To Be Or Not To Be.......GREEN!

What's wrong with me that I'm not green?  I should be, shouldn't I?  I'm a Boomer, aren't I?  Well no, not actually.  I'm one year older than the Boomers, actually.  So, maybe that's it.  On the other hand, one of my major jobs as a kid, was tending the compost pile, which we always kept going, always and always, on our farm in Silverdale.  We fed cows our corn husks.  We fed birds our left-over breads.  And plastic bags?  Hell,  plastic bags, which were hard to get, mind you, because my mother made her bread, so no Wonderbread made it 's way through to our house and we grew all our own vegetables......anyway, I wore plastic bags on my feet....as boots!

Talk about humiliation.

Maybe it's that.

Maybe I was humiliated out of being green.  At a young, tender age.  Because I just can't seem to get going on this. Not even now.  Not even yet.

And now my own town of Bainbridge has, of course, become the first city in Kitsap County to ban plastic bags.  Oh, wow. Oh, good.  Oh, terrific.  I guess.  Gee, though.   I'll miss those plastic bags.  I love them for potato  and onion parings.

"It's an expression of our community values," said Councilwoman Kirsten Hytopoulos, who began crafting the proposed ban late last year.  This last statement is part of an article in the most recent Bainbridge Islander newpaper which has kept quiet on the big police scandle that has made it to the front page of the Seattle Times twice in a row in the last two months but which loves to talk about the grace and goodness of banning plastic bags.

I love the ironic nature of Bainbridge Island.  For instance, here, "On Island", we have a free drumming circle.  You don't even have to own a drum, you can just come, pick one out, and go to it.  The drumming circle is run by a black guy with a headfull of dreadlocks.  He's pretty wonderful looking and so is his female partner, who is not black. Black, black, black.  I love to say this in regards to people, because, really, there are virtually no blacks - - or African Americans - - on - -Bainbridge Island.  None. Nada. Zero.  Why? 

Who knows?

There were a few in Poulsbo, but only a few.  But, Bainbridge?  Are you kidding?  And now - - no plastic bags, either. Are both bad for the environment, or am I just a bad bitch for even asking this? 

Probably the latter. 

"I totally support this," said ____________, "I picked up a plastic bag from Lytle Beach and filled it with all the garbage I could find, and it only took me five minutes."

Huh?  This is an argument against plastic bags?  And what are people with dogs (who poop) going to do?  What am I, who are soon going to inherit Magge's dog Tess, going to do, scoop up up her poop with ......what, paper towels?  (NO!).....toilet paper?.....(NO!).....a tiny shovel and .......oh, give me a break.

It's obvious, isn't it?  I'm starting to save my plastic bags.

But it isn't just plastic bags.

I'm also oblivious, pretty much, when it comes to most anything that is supposed to be "good" for society, at large.  Recycling.  I mean, I DO it, I just don't quite know HOW to do it and I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to do it. 

My husband does.  He drives places to do it.  He drives glass to glass places and plastic to plastic places and he's this wonderful guy who believes in all this and I know he's right and I know I'm wrong but I can't help it, I want to strangle him sometimes for his..........self-righteousness.  Not that he SEEMS  and tries to be self-righteousness.  So it must be my own guilt that I want to strangle him for, right?  Right. 

Guilt.  It always always comes down to that. 

I'm just not green.  I only just learned that, if you turn a "something" over, and you can discern that there is a triangle-shaped - - well, "triangel" on the bottom of the said-thing - - then it's okay to drop it in the re-cycle.  Re-cycle.  Some people say RE-cycle and other's say re-CYcle. 

I am one who says re-Cycle, with the emphasis on the "CY".   See, that is the kind of person I am.  I care more about where one puts the phoenetic emphasis than where one puts the article.

I am going to hell.

And there are labels.  And what I call "due dates", but which are really dates after which one should really not eat certain foods.  They are all printed there, on the food product, plain and simple.  There they are.  But I never pay attention.  Probably because I didn't cook for the last God knows how many years of my marriage - - and then, after Jim died, I cooked - - oh, who knows what!  Fresh shrimp and spinach.  Cheese and crackers.  I was VERY good at cooking cheese and crackers.  Cheeseburgers from the local Pub.  I can cook an EXcellend Pubburger from the Pub.  And, if I want a filet mignon?  The local Four Swallows has the best!  So, why should I even bother?

So much for "due dates".

But today I looked at my "egg-dates"  and I gulped and tossed a dozen out.  As well as my "bacon dates".  Just tossed them right out and wondered how the hell Jim ever kept up with this kind of thing, given his many, many tirps to the fossil dig sites and his days and days in front of computers, typing up scientific articles. 

HOW, oh, HOW did he keep these dates in mind?

Or did he?  Really?

I mean, was Cowboy "green"?

We never spoke about it once.

I do remember when Al Gore came on television and did whatever he did and said whatever he said, we applauded him.  "Good going, Al!" we declared, or something like that.  'We've only got one planet here, and it is sure in danger and we are sure the cause and, goddammit, let's DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, Al, WE ARE WITH YOU!!!" was pretty much our message to old Stiff-Faced. stiff-armed Al.

