Showing Up

"What's your story?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, usually when straight people come to an event like this it's because they have a story. A reason to show up."

I pondered this for a moment, then offered up, "Well, I had a family member who died years ago of AIDS. Half the family doesn't know that's what he had because they didn't know he was gay in the first place. So there's that. But honestly, I don't know that his death directly inspired me; we weren't close or anything. It's more that this is the civil rights movement of our time and straight people need to show up because it's the right thing to do."



It was 1996 and the event was a Human Rights Campaign speaking appearance in Spokane by Candace Gingrich, half-sister to then-Speaker of the House Newt. It would take another 10 years before Washington state recognized domestic partnerships, another 6 years after that before Washington voters upheld the equal right to marry with the passage of Referendum 74.

What did I do to further the cause? Not enough. It's never enough. But I didn't stay home and wait for someone else to do the work.

I donated to the Pride Foundation and the campaign for marriage equality. I had our campus join the Inland Northwest Business Alliance, Spokane's LGBTA Chamber, just the way we belonged to the other Chambers; attended lots of meetings; and made some good friends. I ran for office as a vocal and open supporter of equal rights (and lost, but not because of that -- three-way primaries are tough). I walked and biked in Pride parades. I attended meetings and trainings, changed my usage to ask after people's partners (before they could be labeled spouses), updated language on the website I was responsible for so it would be more inclusive, spoke up in work meetings if we were slipping into assumptions I eventually learned to call "privilege", served as on-campus sponsor of events held in our facilities.

I write all this not to take credit, but to remind myself that I was awake. When we tell stories about ourselves we reinforce our essential nature, and mine is that of someone who wants to change things for the better. When things need work someone has to do something. I'm someone.

You're someone.

Being awake didn't start with Candace's visit to Spokane. My grounding started with my childhood feminism (thanks Mom) and belief that the government has no business telling us what to do with our own bodies, which extends to our sexuality. I had been a vocal opponent of the anti-gay Prop. 1 in Idaho in 1994, and its defeat was a bright spot on the night I lost my Senate re-election bid.

Along the way I also participated in trainings around race and privilege. But somehow, safe inside my higher education bubble where we actively recruited a diverse applicant pool and set up inclusive photo shoots to represent a welcoming campus environment, I thought we were on a reasonably steady trajectory of improvement in racial equity.

I thought everyone understood that America was becoming increasingly diverse, making inclusion an imperative.

I thought most good people could agree that any one of us is better off when all of us are better off.

I thought Lincoln had it right when he closed his first inaugural address by referring to his confidence in "the better angels of our nature." 

Having represented the Idaho legislative district that included the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations compound and then seeing them bankrupted and the compound turned into a peace park owned by North Idaho College (where I served on the board), I thought America understood the dangers of white supremacy, fascism, and hatred and we were working to outgrow these. 

When I cried with my daughters the night of Nov. 4, 2008, telling them they would grow up in a different America than the one I grew up in, those were happy tears.

I worked for a university that conducted research into racial profiling, which we understood to be bad policing, so surely police training would address this and things would change. I worked with faculty in the health sciences who focused on health disparities, so surely public health would address this and things would change.

This confidence in ongoing improvement in our national character is quite probably grounded in my whiteness. I don't have to witness racism so it can be invisible to me, making it shocking when it becomes visible. When my friends tell me stories about things that happen to them I hate the realization that this really happens, every day. I wish it weren't so, for all the good wishing does.

Understand that I grew up with Star Trek. Lieutenant Uhura with the dramatic black eyeliner was a strong and sensitive woman. The Star Trek future had women and people of color as admirals, scientists, doctors, explorers, starship captains, engineers. Men worked as nurses and reported to women superiors. People with conditions we label as disabilities lived full and productive lives with important jobs. This was -- and is -- the future I would raise my children to live in.

In all the Star Trek episodes with parallel universes there are inflection points that put them on a brighter path or a darker. In some moment the actions of one person make the difference. And here's the thing -- they don't know exactly which moment is THE moment. So they have to do all they can, all the time.

As do we. The brighter future requires that we wake up, and stay awake. It requires that we show up, and continue to show up.

