#*though i do think that even in a fully walkable city cars have more personal utility than people like to argue

[elucubrare]

that post about different modes of transportation & their effect on your experience of a city is a really frustrating piece of rhetoric for me - i don't necessarily disagree with the unstated underlying point (that cities need fewer cars)*, but arguing that by positing personal experiential data as universal is bad rhetorically.

driving makes your city feel like a few islands, pockets of space where you regularly go and new ones you discover only when brought there for a purpose, but all amidst an ocean of just, filler

driving made the city i drove in feel connected - i saw the ways the roads flowed into each other & the places where they were overburdened because more people went there; i saw the ways that the roadbuilders worked with and around the landscape; as i drove, the wildflowers and grass blew around the highways, and when i reached a high point I saw the city laid out below me, its intersections and its pathways.

Taking public transit makes your city feel like a network of corridors, a glowing grid along which you may discover new things, but whose alternate winding paths you only take when given to by circumstance.

taking public transit made my city feel like it consisted of two points, the station i went down in and the station i came up in; the rest of the city presumably existed, but while i was on the train it could have been vaporized and I would never know.

My point here isn't that my experiences are right - quite the opposite, actually. My experiences are specific to me and to my cities - i'm sure i'd feel differently about public transit if my experiences were with above ground trains rather than below ground. My point is that 1) the second person in the OP is really carrying a lot of rhetorical weight to attempt to universalize a single experience and 2) this is essentially a policy argument & neither my experiences nor OP's are really relevant to it.

[guyprincess14]

Okay, I’m posting this here because it keeps getting taken down on insta and I’m done. This is supposed to be a fandom page where I post things I love and don’t stress about other things but I have to say this somewhere.

We have to stop wasting our social and emotional energy on trying to get companies to stop greenhouse emissions. It isn’t going to do enough, I want to be hopeful but we have to be realistic. We can still keep those kinds of things in mind, ride public transportation, e-bikes, compost etc… Our focus needs to shift to coping with climate change now. We have to start putting in place measures that will give us a safety net as things get worse.

We have to start thinking about coastal cities now, how to get people out when it starts to flood. NYC, DC, Sydney, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Cape Town, Rio de Jenaro, Mumbai, Venice, all of them will become unlivable and climate refugees need to go somewhere.

Places that will be safe need to prepare for large swaths of refugees, that means lots of housing complexes, and less single family homes. Strong communities will be essential, pick a place and stay there as long as you can. The goal has be to build up individual communities as much as you can, that is where you can do the most good. Do what you can to reduce poverty and homelessness. Tear down hostile architecture, make sure people know they are loved and wanted.

We need to localize as the global systems collapse, that means large local farms, people getting back into trades, small maintainable power grids, and making our cities walkable and transitioning to electric bikes instead of cars. We may be able to power large cities with nuclear, but we have to work on making it safer, preferably with thorium than uranium.

We need to find ways to create medicines without large mechanical systems, as well as creating disability aids. We can not rely on massed produced items. We need to start learning practical skills and get back into traditional trades.

We have to go back to paper instead of digital. All of the digital archives will be lost when we can no longer support global internet. All records of births, deaths, family trees, literature, cultural histories, all of it needs to be protected so it isn’t destroyed.

Indigenous people come first and foremost as they will be our guiding lights. They shouldn’t have to be, but they have the knowledge of survival and reciprocity on the local lands.

We have to get rid of the damns and restore those areas. They cause far too many floods as they deteriorate and the space that will gained makes for more livable land. Areas like Las Vegas can’t exist anymore; it takes too much water to keep them running and it isn’t sustainable in the long run.

We have to change our food system, meat animals currently take up too much space and resources as well as monoculture. Animals need to be raised locally, at the bear minimum, while keeping cultural foods around is important, nutrition has to come first. We need a three sisters type of approach to local farming, cultivating things that grow intertwined and benefit from each other and we need to do it regionally.

Food waste en mass is unacceptable - not finishing a meal because you are full is fine - supermarkets will eventually become obsolete but in the mean time we have to use things until the very end, until it it fully expired. No tossing out day old bread, fresh produce, anything that can be eaten.

