil

as I walked home alone.

(Then I look up in the sky
and in the stars I swear I see

a picture-text from you.)

In Part 1 of this post, I linked and quoted several news stories that highlight widespread difficulties being faced by everyday people (in the United States, so probably elsewhere too). I asked readers to just sit and let the reality sink in, as opposed to jumping right into trying to find solutions.

For one thing, the problems are systemic and won’t be solved by snap judgments or finger-pointing. For another, we tend to come up with better ideas if we are willing to fully take in the present situation.

In a nutshell, my biggest takeaway from the articles linked in Part 1 of this post is this: One-third of households in the United States are currently behind on rent or mortgage payments, and are facing eviction or foreclosure. One-third.

Other issues I mentioned are all related: Certain corporate executives have seen their wealth skyrocket over the past few months. While everyday people are facing having to choose between a roof, food, and transportation. And workers, afraid of losing their jobs, meekly obey boss’s orders to return to their workstations, despite having severe symptoms of illness. Meanwhile, the government commands certain industries to keep production rolling despite the health hazards.

Of course, most of us have known about these trends for a while. And probably at least some of you have been directly suffering their effects. Covid has just magnified the systemic cracks that have been growing for a long time.

Now. You and I have only limited say in what the government or corporations will do. We can and should pressure them to take steps to address the systemic roots of the crisis. But nothing is going to be solved overnight. In the meantime, a huge percentage of everyday people have an immediate emergency on their hands: the possibility of becoming homeless in the near future. So that’s what I want to try and help with today.

In the article about the eviction/foreclosure crisis, one person said he and his family “may have to sleep in their car, stay on friends’ couches, or move to another state to crash with distant relatives.”

Now, for anyone else facing this hard choice: I’m going to offer my best advice to help you deal with the situation and even come out better off. I’ll cut to the chase: Do not allow yourself to get evicted or foreclosed on. Do anything else (legal) first.

Food: Food is still abundant even in these hard economic times, and lots of organizations are handing it out. I know it’s hard to accept handouts, but if you are in the situation described above, swallow your pride. Go to a church or food bank. Even dumpster-dive. We have way too many surplus calories floating around (at least in the USA and Canada which is the target audience for this blog — and probably in Europe and Australia too) for anyone to go hungry (or to get evicted because they chose buying groceries over paying rent/mortgage).

Car: Sell the car! Plain and simple. Sell it, rather than go homeless. You don’t want an eviction on your record. And you do NOT want to live in a car; trust me. (And I’m a person who has voluntarily lived in her vehicle — back when she had a vehicle — and who is single; no kids or spouse to take care of.) Whether or not you have a family to take care of, you do not want to live in your car. You can’t cook; there’s not enough space; you’ll spend most of your day dodging people’s prying eyes. You’ll constantly have to find money to keep the car gassed up, and you’ll constantly have to worry about it breaking down. And (if you have kids), you will risk having the kids taken away by government agencies. For those of you who are saying, “But how do I get to work without a car?” — there are many solutions, which I have often posted about before. Nutshell: start a homebased business; or find some kind of work you can do in your neighborhood; or move to a place where you can walk or cycle to work.

Roof: This is where it’s at. Keep a roof over your head. Do whatever it takes without breaking the law (and here I’m not counting local ordinances that limit the number of people living under one roof — those rules are elitist and absurd at the best of times, and downright criminal now; go ahead and violate those if you have to).

Some tips for keeping that roof over your head:

• Invite family or friends to come live with you; or move out of your place and live with them. No it’s not easy doubling or tripling up. But it beats the alternative.

• If you rent: Bargain with your landlord for lower rent. Landlords are feeling the pinch right now, and some might be willing to accept less rent rather than have to go through eviction proceedings, and rather than have to wait some indefinite length of time to start getting paid full rent again. (Speaking of lower rent, rents in some big cities have started to decline.)

• If you own a house but have a mortgage: Invite people to live with you. I would not attempt to tangle with a bank. (Unless it’s to arrange a short sale and bail out of there and move in with family or friends.)