Your Turn

How and where do you show up?
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Related Reading on my Blogs

• Personal Privilege and Biking: It Takes More than a Bike Lane to Start Riding (2016 update to a piece I first wrote in 2012, updated in 2014; Nov. 19, 2016)
• Inclusion (Sept. 15, 2014)
• How I Came to Be a Bike Advocate (Sept. 15, 2014)
• Is There Such a Thing as a Lowercase "nazi"? (June 24, 2012)
• Why Marriage Matters: A Valentine to my Sweetheart and a Thank-You to the Washington Legislature and Governor Gregoire (Feb. 14, 2012)
• Hate Cannot Drive Out Hate: Only Love Can Do That (Jan. 16, 2012)
• The Very Proper Gander: A Fable for our Times (Oct. 21, 2011)
• Everyday Inclusion: Showing up for a Parade Once a Year Isn't Enough (Jan. 17, 2011)
• Representing the Aryans: Political Speech, Violence, and Living Without Fear (Jan. 9, 2011)
• We Stand United (Oct. 29, 2010)
• You'll Save Us, Won't You? My Kids the Idealists (Nov. 29, 2009)
• Standing Up for What's Right (Oct. 18, 2008)

Remembering Don

Can one be "good at" grief? I don't think I am right now. I really have not allowed myself to fully believe, fully grasp, that my brother Don died on Friday, July 1. I am blindsided by the small things that remind me of him, I cry unexpectedly, but it isn't really real. It just isn't. I guess that's the denial phase.

Some of the things that have caught me off guard with a stab:

A motorcycle on a wine label, because he rode motorcycles like a centaur, his body one with the bike, and took me on thrillingly fast rides as a little kid. He made a dramatic addition to a sparkly electric blue helmet with a streaming, Viking-like plume of white horsehair taken from the tail of my horse Shawn, an old pinto who had retired from barrel racing.

Looking for photos to use in his memorial service I found one of my younger sister Julie and I on our red tricycles, brains safely encased in a couple of our brother's big helmets. After working as a graphic artist for years he became a motorcycle safety coach; the public speaking didn't come naturally but he really knew how to ride. Whenever I see someone on a motorcycle I think of my brother.

A rack full of Hawaiian shirts for sale at a West Seattle street fair, because he developed a taste for such shirts and was wearing one pretty much every time I saw him for I don't know how many years.

He wasn't a fancy dress-up guy. His attire at his wedding to sweet Lisa consisted of blue jeans, a T-shirt with the ruffles of a tuxedo shirt printed on it, and a tailcoat. He looked fantastic. I loved having a brother so good-looking that in college when he stopped by my sorority house to pick me up for an outing to hear his friend Scooter's band play at the North Idaho Cowboy Bar in Troy, someone in our dining room dropped her pencil in disbelief that this hotness was my date.

Driving home from a meeting in Olympia sobbing as I sang a song he wrote that our whole family loved, "Pickaway." I write it like that because the lyrics could be read as "pick a way" or "pick away". I grew up with his homegrown music, he and his friends playing guitar and singing around a campfire or in chairs drawn in a circle.

He didn't have the kind of voice that would have led to commercial success but man, could he play the guitar. I always felt lucky to have grown up with music that wasn't just the same Top 40 everyone knew all the words to. Long ago I wore out the cassette tape with a recording of the song. Fortunately, Scooter has a digital recording and all of us will get a copy that won't wear out.

The fact that I live in Seattle now is a way of remembering Don. For many years while I lived in Coeur d'Alene and then Spokane, I'd bring my two daughters to western Washington for a trip once a year. It always involved stopping in Seattle to visit Don and Lisa, staying at their condo in downtown, visiting Pike Place Market, and seeing them before going to Anacortes to catch the ferry and visit my younger sister in Friday Harbor. When Eric and I moved to Seattle in 2012 we lived in that same condo for a while before finding a rental, then buying the house we're in now that sits only 3 miles or so from Don's place in Burien.

His catch phrases -- I won't remember all of them in trying to make a list but I know when I hear certain things they will grab me. He was the first person I heard use the construction "X-y X-erton," as in saying someone was a real Judgey Judgerton, and when I use that formula I think of him.

When we'd say goodbye and hug he often said, "Love you like a sister."

When bedtime rolled around Dad used to say, "Time to retire to the arms of Morpheus." Don's version: Que sueña con los angeles (dream with the angels).

Don was the most happy-go-lucky of all six of us, the children of Bill and Gladys Greene. He had a gift for friendship; he made friends easily and kept them forever, always adding to the breadth and depth of his circles. On September 2 our family and friends will gather to remember him, tell stories, cry and laugh. What he would want us to say: "C'est bon."