I know this isn’t everything, policing, government, water treatment, the way we build, money, education, protecting cultural practices and artifacts, population centers, there are so many things I could go into but I’m not going to write a full essay on tumblr. The point of this is even though we can’t stop global warming, we have so much else to do. I am still alive today because this is my mission. I have lived my life with respect and compassion in everything I do, my goal of reducing suffering is how I make my personal and political decisions. I am doing all can to make the world a little better every day, and taking care of myself.

We either transition slowly now, or all at once later, and the latter involves a lot of suffering and death. In the meantime, speak out against genocide, turn your anger into action, find joy, and know your power.

(It’s really hard for me to cite my sources on this one because how do I cite my whole last semester of university, I’ll ask my prof and see if she has any ideas)

[guardianfloofs]

Caught myself wanting to brainstorm today. Been wanting to figure out where the Guardians would live, and what kind of place it would be. Even though I highly doubt I'd be able to draw it or anything like that, but hey, some worldbuilding helps either way,

So far, Arc and I have landed on making up a fictional place, just to give us some freedom. As for the details about it, I mainly have these points:

Small to medium-sized city that's moderately urbanized city, or at enough to keep step with modern times. Plenty of nature within it too, like, there's actual trees and gardens and parks! :D

Possibly a coastal town or has routes leading to the ocean?

Lots of walkable infrastructure with some public transit or minor car traffic. (Seriously, I am projecting my dreams as an American citizen.)

Magically-inclined; the citizens live alongside spirits and other magical beings in relative harmony. The use of magic is common, but tech isn't ruled out either. This magical quality is possibly what draws troublesome entities to it, and why services like what the Guardians provide are called upon regularly.

Maaaaybe a nexus of sorts that has paths or portals leading to and from other, similarly magical places, which is how the Guardians can get to some places far outside of their home range. (Unsure on that, but sounds cool)

The Guardians' home would probably either near the outer edges of the city, or maybe within it, but they have quite a bit of space to themselves. (Thinking on that.)

Due to quite a number of heroic feats, Sirius (or at the very least, "Tenrou the Protector") became a celebrated figure, to the point that small statues made in his likeness can be seen around homes and shops. A yearly festival is also held in his honor as a show of adoration and gratitude for him protecting their city, one that Sirius does try to personally attend each time. The statues seen around could be seen as wards, or aids for Tenrou to locate evil presences in the city. (Don't fully know about that last part yet.)

Honestly, I have a lot more thinking to do, but it does make my brain happy just sort throwing this out there.

[noelle-wright]

A Journey Towards Debt Liberation

Working towards paying off my student loans was one of the most scary, liberating decisions that I decided to embark on. When I first took out my graduate school loan and moved to France in 2013, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know what interest was and how that would affect the life of the loan. I just went with whatever the Department of Education was offering.

Fast forward to life right after graduate school, the reality of Hawaii public sector wages hit me hard. The thought of paying through almost $60,000 in student loan debt seemed impossible, and I believed I wouldn't be done until I was 40. As a 23-year-old, that was fine, though, because I had no plans to own a home, start a family, etc. However, the reality of this loan was a constant worry.

It was a trip home to visit my sister and brother-in-law that really got me thinking about how I'd been approaching my loans, as they had been aggressively paying down loans. I had heard many podcasters preach about "financial freedom" and paying off $100,000 in two years. I would get bitter inside and thought that doing what they were doing was impossible for myself. However, with the inspiration of my family, I saw that it WAS possible. I realized I was mentally stuck in a limiting mindset, and my bitterness at those paying off their debt was a projection of the insecurity I felt in my own situation.

As I started to reach my later twenties, I moved to a much better paying career and started a long-term serious relationship. I decided it was no longer time to be held down by my debt in order to manifest the life I intended to create for myself and with my partner. For me, there was no better time than now to work on my debt - while I had low expenses and a stable job. I happily traversed into an ABUNDANCE MINDSET. I shifted my thinking from not believing I had enough to believing that I did have the means to get out of this debt, and that everything I had now was all I needed. Money can be so stressful, but when our minds are controlled by it, it blocks us from serving our higher purpose. Financial freedom is also a mindset and a practice in discipline. The more you practice, the more you evolve. My goals were to 1) taking responsibility through hard work and discipline, 2) liberate my mind from the worry of money and feeling of lacking, and 3) turn this journey into part of my sadhana, or spiritual practice - spiritually work on discipline and seeing myself and everything around me as abundant.

Here are a few things that helped me along the way.

Know how much you owe and your interest rate. It can be scary to face how much we owe. I didn't keep track when I was borrowing, only to find out I had initially borrowed $59,410.93. I was so scared to face how much I owed, that I didn't really start paying attention until 2018. Be clear with how much you owe so you can start setting goals that work for you.

Know your monthly spending vs. how much you make. Be completely honest with yourself so you can see your net outflow and what extra you can realistically put towards your loan. This also allows you to cut off expenses that you may not need.

Refinance. It took me five years before I proved I was credit-worthy for refinancing, but it got me a lower interest rate, so keep trying. Do your research when looking at companies (I myself refinanced with CommonBond).

As much as you can, pay your minimum then build to paying over your minimum. When I had a low salary, I applied for income-driven repayment (IDR) to pay lower than my minimum. Even when my salary got higher, I got mentally stuck in an IDR-mentality, but I was actually doing myself a disservice. If you start to make more money, start paying that pre-IDR minimum right away. Even better, start paying MORE than your minimum. Set up automatic payments so you don't know what it feels like to have that extra money to spend. Personally, I paid a portion towards my loan every week.

Make more money. This sounds blunt and I understand everyone has different circumstances. For me, though, moving to a job that paid me $30,000 more per year and gave me much better benefits like, fully paid healthcare, paid transportation, and life insurance really helped. Also, taking on a side hustle changed everything. I work really hard right now and put in the time, but I know that in a few months I can live more comfortably and have more free time. Don't let making more money, though, inflate your lifestyle.

Listen to podcasts and go online for inspiration. Sometimes it can feel like you are alone in everything, but when you enter the online world, you'll see that there are a ton of people in the same boat and with their eyes on the same prize. My favorite podcast has been Afford Anything with Paula Pant and watching Aja Dang's YouTube videos on her own personal journey.

Get a financial planner to help you.  They help you stay accountable, and can provide you with tools to use to help you figure out how much you should be paying to meet your goals.

Live frugally where you can. Discipline. If you can't increase your income, decrease your expenses. I forgo a car because of multiple reasons; I don't have kids, I live in a convenient and walkable part of the city well-served by public transit, I want to lessen my impact on the environment, and I quite frankly just hate driving. Since my company pays for my bus pass, I basically have no transportation costs except for occasionally buying my boyfriend's gas (the rare times he lets me). I also still live at home and get an unbelievably subsidized rent to help my mom out. Ever since I discovered Poshmark, I got rid of a lot of clothes and made over $1,500 on the app. I also now don't buy new clothes; I only buy clothes on Poshmark. I also participate in a yearly "Lent" with my friends that has really helped me break some bad habits (I credit this exercise to me no longer watching TV except for Game of Thrones, and cutting down clothing spending habits by 75%!). It also helps to unsubscribe from newsletters that tempt you to buy more stuff. Living frugally is a mindset. It doesn't have to feel like frugality; think of it as living simply. It could feel more liberating to be freed from ownership of too much stuff. There are less things to think about and less clutter to look at. If you experiment or practice changing your mindset, you may be surprised at what you can let go of materially to live well, while at the same time saving money.

...But don't deprive yourself. When I started my student loan journey, I was definitely overwhelmed by the budget aspect because I wanted to preserve my lifestyle. I didn't want to cut down on the things I valued, especially on food, fitness, and travel. I resolved not to cut corners on the things that mattered most to me. It was important to me to not get into the mindset of deprivation.  Still buying what is nourishing for your soul is crucial in preserving joy throughout the process.

