charmingi

[charmingi]

like canaries in a coal mine

I remember sitting in my environmental philosophy class when my professor mentioned Baltimore's trash incinerators in passing. It pulled my focus back to class after a thirty minute galavant in a daydream, and I immediately minimized Zoom to open up google and do some research on air quality in Baltimore.

You see, I have asthma, and it's sensitive to air pollution. I've always joked with my friends that I'm the canary in the coal mine. For example, when I was visiting my abuela in Puerto Rico, I had an inexplicable asthma attack in the early afternoon. Later, after the sun had set and the song of tree frogs began to lull us to sleep, my abuela called me into the living room and pointed at the TV. On the evening news was a forest fire in the town over, Maricao, and it was affecting the air quality of the surrounding areas.

So, I think I'd be able to tell if I was nearby an incinerator where thousands of tons of trash is burned each year.

Trash incinerators have a long legacy in America, the first one built on Governors Island, New York in 1885 (1). Research into their environmental impacts didn't come to light until the 1960s –– partly due to the suppression of climate science information pre-1960s driven by corporate profit incentive to hide the detrimental effects of the rampant pollution caused by their products and services. Post the Clean Air Act of 1970, many incinerators had to be shut down in the face of strict air pollution regulations they could not meet. The idea of burning trash as fuel makes sense in theory, as it puts unsightly, stagnant, and smelly landfills to "good use." However, an incinerator poses an inescapable hazard to human health: air pollution.

It's like eating the contents of your garbage can instead of leaving it where it is. They're both bad, but one's arguably worse.

No matter what, waste incineration releases hazardous pollutants into the air. Air pollutants like particulate matter can cause lung and heart diseases, heavy metals like lead and mercury can cause neurological diseases, and toxic metals like PFAS (forever chemicals used to make almost everything from cookware to cosmetics) or dioxins (a persistent environmental pollutant most often created through the combustion process) can cause cancer and other health problems (2). In Baltimore alone, Wheelabrator processes 700,000 tons of trash each year (3). The incinerator "releases about 120 pounds of lead, 60 pounds of mercury, 99 tons of hydrochloric acid and 2 tons of formaldehyde" (4). For every ton of trash Wheelabrator burns, it releases a matching ton of CO2 –– the number one greenhouse gas (5). To put it in perspective, the incinerator produces 36% of all of Baltimore city's air pollution (6).

Although the company behind the site says the facility is "in full compliance with stringent state and federal air, water and solid waste regulations," the impacts of an incinerator can be measured through the health of nearby residents (7). According to the city health department, "the average life expectancies for babies born to families in Cherry Hill, Curtis Bay and Brooklyn are all less than 70" or a decade less than the state-wide average of 80 years. In Westport, residents are twice likely to die of lung cancer than their counterparts in North Baltimore (8). While these statistics are influenced by multiple factors, proximity to Wheelabrator is definitely one of them.

Last weekend I dragged my roommate, Ava, out of bed for some on-the-scene investigation of Wheelabrator. It was a 28-minute drive from campus, relatively far removed from our North Baltimore bubble. I was having trouble breathing even before I parked the car on the side of the road outside the facility. Ava had to get my inhaler from the backseat while I thought about the people who live and work near or on the site, breathing in air that can kill a canary like me. That has killed canaries like me. We scrunched our noses, the smell of garbage inescapable, pungent and rank enough to taste. The smokestack was tall –– taller than any building I'd seen in Baltimore so far –– with an itty-bitty, skinny ladder reaching all the way to the top. It reminded me of an abandoned one made of crumbling brick sitting in an overgrown sugarcane field in Puerto Rico. They're like ghosts to me –– industrial landmarks past their prime, lingering for little reason except by the will of those who can't accept progression forward. Ava took a few photos, squatting down to the ground wet with dew to get the whole structure in frame. Then, they tugged on my sleeve as rain began to fall, trying to kill my curiosity of what lay behind tall metal gates. They led me back to the car. We drove through the nearby streets, eyes wandering over peeling paint and broken windows. Neither of us are talkers, and we didn't speak much that day either, but I could tell we were both thinking.

#7

[charmingi]

just look at it !!!

I'm half-white... white enough to experience xenophobia instead of its ugly cousin, racism. My brother isn't –– he looks more like my mom. Despite only being four years apart, we had very different experiences with teachers and peers growing up, and it was because of the color of his skin. I know that racism is real, not a faded chapter of a history book or a dying ideology in remote parts of the South. It's physical; it takes up space in a room. I can see it in my brother's self-surveillance and his obsession with formal language. He's afraid to be mean and afraid to be stupid. Our mother pours out mere drops of cultural knowledge, and it slips through the space between our fingers because we're too clumsy to catch it when it falls. Growing up the child of an immigrant is asking how to cook a traditional dish over the phone, your mother sifting through aged memories as you scribble what she says haphazardly into your notes app.

