Taking on Goliath (opposing coal bed methane development)
Sitting Pretty, by Nicole McClelland
Fancy Western hotels in Thailand have amenities like toilet paper, and as crappy as our hostel was, it was at least fancy enough to have sit-down toilets. At the Bangkok train station, however, I had no choice but to leave my silly American pretensions at the bathroom door and squat. I managed to pee on my jeans and spill all over myself the plastic bowl of foul water that was provided in lieu of a water gun.
Dan smiled broadly as I walked through the exit, all wet spots and irritation. "You peed your pants," he said, kissing me on the cheek.
"I'm never using a squat toilet again," I told him. I waited for a moment, ready to fight, but he spared me a repeat performance of the "people who use squat toilets don't get hemorrhoids because they don't strain their anuses as much" lecture.
"And I'm carrying tissues from now on."
"Oh, come on." He laughed at me. "That's a waste of paper."
"Don"t give me that shit," I said. "We use toilet paper when we're at home. You've used toilet paper your entire life."
He stopped smiling. "Yeah, but that doesn't mean there's not a better way." He was suddenly earnest, prepared to explain poignant environmental truths to his liberal arts graduate partner. I was a soft hippie, the sort who recycles and turns off the water when teeth-brushing, and I wanted to do more. But I had been raised in all the comforts a yuppie could afford, and wasn't as prepared as perhaps either one of us had thought I would be to abandon them. Dan readied his hands for the gesturing that accompanies his recitations on why he studied ecology and engineering, on the way that the marriage of science and conservation will beget the future of the Earth.
Read the rest of the article for the author's reactions to compost toilets and free-range urination.
So how do you persuade someone that creaturely comforts are possible only at a price, and that price may no longer make those comforts reasonable (if they ever did)? And who is going to have difficulty giving up such comforts, especially if they are tied to a certain notion of hygiene, though not necessary for it?
Orion Society
For something not from Orion:
older article on Wendell Berry
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