Save for big expenses. Start a separate savings account for bigger expenses, like a trip, car, training, etc. Calculate its estimated total cost and how much could be saved for it per month. Then, establish a savings timeframe and automatic monthly transfer into that account. It's important to not be tempted to dip into that account. Personally, my big ticket items are travel. I don't feel scared to take a vacation because I know I already have the funds for it set aside.

Celebrate the small wins. Whether its setting up that detailed budget spreadsheet or the big-ticket savings account or putting an extra $100 towards your loan, be proud of yourself every step of the way.

Don't obsess over it. Oddly, once I started making progress on my loans, I became obsessed with paying them off. I realized the space it was occupying in my mind was large. It's important to not let the whole process consume your life, and be patient with the journey.

if you're comfortable, use a zero-based budget. Put simply, zero-based budgeting allocates all of your money to something. Through the help of a financial adviser, I realized the money I was saving in a savings account yielding 2.2% interest was just sitting there and not doing as much as if I put it towards other things like investments or putting more towards my loan. Through zero-based budgeting, you can actually find ways to better maximize the use of your money. I realize that this isn't realistic, though, for those that might freelance.

[mmwm]

Welcome to day 3 of 31 Days of Heterotopias: Motels and Hotels, a month of posts about how motels, hotels, and inns function as heterotopias and liminal spaces in society.  (More about heterotopias and liminal spaces.)  Each post will look at these ideas from its own vantage point, which may not obviously connect with the others, and which may mention motels and hotels only peripherally or may focus on them without referencing heterotopia or liminality. I won’t attempt to tie the posts together. They’ll all be listed here, as they are posted.

___________________________________________________

There are six motels/hotels that we (spouse and I) stay at over and over, in Savannah, Boston, Middlebury VT, Orleans MA, Boothbay ME, and Ogunquit ME. I’m not sure exactly what their appeal is. Prices per night range from $89 to $250, all fairly mid-range for their locations. The locations themselves are great but they differ — two are in the heart of cities, two are in the heart of towns — all four very walkable to the things we want to walk to — and the other two are on the outskirts of town, though still walkable into town (a mile or two each way, which we enjoy), and one of those is a few blocks from the ocean. Three accept pets, which mattered to us until a few years ago.

I’m going to highlight one of these hotels today, The Holiday Inn Express-Historic District, Savannah, GA. We’ve stayed here at least four times and would have stayed more but they were booked twice when we travelled and we had to stay at other hotels, including the Cotton Sail, which sits just above River Street, chic, modern, expensive, and the Planters Inn, on Reynolds Square, which is old-fashioned, falling apart (when we were there, the elevators didn’t work, almost the whole time!), and the staff was unfindable and not helpful. There was a complimentary bottle of wine in the room for my birthday, which was a lovely surprise, but things went downhill from there, and at more than $300 per night, things needed to be pretty perfect.

But I love the HIX.  Yes, it’s a Holiday Inn — which, when I was growing up in the 70s, was “the nation’s innkeeper” and its iconic sign was everywhere (my family stayed in family-friendly Holiday Inns and Howard Johnsons on our once-a-year vacation) —

(above, not my photo)

— but this one is on the corner of E. Bay and Abercorn, one block from River Street, a few blocks from the City Market, a block from Reynolds Square. The location can’t be beat. (Shown below with red tag. You can also see the Cotton Sail Hotel and the Planters Inn on the map.)

We come into town on the train,

take a cab to the hotel, and we don’t rent a car (from the airport, miles away) until we check out and leave for Jekyll Island, an hour and a half away — often via the Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens:

*

Somehow the HIX feels like a sanctuary from the moment I enter the wide, whooshing automatic sliding doors, usually for the first time each visit at 6:30 a.m., more than 24 hours after having fallen out of bed in New Hampshire at 4 a.m. to catch the 5:50 a.m. bus to Boston, then the 9:30 a.m. train from there, through a change to a different train line in New York’s Penn Station in the afternoon, with evening and overnight on the Silver Meteor (which continues on to Miami), to be awakened early again, at 5 a.m., for disembarking.

