My mother went to Sears and all she got was a lousy 10-year warranty – redefining sustainability

I’m hoping that you understand that the title of this entry references tacky vacation t-shirts like “My brother went to Cabo and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”. I’m sorry, I should never underestimate the intelligence of the reader, after all, you already have the good sense to be reading this blog in the first place. Kudos to your good taste. I thought that in honour of the Copenhagen climate change summit this would be an appropriate post.

Let me start off by saying that I subscribe to a ridiculous number of e-newsletters; it keeps me in the know of what is going on in this fair city and what kind of free stuff I can get my hands on. A friend of mine enters every contest that Eye Weekly and Now has to offer every Wednesday. Wins have included an Ashley Tisdale CD and Jamie Foxx concert tickets. It goes to say that you can’t win if you don’t enter –sometimes a correlation does equal causation. In any case, quite a while back I got an email from the Cadillac Fairview Corporation asking me to fill out a survey for a chance to win a $100 gift card. For those that don’t know, the Cadillac Fairview Corporation is a commercial real estate company and they own malls like the Shops at Don Mills, the Eaton Centre and Yorkdale. I’m all for free money and incentives sure work on me to get me to do a silly survey.

The survey was about my perceptions of how “green” the Cadillac Fairview malls are. In the unique response box, i.e. the one at the very end that says “additional comments” I lashed out about how the concept of “green” is quite the elaborate sham and marketing ploy in attempts of corporate social responsibility that tricks an uneducated consumer into believing that somehow this shopping mall is benefiting the environment and that the focus should be more on sustainability ensuring lasting (positive) effects for generations to come. I wonder why I didn’t win the $100 gift card.

On a completely separate occasion a friend of mine and I were talking and I inquired how his mother was doing. He replied that she recently bought a new washer and dryer after the one in their family home had crapped out after 20 some years. The salesperson told her the lifespan of her new washer and dryer should be about 10 years. That’s about the same thing that happened when my family bought our new washer and dryer last year after ours crapped out following 25 years of service.

Whatever happened to quality? Everything we have now is so disposable and nothing lasts longer than a meager decade, year, month, or week. This entry was inspired by an article I read in the September 2009 issue of The Walrus about Paul Merrick, who is an architect in Vancouver. He says that:

Sustainability means all those things: grey water, green rooms, passive ventilation, low-flow showers and toilets, and recycling waste, but there are many dimensions of this thing we call ‘green’. He recalls a recent visit to Mozart’s birthplace in Salzburg, Austria where he had a eureka moment about sustainability, understanding for the first time that it means building things that last. ‘It’s a little row house downtown with party walls and timber floors and walls built from rubble and stone, and we realized –holy cow –this house was already 600 years old when Mozart lived here. So that’s pretty sustainable, as in, it has been sustained.’

I’m no architect, that’s for sure, but I swear I had the exact same reaction that Merrick did when I visited that house in Salzburg this summer. That’s how I always feel when I’m in historical places whether it’s the Mozart Geburthaus in Salzburg, the ruins of ancient Delphi in Greece, or the Medici chapels in Florence. I am always marveled and taken aback by the multitudes of people before me that have walked through these iconic places. How do these places survive all this time? We of this new millennium think that we are so sophisticated but we can’t build much that seems to last.

Back to the washers and dryers though–how is that things built in the archaic 80s can outlast things built in this shiny, technologically-advanced, eco-friendly time of today? Sure, I can get that new appliances use less power, conserve more water, but if you have to keep buying them that just means more and more need to be manufactured and shipped around the world, more and more recycled and taken apart and that consumes a considerable amount of energy I would think. It’s just like the episode “Into the Crevasse” of “30 Rock” this season (so far the season’s best in my opinion) where the GE microwave division needs to come up with an idea as revolutionary as the light bulb to inspire more people to buy microwaves. One character posits;:, “what if microwaves broke down and people would have to buy them more often?” And naturally “30 Rock” satirizes, in a way no short of brilliance, how our corporations think – if you aren’t watching this show, you really should be.

It saddens me when old Victorian houses are bulldozed in Toronto to make way for condominiums. They pop up in every tiny plot of land imaginable these days. And with the hurried way they are built, it doesn’t take an architectural genius to know that they aren’t built to last. When we don’t preserve our historic buildings we aren’t leaving any real sense of what Toronto was for future generations to come. It’s clear we don’t have an abundance of ancient ruins, if any, but soon all we’re going to have to show for ourselves are shoddily built condominiums.

It isn’t all bad news, I’m not a naysayer of everything (I think), Toronto is leading the way for rooftop gardens to help battle CO2 output, so perhaps we’ll get there with baby steps, but I just wish things would last instead of having to continually reinvent the wheel, is that really too much to ask for something longer than a ten year warranty?

