Playing with Life: From Tamagotchi to Moribund Keychains

In Beasts of the Southern Wild, when Hushpuppy is evacuated to an emergency shelter, she narrates, "When animals get sick out here, they plug them into the wall." She is referring to her fellow human animals, of course, but Hushpuppy's understanding of ecology does not draw from a human/non-human dichotomy with regards to sentient beings. Hushpuppy's education foregrounds not only respect for animals but also the experience of being an animal.

Yet beyond the Bathtub, so many human animals underline the distinction they make between themselves and "non-human animals" by relegating them to the spheres of leisure and play. African safaris, trips to the zoo, and even the treatment of some pets can turn other animals into entertainment. 

One of the extensions of this mentality has been the popular electronic tamagotchi pets. With handheld pets, children can "play" responsible, learning to feed, discipline, play with, clean up after, and put to sleep simulated life without the danger of killing the family fish, gerbil, canary, cat, etc.

Source: La República

China has taken keychain pets to a new level with the sale of live miniature animals in plastic bags filled with colored, oxygenated water. Requiring less care and attention that the tamagotchi, the animals will supposedly live for a few days in their oxygenated, "nutrient-rich" environment. Animal rights groups have lambasted the new trend, creating petitions to stop the capitalization of animal cruelty on the streets of China. 

This particular brand of animal abuse, though, is most horrifying for the way it resonates with animal care. Keeping animals (or electronic likenesses) as experiments in care-taking seems to lend to the "cutification" of life and attitudes that draw a thick impassable line between humans and non-humans. Animals become practice for human care, but not "real" care itself. Then again, what do human animals know about care anyway, Hushpuppy, if we are still plugging our own sick into the wall? Somehow these (mis)understandings of care allow some humans to think of non-human life as pseudo-life, at least that's the only way I can explain why anyone could create, sell, or buy these little ticking tombs as attractive charms. 

Source: La República

Our Trash, Our Selves 1.1: No Waste Flu

Shortly after starting to keep our trash, I got the flu, which put a wrinkle in my trash-minimalism goals. With no sick food in the house, I found myself craving Campbell's soup, and before long, I had a big stack of empty tin cans to show for it.

I knew I had to be better prepared next time, so when I got better, it was time to make a stockpile of soup. Luckily, making soup from scratch is the second easiest thing ever (after making applesauce).

Here's what to do:

1. Save veggie scraps for a week. What can you save? Just about anything! Ideas are here and here.

2. Toss everything in a pot. Fill with a bunch of water. Add herbs and spices if you'd like.

3. Bring to a boil and simmer for quite a while. Most people recommend 30 minutes to an hour. I let mine boil even longer.



4. Strain and use as broth! Ta da!



5. Freeze for future use or make soup and freeze for a quick sick-day dethaw solution!





Another zero waste sickness necessity is handkerchiefs. My grandmother was a child of the Depression, a sort of proto-zero-waste innovator, and she never left the house without one.

g-ma

Luckily, I inherited these two lovely handkerchiefs. 

You would be surprised how much snot these guys can absorb. Having two is nice because you can use one while the other sits out to dry on the heater after a good hand-washing. At my sickest, I think I would have liked to have had three, but I'm making two work for now.

Voilà! Surviving the flu with minimal waste.

Brazil's Cultural Citizenship

I am fortunate enough to live in a city with two free art museums, Baltimore Museum of Art and The Walters Art Museum, not to mention the fact that in under an hour I can be on the sprawling Smithsonian Campus with several lifetimes-worth of free museum-visiting options, so it's easy to forget that there are places in the country where this kind of culture is a commodity, afforded by an elite few.

A recent trip to the depressed midwestern heart of the U. S. took me to the Art Institute of Chicago, which cost me $40 (one adult @$23 & one student @$17) + parking in downtown Chicago. Even Chicago residents pay $20 a visit ($14 for students).

Admission Information for Art Institute Webpage

While forking over the fee for an afternoon of the arts, I couldn't help but wonder how many Chicagoans are deterred by those high admission costs. (Yes, children under 14 are free, and the museum is free to everyone Thursdays from 5-8pm--if you get there earlier enough to be at the head of the line, you may even get to spend more than an hour looking at art!) Who are we keeping out of our museums? What do those exclusions say about what the museum experience means in 21st-century USA?

Here are a few more general admission fees (in descending order of price) from some of the country's top art museums:

Boston Museum of Fine Arts: $25

The Met: $25

NYC MOMA: $25

Philadelphia Museum of Art: $20

High Museum of Art, Atlanta: $19.50

The Frick: $18

Guggenheim: $18

San Francisco MOMA: $18

The Whitney: $18

Seattle Art Museum: $17

Milwaukee Art Museum: $15

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: $13

The Phillips Collection: $12

Detroit Institute of Art: $8; (free for residents of surrounding counties)

The Cleveland Museum of Art: FREE!