If we zoom out, racism can be explored with eyes, ears, hands, tongue, and nose. You can see neglected schoolrooms devoid of the proper supplies and a neighborhood's general lack of access to a store stocked with healthy foods. You can hear the noise pollution of a highway built through a neighborhood. You can taste the hard metals leaching into a water supply. You can smell the air too close to a locally unwanted land use (landfill, concentrated animal feeding operation, etc.). The victims are almost always the inhabitants of a historically black and brown neighborhood, disproportionately impacted by a myriad of health maladies and dying to them at rates higher than their white counterparts (1).

Baltimore is the nation's favorite example when discussing the detrimental effects of redlining. The racially discriminatory policy allowed mortgage lenders and banks to exclude racial minorities from obtaining housing in certain neighborhoods (2). It was used to carve swathes of segregated neighborhoods, keeping black and white separate and disturbingly unequal. Despite being outlawed in 1968, the practice continued under different names like "blockbusting" and "exclusionary zoning" (3). Explicitly racist policy ensured the uneven development of neighborhoods. For example, schools are funded by local property taxes. If the local property value is low, the school with be underfunded, too. Children are left without the proper supplies, faculty, and curriculum to succeed, posing another social obstacle on the path to a high quality of life. Redlining, among many other things, heavily contributed to the racial wealth gap. The purchase of a house is oftentimes the largest investment a person will make in their lifetime. Being denied a loan to purchase property that will rise in value over the years is being denied the boon of that investment. While white families were able to invest, prosper and pass this wealth down to their children through multiple generations, black and brown families were systemically denied this same privilege. Instead, they were isolated into neighborhoods that received little to no public investment and suffered from discriminatory policy like where locally unwanted land uses are chosen to be built, whether schools should be funded at the state level or the federal level, and over-policing. Just to put it into perspective, in the 1930s black households comprised 20% of the population but were confined to 2% of Baltimore city (4). Their property value stayed low or decreased, making it almost impossible to simply sell the property and move somewhere "nicer." With what money? This was deliberate impoverishment.

Poorly enacted forms of reinvestment often lead to gentrification (a new housing issue seen as early as the 1960s) (5). Wealthy outsiders move into neighborhoods benefiting from the fruit of well-intentioned policy, raising the price of goods and services, and ultimately pushing out the people who were originally supposed to be the benefactors back into neglected neighborhoods. The cycle continues, all so racially linked.

I assume most Baltimoreans know about the Black Butterfly and the White L. If you're not from Baltimore, though, or if you don't know, it's in reference to the shape of the "area around the Inner Harbor and stretching straight North to the wealthy neighborhoods of Homeland and Guilford, with the low-income, majority Black neighborhoods that make up large swaths of East and West Baltimore" (6). Our campus is on the edge of a historic dividing line –– York Road. Property was sold to black families on the East side of York, and property was sold to white families on the West side of York. The difference is stark. It's obvious. Just go look at it.

#6

[charmingi]

The state of my breakfast is the state of my day

Cooking is a hobby of mine that I don't do very often and it's to my own detriment.

Honeyed yogurt with granola and cut strawberries, Sleepy-eyed with a solid eight hours under my belt, I have time to breathe. My roommate went grocery shopping the day before, and I have a lot of options to choose from a fully stocked fridge. Zucchini on top of the box of leafy lettuce, or three containers of hummus and the cold cuts in the drawer underneath… It's the tub of vanilla greek yogurt that my hands reach for. A pretty parfait, I think to myself. I wash strawberries under cold running water and cut them into shapes. It eats up a bit of time, but it makes me happy, and it's important to make yourself happy. Drizzling the inside of a mason jar with the honey wand I nabbed from work, I layer my ingredients. I think I'll have it with a hot cup of jasmine tea. I can't wait to sit in a morning sunspot, eat, drink, and watch my potted plants grow. I love to be deliberate.

Granola bar, Sometimes the bed is like a siren pulling me back and into her, and sometimes she wins. I love to sleep and I love punctuality. For some reason, these two things are almost always exclusive. Maybe the day before was a little too long and I got a meager six hours of sleep that I wanted to stretch into seven, but these poor early-morning decisions leave me with no time to be meticulous about what I eat. I don't like to skip meals. It reminds me of high school; I struggled with eating regularly for all four years. Now, I'm short. The consequences of my actions forever cemented at 5'3". I grab a granola bar from the cabinet on my way out, running down the stairs because if I don't use every single second I have the way it needs to be used, I'll be late for class. I spill crumbs everywhere I walk ––a little breakfast for the birds, too.

