check it out: ugly boots in action in vermont! this video is mostly of rick and sarah's sheep, but stay tuned all the way through for the pups and cupcakes. needless to say I had a lovely visit.
on my long train ride yesterday from soggy new york to snowy vermont, I contemplated the ugliness of my snow boots. it's not that they're offensively garish or clashy or any of the other things that usually qualifies something as ugly in my book. they're just black snow boots, with laces and velcro straps that tighten around the ankle. but they are... ugly. they're utilitarian, inelegant, masculine, a bit on the militaristic side. I got them as hand-me-downs from my younger brother several years ago, enough years that his feet were only slightly larger than mine instead of nearly twice as big, the way they are now. nonetheless they are the kind of boots that a teenage boy would wear before he has begun to worry about being stylish.
this is the first year in a while that we've had enough snow hanging around on the sidewalks for me to need to wear my snowboots out and about, instead of just when I'm playing in the park. I was chagrined to realize that, when forced to wear the black combat-ready clompers to school, I wished I had a prettier pair. not necessarily a girly pair of snowboots. just one that was not so ugly.
worse, I realized that what was really stopping me from buying new snow boots was not so much my environmentalist convictions -- consume as little as possible -- but that I couldn't really afford them. like everyone else in the country, I've been working a little harder to pinch (or stretch?) my pennies this year, although for me it has less to do with the collapsing economy than my perhaps-foolish decision to live alone in my two-bedroom apartment after the summer departure of my housemate. so now, to keep paying the rent and the bills without draining my savings account, I don't buy new (even secondhand, new-to-me) clothes or shoes, particularly when I have perfectly functional if unattractive things in my wardrobe already. if my students have noticed that I wear the same pair of jeans three days a week, they haven't mentioned it.
anyway the upsetting aspect of this isn't that I wish I had different boots. my boots are fine. but the thought that I might have just gone out and gotten new ones, just because I wanted them, is bothering me. I think wanton consumption is wrong yet I could have convinced myself that it was somehow justified if my boots were too ugly.
I do understand why people are worried about stimulating the economy. I don't want working class families to be hurt by layoffs and the inability to pay for actual necessities. but I hope that, as we collectively find that we can no longer afford to buy new stuff left and right, we decide that we actually don't need that stuff. and I hope that in working to rebuild the economy, we are smart enough to realize that we have to base it on something beyond material goods. we can recondition ourselves to believe that ugly, used, warm, waterproof boots are perfectly wonderful, and then spend our money on things like train tickets to snowy vermont, where they can be put to good use.
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20 February 2009]
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I'm on vacation! at least in the sense that I don't have to get up and go to school every day. yesterday I made color-coded lists of things that need to get done. I made my dissertation list day-glo orange in the hopes that the color would give it some urgency. then I took my lists and parceled them out across the week, so that each day (except friday when I will be visiting friends and sheep) has a rainbow to-do list of its own.
I didn't put "update wockerjabby" on any of my lists which sort of means right now I'm doing something I'm not supposed to, but I was hoping it might happen a little more organically. even if that means some short entries. it's weirdly tiring carrying around all the things in my head that I would like to write about but don't have time.
right now, however, I am off to "print & mail franklin mint form," to actually get the money out of the credit union account I haven't touched since I graduated from college in 2003. there's a to-do list item I've been failing to cross out for years.
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17 February 2009]
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