"The Green Thing" Interview with My Aunt

Back in the 1980's I did a search to find my mother's biological family because she was adopted, and even though I loved my grandparents, I was curious about our medical background and our genes in general.   I found out around 1985 that my mother, brought up as an only child, had two brothers and three sisters!  In fact, she even had the same name as two of her sisters, Nadine and Virginia.  My mother's name was Nadine Virginia!  Her first brother had died, but we were able to meet her other brother and all three of her sisters.  Now Aunt Virginia is the only one still living.  So...that's how I know the person I interviewed for our assignment on "The Green Thing."

I was going to call her, but she called me first because she was concerned about a tsunami coming after the earthquake in Chile.  I returned her voice message, and then we talked about "The Green Thing."

First I asked, "Do you think modern technology has made your life easeir than before?" She immediatley said "Yes!"  The first thing that came to her mind was how much easier it is now to wash a load of clothes.  When she was a young mother back in the late 1940's, she had to wash her kids' clothees by hand, in a riinger machine.  At that time she and her family lived in an autocourt in Los Angeles, where there were ringer machines available for 25cents, but she still had to put the clothes through the ringer.  She said it took a quarter, and you were able to use it for a certain amount of time.  But she said that she remembered her mother washing their clothes in the bathtub.  If it rained, they had a wooden rack and dried the clothees over a floor heater, but that requied a lot of ironing afterwards.  Yes, now it's easier, she thinks.  She can now shower by herself, but she remembers taking a bath with her sister when they were kids.  As for other household appliances, she put off getting a microwave for a long time because she was worried about radiation, but she finally became convinced that ti would be all right.  She remembers that people washed dishes in a sink and then rinsed the dishes in a dish pan.  I asked her about getting from place to place, and she said they had a really good streetcar system in Los Angeles, and it took them from Glendale into the Los Angeles Subway Termina on 5th and Hill.  It was easy to kget around cheaply.  "We had wonderful Hollywood to Newport Beach lines," she said.  Then the Auto Club sprang up, and the electric streetcars disappeared.  I told her about a documentary on that subject, "Taken for a Ride." That tells about how General Motors and other companies bought the streetcars and then destroyed them so that diesel engine busses and cars could take over.  Some people said that the destruction of stretcars was part of a strategy to make the US dependent on automobiles.  When she was gorwing up, her father had a car, and when she got married, her huband had a car, and he also piloted a plane, which was unusual for husbands in the 1940s!  Unfortunately, he spent all their money on this hobby of planes, and he died in an airplane crash leaving her and their children in debt.  That was NOT technology at its best! 
When I asked, Do you ever think about how your habits affect nature and natural resources," she thougth of the weed killer she uses for grass.  She doesn't really have a lawn, but weeds pop up through the cracks on the walkway and patio, so she uses weed killer on that.  She used to wash down the drive way and side walk with a hose, but now she doesn't because of the drought.  Even before the drought, her second husbnad didn't wan her to do that kind of work outdoors because he thought it would look bad if they neighbors so that she was doing it instead of him! 
I asked her about things like cell phones, computers, and the Internet, and she said that she's seen more bad coming out of Facebook.  She likes to take her grandson out to eat from time to time, but he's always checking his phone and waiting for a call.  I asked, "Do you think that if we try to save the environment, our pesonal lives will be easier or more difficult?"  She thought about this, and we talked about "the good old days" when we were all poor but at least we didn't waste.  She thinks the automobile is one of the biggest problems, but she's heard that the electric car runs on coal, and that's bad.  (After our interview, I looked this up.  http://theenergycollective.com/lindsay-wilson/234736/electric-cars-aren-t-green-myth-debunked )
We discussed the ideal of not wasting resources and of valuing every little thing.  Then we changed the subject to a trip we might make togther latert his year.

I was happy to have this interview because I love my aunt, and every time I talk to her, I learn something new about the family that my mother, born in 1921, didn't meet until 1985!