Flowers of Evil

Baudelaire could not have imagined that I would steal the title of his majestic and wonderful poetry book to write about one of my pet peeves.



Flowers of Evil bother me. To the point of repulsion. I have goose bumps, my skin crawls back, nausea invades me, I cannot breathe and sometimes I even develop an immediate headache. This morning, when I stepped into the medical building where my dentist’s office is, the symptoms flared up. I was not totally awaken and was juggling chapka, gloves, bag, book and coffee mug. I still had my sun glasses on coming into a black marble walled foyer from the sparklingly sunny snow patches. I made my way on automatic pilot into the even darker elevator, not noticing anyone or anything.

On the way out, I had my regular glasses on.  The Flowers of Evil hit me right in the face as soon as I got out of the elevator.
 
 
 

 

 

Tall ivy plastic trees, almost unnamable exotic plastic plants, plastic ferns and foliage of sorts. Or should I say dust gatherers, allergy enhancers, BPA releasers, toxic fumes slow producers?

I wonder if anyone has taken up the fight against these Flowers of Evil yet. What purpose do they serve? Beautification?  Interior Decoration? Soothing you into a hypnotic zone before you get your teeth drilled, your breast mammogrammed, your skin cancer removed?  What is their carbon foot print? What is their long term health damage? Where are they made? What about the workers’ health?

Ecological Epiphany

Voltaire wrote in Candide: "Il faut cultiver son jardin."






It takes time to understand the core meaning of this sentence. Of course witty Voltaire did not mean it for us to literally dig and plant and weed and harvest our garden, nor did he encourage us to live off the fat of the land. That would be his archnemesis' fashion, le cher Jean-Jacques,  the philosophizing Tartuffe himself.
But Voltaire's beau mot became my motto as I compared my front and back gardens, took notice of sun and shadow, surveyed the terrain and calculated the optimal sun exposure per day per week per month and per season... all with the aim of becoming a "gentlewoman-farmer", or rather an "urban food-grower."

At heart I am a country girl who is happier when "playing dirty," with soil under my broken fingernails, mud on my toes, and the sun my only cosmetic. Long walks in the woods, observing birds and bears, finding praying mantises, spotting fish jumping out ot the lake or animal tracks, and learning the name of trees and plants bring me the sort of pleasure Teresa of Avila enjoyed in her Ecstasy. In Nature I find peace, I find myself and I find God.

It took me  years to come to terms with this aspect of my personality. Years and a few good books. Maybe it's age after all, or all those Montaigne's Essays we were forced to read and explain when we were in High School, or the perusing of thinkers and writers like Thoreau and his Walden, Rudolf Steiner's The Agriculture Course, Annie Dillard and her Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Barbara Kingsolver and her self-sufficient year she describes in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and more recently Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemna and In Defense of Food, which I read after screening Food, Inc. Recently I also stumbled upon Wendell Berry's poems and other writings, which may have been just what I needed to finalize my education and who could be considered as a Walden-Steiner combination with an Amish twist and a few other tricks up his sleeve.

If I dig into my youth, I can already detect the first filaments of what my daughter calls "Mom's inner hip-hippie-peacenik-side." Tolstoy was my favorite writer from the moment I read War and Peace.  When I read Anna Karenina, especially Part 3, Chapter 4 in which Levine cuts the hay with a scythe along with the peasants, I became convinced that for the Earth to survive, it would be necessary to put a brake on progress, to slow down instead of to constantly grow. Decrease, not increase. Save, not spend. Make, not buy. I felt like a prophet in the desert for the next 30 years...

My ecological epiphany never left me, although I toned down my enthusiastic declarations of ecological independence and refrained from writing more Constitutions of the United States of the Earth. Somehow, my fellow-citizens and college mates thought I was just a jester, another fool in the realm of dreams, living in the kingdom of Chimera CSA.  Now, they are all joining their own CSAs, brag about the bounty of their weekly basket and the benefits of biodynamic agriculture. I am so happy they finally saw the light that I do not waver my finger at them in an "I-told-you-so" gesture, neither do I claim my 5 minutes of recognition.

But now at almost 50, I can accept my "inner hippie self," I can cheer for my little organic garden and its humongous harvest,  I can relish in my home-made pickled chili peppers, pickled cucumbers, jams and cookies, I can support my CSA which brings my family the biodynamic dairy and animal products I cannot provide. Yet.


Top right: Photo of my garden at the beginning of June 2010
Bottom left: Photo of my first harvest, first week of July 2010.

Thoughts Since I Cannot Speak

In bed for 4 days now with fever, strep throat and penicillin, the only thing left for me to do is to read and think.

The first thought that hit me while reading the accumulated Washington Post: why should the federal government bail out the auto industry? Apart from the humanistic reasons of trying to keep workers their jobs, that is. I say, let the oil industry bail them out: oil and car industries have gone hand in hand over the last few decades and especially in the last 8 years to ensure that no so much money was dedicated to "greening" the U.S. car industry: if a car becomes fuel efficient, then the oil industry loses money, right?

If the car industry bail out is a must to save the economy, then let's accompany it with a few pre-requisites. Not only with quotas of fuel-efficient cars to be built from now on till forever, but also with money for research on global warming consequences and moreover, on green solutions that would guarantee US independence from foreign oil, and from oil altogether. And not only that, but the Federal Government should become part owner of the bailed-out industry. This is not socialism, this is ensuring that the money used for the bail out does not fall into the wrong pockets: for who is truly bailing out anyone here, but the tax payer? You, me, and millions of others not so lucky pilgrims, whose lost-job packages will not include millions if our jobs do disappear.

Add a special tax on any car that run less than 20 miles a gallon in town... These are the cars that should be more expensive to buy (remember a few years back when anyone seemed to buy Hummers: the aid for farmers ended up benefiting the local yuppies who "needed" one for the day when their very long driveway would be under 3 feet of snow... The last time it happened in DC was in 2003!).

Add a special tax on homes over a certain number of square feet: McMansions are not only symbols of bad taste, they are also a waste of energy and can never be made fuel efficient.

The second thought that hit me (and hit me hard too!) was the potential "Return of the Clintons". Why would Hilary (and her inescapable husband) be a better Secretary of State than, say, John Kerry? Apart from the fact that the deal reeks of conflict of interest (Bill Clinton's job since his presidency involves dealing with many countries, some of them have their hands very dirty when it comes to human rights), why bring to the White House cabinet personalities who certainly do not incarnate "Change" or "Hope"?

Come on, Obama: do not shoot yourself in the foot before the inauguration!