• If you own a house free and clear: Much easier — but if you own a house free and clear, you are probably not facing foreclosure. If you are, then invite family or friends to come live with you. Or sell the house and move in with family or friends.

• Cut your utility bill by 1) turning the heat as low as you can stand (or turn off the airconditioning and open the windows if it’s hot where you are); 2) minimizing use of hot water; 3) minimizing use of clothes-dryer (use clothesline or drying rack). These three are the biggies in most utility bills.

• Sell any excess stuff you’re not using or don’t really need. Dishes, furniture, appliances, whatever. It’ll make you a bit of cash and free up space for sharing your place with other people.

• If moving to a different geographic region: Don’t think of it as temporary; think of it as your new normal. Pick a place you can stand to live; people you want to live near. You might as well; the economy’s bad all over right now. Yes the economy is worse in some places than others. But generally speaking, the pandemic economy is such that right now may be the best time in my lifetime (and I’m almost 60) to think about your own preferences first, rather than have “availability of a job” be your first criterion for choosing a geographic area. Most of us in this modern world have friends and family scattered far and wide. Pick a place where you can think about putting down roots.

• Ditto for moving in with friends/family. Don’t think of it as couch-surfing; think of it as your new normal and pick your people accordingly. Worried about imposing on people? In addition to paying them what money you can, be sure and offer them something they need, and make yourself a steady reliable source of it: cooking, landscaping, housecleaning, babysitting, whatever.

• New normal (economy): My best advice is never take fat times for granted; enjoy them but never assume they’ll last. In fact, it’s always good to assume that a fat job or brisk economy won’t last, and live accordingly within a tolerable risk margin. OK, so that’s fat times. Now that we’re in lean times, my best advice is assume this is the new normal. That has always worked for me. The worst that can happen is you end up creating a bigger safety cushion than you need; pinching more pennies than you have to. This is NOT about deprivation; that cliché “The best things in life are free” exists for a reason!

• New normal (pandemic): I don’t like to sound doom-and-gloom. But I believe we are going to have many more pandemics, possibly much more severe. And I’m treating this one as the easy-peasy dress rehearsal. Yes, I know it’s hardly “easy-peasy” — but I suspect this is a cakewalk compared with what might be coming. (And there is the fact that a new, more contagious strain of the virus has cropped up. Only in England so far, but we’d be wise to heed.) Am I in total lockdown, cowering in my house? Nope! I’m developing new habits for living well without risking the public health (or my own health) unnecessarily. And the habits are aligned with my livelihood and my deepest core eco-values.

• Make your own job. Be it home-based or neighborhood-based or whatever, this is your golden opportunity to create a livelihood for yourself that is more robust than an employer’s whim. Find a local need and fill it. Even if you only make 10 or 20 or 30 bucks a day at first, you’ll be able to get by (because you’ll have radically reduced your overhead in the ways I suggested). Just a few ideas: sewing, mending, baking, bicycle repair, knife-sharpening, errand-running, babysitting kids (outdoors; social-distance); teaching (via Zoom, Facebook Live etc.), landscaping, painting custom signs, collecting compost, organizing yard sales. Even just scrounge through the curbside “trash”; you’ll likely find an abundance of furniture, shoes, other stuff that’s good enough to sell.

• Full disclosure: A few years back, I went through a fairly lengthy phase when I hovered on the edge of being involuntarily homeless. If I’d been too proud to urban-scrounge for other people’s unwanted food (as well as wild-forage, and grow some of my own); if I’d been saddled with a car; if I’d been too snooty-bougie-minded to have roommates in a tiny apartment “at my age” (it was actually fun exercising my creativity to make a micro-bedroom for myself out of old doors and bookcases, so the roommates I depended on to help with rent could have the real bedroom) — I’d almost certainly have become homeless.

A lot of things really seem to be falling apart right now. One of my favorite quotes (which I’ve heard attributed to Marilyn Monroe) is, “Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”

I have often found this to be so. And, collectively speaking, I absolutely think that right now is one of those times. Go make some good things fall together, for yourself and your community and the planet. I’m here to support you, so please give me a shout anytime if you could use some more ideas!