Crutches and commitment – C is also for cookie

There have been pretty pre-eminent themes in my life last week – if you can’t tell they’re crutches and commitment. I love a thematic week and alliteration, so it feels like a win-win.

Crutches

I’ve never broken a bone before in my life *knocks on head*, and during phys ed orientation week everyone was exchanging athletic injury stories. Torn ACLs, separated shoulders, all that fun stuff; and what did I have to add to the conversation? “Uh, one time I tripped on an escalator at a mall; there was a lot of blood.” Clearly, you can see that 1. Shopping is my favourite sport (sample sales can be very competitive) 2. I was really popular with the jocks.

But the type of crutch I’m writing about today, isn’t about athletic (or shopping related) injury. But a crutch is something/someone a person needs when they themselves can’t walk tall on their own, and that is pretty much the overarching theme of the week that was.

I may not have any epic sport injury stories, but one thing I share with my Phys Ed brethren is my love of winning. This love can be further extrapolated into excessive competitiveness, extreme stubbornness and exasperating perseverance. Love me or hate me, it’s what’s on the plate. But it also makes me fall privy to never giving up (hence perseverance), especially on people. I always feel it’s my duty to fix things; even when the conversation is circular and I feel like bludgeoning my head with a plywood 2x4, I don’t stop fighting. Thereby, I make for an excellent crutch.

But crutches, whether they are made of aluminum or made of people are only meant to be temporary. As people heal, physically or otherwise, they learn to stand on their own and be their own person again. Every wound takes a certain amount of time to heal. It’s just much easier to predict when it is something physical like a femur fracture. Regardless of how stubborn a person is the body will regenerate itself. But the mind and (non-physiological) heart are different wounds that you can keep open with stubbornness, or do a patchy job of closing it up only to have it reopen twice as badly. Kind of like discount plastic surgery.

So I’ve learned my lesson as a crutch, because as much as I pretend to be one – sturdy, strong, and cold (because I’d be made of aluminum), I can’t actually be. Because a crutch is something you use when you need it and push it to the back of your closet until your next tumble. Unfortunately I can’t be shut up in a closet until next time; I’m still there every step of the way. Moreover, I also have my own journey and path to travel and as much as I know I want to, a crutch can’t save a person who won’t save themselves.

Commitment

What I’m about to say next may seem counterintuitive, so begin scratching your temple with your index finger now. I’m actually a huge commit-a-phobe. You may think: geez Sarah aren’t you unwaveringly committed to saving bewildered souls? The answer is yes, but with qualifications. I only care to save things I really believe in, and I believe I don’t waste my time with lost causes, but what takes me a long time is to believe in something.

When I turned 22 I decided it was time to start wearing make up; considering girls have been painting their faces since the age of 12, it’s a pretty late start. I find make up daunting; there are far too many options and only God knows what it all does. I couldn’t commit to buy a whole tube of anything so I just decided I go into the world without battle paint on. To this day I cannot commit to an entire bottle of eau de toilette. 60mL of fragrance sounds like an eternity to me, and to smell like one thing for an eternity sounds like a big decision.

Commitment: could there be a dirtier word? The next one to throw out would be relationship. And on those two notes, I throw my knowledge to the gods that are HBO and consult the bible for any female between ages of 18 – 40. Because what woman hasn’t likened her life and the lives of her closest friends to the fine leading ladies of “Sex and the City”? To be hip and cool, and timelessly stuck in 2004, I will do the same.

I used to be the biggest Carrie, and just knowing it makes me hate myself a little. I had my Big-type relationship through university. I was that girl who got lost amidst a “we” and disappeared from her friends and only re-emerged when shit hit the fan. The girl who got hung up, thrown for a loop and took a hell of a long time to recover. The crutch part of me was something fierce and I tried so hard to fight for that dying relationship. He’s not the Big of my life—no, my Big is still with his Natasha, but that’s a story for another time and copious bouts of therapy later.

Today I see myself as more of a Samantha, and damn, am I much happier. I’m speaking my mind and not being jerked around. I can only apologize for what I do, not who I am. I feel like relationships get in the way of my sex life, and I’m not apologizing for that either. Every now and then crutchie Carrie comes out to play and I feel like bludgeoning her with that aforementioned 2x4. I’m just on the look out for the right someone to believe in, and then I’ll have grown up enough to be ready for it. Smith Jerrod, where are you?

In a good essay, I’d try to find a way to meld the two topics together and come up with a cohesive conclusion, but this isn’t a good essay. I, like this conclusion, am a work in progress. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

P.S. Sorry for the lack of actual cookies in this post.