and people

This morning I checked section 3 of the eruv. At that point, it was flatly overcast, perfect for checking since there was no glare. I took a new route to work afterward: it turns out the 101 bus stops at the far end of the section. I hadn’t tried it before, but today, someone was waiting, so I figured it wouldn’t be an unreasonable time until the bus came. That got me to Sullivan, then I hopped on the new, revised 85 bus (that was almost the previous CT2, except much less express), which would’ve worked fine had there not been roadworks that involved a detour and extra traffic. Still, I got to work at a reasonable hour, and got to see some new-to-me murals, so overall, a win.

I’d forgotten I’d signed up for a training; it’s lucky they sent a reminder email. It was in person, so I got out of the office, walking halfway across campus to learn more about how to deal with various types of fires (pull the fire alarm, don’t try to stop it unless very confident (people are more important, so get out)), and, interestingly, don’t call 911, but the campus police: they have a direct line to the municipal fire department, which has locations nearby, so they can get to anywhere on campus in 4 minutes. 911 gets routed to Framingham (mid-state), then bounces back to the city, resulting in a 12 minute response time. We covered the various types of fires (flammable types of metal sound particularly hairy) and how to stop them. (But really, get out and let the professionals do it.) And then we went to the loading dock and each got to set off a BC extinguisher, which was very cool, and also LOUD, which I hadn’t expected. I feel like I got another adulting point.

I took a bit of a long-cut back to the office to get some food, and got to pet some grape hyacinths before I talked with my mom on the way (she’s off for an international adventure with one of my cousins).

I realized it was the end of the month but I hadn’t gotten a reminder email about giving blood, so I hopped over to MGH to donate (OK, I took the T, no actual hopping involved ;-P). It took waaaaay longer than usual: they’ve just switched (less than a week ago) from a paper questionnaire to tablets, and it is not yet a faster system. For one thing, when you need half a dozen pages to explain what to do on the tablets, the design of the interface is not good. After help from multiple folks, I got through it, and then it turned out that the answers hadn’t gotten sucked into the system, so the intake person had to redo it all anyway. And it’s also why the email didn’t come: this new system is… not yet optimized, shall we say? And none of the snacks were sugarless or gluten-free, other than the raisins, which I feel are ingredients, not snacks in and of themselves.

And so home via bus 69 to make some food, feeling like the day was far from wasted.

I know multiple folks who’ve been bitten by ticks and ended up with alpha-gal*, an anaphylaxis-level allergy to mammal-based foods, which sucks mightily (ticks and mosquitos have their place in the web of life and all, but they’d be my first two to vote off the planet if I had the option). And since folks often don’t know they’ve been bitten until they have a reaction, and like other tick-borne diseases (Lyme…), can be difficult to figure out, it’s extra awful.

None of which goes through by brain first when I hear “alpha-gal.” No, instead I ruminate on how it would be fun to read the adventures of AlphaGal and her sidekick, BetaBoy! I still haven’t decided whether these would be superheroes with powers tbd, or ones whose adventures focus on linguistics and various alphabets (perhaps for kids? or a much more clever person would be able to write them for adults?).


* link to Wikipedia; it’s awful that the CDC doesn’t feel like a reliable source these days.

Today is Earth Day, and tomorrow the weekly (USian) drought monitor updates (link is to the whole US; I generally look only at MA). We’re still in drought, albeit not as badly as some weeks ago, with slow progress as we do get some precipitation.

I was thinking, though, that while we can’t do much about what the weather brings us, there are some things that humans do control that can mitigate (or not), in how we use our spaces.

One example is that paved parking lots mean the skywater we do get is runoff, rather than being absorbed where it lands. If too much of the environment is paved, that can mean flash floods even when the absolute amount of water wouldn’t predict that. I saw that up close and personal years ago when a sudden storm left parts of Somerville underwater (I slogged through water that was half-way up my calves to get to my volunteer shift that day), while Cambridge, which has more unpaved space, was totally fine. (Some parts of Somerville tend towards having the spaces around various houses and triple deckers paved, so there’s no yard maintenance. Which means other challenges instead.)

Another example is how so many places have ‘drained the swamp’ (or other types of wetlands). Fewer mosquitos tend to be a win, but really, there’s a reason for wetlands in a lot of places: they act as sponges that can absorb a lot of water if necessary/available, then release it slowly over time, so it all gets somewhere useful.

A third example is that when soil is reduced to dirt, there’s a much greater possibility of flooding and erosion, because the soil has been degraded so much (from pesticides, fungicides, even commercial fertilizers, also repeated ploughing that disrupts many underground systems, etc.) that it’s more an inert growing medium, rather than a dynamic biosystem with not only plant roots, various underground dwellers (earthworms among them), and microbes, but also mycorrhizal fungi that make soil healthy and able to use the water that comes. As with so many other things, diversity leads to better soil health, leading to more resilient systems, and food with more nutrition.

The world feels like it’s all in flames. Given that, let’s think about rebuilding with systems that aren’t wholly extractive, but regenerative of the planet.

Some related reading:
Paradise Lot, Eric Toensmeier and Jonathan Bates
Wilding, Isabella Tree
Grass, Soil, Hope, Courtney White
Dirt to Soil, Gabe Brown
The One-Straw Revolution, Masanobu Fukuoka
Deeply Rooted, Lisa M. Hamilton
Farming While Black, Leah Penniman
A Call to Farms, Jennifer Grayson
The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer