Environmental policy

This has nothing to do with what

This morning it hit me, while packing my things at my mom’s house, before heading back to New Orleans, what I love about traveling is the idea of a new beginning. 

I helped a Bosnian man named Niko load a riding lawn mower into his truck yesterday. I was standing in an upstairs bedroom when I saw him outside of the window, so I walked outside slippers mimed lifting as he was about to pull away. 

In my mom’s neighborhood there is a day when people put items that do not fit into garbage bins out on the curb for the city to collect. We have a similar sort of system in New Orleans. We call 311.

This 311 call generally goes to dispose of soiled mattresses and cockroach-infested couches, if the call is made at all.

In my mom’s neighborhood, there are items that can still be reused. A riding lawn mower for instance. And so, what I have been told is that there are people who come through the neighborhood and collect what might otherwise go to a landfill. I like this idea. I wonder if we might come up with something similar in Uptown New Orleans. Instead of driving to collect metal, we might find today’s Sanford and Son. We might find a way to waste less.

(I love Cuba. I say this because it is a place where everything is used. This is what writers call a non sequitur.)

I almost lost my backpack at the airport this afternoon after sitting in a space far from my flight, where there was silence, where no pain bodies ran into other pain bodies after the plane being delayed, after the agent announced over the intercom, “The mechanic said that he has fixed the oil thingy and we’re just waiting on the pilot to sign off on the paperwork.”

You can see fear in the words and gestures of those whose flights might be missed and with fear comes the need for control, the need to blame, and I find all of this interesting considering the conversation I just had with a woman from New York who is getting involved with environmental policy and had some questions about land use in New Orleans.

There is a way to tie all of this together. I told her many things in the hour we spoke. She asked a few questions. I now consider words like Federal Government and FDA and how sometimes connotations prevent communication. Take the word God, for instance.

The woman was kind to listen to my attempts to encapsulate twenty years of experience growing into a one-hour phone conversation. And you are kind in your attempt to read about my day encapsulated in twenty minutes of writing. 

Fear and control. Separation. These are what block. The need for certainty, to be right, but in all of this exploration, a thought came up, when she asked about LSU ag extension working with the growers in New Orleans and I remembered the seeds I gave to an agent and wondered whether any of the guava had been started. Maybe there could be a happy sort of medium. 

She said they’re looking to find a market for Urban Agriculture and I find this to be part of the problem. Though not fond of words like problem I do not think that selling can lead or support what the earth has to teach us.

I believe her ears perked up when I spoke of the different perennial vegetables and fruits that could be grown throughout the city with very little input. I took notice of her taking notice of this. Perhaps there is a way. A way to take space that is otherwise mowed and to get different restaurants on board. 

I’ve had this idea for years. We do not need all the dandelion spraying baby boomers to die first. You see, anybody who sees the glory of life will be brought into touch with a part of their inherent DNA that cannot be denied.

Within, the connection has never been severed. 

Who knows? Maybe there is a way. Maybe funding for my greenhouse can happen without selling my soul. Maybe the problem is the solution. Maybe it just works real slowly.

Maybe it’s hard to pay attention and write with all of these announcements at the airport, but that’s not going to stop me. 

Stay curious. Who knows. Someday there may be cracks in the French Quarter where pitanga stretches out and a man from Brazil might reach up his hand for one surinam cherry and feel the same as Niko did when I lifted up that riding lawnmower with him.