And just about always, our room is ready when we stumble in, bleary eyed, at 6:30, both needing showers and some sleep on a real bed before hitting Huey’s on the River for beignets, cafe au lait, and grits:

Nothing says “welcome” like the availability of the hotel room in the wee and exhausting hours of the morning, and check in staff who seem happy to provide it more than 8 hours before their normal check-in- time. (They also give us bottles of water and sometimes fruit.)

Chilling out on the bed in your hotel room watching television, while wearing your own pajamas, is sometimes the best part of a vacation.  — Laura Marano

*

We’re usually at this hotel at Christmas and New Year’s, when it’s decorated cheerfully and simply.

There is something especially wonderful, for me, about spending big, culturally significant holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving away from home, and it is precisely because of the heterotropic feel of it: I like the way time passes differently when travelling, when staying in a city or town where I don’t know anyone except the person I am travelling with (and if I’m travelling alone, even more so). Time is open, the future is unknown rather than proscribed as it often is when surrounded by family or friends, when in one’s usual place, taking part in the same interactions as always on these occasions.

We often spend a day or two before Christmas in Savannah, then drive to Jekyll on Christmas Eve or Christmas itself, and we return to Savannah on New Year’s Eve or the day before, spend that night there, and take the train home on 1 January. I love subverting the procession of what is often treated as “sacred” time by making it feel ordinary (ordinarily holy) through the mundane activities of packing, picking up a rental car, driving on the interstate, unpacking, finding take-out Chinese food someplace or just nibbling on snack food when most others in our culture are buying, wrapping, feasting, gathering in groups. I like interacting with cab drivers, rental car agents, restaurant staff, hotel staff on these set-aside days; I feel I am part of an underground community in some way, and at the same time I know I’m not. Our schedule and plans for Christmas Eve and Day and the days before involve not decorating a tree, not wrapping and unwrapping gifts, not making holiday foods, not meeting family/friends for a meal, not going to church, and so on, but rather just checking out of a hotel and picking up a rental car on time. Then? Nothing is certain; time could unfold any way it will.

We exchange only one or two small gifts during this period and I make some rough decoration for the room from shells, branches, sand, rocks, ribbons and rope, a few shiny things. If we were at home, I’m not sure we’d scale down to this extent, but even if we did, I don’t think it would feel the same to me, because there is something about the usual place, home, that exerts a kind of sway on time, on plans, on what’s expected to happen when, and it really does seem like it’s the place itself that has this effect.

Michel Foucault says (slight paraphrase) that “the heterotopia begins to function fully when people are in a kind of absolute break with their traditional time.” To make “an absolute break with traditional time”  — by travelling away from home, by staying in a hotel or motel that superimposes and confuses public and private space, that functions as a temporary and transitional way-station, that allows personal (and perhaps “couple” or “family”) identity to float free of its boundaries in an anonymous environment — removes or rescues us from prevailing norms, allows time and self to dissolve and re-order to some extent, blurring the boundaries of time and self as the boundaries of meaning in the space itself are blurred (public/private, familiar/strange, feels institutional/feels like a retreat, etc.). And what period of time is more traditional in American culture than Christmas and the weeks before it?  (Rivaling Christmas for traditional celebration, Thanksgiving is the other time we tend to travel each year.)

Some years, we do feast on Christmas Day at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel buffet extravaganza, and New Year’s Eve is often a special dinner in Savannah. We may attend the Christmas concert at St. John the Baptist in Savannah, or take a nighttime walking tour with a sort of Christmasy Dickensian theme (a fund raiser for the local food bank or other charity in Savannah). Even those time-appropriate, traditional “Christmas” events, however, take on a different feel, because we are in the space of a heterotopia, where multiple realities are juxtaposed. We’re in a place that’s both familiar (we have been to Savannah and Jekyll before, we have certainly stayed in Holiday Inns before) and unfamiliar, even exotic, a place where the weather is mild enough that we can dine outside at a cafe table on the sidewalk in mid-winter, when there are feet of snow piling up on our driveway at home. We are among palm trees and camellias blooming everywhere. We are wearing light clothing. We are among other tourists, also enchanted and bewitched by their surroundings and how they feel in these strange surroundings, unmoored from the usual family, community, daily household tasks. It often feels surreal, disorienting in a mostly good way.

