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This week, I discovered how much Bill Maher I remember back when I was a kid, and people were really starting to pay attention to the environment in my crunchy hippy hometown of Portland, Oregon. I also remember how embarrassed I was that my mom carried ratty cloth bags she'd made to haul our books from the library, our groceries from the market; I remember recoiling at the thought of compost heaps; I remember my anger and frustration at being asked to cut the grass with the mechanical mower. Yup. Back then, being resource-smart wasn't cool. It was stinky, weird, a little desperate. It made you seem poor.
I thought things had changed a little.
After all, designers are pushing fabulous instead-of-plastic bags to carry around your groceries and library books and iPhones; bottled water is being banned in San Francisco. It's hip to care.
Or not. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal reminded me just how uncool being green still is. Or in this case, entirely against the rules. Susan Taylor, in Awbrey Butte, Oregon (just over the mountains from where I live in Portland, near my mother's childhood home), has her neighbors up in arms -- and threatening legal action -- because she's hanging her laundry up to dry. She loves hanging up her laundry, and decided to give her old habit a renaissance after she read about how much resources our dryers hog (it's in Time and Vanity Fair for goodness' sake!).
According to her neighbors? The clothesline "bombards the senses," it "doesn't blend."
Perhaps that's the problem: doing the right thing for the future doesn't blend with the American mainstream. We'd rather fill our present with Ford F350s, ultra-capacity dryers, and disposable plastic bottles filled with soda pop
for the kids. Forget healthy babies (even though it's been proven that breastfeeding a baby exclusively while he's small reduces obesity and makes him smarter, which in turn saves thousands or hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in health care over his lifetime), it's embarrassing in public. Ick to hanging your laundry and toting your groceries in cloth bags; it "doesn't blend." The compost heap is stinky -- put your kitchen trash in a heavy-duty plastic bag and throw it in a landfill!
Isn't it time to stop blending and start doing the right thing?
Or not. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal reminded me just how uncool being green still is. Or in this case, entirely against the rules. Susan Taylor, in Awbrey Butte, Oregon (just over the mountains from where I live in Portland, near my mother's childhood home), has her neighbors up in arms -- and threatening legal action -- because she's hanging her laundry up to dry. She loves hanging up her laundry, and decided to give her old habit a renaissance after she read about how much resources our dryers hog (it's in Time and Vanity Fair for goodness' sake!).
According to her neighbors? The clothesline "bombards the senses," it "doesn't blend."
Perhaps that's the problem: doing the right thing for the future doesn't blend with the American mainstream. We'd rather fill our present with Ford F350s, ultra-capacity dryers, and disposable plastic bottles filled with soda pop
for the kids. Forget healthy babies (even though it's been proven that breastfeeding a baby exclusively while he's small reduces obesity and makes him smarter, which in turn saves thousands or hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in health care over his lifetime), it's embarrassing in public. Ick to hanging your laundry and toting your groceries in cloth bags; it "doesn't blend." The compost heap is stinky -- put your kitchen trash in a heavy-duty plastic bag and throw it in a landfill!
Isn't it time to stop blending and start doing the right thing?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-20-2007 @ 12:36AM
Grumy ole guy said...
To oppose breast-feeding is like coming out four-square against motherhood itself. Yes a cloth thrown over the suckling kid might be a nice or even appropriate touch, but, come one, what more natural action can there be than a mother nursing her child. In addition to the health benefits to both mother and child, the research strongly suggests that the bonding of breast feeding is also important to the emotional well-being of the child. As the husband / father of three grown breast-fed children, who was also breast fed by his mother, I think that Maher and company need to get a grip on their sensibilities and realize that it isn't about them, the kid is more important. No one forces those around to watch, we're all taught to avert our gaze.
10-06-2007 @ 5:00PM
Michelle said...
You know, I think old Bill is afraid that he'll be unable to refrain from scraping his carrot when he sees a nursing mom. Gotta shift the blame somewhere else. He's the pervert who will pitch a tent in his pants from seeing a stray mammary.
People say that the "nursing is natural and should be public" logic is false because having a bowel movement is also natural. And we don't do THAT in public. But how can those hostile maggots even compare taking a dump with feeding one's offspring?
I just chalk it all up to people being embarassed about their bodies, and so they project their self-hate onto others. A mother feeding her child with her boob? Oh that's disgusting! A mother hitting her child? Oh that's discipline.
What is wrong with this country?