If we were a thoughtful society, this pandemic would have taught us that forced commutes to office parks - which are ecological disasters - is a terrible practice.
We turn green spaces into heat-absorbent pavement farms so people can unnecessarily go to offices they don’t need.
The amount of chemicals we dump on office park landscaping to make its ornamental green spaces look pretty is a sin.
The amount of land we consume with largely unused parking lots, also a sin.
And every large company in the country just learned firsthand, they don’t need them.
One of my secret getaways during the pandemic was an office park that was largely shuttered due to COVID.
Here, at the foot of the property, is a grassy area with no actual purpose. It has no path, no use, no proximity to offices.
It’s just… a grass bowl.
Now, during COVID, it was nice for birdwatching. Attracted hawks and swallows and woodpeckers and warblers and on and on.
It’s under construction now. They’re digging up that drainage chute you see in the foreground.
Meanwhile, there is a natural brook 30 yards to the left.
They literally dug out this grassy U-shaped, useless bowl in what had been a natural downslope draining to a stream.
And now that they’ve fucked up the natural drainage, they’re pouring concrete to shunt the water… away from that stream.
Office parks are disasters.
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That little Giving Garden - those little rows of raised beds tended by strangers - produces 70,000 pounds of fresh produce a year.
Since its founding, it has provided fresh, organic produce to over 200,000 families.
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Fresh produce is expensive.
Food-insecure families cannot afford the makings for a salad. They can’t afford a trip to the farmer’s market. They can’t afford local summer corn or fresh fruit.
When a food budget tightens to the point of choking, fresh produce is one of the cuts.
My son played his last regular season game of soccer today; and I’ve had a pint or two of Guinness.
So it’s about to get very Hallmark movie in here very fast. You have been forewarned. If you strap in for the ride, ya gets what ya gets.
Anyway, let’s proceed.
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It wasn’t my son’s last game with this team. They have a tournament left in June.
Today was just the last match of the regular season.
Surely that couldn’t be enough to send a grown-ass man into a Guinness-fueled nostalgia thick as marmalade.
And yet here we are.
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I had that June tourney in my back pocket. That was my buffer. I wouldn’t need to get all emotional today, you see, because it wasn’t really my son’s last game of the year.
I fully believed that. I was good.
This wasn’t going to be the Day of Unbearable Sentimentality.
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Sitting at a bar (for only the 2nd time in a year) eating a quick lunch.
Meathead 1 comes in by himself. Meathead 2 eventually arrives.
They have now been talking about transgender kids in their circle of friends for 15 minutes.
And it has been... adorable.
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As soon as I heard ‘transgender’, I braced for some asinine slew of backwards, bigoted, dumbfuckery.
Instead, Meathead #2 led Meathead #1 through a catch up about a mutual friend’s child who is transgender and another friend’s child who is gender fluid.
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Meathead #2 knows what he’s talking about. These aren’t the awkward fumblings of someone who doesn’t have the language for a topic.
He is lowkeying it but he has thought about this. Processed it. Worked through it. Came out the other side where the job is to be an ally.
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Happy Mother’s Day to every mom who has ever made their kids a hot breakfast but not eaten their own until was cold.
Happy Mother’s Day to the moms who put their kids first.
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Biological or adoptive; parent or stepparent; a mother is the one who shows up - no matter what the birth certificate says.
If you are that kid’s shoulder, a parent they trust who comes through and cares, who hurts when they hurt and takes joy in their joy, you are a mom.
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A mom isn’t someone who just performs tasks; a mom is someone who loves from way down deep and who shows it.
Happy Mother’s Day to all of the moms who don’t just perform the function but instead inhabit the role.
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