Leftover ham and cheese croissant from Starbucks, I'm not proud of this one. I had to truck through my day from dawn till dusk on two and a half hours of sleep. Don't ask why or how –– just feel bad for me. I love to be pitied. Bright and early, my nurse chewed me out for not calling her to tell her I was using my nebulizer before I showed up at the office. She made me fit in a doctor's appointment sometime before I went to work (bless her heart). I took a midterm I didn't study for and then scrambled to my next class. From that class, I ran back to student health services. I was late for the appointment (ugh), but the doctor was kind. She listened to me ramble about how "this happens once a year" and "I just need a blister pack of prednisone" with this sort of obvious skepticism. I was a little embarrassed, but I left with the medicine. Only then, as the clock neared two, did I realize that I had not eaten. No sleep and an empty stomach? Of course I felt woozy. The only thing on me was a ham and cheese croissant I left in my bag overnight. Yeah, I ate it. I don't regret it.

Egg in a blanket with summer sausage, One of my personality traits is that I love my roommate. They fill up the cup on my desk with water when I'm not looking and massage my wrists when my chronic pain flares up. One particular morning, they broke our morning silence with the sound of their stomach growling and a sheepish "I'm hungry" before disappearing into the kitchen. A few minutes later, the apartment was thick with a smoky, sweet smell and my stomach began to growl too. Soon enough, they brought me a plate of egg-in-a-blanket with grilled summer sausage and a glass of iced tea. The food was good on its own, but sharing a meal makes it taste better. We started the day together, spent the day together, and ended the day together. We're a little domestic if I think about it.

I've had a strained relationship with food throughout my life, and I haven't always been very good at eating. Upon further inspection, though, the days where I celebrate it are the good ones. The days I don't… well… yikes.

#5

[charmingi]

letter to a teacher

I'm always nervous about meeting new people in new places. I offer fake laughter and syrupy compliments to overcompensate for the thick fog of social awkwardness I navigate through. It was the same when I met you. I remember telling you that you were very pretty. I wasn't lying, or anything like that. You've got this milk-blonde hair, these grassy eyes, and a gummy smile. I overheard you talking about getting a spray tan, and I wanted to say that you'd look like a model off a poster from the 80s (in a good way). I thought if I told you, you'd forgive me for my eccentricities. Maybe you'd ignore the way I avert my eyes, preferring to examine the tips of my shoes instead of meeting your gaze. If I'm nice enough, maybe you'd avert your own when I have to get the jitters out.

Sometimes the low babble of the foot traffic passing by, the harsh brightness of overhead fluorescent lighting, or the aromas of the other food stalls in the market mix into an off-key symphony of sounds, sights, and smells that inundate my senses. The world gets too loud, and I have to channel all the pressure that builds up inside me outward. I close my eyes so tight my nose scrunches, shake my whole body with a shiver like a wet dog, bounce my leg so hard it could fly off, flick my wrists till the bones crack, etc. little things like that. I'm nervous you'll think it's weird.

I walked into work for the first time when the sun had just risen and the floor cleaner from the night before still made the air sting with citrus. You walked me through how to use the register (I already knew how), taking fridge temperatures (I also already knew how), setting up displays, and putting out free samples (you gave me creative freedom over this one). You're very gentle, pausing to see if I've kept up with the flow of every explanation of every procedure. Label the cheese with the date it was opened, take temperatures every two hours, and plug your nose when you run hot water through the sink –– the grease trap stinks. I learned the morning shift is slow, and I need to bring a book to work to make the minutes pass faster till another customer appears. During that slow shift, I also learned a little bit about you.

You were an elementary school teacher turned market manager. Suddenly the ease by which a step-by-step how-to guide rolls from your mouth like air made sense. The top layer of the ice cream you were scooping into a cracked sugar cone was too soft, and it slid right off the top back into the container. You stared at it all disappointed, your eyes matching the tone of your voice as you described how much you missed the sniffly kids of a hectic classroom.

"Being a teacher… I'm meant to be that," you said. I agreed with you, and I made sure to say so. "I was just so… tired. I didn't receive the support I needed."