Dental floss seems to always come in some kind of plastic, be it a plastic bag or hard plastic case. I thought it’d be easy to just find a naked roll of the stuff, but not so much.

Here an eco-blogger and book author has written what seems to be a very thorough overview of various floss options. (MyPlasticFreeLife.com)

And I added my own comment to her comments section: Thank you for this thorough writeup. It seems like it should be a simple thing to just offer a floss that’s wound on a cardboard spool, and does not come in a plastic bag or box, and does not come with metal cutting attachment (let people cut it with their own knife or scissors). What I finally tried that worked is Nymo thread, a very fine thread used for beading. It comes on a plain cardboard spool, and I already have many rolls of it in my beading supply kit. I used it plain; and also tried waxing it with beeswax. Works well either way.

BTW, My Plastic Free Life looks like quite an impressive blog. Apparently its author, Beth Terry, has been posting since 2007!

Ms. Terry’s book, shown on the blog, is one I’ve heard of but have not yet read. Looks very worthwhile. (Title is Plastic Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too.)

Some more readings to add to this ongoing topic:

• “Respect Hawaii’s Sacred Land,” by Isiah Magsino in the excellent email newsletter Anti-Racism Daily: “Investigate the motives behind Zuckerberg, the telescope, COVID travel, and the development of sacred burial grounds, and you get one common denominator: money from outside of Hawaii. This contributes to the growing wealth disparity between non-Native Hawaiians and Native Hawaiians, as Native Hawaiians have the highest poverty rate in Hawaii …”

• “Study Hall: Ethical Tourism” (Nicole Cardoza; Anti-Racism Daily): “Isiah’s piece touched on how tourism to Hawaii contributes to its colonization, and how many may not respect its deep history and culture. At the same time, tourism is important to the local economy. When traveling to these spaces, it’s important to listen to the best practices of both the local travel boards and the Indigenous communities that inhabit those lands. Always aim to spend your money with locally-owned lodging, restaurants, etc. Respect the land and don’t leave a visible footprint (recycle, wear the right sunscreen, etc). You can learn more from mindful travel from people like Dr. Kiona that regularly outline these issues.” (This piece seems to be available only in the email newsletter. It was written in response to a reader who asked if they should simply refrain from traveling to Hawaii even though they are interested in the culture.) Go here to subscribe to Anti-Racism Daily email newsletter. It’s a very practical and insight-filled resource.

• “Stop Going to Mexico: Travel during pandemic is ‘vacation colonialism'” (Stuart Schuffman, in San Francisco Examiner): “Many of the people I see going to Mexico in my social media feeds are in the ‘wellness community’ or are people who focus on spirituality and ‘personal growth.’ Loving yourself and working on health and wellness are incredibly important, but doing so at the expense of other peoples’ health and wellness makes the whole thing total bullshit.”

• “As Casino Revenues Plummet, What’s Next for Tiny Macau?” (Simon Lewis, in TIME): Macau’s economy is almost entirely reliant on the casinos where Chinese from the mainland do their gambling. It may bring in money for state coffers, but Souza, whose clientele comprises largely Western expatriates and Macau citizens, feels the gaming industry has corrupted his home. ‘The money is going into [officials’] pockets through these big projects,’ he says, ‘It’s wasteful.’ When the casinos came, ‘the feeling of Macau, the feeling of the neighborhood, changed very suddenly,’ he says. ‘It’s not a place I feel like I want to stay in.’ ‘There’s a lot of side effects,’ Lei says. ‘In business and even [in terms of] how to think about the city, they only think, “we need to please the tourists.” I don’t think that is good for the young generation.'”

• (This one’s a video.) First TikTok vid I’ve ever watched and it’s a goodie. Anti-racist, anti-colonialist, pro-resident, pandemic-acknowledging take on travel to Hawaii. “Should you be traveling to Hawaii right now? NO!” TikTok video by Thelma; link via Anti-Racism Daily email newsletter.

• And, here is my previous post where I started a list of my favorite readings that both echo, and have helped me to clarify, my thoughts on tourism. Enjoy!