The Many Household Uses of Baking Soda and Why You Should Care

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Wednesday July 31, 2013 · 9:01 AM PDT

2013/07/31 · 09:01

Most of us have this stuff in our kitchens:

"Many Household Uses." Never mind their vagueness here, those are words for our times.

"Baking soda," or if you prefer its chemical name, "bicarbonate of soda," is a nice, simple molecule, both cheap and inert. It's not under patent anywhere. And, take my word for it, you can use baking soda for much of what you already buy specialized household- and personal-care products for.

For a sampling of the myriad, improbable "Household Uses" of baking soda, and a sense of the insurrectionary character of those "Uses," follow me below.

karmsy

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Monday July 08, 2013 · 9:47 AM PDT

2013/07/08 · 09:47

A citizen of the greatest country on earth, subject to the laws and protection of mightiest sovereign, and I'm preoccupied these days with…figuring out how to feed my red wigglers as much of my household waste as possible. I'm wondering whether they'll dig into avocado pits I shove under their bedding.

"Waste," what my worms convert to compost, got to be a phenomenon, roughly, when the Industrial Revolution got into swing in the 1800s and human population started to take off apace. After you got through creating and using what you needed, there was so much leftover. Damn, waste piled up, and the piles just kept growing. And post-industrial society has been clogged in waste ever since. Buy a drink, toss the cup. Get rid of the ads, the wrappers; just throw them away.

Indoor vermiculture is my partial solution to this contemporary problem. To explore roots of that solution in early modernity, follow me below.

karmsy

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Monday February 11, 2013 · 9:23 AM PST

2013/02/11 · 09:23

The dialog in my head beforehand ran something like this:

It’s ancient history. What could you possibly hope to gain by doing this?

Closure. I’d gain closure by respectfully reaching out, no matter what her response.

So I went ahead. I sent email to someone I hadn’t spoken to in twenty years, for unrelated reasons, who had caused me offense. I hit her up for an apology.

Too many tiny private acts just like this will doom Rush Limbaugh's career, if concerted grassroots action doesn't do it first. He's terrified. Rightly.

karmsy

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Monday February 04, 2013 · 11:08 AM PST

2013/02/04 · 11:08

On Saturdays, with her grandmother mostly out of the room, I tutor Guadalupe Figueroa, aged 14, at the family's kitchen table. There is a picture of the Last Supper hanging above us, with colorful figures of Jesus and the Twelve, going in all directions. Today there is a stock pot simmering on the stove across from where we sit. The turquoise walls sweat from the steam of whatever's cooking.

The way I most enjoy making money in this time I'm without a classroom job, is tutoring. The school district—improbably, wisely—pays for home after-school tutoring for disadvantaged kids at risk of flunking basic algebra. Lupe has already flunked it once and is taking it again.

karmsy

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Tuesday October 02, 2012 · 8:09 AM PDT

2012/10/02 · 08:09

The process of maturation, at best, develops the faculty of self-awareness. The ability to assess oneself, compassionately and realistically, is not valued in our culture, which glorifies youth. It's too bad. We need the wisdom of maturity, as much as we need the energy of youth. A reliable awareness of your own state of mind and intent, your own capabilities and limitations, and curiosity about the effects of your behavior on others, are usually developed, if at all, in maturity. Without them, you can't intentionally improve.

The Democratic Party, by virtue of its size, age, name recognition, and funding, is the most mature progressive political party in the United States. Because of this maturity, flawed as it is, it is the party I see as best-suited to the advancement of progressive aims in a pluralistic society.

karmsy

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Sunday May 27, 2012 · 4:52 PM PDT

2012/05/27 · 16:52

For economic reasons, I am contemplating a 2,000-mile relocation. Such a thing would have been unthinkable only a few months ago, and here I am, investing considerable time and money to make it happen. I have only ever lived within two hours of the hospital where I was born. I am a little nobody, and I may well leave the only home I have ever known. I am in my 40s. If I relocate, it will be tantamount to dying out of one life and being born into another.

We tend to invoke God at extreme moments. This is true even if God doesn’t figure much in our consciousness otherwise. Whether they pray, people often curse, mouthing names of the Almighty, when big, unfathomable things happen to them, when catastrophes befall, when there are personally cataclysmic shifts of any kind. The general principle that people who are normally not so interested in religion, tap the Divine when they face something huge, may explain why I have been thinking about God with uncommon frequency and urgency these days.

Welcome to Brothers and Sisters, the weekly meetup for prayer* and community at Daily Kos. We put an asterisk on pray* to acknowledge that not everyone uses conventional religious language, but may want to share joys and concerns, or simply take solace in a meditative atmosphere. Anyone who comes in the spirit of mutual respect, warmth and healing is welcome.

karmsy

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Thursday February 16, 2012 · 10:44 AM PST

2012/02/16 · 10:44

There are many iconographic representations of discrimination, generally including overt visual symbols, such as pairs of drinking fountains marked “white” and “colored,” or people wearing gray-striped coats, embroidered with Stars-of-David. But the most remarkable visual statement about inequality that I know of, illuminating both its inner workings and its terrible human cost, is the Diane Arbus photograph, Loser at a Diaper Derby, N.J..

