Rural Routes/Margot Ford McMillen

Time for Detox

I know. It snuck up on me, too. But here it is almost the winter holidays, and that means surprising our loved ones with gifts, trying to make up for almost two years of distance, inconvenience, and zoom calls. And, now, we’re hearing there’s a major supply chain SNAFU, blocking the entire Pacific Ocean and clogging US ports, keeping the store shelves naked.

But we don’t need plastic geegaws from China to forget our troubles. Progressive Populist readers have been un-supporting the international industrial system for years. We’ll get local foods, forage for the things we give and get it all done without undue fuss while supporting our communities. When we support our neighbors, we can carry our stuff home. Amazon, bye bye!

For many years, my family has celebrated Buy-Nothing Day, which is the day after Thanksgiving, sometimes called “Black Friday,” because it moves stores from the red-ink part of the year to the “black-ink” days of the shopping season. That Friday was purposely created to encourage holiday shopping. Today, it’s best known for “door-busting” sales, shoppers camping outside malls and fist fights at the big-box stores. Best to stay away, especially this year.

Buy-Nothing day is when we disconnect from all that. Stay home and play music and board games in the front room, eat leftovers, call the neighbors for company. For years, we hosted jam sessions but we live in a place where some folks are afraid of shots, so the jam sessions are just an outdoor summer pleasure these days. Back then, we always enjoyed a chance to let our friends understand that we could run out of things and avoid trips to town. Run out of coffee? Try our mint tea, harvested from the garden right outside the house. Run out of forks? It’s OK to use your fingers.

Of course, we all know we can’t completely disconnect from the industrial system. We’re still paying for utilities, phones and internet connections, but we do our best. Sometimes, on BND, activists go to the malls with sharp scissors, offering to cut up credit cards for consumers. It’s a symbolic step toward cutting the chains of debt. And, now, as we finally worry about climate change, it’s a symbolic step toward saving the planet.

Buy-Nothing Day exists as part of Adbusters, an organization against overconsumption of everything. After BND became a thing, Adbusters founded TV Turnoff Week so that we consumers could give the tube a rest. That morphed into the brilliant Digital Detox Week every May. “Digital” includes computers, phones and TV sets.

Why do we need a detox? In 2018, the American Heart Association announced the alarming news that kids and teens age 8 to 18 often spend more than seven hours a day in front of screens. The AHA recommended that kids only spend a maximum of two hours per day digitally engaged, and even less for younger children. Then came the pandemic, when everything from school to entertainment to zoomed family time was happening on a screen. Digital detox might be impossible for a family in 2021, but it’s worth a try. The worst that could happen is the effort might make us realize how deeply we are connected to the often shady world of the internet.

So what do we offer our friends and families as gifts of the season?

For some years, my family exchanged names of non-profits that we love, and we’d each donate to the other’s non-profits. A good outcome was learning what our kin cared about, but the bad news was that all year we’d get solicitations from groups we didn’t personally care about. The next step in this journey was putting our gifts together, voting for one or two organizations and donating to those. That worked, a little bit, but it was impossible to solve the arts-versus-the-environment problem. We finally settled on making gifts to our own favorite non-profits, but honoring our beloveds by making donations in their names.

Another shared tradition is book-giving. We always give books that we’ve read, often giving books we’ve even marred with underlining. I’ll forever be grateful to a sister who in 2015 gave me a copy of Yuval Noah Harari’s book “Sapiens.” I gave it to my husband with my underlinings, arrows and exclamation points in the margins. I’m just as grateful for “Sapiens” as a graphic novel, given to me in 2020 by a son. This year, I’m reading like crazy and hoping to find a book I can give to everyone.

The obvious — subscriptions to this periodical, The Progressive Populist — will keep people entertained and educated for the year. I, personally, enjoy the arguments of my fellow columnists and always find new ways to think about the problems I’m worried about … like global climate change, speaking of which, we can fight by staying home, shopping local, and unhooking as best we can from the industrial system.

Margot Ford McMillen farms near Fulton, Mo., and co-hosts “Farm and Fiddle” on sustainable ag issues on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo. She also is a co-founder of CAFOZone.com, a website for people who are affected by concentrated animal feeding operations. Her latest book is “The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History”. Email: margotmcmillen@ gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2021

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