Life Without Plastic

Posted on October 12, 2013 by Elaine Romanelli

Plastic! Get yer butt out here! I have a bone to pick with you.

I’m tired of plastic. Especially broken plastic.

Broken plastic things litter my house, and my conscience. Broken salt grinder, wounded hair clips, wrecked fasteners and closers and all manner of thingamabobs and doohickies. They’re everywhere.

Can I recycle them? Nyet.

And every time I go out, I end up with more plastic. Bags, cartons, bottles, take-out containers… in New York City it’s impossible to keep plastic at bay. And you know as well as I do that that’s where it ends up: in the bay. In the ground. In the water. In the food supply. (Plastic in my chocolate?! GASP! The horror!)

So I was VERY excited to find this site:

http://lifewithoutplastic.com/boutique/round-stainless-steel-airtight-takeout-container-with-removable-dividers-p-573.html

It’s not the be-all, end-all, that’s for sure, but dag nab it, I’m gonna get myself some non-plastic wares. And I’m hopeful that sooner rather than later, mushroom-based packing will replace the dread styrofoam. (Why, yes, there is a fungus among us! Read all about it here.)

I’m not saying plastic’s never done me no favors. I’m just saying: it’s way too pervasive. Can’t we dial it back? Plastic can have a place at the table, but does the dining room set have to be made of it?

I think not. Bring out the birch! Hand me some hemp! Dish out some dirt! Or whatever. Just… enough with the plastic everywhere. It’s one wee planet. There’s no actual ‘away’ (as in’ throw that broken plastic thing away’), so we really need a team approach here.

I realize this is part of a larger conversation about manufacturing and consumption and production cycles and consumerism and demand and AAAAAAUUUUUGH but I’m not going to let scope creep eat my rant.

Less plastic. That is all.

 

 

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For my Canadian friends

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Elaine Romanelli
Canadians

from the New Yorker

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Thought du jour

Posted on September 30, 2013 by Elaine Romanelli

If you can’t believe

it’s not butter

You haven’t had butter

in quite some time.

Picture 6

taken from http://9gag.com/gag/aVOeo3v , photo credit unknown

 

 

 

 

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Late Night Poetry: The Road Not Taken

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Elaine Romanelli

Why are some nights sleepless and others full of dancing sugarplums?

I can’t say.

If I could, I’d be rich. RICH I tell you, RICH!

So maybe I can’t help you sleep, but I can soothe your wakeful soul with some Late Night Poetry, a recurring feature here at The Skinny (our motto: No TV After 2:00 AM.)

I’ve been standing in the metaphorical woods lately, staring at paths, so this feels apt.

Yes, it’s a classic, you’ve heard about it sooooo many times… I wonder what it will mean to your current self, though, on this starting-to-get-cold night, in the beginning of this busy fall..

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

 – Robert Frost

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The Swannanoa Gathering

Posted on September 15, 2013 by Elaine Romanelli

I keep meaning to post about the amazing experience I had at the Swannanoa Gathering over the summer.

But I keep not doing it.

What the what, self?

Well (Elaine), I think it’s because the whole intense, glorious week was very much like some of my most fun nights have been. Which is to say, they don’t translate well.

Like this one: I am 17, sitting in an overheated room at a YMCA, having the time of my life with my best friend and a bunch of musicians. We are young and high on being young, and new to town, and everything is hilarious. Two people come up with a rap about Gandhi, and the whole room collapses laughing – doubled over in aching, crying, whooping, snorting hilarity.

I don’t remember everyone who was there, or what all was said that night, or anything about what made the rap hilarious (except the end: g-g-g-g-g-g-GANDHI!).

But MAN it was funny!

That’s SO funny, right?!??

Right?   Hello?  It… it wasn’t… it wasn’t so funny?  But…  no, see, it totally was…

Many of my most cherished experiences in life have been like that. You can see how they don’t make for good stories. “People in a room talked and laughed and enjoyed each other’s company!” “We ate dinner for 4 hours and had really engaging conversations!” “Game night! That charade! When he made the hand puppet beaver! HAW!”

These are not good headlines.

And it’s because someone reading about it later has no way to put themselves in your shoes. There was no one famous, no unusual good fortune, no exclusivity involved, no inspiring photos. Nothing that would make a good Facebook status update. (“Went yachting with famous person and met new romantic squeeze while eating amazing home-made thing off coast of super beautiful place! Isn’t my life so great??”)

Those moments of feeling alive and loved and very present, all cares forgotten, all joy foremost; those are experiential, and there’s no transitive property for others. The magic that transpires is created in the space among people, and then evanesces.