Loser at a Diaper Derby, N.J.
1967
Artist: Diane Arbus, American, 1923 - 1971
©2011, Yale University Art Gallery

(The "diaper derby" has been an American suburban custom at least since World War II, involving infants of crawling age. In a diaper derby, a line of mothers faces a parallel line of their infants, from a distance of several feet. At the "starting gun," the mothers call to their infants, and the infants crawl towards them. The "winning" infant reaches the line of mothers first.)

karmsy

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Sunday July 03, 2011 · 4:53 PM PDT

2011/07/03 · 16:53

Several weeks ago, I wrote a diary about one characteristic common to “quality” faith traditions, those compatible with a quest for social justice. I am going to write about another of those characteristics, but this time, it’s personal. I’m telling my own story.

Welcome to Brothers and Sisters, the weekly meetup for prayer* and community at Daily Kos. We put an asterisk on pray* to acknowledge that not everyone uses conventional religious language, but may want to share joys and concerns, or simply take solace in a meditative atmosphere. Anyone who comes in the spirit of mutual respect, warmth and healing is welcome.

(Special note: No links in this diary. I’m sick and tired of placing them :)

I was at one time very concerned with maintaining my relative position on a cosmic social totem-pole.

Here is what I remember.

karmsy

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Sunday March 27, 2011 · 5:08 PM PDT

2011/03/27 · 17:08

Welcome to Brothers and Sisters, the weekly meetup for prayer* and community at Daily Kos. We put an asterisk on pray* to acknowledge that not everyone uses conventional religious language, but may want to share joys and concerns, or simply take solace in a meditative atmosphere. Anyone who comes in the spirit of mutual respect, warmth and healing is welcome.

We know all about religious dogma. It’s personally scarred many of us; if not, we’ve noted its deadly toll over the course of human history and continuing into the present day.

Many progressives believe religion itself to be at the root of human folly. A view that compels me more concerns a phenomenon too regular to ignore: “quality” religious beliefs informing individuals’ or communities’ quests for social justice. No, I don’t have statistics about religious involvement by progressive activists. I have only personal impressions regarding what characteristics “quality” spiritual traditions, those compatible with democratic-humanist social ideals, share. When they’re religious, progressive activists tend to subscribe to a religion that that includes a “tradition of heterodoxy,” a promotion of learned discussion and interpretation of religious teaching by believers. Religious progressive activists’ faith traditions, furthermore, emphasize an “equality among God’s people” in the eyes of the Creator, regardless of life circumstances or personal characteristics such as gender or race. (I will write about the latter in a future essay.) For now…

karmsy

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Monday November 08, 2010 · 9:38 AM PST

2010/11/08 · 09:38

We get better. If there’s nothing in our way, we improve; we naturally become more skilled, more compassionate, more humane, more rational, more aware. We mature.

As individuals improve during their lives, society improves over the course of history. African Americans officially won civil rights after a struggle. Women couldn’t vote legally, but now can, and do, in numbers. A bulletin board at a nearby high school displays the unequivocal anti-bullying message, "Your words can kill." As true as it was back then, would I have seen that in the 80s at my high school? Don’t bet on it. Diseases that once were fatal, we’ve learned to prevent and to cure. Overall, whatever horrendous problems remain, there is continual movement towards solving them, momentum we can’t just call random. It’s progress.

karmsy

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Wednesday December 23, 2009 · 5:34 PM PST

2009/12/23 · 17:34

Allow me to publicize a stunning, little-watched 5-minute YouTube video I came across a couple of days ago. The video consists of a series of still visuals to accompany the final chorale of a Bach cantata, BWV 11: Lobet Gott in Seinen Reichen, itself no "smash hit" in the broader culture.

karmsy

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Monday August 17, 2009 · 12:25 PM PDT

2009/08/17 · 12:25

In recent days, we have seen one diary on the rec list, about the presence of disruptive, possibly armed freepers at healthcare-themed town-hall meetings. The diary had a title I'll paraphrase as, "American Democracy is DYYYIIIINNG!! We're Doooooooommed!" We've seen another rec-list diary quite recently, regarding troubling, equivocal noises from the Executive Branch about the "public option" for funding healthcare; this diary was titled something close to, "A-a-a-a-a-ah, A-a-a-a-a-a-h, the Pu-u-u-blic Optio-o-o-n is De-e-e-e-a-a-a-d!" (Maybe with a little modulation in that last word, so it's more like, "De-e-E-E-E-a-a-A-A-A-a-a-ad!" Sorry, I'm being catty here.)

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