Weekend Report Card: F
Cravings: All pizza, all the time.
Mood: I’ve felt better.
I had a little slip. Well, actually four little slips. I’m not going to spin it. Here’s my straight confession:
1. I ate 3 Sun Chips with cheese on them.
2. I downloaded a Season Pass to Season three of The Closer;
3. I had a 7:00 am call to do the Today show and talk about being a freegan and I took them up on their offer for a ride and they sent a big Ford SUV and I got in and I took the ride;
4. On my way to Urban Foraging, I bought a 32 ounce of spring water.
Now, if you’re going to let me have it, please email me now because now I’m going to put the spin on it:
1. I didn’t know the Sun Chips had cheese on them when I put them in my mouth; but I did "discover" the cheese before I swallowed the said Sun Chips and I did not spit them up.
2. There’s no real excuse for this one EXCEPT to say that Apple iTunes makes it really easy to cheat with their one-click purchasing - I didn’t even have time to think before I did it and you know, you can’t return uploads and what was I supposed to do; it’s not like I ate Creamsicles or anything.
3. It was 6:30 in the morning! I was late for national television and I didn’t know they were going send an SUV and I refused the car they gave me to take home. It was 6:30 in the morning!
4. It was 901 degrees and I forgot to bring water. And the kind gentlemen, Wildman Steve Brill, said you couldn’t go on the foraging trip if you were late so I couldn’t go back and get tap water! Do you want me to die in the course of this experiment?
So, I am at once a terrible freegan and in need of forgiveness so I’m turning to the big guns. The man, who I believe, got me into this mess to begin. That’s right, I’m calling Henry David Thoreau onto the carpet! Not Walden, I’ll get to that a little later in the month. No, I want to consider my transgressions in the face of Civil Disobedience, the tract that made him famousa. Yes, I’m going there. I’m skating right out of this on the pages of a much better writer then me. In Civil Disobedience, Thoreau writes;
"The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice."
I broke the rules; but I don’t think I acted outside of the sphere of my conscience. So, yes, I am going to redouble my efforts and yes, I will continue to investigate what the heck is being asked of us in the face of overconsumption and global warming, but I will never ever judge anyone’s efforts, only their conscience.
Now, about that urban foraging I promised to tell you about. I had an absolutely amazing time. There were about twenty of us, poking through Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and just about everywhere we looked, Wildman Steve showed up plants we could eat: four or five different kinds of mushrooms, wild sorrel, some kind of common spice bush that makes a great herbal tea, sassafrass, wild violet, these little fruits call hawthorns that taste like little apples only better and huge stands of elderberries. Now, regarding any future urban foraging, let me simply say this; I’m not going to become a mushroom-hunter because the darn things all look alike and some are very poisonous (and again, I must point out, I wouldn't recommend anything that would endanger your health so don't mushroom hunt if you, like me, don't know what you're doing.)
Not to mention the fact that I don’t even eat mushrooms, so any poisonous ones I picked would promptly be fed to friends and family. That would not only be tragic; but it might also find me charged with first degree murder and while I am the kind of person who picks out a defense attorney ‘just in case,’ I don’t want to go there over some mushrooms. But, the sorrel and the violets were really good and they’re also really expensive in grocery stores. So I can see myself doing that in the future (especially since people look at you with gentle curiousity when you forage in the park as opposed to hostile shock when you're elbow-deep in the garbage.)
Two other interesting things happened yesterday at Urban Foraging. The first was that I was asked whether being a freegan was ‘a higher level then vegan?’ And I said no, it wasn’t higher or lower, it was different. I’ve been asked this question a lot and in response I just want to say; "what is with all the competition?" Why do we have to be complete failures if we can’t continuously take it up a notch? Can’t climb Mt. Everest without oxygen? Failure. Didn’t see U2 in a small club in Dublin in the early 80s. You’re no fan! Gave up meat but like to eat cheese? Failure? Drive a Prius but need to fly for your job? Failure. So no, freegans are not better then vegans; they primarily boycott overconsumption while vegans boycott the animal industry. O.k. Sorry to get heated, but I just had to get that off my chest.
The other thing that happened is that about 4 people apologized to me for foraging for ‘selfish’ reasons like wanting to experiment with wild greens or being curious about which plants are what in the woods or heaven help us, they were looking for a educational reason to get their kids out in the park. There was no reason to be sorry. You have a right to have your own motivations and they don’t have to be mine.
So there, that was the weekend. We’re going to start fresh tomorrow with a clean conscience and chat some more about waste.
Good News: My Mom seems to be calming down about the smoking thing. There are no milk or eggs in those homemade berry pies from the Greenmarket!
Bad News: Please see above.
Worries: If you left a peanut butter & jelly sandwich in your desk over the weekend and then ate it, should you go to the hospital and have your stomach pumped?
Post Script: Alright, alright! I had two Diet Cokes but they were offered to me and I was weak, so weak! But this week, no transgressions - at all!
