I’m writing this while half of the country is caught up in riots, and the other half is on Netflix with no clue about those riots, because the longer this period of social distancing goes on the more siloed our worries become. This is all happening at the same time that Elon Musk is rendering space completely and totally inaccessible to the average US citizen, and that’s about as depressing to me as the possibility of coming down with food poisoning in a Las Vegas bathroom. Normally (for COVIDland, at least) I wouldn’t have known about either of these events, having removed Twitter from all of my devices, but I was dumb enough to want to scream into the void this morning and logged in on my desktop.
Hindsight may be 20/20, but it seems to be somewhat mysteriously out to lunch whenever I could use a little bit of its clarity.
Bed #1: The first I planted, and therefore the most lively.
Some of my starts are still cooking.
Bed #7: The last I planted. The cabbage starts are aLIVE.
In somewhat better news, the garden is coming along. I’m battling the insects for some of the leafy types, particularly the cabbages, so I’ve been learning the ins and outs of insecticidal soap, which when it comes to gardening supplies is for once actually less terrifying than you’d think. Dish soap and water plus spray bottle. Do ecologically minded soaps work as well as the standard kitchen chemical? I’m going to find out. Eventually. Apart from the cabbages, which would be going completely bonkers with joy if it weren’t for the insects, not much else is thriving yet. Everything’s hanging in there, but even the most voracious of climbers, the scarlet runner beans, haven’t been putting out new leaves for a week. One of my squash flowered already, but the plant is still just a little stripling so I don’t have much hope it could produce anything serious as a result.
It is hot. And sticky. There’s not a hint of a breeze. I think we’ll get a cracker of a storm tonight. Surely.
Bed #3: #2 isn’t really worth mentioning, but this one is
I mean, look at that rhubarb! It’s totally our neighbor’s. Sort of.
Housemate had a gate frame. So now I have an arbor. YAY
I have been sorting papers all day and reading the fine print of my health insurance policy, which was about the most delightful middle to my day that I could have dreamed up. And of course I took a quick look at Netflix and tried out the Jeffrey Epstein documentary series, because I really know how to complete a mood. Watching some of his victims grapple on-camera with their feelings of complicity because they were not at 16, or 14, capable of understanding just how they were being used and to what ends … it reminded me of what it felt like to be briefly but intensely groomed by a predator. And how it can make a person feel dirty even a full decade later. Even if one ends up making the right decisions, time after time.
There are other reasons that Epstein’s victims and their stories resonate with me. Many were high academic performers with crushing self-esteem issues. Many needed, on some level, both the perceived stability and purpose that Epstein gave them at a time when they were most in doubt as to their futures. And of course many of his victims are precisely my age now––31 going on 32. I don’t have anything new to offer in the conversation about Epstein’s crimes, just the persistent mental itch of shame over having been conned myself. And an ongoing, entrenched dislike of what money allows the fantastically rich to do.
Like launch luxury vehicles into space. Co-opt the image (down to the government logo) of public science to serve private ends––ends that would convert Mars into a luxury retreat for the monied individual and do absolutely nothing for the millions of jobless or homeless. Who will Elon Musk’s clients be, the ones who can actually afford a trip to his vision of an Earth-2? Why, the Jeffrey Epsteins, of course.
Oh yes, I’m a little bitter. Even though I could never have earned a spot on a rocket in any case, for a variety of reasons, and therefore Musk isn’t taking anything away that hadn’t been impossible to start with. (Except for the dreams.) Even as I recognize my incredible privilege to have been born in a time and place where I could acquire two graduate degrees and still complain about the limits to my dreams. Even as I live in a part of the US where COVID-19 has barely scratched out the smallest presence so far, and where I can get to know the creatures that land on local dinner tables and therefore make educated choices about what I am willing to eat. Even as I take note of what a privilege it is to have friends and a family who aren’t going to let me starve or lack for medical care in a time when so many others truly don’t know whether they can make it through this economic crisis. Even as I get to walk blithely through the world and acquire all of these other privileges in part because my skin could be used as those reflective batons folks use to direct planes at airports.
