Why Sustainable Systems
Every semester a voice asks, why do you teach sustainable systems?
Maybe it all started when I meandered downstairs to the common room at 20th St one evening and noticed the RA office open with a pizza box and a friendly face asking if I wanted to be a part of Hall Council. A year later I was an RA of the first Green Floor leaning against the wall in the electrical room downloading measurements from meters for direct feedback on residents energy usage.
Perhaps it was before that, in a different common room with clunky dorm furniture just as bad as any other. Watching a film screening of “An Inconvenient Truth” I scribbled notes with a speed that consistently spelled “inconvient” wrong; greenhouse gas emissions competing with my dyslexia. For the first time my heart was broken by someone I didn’t know to name.
Or the ritual of picking up litter on the beach with my dad.
My favorite game we created as kids was called, “The Park”. My job was to gather chestnuts and sell them at a store. My sister was the cop. The crack between the sidewalk squares was a stop sign.
Falling asleep on the beach in the afternoon is better than bed.
The first photograph I ever took and submitted for a show was a path blanketed with pine needles between sets of tall trees in the woods. I wanted to one day get married there; arced by angels.
In an 8th grade hallway pushed up against the wall with no teacher around, it became clear that my body reflected a bigger story. Cafeteria lunch tables were color coded and I crossed the invisible line. After months of being bullied, we were friends outside.
Maybe it’s because I was born the year James Hansen announced to the world Global Warming is real and caused by humans.
Or something even further back in time; my grandmother coming over to America alone on a boat from Shanghai at 13 years old. Instead of traveling back to China for the holidays from boarding school she would go to a friends house on an island where some 70 years later I would fall in love with the way light paints pigments through beach blankets on warm sand.
Or a few days ago while bouncing an 8month old baby on my chest to lull his cries, I catch the glimpse of a The New York Times front page headline, “Ecuador tried to curb drilling. The reverse happened.” My godson, niece, two nephews and the children I don’t yet have will live in a world I can’t change.
Each time I’m marching in the streets - 1%, Fracking, Women’s March, BLM, Climate Action, PTF New School Strike - something feels similar. The disappointment, joy, solidarity, betrayal and pain.
My sweet neighbor stumbles to greet me on the sidewalk at 5:30pm and everything inside me wishes every system around us advocated for sobriety, balance and care.
The warmth of the sun through my turquoise leotard and black leggings made me touch myself in the foot of the passenger seat after gymnastics while my mom was in the upholstery store. Yes, Nature has been my longest lover.
Maybe it’s because the beach where my grandmother’s ashes are buried is receding, cliffs eroding, sea level rising. The first love of my life is shrinking.
Or I could just say free pizza is how I got involved with organizing towards sustainable.
Maybe it’s because when a student articulately says, “A system that is sustainable is just or must be just to become sustainable,” I feel there’s no better place on Earth I could be.
Photo: MV, Alison Lee Photography LLC