Purity: the impossible dream. Environmentalist Tom Kinder describes his family’s “awakening” to the ubiquity of plastics, in Greenkeeping (September/ October): “We looked around our house and saw the very chemicals that we had fought in hazardous waste dumps or chemical factories….We had to do something. So we piled all our plastics–okay, not quite all, we kept the records, phone, car, computer, etc.–we piled all the plastics we could stand getting rid of into the car and drove them off to a consignment store.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
“If we can’t have distinct political parties in America, let’s at least have politically distinct long-distance companies.” So says Peter Barnes, cofounder of Working Assets, the family of socially responsible enterprises that has launched a new long-distance service. Its customers will receive with their bills brief descriptions of two pending issues, and the phone numbers and addresses of key decision makers on those issues. If customers call any of these people on the first Monday of the month, their calls will be free.
Works of art. Poet Carla Dennis at a June 27 “Women in Verse” poetry reading (quoted by Joe Kraus in Letter Ex, August): “After I had my child, I had a hard time writing poetry again because writing a poem is like having a child. When I looked at my child, I thought, ‘This is the best I’ll ever do.’”
From one teacher’s diary of school reform, as published in Catalyst (November): “June 14. As a cost-cutting device, the board has circulated a letter among its employees asking them to report the insurance carrier on any second job they might have. In what other profession would it be assumed that the employees have second jobs?”