With two notable exceptions, the double digit prices for art museum admission underscore the museum visit's prestige as a luxury activity, a sort of experiential cultural capital to enhance the status of an already select crowd.

Brazil's government is working to create a decidedly different cultural landscape for its citizens. Amidst an economic crisis, the country recently decided to issue a vale-cultura, a monthly "cultural stipend," to workers making up to five times the minimum wage (approximately 12 million Brazilians). Employers will pay 90% of the 50 reais (approximately US $25) with workers opting to pay the additional 10%. Cultural stipends will be issued on debit cards that workers can use to go to the theatre, the movies, museums; buy CDs or consume other cultural products. The initiative is expected to go into effect this year.

While this initiative promises to increase Brazil's cultural consumption by 7.2 billion reais a year (approximately US $3.6 billion), this move also speaks to how Brazil views the relationship between citizenship and culture. The initiative's stated goals have a decidedly educational aim, "Primeiro, fortalecer o mercado consumidor de bens e serviços criativos e, segundo, contribuir para a formação de cidadãos apreciadores e consumidores de cultura." (First to strengthen the consumer market of creative goods and services, and second, to contribute to the education of citizens who value and consume culture.)

States can promote a number of different types of consumerism, but Brazil's vale-cultura democratizes citizens' access to cultural knowledge while supporting a fiscal sector that provides meaningful and enriching ways to experience citizenship. Having a vale-cultura means that the museum visit is no longer a cultural luxury; it is a worker's decision and right. (The São Paolo Museum of Art costs R$15, which would leave workers 35 reais for the rest of the month's cultural activities.)

Brazilian artist, Paulo Nazareth, currently on display in Sao Paolo

The vale-cultura--understood as part of the legacy of former President Lula's social welfare program, bolsa família--seems to suggest that the Brazilian government sees culture as more than recreation; it is a sort of sustenance, as essential as nourishment, shelter, and medical care. In the words of Brazil's Minister of Culture, Marta Suplicy, "A gente não quer só comida....Cultura é o alimento da alma." (People want more than just food...Culture is the bread of the soul.")

Our Trash, Ourselves

Timothy Morton's Ecology without Nature is a brilliant, theoretically-grounded challenge to the contradictions and hypocrisies of deep ecology, an ecological philosophy that, according to Morton, advocates for the protection of a reified construct of Nature. The book's basic premise is that the concept of Nature as a pristine place out there--that is, apart from us--that we need to preserve is actually an obstacle to genuine left ecological discourse. (Ecology without Nature, incidentally, is written for an academic audience. If you're interested in these ideas, but want to skip the Marx, Derrida, Hegel, etc., I highly recommend the more recent The Ecological Thought, written for a broader audience).

To be truly ecological, to deal with the here and now, Morton proposes a "dark ecology" that emphasizes interconnectedness while acknowledging waste and ugliness as a part of it. Drawing from Freud, Sartre, and Kristeva, Morton theorizes that we separate ourselves from our shit (I use shit here as a deliberate taboo) in order to maintain a difference between "I" and "slimy things." In other words, we get rid of our shit, pack it away, and send it off to create an idea of ourselves as "not slimy things." On the contrary, Morton urges, "We should be finding ways to stick around with the sticky mess that we're in and that we are..." (188). 

Project "Our Trash, Ourselves" grew out of my reflections on Morton. I started wondering what my shit would look like, so for the next year, I am going to save my shit. The ground has already been paved by innovative predecessors who have excellent tips. 

Here is my basic game plan:

1. All organic waste gets composted.

2. Recyclables will be stored separately from pure trash and not recycled until the end of the year. Recycling is good but re-use is better to avoid the energy costs of recycling.

3. Trash will be stored separately.

4. Until someone comes up with something genius for a city dweller, I will continue to use modern plumbing.

That's it. I live in a very small one-floor apartment, so for now, everything is in separate cardboard boxes on shelves in the kitchen. The goal is 1) to think more about my trash while it collects in my kitchen and 2) to make less of it. If something comes with packaging that I know I will just have to add to the trash pile, I will try to avoid it.

Today, for example, as I was leaving work, I was starving. Remembering that there was a fresh jar of salsa in the fridge, I emailed my partner and asked him to pick up a bag of chips for appetizers on the way home. He immediately responded, "Um, where can we buy chips in bulk?" Touché. Then I remembered that we had corn meal at home, so we made our own chips. I had to wait a bit longer for my appetizer but was able to snack on the chips when they were in tortilla phase. Now, I just have to figure out how to fry my tortillas without the comal setting off the fire alarm.

Voilà! Waste-free chips!