Thinking About Garbage (and How to Make Less of It)

Raised as I was by Depression-era parents and by a mother who was a great scratch cook, and wanting to leave the world a better place through environmentally thoughtful choices, I have a lot of old-fashioned thrifty and eco-friendly habits. As we've moved three times within three years we've also downsized a fair amount and I like what simplifying our possessions does for our lives.

A few years ago I read Garbage Land*, which looks at where our garbage actually goes when it goes "away." At the time I probably felt pretty good about my habits. But I've been reading Zero Waste Home* the past couple of weeks and realizing I can do quite a bit more with a little forethought.

Mind you, I'm not going to go whole hog. Author/blogger Bea Johnson burns almonds one by one, puts the ashes through a sieve, and grinds them to make kohl she uses for her eyeliner and homemade mascara. For real.

In other makeup tips, she uses cocoa powder to darken her eyebrows. Sounds delicious. I may make her all-purpose balm good for everything from chapped lips to wood furniture to leather shoes.

She reassures throughout the book that these choices don't have to take more time than dealing with (and earning the money for) more wasteful choices. She lost a little credibility with me when she referred to making a gingerbread house from scratch as "simple and fun." I won't even make those things from kits, packaging or no packaging.

And I do think her choices come from a place of unseen privilege. She's made her knowledge and practices into a career, which is great for her, but she didn't start this effort working 3 jobs as a single mom with no benefits. I don't begrudge her the chance to test these ideas so I can benefit from them. I'm just mindful of how hard some of this can be for reasons she doesn't speak to at all. What kind of grocery store is accessible given all your other time demands and the transportation modes available to you, for example, will affect what products you can buy in bulk.

What the Zero Waste author has given me is a new R before Reduce, Reuse, Recycle; a final R I was already using; and an additional boost of commitment along with some recipes and tips. Possibly some healthy guilt, too.

#1 R: Refuse. If you don't take it home in the first place you don't have to throw it out (or otherwise deal with it).

From packaging to receipts to "free" items at conferences, just say no. Free things at conferences and events are free as far as cash changing hands, but we all pay the cost of those cheap plastic pens you never actually like enough to use when you get home. As a conference organizer I'll review what we plan to give out to make sure it's truly useful and as eco-friendly as possible.

I've already added a caveat on this one at the cash register: If they're just going to throw my refused receipt into the trash, I'm going to accept it and take it home to recycle.

The author takes her own packaging to stores for everything. You're probably already carrying reusable grocery bags, maybe even reusing plastic bags for produce. But do you carry pillowcases to take bread home in and your own refillable jars for dairy products? Me neither.

(As a side note, why on earth did they add those plastic pour spouts to milk cartons that make their own little pitcher spout when opened the old-fashioned way? What a waste.)

#5 R: Rot. We've had a compost bucket for years. In Spokane I had a cold pile (I figured I was in no hurry to make dirt), in Seattle it's gone into the municipal composting green waste can. Now that we have a big yard and room to grow veggies I can get going on compost with a purpose.

What I picked up from the book: Reminders that some of the things that I reflexively drop into the wastebasket can be composted, like clippings from haircuts and dryer lint (I don't use dryer sheets).

The Aha Moment: Much of this isn't rocket science, it's Remembering (I think of this as R-0).

For example, I had thrown out an old and icky makeup applicator and was all set to purchase organic 100% cotton pads to wash and reuse. How friendly and natural, even if they do come in a plastic bag and I could make my own instead.

And then I remembered that the foundation I'd be applying actually came with its own applicator sponge. Done.

For the record, Johnson just uses tinted moisturizer, and then all that food-based pigment. Again, I'm not quite there in giving up certain habits and self-imposed expectations.

My initial implementation notes above and beyond current habits in case they give you ideas--


Things I've been buying that I'm going to replace with reusables:

Facial tissues: Riding a bike means dealing with a runny nose daily in cold weather. Heaven knows I have enough T-shirts from all those bike events to cut a few up into handkerchiefs.

Paper towels: I hadn't been using them at all, then bought some for a reason that now escapes me.

Plastic wrap and waxed paper: I had already bought a silicone cover we use for a lot of applications that would call for plastic wrap, such as covering a bowl of bread dough while it rises.

At the very fun Recology Store in Burien run by solid waste company CleanScapes, they sell a variety of things that help you choose reusable products made from things found in nature without a ton of processing. One new find I especially like: food covering Abeego, coated with beeswax, jojoba oil, and resin. It comes in a recycled/recyclable uncoated cardboard box.