I'm going to admit, I'm a really petty person. A lot of things make me mad. When people in front of me are walking too slow, when people are rude to service workers… little things like that flip me from happy to angry like a coin. However, I was caught off guard by the way the color red swelled up in my chest so big like it was going to choke me. I just met you, and I felt a sort of righteous indignation for you and every other person in your position. I know too many.

I want you to know that I wish you could do what you want to do. I wish the world treated you better. The good teachers who put a portion of their paycheck into buying school supplies for kids they'll only know for a year. The ones who meticulously memorize behavior files to equip kids with the support they need (visual cues, extra time, fidget toys, and so on). The teachers who bring the phrase "it takes a village to raise a kid" to life. Every minute spent helping a little kid through the foundational first years of their life should be returned ten-fold.

I wasn't nervous for long around you, by the way. You didn't make me feel weird. That's how I knew you were a good teacher.

You told me my quirks (you know, the ones I was worried about earlier?) were charming. I know you don't know this, but my friends call me charming. I love that word. I'll keep that compliment in my pocket and carry it around with me like a piece of treasure. I might be awkward… but I'm charming.

#3

[charmingi]

how to be baltimorean

when does it start to feel like you’re from somewhere? like, when do you start telling people that you’re “from” a place? i tell people i’m from durham, north carolina; and that i’m also from dorado, puerto rico; but that i was born in newburgh, new york. i’m “from” all three of these places, but i’m definitely not “from” baltimore. is there a year quota i have to hit? maybe there’s an initiation ceremony or a hazing like a college fraternity. or do i have to wait for the next life and be reborn as a baby in a hospital down the road? i’m curious.

what i’m trying to say is that i’m a baltimorean imposter. i’ve been here for about a year, and i don’t know a single thing about the city other than that there are a lot of crab restaurants and edgar allan poe did something here (lived, died? if only i could remember… maybe i’d graduate to baltimorean). this is, if you can count to two, only two things.

i’m exaggerating for effect, but my ignorance does make me feel itchy. my empty head is decisively disrespectful to the city, which is why i want my sponge-like brain to go out soaking up experiences. baltimore and her people have been here for so long, yet all i know about them is crabs and one dead guy? i need to visit everything – historical neighborhoods, contemporary art galleries, poetry open mics, urban gardens, well-known landmarks, forgotten buildings, flea markets and on and on. the entire time, i’ll be taking pictures like a google maps van (both literally and figuratively).

it won’t be too hard. baltimore’s bus system is a little more forgiving than durham’s, even if it isn’t entirely free. i love the way bus drivers drive here, stepping on the accelerator if i take even a second too long to pull out my card for the fare. i’m not joking, either. it’s humbling to be sent stumbling into a seat. so many people from all walks of life get on and off a baltimore bus. while i get to ride it for a non-essential weekend outing, many others rely on it for their commute. on one hand, it’s amazing to be able to move through so many different worlds on the way to the local plant nursery, but on the other, it’s a little frustrating to uncover the history behind why a neighborhood has been neglected while the one just a block over is flourishing. i wish the government would invest more in public transportation.

i think that was my initial impression of baltimore. the disparity of wealth and why it exists is hard to swallow. that hasn’t changed in the year i’ve been here and i don’t think it will any time soon. i hope to write about it more in my future posts.

i have a hidden agenda, by the way. i want to cement my moments into memories. i notice, recently, that i've been doing a lot of nothing. it’s stressing me out. i wake up, i eat, i work, i sleep, and it all repeats. i barely ever leave my room for anything other than my mechanical class and work schedule. my doctors like to reassure me that it’s a simple byproduct of my disabilities, but you have to admit that it gets a little dull. can you relate to that sentiment? do you know that panic that swells in your chest when you forget to watch the clock and suddenly the sun has set?

by no means do i believe a human must be productive with every single minute of their day to be “truly” living. productivity is a sham; it doesn’t exist. instead, i want to practice awareness. it’s not what i’m doing or why i’m doing it… it’s being aware of what or why, like a meditative practice that emphasizes the importance of feeling every breath you take. awareness is the tool i’ll use to ascribe value to any moment i want. i’ll tell you if that works.

so, this blog will be a collection of moments i've been aware in baltimore. it’s an active protest against my so-far sedentary lifestyle!

i hope all of this made sense… if not, the short version is: i don’t know anything about baltimore, i want to know more about baltimore, i will know more about baltimore, and i’m bringing you with me (imagine yourself in one of those baby backpacks). oh, and i hope to graduate to baltimorean by the end of the semester!

gi out :3

p.s. here's gi in a texan thrift store to prove that he leaves the house (and sometimes travels very far distances):