Don't Fence Me In
Two weeks in the US with mom flew by. There were medical appointments, lunch at the country club (below with our host, Sandy, second from right), lots of cleaning and cooking, having neighbours over (I made pumpkin-chocolate cheesecake), visiting neighbours to deliver presents, and two entertainment outings. We got the car, the heating and air conditioning and the recliner lift chair serviced. And I took down Christmas decorations.
The first entertainment was Wicked for Good. I really enjoyed the Cynthia Erivo bits but was not enthralled by the Ariana bits. I don't enjoy her voice as much. There were some clever plot twists involving Dorothy's three companions. The second entertainment was a tribute to Aretha performed by CeCe Teneal from Orlando. She has a big voice and got the job done beautifully. Her backing band was very good but no horns, which I missed on a few songs. Tickets courtesy of Sandy, pictured above. I enjoyed a visit with her and her husband Alex the day before I left.
Below is mom with some of her Christmas gifts. Eddis sent the tea cozy last year and the 3D card this year with the cream and sugar. I contributed table mats and cutlery from M&S last year. Cut out of the frame is an 8-inch high robin made from tweeds upcycled from Hanna's Hats in Donegal Town, one of mom's haunts back in the day.
Getting back to the title, taken from a Cole Porter song about the frontier spirit of the American West.
When I am in the US, I am always appalled by the waste. The plastic bag that everything you buy is put into!! I walked out of the Dollar Store the other day with a half dozen bags – I hadn't bought that much but they seem to want to put only a few items in each bag. In the UK we pay for each bag so we bring our own.
Mom has no recycling so everything – food waste, cardboard, glass – goes in the garbage. In the UK, you can be penalised for not sorting the recyclables, including food waste, from your garbage. It is painful to see so many things landfilled that shouldn't go near a landfill. (Her garbage company lost its contract with the recycling plant; prior to that, paper, tin and glass were recycled but not food or yard waste).
The cars and trucks are all massive, equating to obscene carbon emissions. In the UK, per capita carbon dioxide emissions are about 4.7 tonnes per year. In the US? 14.4 tonnes per person (2023 figures). That one statistic explains why I don't want to live in the US. We know what carbon is doing to the atmosphere, the oceans, the forests, yet we put our foot on the pedal of our Ford F-150 pick-up trucks (best selling vehicle in the US for over 40 years; mpg in low to mid 20s; equivalent for UK is the Ford Puma, mpg in low to mid 40s). Americans drive 14,000 miles/year on average, twice what UK drivers average (we have public transport alternatives and a lot of us can walk to the shops).
I spend a lot of time trying to understand the US mindset, why Americans are so comfortable with waste and in such denial about the consequences. I blame WalMart. The average store is more than three times the size of a US football field. I think Americans wander around these endless aisles of stuff, a small country of commerce, and have the sense that there are no limits on what they can have/buy/throw away. No limits. Aisle after aisle of pointless products (142,000 product types in average store). Amazon raises the ante exponentially. Why wander through multiple zip codes of stuff at WalMart when an Amazon van can satisfy your capricious needs in a day? Why trouble your mind with Doughnut Economics when you can choose from 20,000 kinds of donuts (I just did a search on Amazon for 'donuts' and got 20,000 results)? Planetary boundaries? Pshaw – when is the new i phone out?
Getting back to my title, I think the classic American isn't a cowboy aching for an endless horizon. It's a consumer whose insatiable appetite is being fed by the illusion of infinity. As more ecosystems collapse and more land becomes uninhabitable, will the penny ever drop?
I had my usual arduous, infuriating trip back on 17-18 January (Avis, United and Dublin Express each contributed to my misery in unique and creative ways) and was glad to be back in the UK. The coverage of Trump's private militia running riot over Minneapolis was breaking my heart.
18 January