i came home around 1am last night, kind of exhausted.
a certain little pooper leaps out of his litterbox as i open the door to my room.
it reeks of catshit. he has managed to step in it, and his back paw is covered in gross stinkiness.
i spent the next way-too-long cleaning his diarrhea out of the litterbox, attempting to clean his paw, cleaning everywhere he managed to track it.
i was feeling cranky and frustrated and tired and overwhelmed and it was not pretty. for sure.
but life goes on.
things are looking up for hillary clinton, which is exciting for me because i kind of love her.
i also read this really good article about consumerism for my gender & media studies class. i'm too tired at the moment to say anything thoughtful about it but i can at least give you a link and a quote.
Current consumption patterns are wreaking havoc on the planetary ecology. Global warming is perhaps the best known, but many other consumption habits have major environmental impacts. Sport utility vehicles, air conditioning, and foreign travel are all energy-intensive, and contribute to global warming. Larger homes use more energy and building resources, destroy open space, and increase the use of toxic chemicals. All those granite counter-tops being installed in American kitchens were carved out of mountains around the world, leaving in their wake a blighted landscape. Our daily newspaper and coffee is contributing to deforestation and loss of species diversity. Something as simple as a T-shirt plays its part, since cotton cultivation accounts for a significant fraction of world pesticide use. Consumers know far less about the environmental impacts of their daily consumption habits than they should. And while the solution lies in greater part with corporate and governmental practices, people who are concerned about equality should be joining forces with environmentalists who are trying to educate, mobilize, and change practices at the neighborhood and household level.
I've always wondered, when folks say, "People don't know as much as they should / need to," how to get people to understand. And when I say understand, I mean how to get them to feel it, relate it to themselves, actually care. You hear these things and they seem like they're just on the newspaper, or just on the TV. We read it and say, "Oh, yes, that is horrible, I understand now." But until folks are utterly horrified and broken out of their inaction, I think that they don't really understand. It is hard to understand in that way.
I've been learning a lot about getting people to care in my African American Religious Experience class. It occurred in a different context, but it was certainly no less relevant or deadly. Hopefully I'll figure out some ways to get people to care from that. Often seems, though, that people don't care until they feel threatened by the problem at hand. It just isn't real until then; one isn't stirred until then. I'm not sure what is best to do; but a lot of people being aware of a problem and doing nothing to change the status quo most assuredly does nothing. (Though I guess it does prep people for when a big change is going to occur.)