Popping balloons

I admit it, I’m not a telephone person. One of the reasons my job suits me well is that I don’t have to talk to people a lot: a quick note here, a short call there, but most of the time, it’s just me and the words on the page.

So I had to wipe an appalling amount of sweat off my palms this morning to call Alaska Airlines and try to calmly explain that their balloon display is a problem while my hands shook. I explained it to a patient Alice of Alaska twice, and then she asked to put me on hold. It was a long wait, as I anticipated. She returned, and let me know that my best option was to print out the boarding passes online, and then go around the middle part of the airport to avoid the balloons, and proceed straight to security. Unless I needed to check bags. Did I need to check bags? Um, yes.

Oh. Undaunted, Alice put me on hold again. When she returned, she announced that she had called the gate itself, and was assured that all the balloons were already gone, it must have only been for a few days. I thanked her, and asked her to pass my concerns on. She sounded relieved that I hadn’t said the word “lawyer” or “sue,” but I somehow doubt she’s going to take up my crusade.

So I cuddled up with my computer and drafted a follow-up letter, the old-fashioned kind with a stamp that am popping in today’s mail to the Alaska folks. While I was at it, I sent off an electronic note to Trader Joe’s, which they assure me will be read by a real person.

My brother, livid at the thought of losing his mechanic to latex allergy (An aside: I’m still having trouble with why mechanics need latex gloves—do engines carry HIV? Can they catch it from infected mechanics? Or is soap too expensive?), hollers that I should hire a lawyer, but the nervous toll of one phone call is enough for me. For now. We’ll see if I’ve popped any balloons today.

The Grinch strikes back

No, I’m not angry because of all the other drivers out there, clogging the roads so that it takes me an hour and a half to go 15 miles. No, I’m not ticked that someone dropped the ball in organizing an event and now I have to reconstruct an entire month’s work. Even the solicitor who abjectly ignored the “NO SOLICITING” sign hasn’t ruffled my feathers that much. And I’m only mildly fuming because my mother has decided not to move after all, despite all the effort that so many people have put into the move.

Nope, I’m angry because I picked up the paper to see this:

MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Yes, that is the checkin counter that I will be using in ten days, and yes, those are hundreds of latex balloons arching gracefully over it. They might as well herald the arrival of this new era of flight by building a shrine to it, with no ramps for wheelchairs.

I’m angry because I’m so very tired of having to explain my latex sensitivity over and over to people who ineveitably respond, “Oh, gee, I didn’t know it was that bad!” or “Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot you had that allergy” or “The Health Department says we have to wear these gloves.” I’m tired of walking into Trader Joe’s and having to turn tail and leave. I’m weary of having to leave kids’ birthday parties. And if that’s not enough, now I need to take on the airlines just so I can check my bags in a public space. This action will open myself to the derisive attitudes of the uneducated, the same ones who make snide remarks about peanut-free school busses.

I take some solace that I am not alone in all this. There is ample precendent set by those brave women who champion for their kids to be able to attend school safely, and a handful of them, met online, are cheering me on. So watch out: I’m drafting letters, gathering phone numbers and then I’m going to go tilt at balloons.

Tending our garden

With supper simmering on the stove, I went outside to chat with the Irish neighbors, recently returned from their sojourn on the Emerald Isle. Jetlagged, they were trying to catch up on tidying the garden, having missed out on the last month of pruning and mowing. Leaning on his rake, he recalls his Dublin neighbor, an old woman telling him not to sweat the weeds, since that’s what a garden is. He sighs as he relates how his US neighbor welcomed them home by dropping a strong hint that they needed to “do something” about the weeds. He says to me, whatever happened to neighbors gardening together, planting victory gardens, helping each other out? America used to be such a great country, says this normally jovial Irishman, what happened?

My mother has decided to stay in the house she and my father built, stairs or no stairs. She reminisces about her childhood dream house, built by her family right before World War II. It was a perfect white house with a picket fence in an upscale neighborhood, and one of its proudest features (tended by a man who made his money in the oil business, no less) was its victory garden. Even this affluent family was doing their part to help the war effort.

Americans in 1943 produced more than 24 million tons of vegetables for sale, including potatoes, in market gardens and on farms, and an estimated eight million tons of vegetables for family use, in home gardens.

(From the Victory Gardens Handbook, a wartime publication by the Pennsylvania State Council of Defense)

Think of it: home gardeners produced a third of the nation’s vegetables in 1943 (some estimates place it as high as 40%). Their success actually resulted in items being removed from rationing lists at the height of the war. What’s more, families were taught to can or dehydrate anything that couldn’t be eaten fresh (housewives, Home Ec teachers and university extensions were all enlisted), and any surpluses in excess of a family’s needs were canned for the greater good—the local hospital, school lunches, and food banks. Everyone embodied the adage of ‘waste not, want not.’ This combined effort released food for the military, increased the amount of vegetables consumed, improved the nutritional quality of the food on most people’s tables, reduced the stresses on the transportation network, and improved morale by empowering people to contribute. It also built community at a time of national crisis, as people from all walks worked together in community plots “in most cases in a very healthful, enjoyable way.”

Imagine if we could do something that could help reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil; if we could do something to improve the nutritional value and safety of the food on our tables, and in schools and hospitals and food banks; if we could get people to eat more vegetables; if we could do something to get people moving and outdoors; if we could do something to bridge the ever-increasing political chasm that threatens to paralyze our democracy.

Think of the victory garden the next time you are stuck in traffic behind a car with a yellow ribbon magnet proclaiming, “support our troops!” Think of what tending our victory garden together could mean.