14 AWP Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 April 19–25, 2019
Fear not to question ‘why?’
Why do we think what
we think?
I’ve been thinking
a lot about this lately, about
the strange alchemy of nature
versus nurture that combines
to make us approach the world
as we do, to take in certain
messages and not others, and
to take meaning from certain
things and not others.
Why, for example, did I
want to leave Tucson, Ariz.,
and go to Chicago for college?
Why is it that my son
is interested in sticking a
little closer to home? Why
do I choose to shop at Marshall’s
while friends of mine
hit small pricey boutiques?
Why, suddenly, are tons of
people wearing heavy white
tennis shoes? Why do I call
those kind of shoes “tennis
shoes” instead of “sneakers”
or something else?
My neighbor rolled her eyes
recently as her sweet toddler
pulled on her shirt.
“Why, Mommy? Why?”
she asked.
The mom mouthed to me,
“Why, everything is why!”
and threw up her hands.
I laughed. I know it’s annoying,
but I love it. When
does that stop? Why do we
Fearless
Living
By Stephanie Thompson
stop asking why?
I was reading an old report
card of mine recently where
the teacher chastised me for
“asking questions without
thinking things through…”
That, I realized, is often how
it can happen. Our mothers’
eye rolls, and our teachers’
annoyance. It gets tiring to
field so many questions, to
think out loud what some
of the answers might be,
to sort through things, and
really think about them.
But what happens when
we stop asking why?
Well, anything can happen.
Slowly but surely, things
around us change. People
make decisions that affect
us and if we don’t ask why,
well, I dare say we often find
ourselves somewhere we don’t
want to be.
It happens all the time. I
think back to the days I wrote
about food marketing, and all
the packaging innovation I
wrote about. Single-serve
sizes, and new resealable,
portable plastic this or that.
The hope was that consumers
would be entranced by something
new, and convenient.
Aided by millions of dollars
in marketing, suddenly the innovation
was everywhere. It
was adopted as the new norm.
And on they went, to find the
next new thing.
Now, of course, we’re
questioning packaging of all
kinds. We are thinking about
where all this garbage goes,
and wondering how we got to
this place, where our world
is filled with plastic.
Artists are often the questioners.
When I was in Jamaica,
walking along a beach
strewn with glass and plastic
bottles, I laughed and said
to our guide, “There was this
movie I saw once, called ‘The
Gods Must Be Crazy.’ ” He
nodded, Damon. “Yes,” he
said, “I saw it.”
It was a South African
movie, that came out in 1980,
when I was 10. In it, a Coke
bottle drops out of the sky
and disrupts a village in Botswana,
and a Bushman travels
away with it to drop it
at the end of the world. His
encounters offer up a hilarious
view on modern civilization
and its many mysterious
developments. But,
did we listen to Jamie Uys,
the movie’s writer and director?
Did things change
as a result?
A friend of mine, a painter
named Joelle Provost, is making
waves these days with her
art, pieces that are a sendup of
the environmental ills we’ve
created with the way we live.
But, like with “The Gods Must
Be Crazy,” people are going to
have to internalize her message,
and be willing to be
inconvenienced if they want
change. It is not enough just
to watch a movie, or view the
art about modernizations that
may have a negative impact
on us, we ourselves have to
decide to ask “why?”
Spring cleaning
Slope residents scour neighborhood trash
By Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Paper
Kings County clean freaks
busted out their brooms and
hit the streets for Civic Sweep
on Sunday, an annual Park
Slope tradition that saw locals
collect a “huge” pile of
trash and have a good time doing
it, according to one longtime
organizer.
“There’s a lot of good work
that’s done at the civic sweep,
but it is also a good time,”
said Candice Woodward,
who heads up the Park Slope
Civic Council’s Sustainability
Committee. “It’s a pretty day,
nice weather, nice people and
good spirits.”
The Council has hosted
its annual street- and graffiti
cleaning blowout every
year since the group’s former
president, the Honorable Bernard
Graham, kicked off the
event back in 2001, and it’s
since drawn hundreds of community
minded locals to clean
the neighborhood.
There was plenty for the
trash collectors to do during
their four hours on the
streets on Sunday. Volunteers
returned to the garbage dropoff
point at Washington Park
with an unfortunate amount of
trash, Woodward said.
“It’s really disheartening
to think that much litter can
be picked up from Park Slope
streets,” she said.
This year, Ninth Street
reigned as the filthiest thoroughfare,
and trash collectors
were spotted carting back a
huge haul of refuse.
“Apparently Ninth Street
was just awful in terms of litter,”
said Woodward.
The event is often well attended
by a small army of eager
beavers from local Girl
or Boy scout troops, but this
year it was soccer players with
Sports Club GJOA Youth Soccer
who scored a starring roll
in Civic Sweep, according to
Woodward.
Andy Beckles from the Lower East Side Ecology
Center sorts through unwanted electronics during
the Park Slope Civic Council’s annual spring cleanup
event.
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I’m amazed at myself, at
the changes I adopt without
much question. Technology
is the most glaring. I find myself
awash in Apple products,
and angry about it, and I try
to trace my steps to how I got
here. It all seemed so innocent
to invest in that phone,
and then the computer and,
suddenly, I’m over a barrel.
But I don’t blame Apple. I
blame myself. I took the bait.
I bit. It is, after all, up to me to
decide. I live in a free country,
and no one, certainly, forced
me to believe in the ubiquity of
these things. There are those
who’ve resisted, who’ve continued
along the way to ask
“why?” and come up with
answers that led them to
“why not?”
Even though I know better,
I am pulled and swayed by the
marketing of things, by the
ease and convenience promised
to me, by the bells and
whistles. It is a complex relationship
between us and our
own minds, and sometimes, I
dare say a LOT of the time, it
is important to stop and think
about what you think, and
WHY! Caveat Emptor. Let the
buyer beware.
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