My bedroom garden. I’m not doing great at watering it, I think. Am I including it to distract you from the fact that Bed #s 2, 4, 5, and 6 aren’t worth mentioning yet? Yes. Yes I am.
I’m still trying to kick myself out of this incredible reading rut I’ve been in since February. I got very close to something like normal while working half days for six weeks and tweaking my medications. My stimulus check helped pay for a biopsy and some other medical bills, which gave me much peace of mind. But with the latest wave of unrest sweeping the country and a return to working full-time, I’m realizing just how thin is the line between stability and utter chaos. I thought a full-time job with benefits meant that I was safe, but a lot of others did too who have lost their jobs to the shutdown. And of course no one is safe from all of the other ways (other than widespread fear and mandatory regulations) that the workplace can be rendered unsafe, physically or emotionally. How many people are stuck in toxic workplaces or jobs because they can’t afford to break away? Time, the New York Times, Forbes, and others were already reporting on the spike in domestic abuse-related calls to hotlines back in March. In less than a day it will be June, and things can only have escalated.
I’ve been mostly lucky in that I’ve only ever been employed by small enough organizations or institutions where I could actually get to know everyone who worked onsite. That makes a big difference when dealing with issues relating to a toxic work environment, at least theoretically, because the chances of being seen as just a cog in a much larger machine are small to vanishing. On the other hand, stakes are high, and the bruises take longer to heal when there’s no middle management to provide effective mediation or employee advocacy. Other than summer internships and retirements, I’ve never actually witnessed anyone leave a job for reasons other than some sort of breakdown in their working relationships. I’ve witnessed exits involving shouting matches, accusations of misconduct, and in stony silence. As an employee, that’s not the way I want to go when I go, and if I were an employer, that’s not the way I’d like to send folks off into the world. How much more impressive it is to be known for boosting employees’ careers and confidence and technical skills, right?
Last week, I was accused by a fellow employee of crossing an ethical line in becoming friends over the years with some of the people who make use of the library. It was the sort of exchange that would have been made worse (and much longer) by offering any sort of defense, but I have certainly given a great deal of thought to the matter since I moved here five years ago. In any case, the accusation was delivered in such a way as to be deeply personal and to communicate, deliberately I think, deep-seated anger and disgust. In a workplace with only five other full-time coworkers, and in a town of roughly 5,000, there’s nowhere to turn that hasn’t already been tried. Several times. The cumulative effects of working in tight spaces with very stressed people has become a matter of discussion in the wake of COVID-19’s arrival stateside, but what’s missing from the national conversation is how these effects exacerbate preexisting interpersonal stress, and how they compound when the drama unfolds within a small town or in a rural setting. As I muddle through each day’s little dramas, I do so in the full knowledge that any mistake will follow me everywhere I go in town, from the grocery clerks who know me by name and which account to ring up when I’m picking something up for work, to the electrician who was also a board member, to the teachers in whose classrooms I stop by for a chat only to discover that pretty much every kid in their class has a parent among my circle of small town connections.
I feel like the tone has gotten pretty heavy, here. You know what that means! It’s time for Leslie Knope gifs!
One solution, of course, is to never make any mistakes. I respect and admire those people who can make a genuine attempt at this. I wish I could count myself among them, but I have all-too-realistic an idea of my propensity to verbal processing and forgetting numbers or performing any task requiring rote memorization. I do truly hope to live an ethical life, and leave behind a reputation for doing so. I’ve spent a lot of time second-guessing myself since the incident above, which has led to a lot of reflection on how endlessly connected everything in my life is. Civil disobedience, human spaceflight, documentaries centering on abuse, personal disappointments and mistakes, white privilege, government regulations, mental health, toxic relationships and workplace environments, and even gardening. I only really get to clear my head when I’m ripping up bindweed.
Ah, the breeze has picked up a bit, and my housemate has locked up the house for the night. She’s put out some laundry to dry, so it’s making crisp snaps as it swings on the line. Everything gets a little better when the wind chimes are going and the temperature drops. I’d be relieved if I weren’t still waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the storm to blow in.
P.S. I found some cute kitty bleps that definitely need to close out this ramblement here.