There’s very little to document in the first place, but also when life is extremely engaging, you are so in it you don’t document it. You don’t think to document it. You are wholly absorbed in being. No part of you is standing apart, thinking about proving to someone else that you were having some kind of experience. You’re just…there. Having the experience.

So Swannanoa was like that. I took classes, met people, heard music, wrote music, played music, laughed, cried, hugged, danced, overslept, underslept, learned a ton, taught a little… and I have nothing to show for it.

Well. Almost nothing.

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September Newsletter

Posted on September 12, 2013 by Elaine Romanelli

Summer was grand! So grand that I just didn’t put out an August newsletter. How do you like them apples?

(Mmm. Apples. Fugis, especially, or Galas. You know what’s good? Apples and peanut butter! Yes! With just a touch of sea salt sprinkled on top.)

Summer, then apples, apples come in fall, and okay, I’m back! It’s September and there’s some lovely reviewing of summer to be done, and some looking forward as well, and if you missed it when it came out, it’s not too late! You can still:

Read the September Newsletter

 

 

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Happy New Year!

Posted on September 4, 2013 by Elaine Romanelli

September always feels like the beginning of the year rather than the lead-up to the end, doesn’t it? Kids are starting new grades at school, that crisp air wakens us from our summer lethargy, and we are all recommitting to the work we ignored in the heat. (Unless you live in SF. Then: what heat? You’ve been frozen solid for months.)

It’s literally the beginning as well, for some: Rosh Hashanah starts tonight! (Which is the new year, for those paying attention to the Hebrew calendar).

I hear the Irish are the lost tribe, but I am connected to Rosh Hashanah not through my heritage but through work; I have a temple job singing for high holidays (affectionately known as Hi Hos). So shortly I’ll be warbling away to greet the new year. No honey or apples will be involved, but four-part a-cappella harmony is sweetness enough for a music addict like me.

For all starting something new around this time, I say:

shana_tova

 

 

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Late Night Poetry: the Vacation

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Elaine Romanelli

What’s with the no posting, Elaine? No August newsletter? No Deep Thoughts? What the what?!

What the what is: I took a little break from… well, almost everything, except for my absolute most favorite parts of life; practicing, writing, eating, lounging, being with people.  I spend SO much of my time and energy in the thinking/planning/doing realm, and not nearly enough time just being. I am too often not present in my own life.

And I found a poem that encapsulates that experience so perfectly. For this month’s edition of Late Night Poetry (our motto: It’s Summer, Go Ahead And Stay Up All Night), we have the wonderful Wendell Berry:

The Vacation

By Wendell Berry

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.

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Climbing the Capitol Dome

Posted on July 28, 2013 by Elaine Romanelli

Thanks to my favorite brother* and his generous and knowledgeable colleague, I got to see the inner workings of the capitol, with a tour that included art, halls of power, and the coolest part for me, ascending to the top of the Capitol dome, which takes you inside between the inner and outer shells of the dome to a viewing area overlooking the mall. Yes. It was WAY cool.

*I only have one brother

 

Enough jawin’! Some photos from the experience:

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Look! It’s the Capitol!

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There is a cool little tram we got to take that runs under the Capitol from one place to another. It’s like a wee toy subway.

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The halls are lined with portraits of politicians from yesteryear to now. I utterly failed to write down who this is, but how fierce a portrait is this? They should all be so cool.

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pretty shiny dome thing!

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Really famous pretty shiny dome thing!

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The white stone my brother is standing on marks the center of DC. (Yes. We all took pictures there. As did the 5,000 other tourists. : )

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This is a portrait of Pocahontas at her baptism, not wearing a wedding gown. (Would be a gorgeous one, though.)

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This is the scene as we start to climb up between the inner and outer layers of the dome.

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View of the frieze around the dome. The frieze depicts milestones in American history.

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The frieze was painted by three different artists, one of whom painted his face into the base of the tree at the point where he finished.

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Heading up, up, up…

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Someone clever during the dome construction made a hinge for one of those pink rosettes you see peppering the dome. So you can lift it up and look out…

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My friend Michelle up by the dome’s phenomenal ceiling.

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Looking down to where we started. (Those people seem very very tiny.)

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Gorgeous day for a view of the mall from atop the Capitol!

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The whole gang atop the dome.

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The spiral staircase heading down.

 

 

 

 

 

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July Newsletter

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Elaine Romanelli

Summer: it turns me upside down. Summer summer summer! (Sing it with me, now!)

Aaaaaaaaaanyhoo…

So, what’s happening with your summer? Vacationing? Working? Mine’s going swimmingly, thanks for asking. Should you desire more details, have a look inside:

Read the July Newsletter

 

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