You’re American when you come out of the bathroom. Also, the bathroom is American, and so is the building the bathroom is in.
BUT FIRST, SOME EVENTS
From anywhere: Please join me for a VIRTUAL event on September 5, 7-8pm, with the Cary Memorial Library and Lexington Climate Action Network. Free to attend! Register here!
In Delhi, NY: Please join me for two IN-PERSON events with the Bushel Collective: a Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth session on August 28, 11am-2pm, and a workshop and reading on August 29, starting at 4pm. Please tell your friends who live nearby.
SUMMARY
I write summaries for people who have to carefully marshal their effort and attention.
This one time I was in a service plaza on the Mass Pike and rainwater started pouring in under the door
There are places that are nobody’s business, but we can look for the places that are our business
Here are a few examples of ways to do that
When I went into the Mass Pike rest stop bathroom the rain was drizzling. When I came out of the rest-stop bathroom, it was pouring. “I’ll wait it out,” I thought, as the water went fast from pouring down to pouring in, under the glass door. A young woman who was working the counter got the floor mat out of the way. An older guy who was working in the back came out, and then went back to the back to seek a mop. The water gushed off the roof, poured over the concrete apron outside the door, and spread and spread on the floor, about half an inch deep. Another customer and I stood watching it with, effectively, our thumbs up our asses.
I strongly suspect that preventing the flood at the rest stop was nobody’s problem. The people working that day got stuck with the cleanup, as they would if someone had thrown up in the aisle or dropped a bottled Frappuccino. But when the water stopped pouring in, not only was no one paying them to keep it from pouring in again, they might not be allowed to do the kinds of things that would prevent it.
At a guess, those things might include something as (relatively) low-effort as installing downspouts, rain barrels, bioswales and rain gardens, like the ones people put in through Umbrella in New Orleans. They could involve something as heavy-duty as changing the pitch of the roof, digging below-ground drainage, or changing the grade of the pavement, which even to my unpracticed eye seemed to be tilting toward the entryway. (I’m reminded of Nate, who pointed out in Chapter 5 of Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth that he and his paving crew often have to do work that they can tell won’t last long in the place where they’re doing it.) The reason that’s a guess is that it wasn’t my problem either. No one was paying me, or even asking me. I was on my way from one place, where I’m rooted, to another, where I was raised. In either of those places, stormwater would be my problem if I were there when it was coming down and in. I would be stuck with whatever effects I couldn’t prevent, but I would also have the responsibility and the authority to try preventing them.
Not so on the Mass Pike. Even trying to find out whose job it would be was so mazelike that I gave up after half an hour (since I wasn’t being paid to do that either. Actual transit and transportation journalists, I salute you). The franchise-holders might know who to call—but they wouldn’t necessarily be there, or even know it was happening, especially if it doesn’t happen every time. The water on the floor was unlikely to get high enough to kill anybody or even make anyone sick; the main thing it was likely to do was make hard jobs harder. But basically, it seemed to me, the people who could see it happening couldn’t do anything about it. And the people who could do something about it not only couldn’t see it happening, but might not have a good enough reason to do so. Some of them might end up on the hook for repairing any damage that, say, caused the plaza to fail an inspection. But would they shell out to prevent the flood from recurring? Would anyone?
I thought again of the Great Plaza Flood when I read this piece on “How to Get Started” by Vicky Osterweil. Of the projects she lists here, some are synchronous in space, like holding a series of stoop sales to benefit abortion funds and some are asynchronous and remote, like gathering mutual aid posts in one place (similar to my other newsletter) or researching titles and locations for empty buildings that could become housing. What they share is a spring—sometime more of a hop—into action without asking for permission. Here’s a need; maybe it should be met in some other way or on a larger scale, but that’s not happening; let’s see if we can meet it.
Osterweil’s list is full of good projects, some of which would do a lot for a few people, others of which would do a little for many people (both great!). Similar work is going on all over. (Shoutout to bike-powered water deliverer Elias, who has been bringing water and ice to encampments of people living outside in this hot summer; Venmo is @steel-heart.) And there are also many places where no one can do it; because they can’t, because they don’t want to, because they can’t want to, because they’re only sort of places. America has filled itself with places and systems that are businesses but no one’s business. Who will build the rain garden at the service plaza?
Scarcity points out that the service plaza isn’t the best place for a rain garden. History reminds us that our standards for which places deserve to be better, which places “count,” aren’t exactly objective. Many, many people are quick to remind us that huge changes in the way we get and spend and lay waste our powers, at the level of government and policy and economy, are what is truly needed. But there is still the question of what to do while those needs aren’t being met.
All of that said, the service plaza rain garden, like the gas station banana, is a parable, although if you want to bring topsoil, gravel and garden tools next time you drive the Pike, I won’t stop you. More importantly, I ask you to think about what in the place where you live might, actually, be your business, your harvest, your magnitude and bond.
QUESTIONS: Where in the place where you live is there something you could just… do, along the lines of Umbrella or Osterweil’s ideas or the water delivery or something else? What don’t you have to ask permission for?
PRACTICE: Invite at least one other person to do that thing with you.
There’s an exercise similar to this on p69 of Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth. You could do that one instead, or in addition.
LONG READING: Susanna Clarke, Piranesi, which is (among other things) about learning that you have more and different kinds of agency than you’ve been told.
I wrote a book, LESSONS FROM THE CLIMATE ANXIETY COUNSELING BOOTH: HOW TO LIVE WITH CARE AND PURPOSE IN AN ENDANGERED WORLD (Hachette Go, 2024). This newsletter holds the ways that what's in it has branched out: new reflections, events and workshops, unresolved questions, further reading, ways to connect and act. I'm glad to be here on earth with you.