Thursday, 25 May 2000

SEATTLE, Wash.

I went home last night and had a wonderful meal, with fresh broccoli rob (Italian broccoli) from the garden. Laurie and I turned off the TV (we watch way too much TV) and just read for a while (before she got her backrub). I’ve had a subscription for years to The Sun, a wonderful magazine without any advertisements, with stories about the trials and tribulations of life. The great thing is that, for the most part, they’re not activist-oriented pieces about issues, but more like real-life testimonials and stories. In fact, my favorite section is “Readers Write.” There is a different topic for each month and readers write in letters about whatever the topic stirs in them. It’s fascinating to read different people’s stories about the very same topic and be reminded of the breadth of experiences there are out there in the world. I highly recommend this magazine, folks. It’s occasionally depressing, but often so insightful, uplifting, or funny that I just scream.

Unfortunately, my morning was not so nice as the night before. We were awakened at 5:00 a.m. by the third and final “aerial assault” from our lovely Washington Department of Agriculture. They found one Asian gypsy moth in my Ballard neighborhood in Seattle last year and decided that was an infestation that could only be treated by spraying the pesticide Foray 48 from a helicopter three times over a heavily populated section of the city. While no one wants the Asian gypsy moth to become established here, there is in fact no evidence that it actually could.

Worse yet, they want to spray this very same pesticide (for which they won’t release the list of “inert” ingredients) over 600,000 acres of national forest in Washington state to control the Tussock moth, a naturally occurring insect in this region. It is amazing that this 1950s mentality is still alive and well in the 21st century.

Inspiration for uninspiring tasks: The Cle Elum River.

Photo: Charlie Raines.

The rest of my day was filled with tasks that don’t inspire me to write, although they were important. We had a staff meeting, worked on details of how we will keep track of campaign donors in a database, discussed how we’re going to set up our grassroots campaign, made a thousand photocopies, and other similar tasks. Just not exciting stuff. I have noticed over the years that much of activism, like any other job, consists of a thousand mundane tasks strung together in such a way as to have a huge impact. Yet, while in the middle of those tasks, they can seem very uninspiring.

I’ve had my dream job for the last 15 years of my life. Yet it is easy to occasionally forget that it is my dream job. As James Thurber said, “I suppose that even the most pleasurable of imaginable occupations, that of batting baseballs through the windows of the RCA Building, would pall a little as the days ran on.” It’s good to remember why we do what we do, so I think I’ll end this diary series with two more quotes that sum up for me why I do what I do.

Don’t you know that if people could bottle the air they would? Don’t you know there would be an American Air Bottling Association (AABA)? And don’t you know that they would allow thousands and millions to die for want of breath if they could not pay for air?
— Robert Ingersoll

To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one’s responsibility as a free man.
— Alan Paton