Shifts away from waste-producing choices:

Plastic produce bags: We have a couple of mesh produce bags but not enough for a typical run for our household. We've been saving and reusing plastic bags but they give out over time. Time to make a few more bags out of the rest of those T-shirts.

Other bulk purchase containers: As for carrying jars for things purchased in bulk, we shop for groceries by bike. Johnson is using a car to haul around all those empty glass jars. I think we can do enough with bags, and maybe I can find a farmers' market with dairy products that will let me bring back milk jugs and reuse egg cartons (much better eggs if they're fresh anyway).

Toilet paper

I first became aware of Scott brand's no-tube toilet paper when they sponsored the National Bike Summit. I meant to seek it out, then forgot about it; now it's on the list.

Use Scott's handy-dandy calculator to figure out your family's lifetime consumption and what could be made out of that many tubes. The sofa shown here comprises 19.720 tubes: the lifetime consumption of a household with 2 adults and 2 children, 2 each male/female.




Making food instead of buying premade in plastic: 

I'll reinstitute my old yogurt-making instead of bringing home all those plastic containers, although I do reuse them to freeze my homemade veggie broth.** Ricotta cheese is also easy to make at home. I already make homemade ice cream -- no sacrifice there!

Johnson says she'd rather buy bread in bulk than bake for a family of four. I'd rather bake and this No-Knead Bread recipe makes it stupid-easy so I'm already on this.

We buy very little processed food as it is, but I've been known to buy packaged falafel mix and I bet I can make falafel. Ditto with hummus and pesto. Buying those instead of making them is just kinda lazy on my part, especially since I grew a bumper crop of basil last summer and missed the peak moment.

We already make our own salad dressing, marinara, pizza sauce, pizza crust, soup.... Being a scratch cook cuts out a lot of packaging but somehow our refrigerator still holds a lot of store-bought containers.

Adding to the list of things I'll start making instead of buying: Mustard, teriyaki sauce (again with the lazy since I've made it before), mayo (aioli).

Renewing old practices: This summer it will be time to get back into canning, freezing, and dehydrating locally grown produce. I've made one batch of ketchup. It is incredibly labor-intensive and uses tons of tomatoes because it has to reduce so much to get the flavors concentrated. It tasted great but I'm not sure it was worth it if I were to figure out the cost per ounce.

(Fun fact: A ketchup [or catsup, if you're one of those people] is any spiced, fermented vegetable paste, which is why labels specify tomato ketchup. The Joy of Cooking has a recipe for mushroom ketchup, among other types. Say, I'm growing mushrooms from indoor kits right now....)

Cleaning products: I'll make liquid Castile soap instead of paying insane amounts for Dr. Bronner's. Simplicity itself: grate Kirk's Castile Soap bars that are 3 for $3.79, mix with hot water. 1-1/2 c. grated soap to 1 gallon hot water, stir, let it sit overnight, blend, put in jars.

I'll finally switch to vinegar and baking soda the way I've meant to for years and years once all the products on hand are used up.

I have all the ingredients I need to make laundry detergent.

Gift-giving: I seek to give experiences where possible, and try to choose practical and needed items. In the case of our children this often means cash, which certainly cuts down on the wrapping paper.

One more step when I do give a real something: Wrapping items in something useful and reusable like a dish towel using some of the Furoshiki techniques.

Your Turn:

• Have some tips or recipes to share?
• Have you tried to go whole-hog zero waste, and how did that work for you?

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*Note on the Amazon purchase link: If you can, I hope you'll ride your bike to your favorite independent local bookstore and buy it there. If you can't, or if you like the environmental footprint of your Kindle, at least your purchase through embedded links on this page will benefit bicycle advocacy in Washington state through the Amazon Associates program.

**Homemade vegetable broth. I save all the little scraps from food prep (tough end of the celery stalk, root end of the carrot, parsley stems, little rubbery bit on the bottom of the mushroom stem, leek stems, onion skins) in a bag in the freezer. When it's full enough or when I run out of vegetable broth, I saute them briefly to extract a little extra flavor through carmelization, then simmer them slowly in a bunch of water in my pasta strainer pot. When it's a nice deep brown I put the by-now-squishy vegetable parts in the compost bucket, strain the broth through a sieve, and freeze it. This is pretty much a perpetual-motion machine: The veggie scraps created by making soup go into the broth I use for more soup.