So we voted for Clinton (whom I loved and my now-husband hates) and we voted for Al and we won and  here I am, with a refrigerator full of stuff that apparently won't not only last forever, it won't even last as long as ME, and god knows, I'm losing track fast.   

Bainbridge. Bainbridge. Bainbridge.  Let's get rid of the plastic bags.  Let's buy more at T & C, it's WAY more expensive than Safeway, but it's more FUN.  Let's go to these drumming classes, how.....EXCITING!  We can pretend we are, like, Native!  OOOOh, Native!  Native isn't exactly like Korean, say,  didn't "they" do something bad around here to the "Koreans" a long, long, long, long time ago?  But that's over now, isn't it?  Isn't it?  Isn't it?

Sure it is.  Now, the Koreans around here are RICH.  So it's okaynow. Isn't it?

Sure it is.  So it's okay.

Isn't it?

Oh, the nightmares Bainbridge would have, if it were one human being.  About the atrocities during the Second World War.  When I was a little girl, in the nineteen-fifties, I rode up here in trucks and picked strawberries in the strawberry fields and I made way less than minimum wage and I got yelled at and screamed at and I thought, "What's new?  This sounds just like home!" and I just kept picking and made enough money to buy myself, over the summer, bit by bit, a few pieces of school clothing, and that was cool.  That was cool.  And that was what Bainbridge was to me.

And to my step-daughter Angela, Bainbridge was the home she lived in with her mother and her father and her brother until her her military-based-father left them all, and her mother had to go to work because when he left them he REALLY left them, meaning there was no child support, no nothing-support, and Kathy found work, first at Harrison Hospital, night shift duty, and then at Puget Sound Naval Shift Yard, night shift duty, because she had to feed her kids, because she was a mother and she had to keep a roof over her kids heads and clothes on her kids backs and she had to feed her kids and she didn't have Ann Romney's CHOICES, folks (please remember that, Frank Bruni, whoever you are, it's all about the choice, not your sadness over yourother's wranglings with the roofers and the electricians) - - and Bainbridge became "a-place-a-long-way-off-from-Bremerton" - - which is where the REAL jobs were.  Imagine that. 

Bremerton.  The place where the real jobs were.

Oh, but I'm not "Green-thinking" here. I should be thinkng about "the kids" and how BAD it is for kids to become "latch-key-kids" because, although it's not precisely "green", it CERTAINLY isn't politically correct, is it?  Is it?  To to to work, to travel all the way from Bainbridge, where you own a house, to Bremerton, where you don't own anything except a job, a job which pays you enough money so that you can buy food and clothing and put gas in your car, to keep your kids in school and, and what? 

Is that what it comes down to?

Is that the real question?

Is the real question this:  is survival really necessary?

Because, if it is: screw plastic bags.

Sorry, folks.

Plastic bags are really, really, not going to be our undoingl. 
   
As a psychotherapist here on Bainbridge Island, I can tell you all SORTS of things that, multiplied by one-hundred-thousand, may WELL become "our undoing" - - but it won't be plastic bags. 

So I'm going to continue to hoard them.  And, simultaneously, I'm going to continue to wonder what's wrong with me that I'm not "green".

FLASHBACK:  I remember the week at the ocean with Jim and Bob and Mel Dietz and Steve Kager and Katy Warner, when they gave me my lovely little Ph.D. party and I sang a song I had composed for them, based on Kermit the Frog's song, "I's Not Easy Being Green" - - but my song was titled "It's Not Easy Being  Phd" - - and Bob laughed so hard he had tears in his eyes.  Even now, six years (nly six!!) later, my dizzy brain wheels, my heart swells, I wish for that night back.  Steve and Katy had managed, somehow, to bring along to the ocean (for we were all staying at the ocean for a long weekend) a doctor's smock, long gloves, a stethoscope, etc. etc. - - and we came up, stontaneously, with quite a marvelous scene, with me, as the new Doctor, with all the Information, tending to These Dear Few in Need, but it was all in humour. 

Nobody had died yet.  Nobody had even fallen ill.  The plastic bags lay, safe in their glorious usefulness, filled with fresh vegetables, on the counters of the Sandpiper Motel.  I was probably nearly ready to contemplate making the infamous lemon tarte which would,  once carved into,  pitch itself like a baseball player gone mad, to the furthest wall, stick there for awhile and then pull itself down, goop by goop, while Steve and Bob stood there, giggling like two school boys who had just witnessed their principal go mad before their eyes and the women said words like, "Just pick it up, scoop it into bowels and cover it with whipped cream!  It will still be delicious!"

Why does the past always seem so innocent? 

So.  Plastic bags.  Al Gore.  Lemon tartes.  Long - - but short times - - ago.  Innocence, innocence, innocence.  Bob. Mel.  Steve.  Katy.  Jim.  Alan.  The harmony underlying the disorder of the human world.

And me.  Not quite in step, even yet.  Even yet.  Not even yet.