everyday ordinary
trying to live without losing my soulArchive for everyday justice
the industry
tomorrow i will be in my 3rd wedding in 6 months, taking a trip down the aisle for the 5th time in my life (not including being a flowergirl). in may, however, i will get to do it in white.
or cream, or ivory, or some other color. but whatever color my wedding dress will be, it will probably come from the cutting floor of a sweatshop in a poorer country than my own. “…[O]ne person’s luxury is produced by another’s labor.”
that’s a quote out of one of my favorite, most painful books that i’m currently reading. it’s called one perfect day: the selling of the american wedding, and it will take your breath away… and not in the seeing-the-bride-walk-down-the-aisle way, but in the what-the-hell-are-we-doing-way.
how about this food for thought.
“what does all this wedding industry hype mean for the woman who turns to the bridal magazines for guidance adn inspiration? One of the things it means is that an expectation that getting married is going to be a very costly endeavor has been drummed into her head will in advance of the start of her wedding planning. If a bride has been told, repeatedly, that is costs nearly $28,000 to have a wedding (the average amount spent by americans getting married in 2006), then she starts to think that spending nearly $28,000 on a wedding is just on of those things a person has to do, like writing a rent check every month or paying health insurance premiums. (Or, she prides herself on being a budget bride and spending a mere $15,000 on the event). She is less likely to reflect upon the fact that $28,000 would cover an awful lot of rent checks or health insurance payments…The bride who has been persuaded that $28,000 is a reasonable amount of money to spend on her wedding day is less likely to measure that total against the nation’s median household income–$42,389 in 2004– and reflect upon whether it is, in fact, reasonable for her or for anyone to spend the equivalent of seven and a half months of the average american’s salary on one day’s celebration.”
which should then only horrify us more as we think about the majority of the world, where $28,000 could be the equivalent of 121 years salary to half the world’s population living on 2 bucks a day.
water is from mars…
when the colorado river finally runs dry, southern california might invent a way to steal water from mars.
until then, i’ve joined the 20-gallon challenge.
animal control
my roommates and i recently moved into our new house in an urban, moderately inner-city neighborhood. we’re just getting acquainted with our neighbors, and one thing that has helped us to do that strangely involved a large lizard.
it all started with my roommates’ shocking discovery of a large iguana on our back porch. i was on the road, coming back into town with my fiancé, the resident reptile expert, so we had to brainstorm over the phone about what to do about the stray lizard. we thought that perhaps he was an evacuee from the fires, or simply a run-away from one of our neighbors. we definitely knew he wasn’t a wild iguana, as they are not native fauna of san diego (although great would be the day when iguanas roamed wild here).
so my roommates captured him… well, actually they managed to shoo him into the house, where he promptly crawled under our oven and got his head stuck. When we finally arrived home, my fiancé had to pry him out of a very uncomfortable spot, and then put him in our bathtub.
then we had an iguana living in our only bathtub.
here’s where this situation helped us get to know our neighbors. during the day, in between shooing the lizard inside and wondering if he had suffocated in the oven, my roommates went door to door around our block asking people if they had lost an iguana. A great way to meet our new neighbors.
we made some signs, posted a message on craigslist, and went without showers for a few days. eventually, i called animal services and they kindly picked him up.
today is halloween, and our neighborhood was full of power rangers, pirates, and other costumed creations. my roommates and i were walking around our block, and amazingly, another pet had escaped and run in front of us. it was a fluffy, brown spotted rabbit. convinced that we shouldn’t let it become roadkill, we divided up and tried to catch it. after a few unsuccessful attempts at capturing peter rabbit, we managed to chase him under a fence. only after he had disappeared to the other side did we see the ominous beware of rabid dog sign on the fence.
hopefully, we didn’t send both of these animals to their death. but we are beginning to feel like part of our job as being a good neighbor is to care for all kinds of living things. hopefully, it will also connect our lives with the lives of those around us.
as long as we don’t have to adopt any stray pit bulls. i personally am very thankful for animal control services.
