A couple of weeks ago, I visited the Comcast Technology Center. It was my first time inside that gleaming skyscraper, designed to knock your socks off with escalators rising above “Exploding Paradigms,” a sculpture of mirrored triangles that the company describes as “a steel vortex heading into the sky.” Just past the top of the escalators, I stepped inside the 39-foot white Universal Sphere. It looks like a UFO, but it’s actually a 360-degree theater in which Peter Coyote narrates a montage of inspiring video clips with a theme of how much can be achieved by working together.
That sounds like a nice message, though I can’t help but be suspicious of a corporate messenger whose business model relies on people staying on their butts with their eyes glued to screens. I also take issue with the emphasis on achievement, which reduces togetherness to a means rather than an end in itself.
I’d rather focus on the togetherness. When I read Marilyn Anthony’s piece about Sharon Lee’s dumpling parties, I wanted to have a dumpling party too. It’s not because I particularly love dumplings (though I do), but because spending a few hours making and eating food with friends is a blast. I figure any food that is fun to assemble and quick to cook will work. How about mini pizzas and cookies? The dumplings, or any other food you cook, aren’t the achievement. They’re the ingredient that brings friends together.
Looking through this issue of Grid, I was struck by how many articles are about doing things in the real world, whether directly or indirectly. We have articles about an environmental center in a city park, about how a middle school teacher gets her classes out into nature (in West Philadelphia). We also have stories about how we can keep real world experiences sustainable and accessible, whether that involves solar panels on zoo buildings or theater companies cutting waste by sharing props and sets.
Grid has always strived to balance coverage of people living fulfilling, sustainable lives with stories of high-level policy. We need to understand and fight global warming, and to keep the pressure on our government to stop exacerbating environmental injustice, which it does when it sends waste to be burned in Chester.
We also try to avoid the trap of saying what we’re doing wrong (driving too much, eating rainforest beef, buying fast fashion) without celebrating the richness and joy of what we can do that’s right.
I am fully aware that reading a magazine is generally a quiet, solo experience, but we hope that when you finish reading, you visit the zoo, go see a show and have some friends over to make dumplings.