Instead of spending Christmas morning unwrapping gifts, we light a candle or two, open a card and a gift or two, and then take a long walk on the quiet beach, admire the shore birds, maybe walk in the woods and look for stinkhorn fungi. On New Year’s Eve in Savannah, we often eat dinner fairly early, walk about on the Savannah streets a bit as festivities are starting to gear up, then head back to the waiting hotel room, where we can perhaps hear a car horn, fireworks, carousers from inside the small impersonal space.

*

Back to the hotel: The room itself is simple, like the lobby, with just what’s needed: good wifi, a refrigerator, a microwave, a desk and chairs, comfortable bed(s), well-functioning bathroom, some space, some quiet.

The staff are always attentive, and the place just works well. I don’t feel in any sense that I am home there, but I feel benignly looked after without feeling watched or intruded upon. I can be anonymous, I am unknown (even after four or more visits), but I also feel the tenuous and privileged connection that being a “guest” confers.

*

While in Savannah, favourite spots besides the hotel and Hueys are the Paris Market, with their unusual toys and stuffed animals, good-smelling things, jewelry, books, household goods, fantastic displays, and the macarons, especially at an outside cafe table …

… the fabulous Arches Bar in the Olde Pink House …

(Our Little Hummingbird cocktail)

And the tavern there for dinner, by the fire …

… and then there is the estimable Gryphon Tea Room, serving tea sandwiches and brunch, staffed by the Savannah College of Art & Design students …

the ceiling

Oh, and Savannah Bee honey, with two (maybe more?) locations in Savannah (and one on St. Simon’s Island) … Free samples of honey there, plus mead tastings, lots of lotions and potions …

… and the River Street Sweets and Candy Kitchens on River Street and at City Market (all with free praline samples) …

Other favourite food places are Jazz’d Tapas Bar for tapas and romantic atmosphere; Moon River Brew Pub for casual eats (big outdoor space); Churchill’s Pub in the wine cellar for special occasions; Rocks on the River and Rocks on the Roof at the Bohemian Hotel for a fun, hip nosh (Rocks on the River was open one Christmas morning when nothing else was, bless them); Vic’s on the River for great view and a comfy traditional spot. Once we get the car, we usually head to the Crab Shack on Tybee Island for seafood and cocktails. I’d love to get to the Crystal Beer Parlor next time; we walked there last time but they were unexpectedly closed that day.

*

Then there’s hours spent strolling on cobblestone streets, along tree-lined streets dripping with Spanish moss, beautiful and interesting architecture everywhere …

… and the parks, gardens, squares, Colonial Cemetery …

… the stairs that are so fun to climb …

… the whimsical creche and the glorious Christmas concerts, with organ and choir, at The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist  …

I almost forgot the Telfair museums — which includes the Telfair Academy, part period house, part art gallery …

… the Jepson Center (a more modern art gallery) …

… and a tour of the Owens-Thomas House (no inside photos allowed) …

*

And after walking, eating, drinking (cocktails on the street!), attending events and taking tours, enjoying tea, (mostly) window shopping, sampling gobs of pralines and honey, pounding the cobblestone and climbing up and down the stairs, it’s so nice to retreat to the unpretentious Holiday Inn Express at the corner of E. Bay and Abercorn for a little quiet, some privacy, a few Zots candies, and some moments or hours of down time in an uncluttered, embracing room, possibly overlooking a pocket garden behind the hotel.

Even after a long train ride and early morning wake-ups, no shower, gritty eyes, I always perk up a bit when I see this ….

When you get into a hotel room, you lock the door, and you know there is a secrecy, there is a luxury, there is fantasy. There is comfort. There is reassurance. —  Diane von Furstenberg

*

  There is Comfort. There is Reassurance. Welcome to day 3 of 31 Days of Heterotopias: Motels and Hotels, a month of posts about how motels, hotels, and inns function as heterotopias and liminal spaces in society.