Sex Pistol's Johnny Rotten on living in London during the late 1970's garbage strike

Snow in Seattle means a holiday from everything: school, dentist appointments, junk-mail delivery, and driving. At its best, the snow presents a get-out-of-jail-free card for the mandatory fun of office holiday parties; at its worst, a three-hour trek home on foot across the "low bridge" over the Duwamish when the Metro buses stop serving West Seattle. Strangers share meaningful glances and flash rueful smiles at each other while pioneering upon unshoveled sidewalks. Small talk increases by 47 percent.

"Cold enough for you? So much for global warming!" And indeed, on the first quiet, snowy morning it seems we have already squelched the problem of climate change and are living in a post-vehicular, post-consumer utopia.

People's cars are left to sit in their driveways under funereal sheets of snow, silent monuments to a dead era of gas guzzling and loose living. Residents take to the streets on foot, buying only necessities they can carry from local shops, bolstering the business of their neighborhood main street. Cheerful outdoorsy types don backpacks and cross-country skis to make it to market, and, at home, parents reconnect with their kids by building pillow forts to pass the time, or, when the cabin air stales, by sledding headlong down slick side streets.

At my home, the first day of snow offered a welcome respite from our busy holiday routine of travel and shopping. We made snow angels, drank hot chocolate, baked and frosted a cake, and, later, curled up under wool blankets to read books by the light of the Christmas tree.

Days two and three, we played it cool, broke into a few of the treats we had meant to save for our Christmas Eve party, called our mothers just to check in, and only occasionally checked the front porch to see if the paper had been delivered.

Day four, my husband and I descended to the basement for a change of pace, let our kids do stunts off the couch to give us a few peaceful moments to update our Facebook profiles and rearranged our Netflix queue. Day five, we revved up the car and, like Bo and Luke from "The Dukes of Hazzard," cleared the berm at the end of our driveway to escape the littered play land of our living room and the growing stench of our mounting garbage. (I use the word garbage inclusively to include the four varieties of refuse we tend in my house: mixed recycling, glass recycling, food compost, and the true irredeemable garbage of rotting meat trays, used Kleenex, and paper towels coated in bacon grease.)

This latest storm posed two problems for me, a mother of two kids under four: nowhere to take the kids and nowhere to take the garbage. I have two phrases for you that capture my predicament: "14-month-old toddler" and "disposable diapers." Just because garbage pick up is cancelled for multiple Mondays doesn't mean Baby takes a BM holiday. Likewise, just because Baby plays for 45 minutes in the snow doesn't mean he will spend the rest of the day sitting on the floor, quietly leafing through Moo, Baa, La, La, La.

In the space of a few days, Baby learned to climb on top of the dining room chairs to pick candy off our gingerbread house, slide rattling pie pans down our basement stairs, and turn our living room recliner into a bouncy toy. My three year old stripped the beds of all their blankets and pillows, constructed a giant boat in the front room, and unlaced all of his shoes for enough rope to tie this boat to the dock of our couch.

Sometime early in the siege, my neighbor and I began a bizarre sort of urban prison transfer program, pawning our kids (the wardens) off on each other (the inmates) at intervals, leading to a motherly arms race of edu-tainment programming for one another's children. My son came home from next door with a Tupperware container full of homemade organic cupcakes, I sent her daughter home with handmade sock puppet. She taught my son some Japanese, I taught her daughter how to make a good imitation of a South American shamanic rainstick.

At the sweet onset of this storm, we thoughtfully taught our children the 200 words for snow. By day six, we took vows of silence and lifted the lid on the kids’ screen time from 20 minutes a day to one hour, per day, per supervising adult. With four adults between our two households, our children watched a heavy rotation of holiday classics such as "The Grinch," "Frosty," "Rudolf," and "A Christmas Story."

The problem of the garbage was a different matter. A person can’t very well take their garbage over to the neighbors for a few hours to restore household sanitation and harmony. We double-bagged the contents of our under-sink garbage and diaper pail, and put them temporarily in the recycling bin, hoping we wouldn't forget to take them out again before collection day.

We stacked up pizza boxes and empty pie pans in the corner of the kitchen to be hauled out at the first opportunity. We left our old newspapers on a living room coffee table until we’d picked over the stories so many times we knew them by heart. Not a few times I imagined myself and my family a colony of hamsters burrowing through a landscape of scraps, shavings, and shredded bedding.

My private caption for this recent city-crippling snow? Winter Storm 2008: Literally living in garbage! The first day of truly bare roads, which happened to coincide with our neighborhood garbage collection, I took my older son on a long drive around Beach Drive. Wind replaced snow flurries, and the streets danced with Styrofoam packing material and the saucer lids of garbage cans. Crumpled Christmas wrap, salami casings and cheese-ball stained doilies escaped into the streets from their overfull receptacles. Blank warranty cards and unread operating instructions for electronics, which will surely short out or become obsolete in 18 months, skirted down curbs, coming to a soggy rest in our already overtaxed storm drains. Oh! all the empty bottles of Bailey’s and red wine rolling in the gutters. What a brutal work day for some men and women with all the wind, tipped bins, and swirling refuse.

Driving through the churning surf of cardboard box tops, tissue paper, two-liter bottle caps, and plastic shrink wrap, I felt ashamed: I know exactly how my household contributes to this slush pile of garbage. Just that day I dumped four disposable diapers, an empty bag for baby spinach, and already the feet of my son's rubber lizard stocking stuffer. Look mom, now I have a snake!

Now and again, when I am a guest in someone's home, I am confronted with my dark side, a compulsion I call DOOPH!: the Desire to Organize Other People’s Houses. Why doesn't she just dump that expired Yankee candle? Why doesn't he send all those old credit card receipts through the shredder? Of course, it is the same reason I have a dead orchid on the window ledge over my kitchen sink and sea of unopened solicitations on the floor of my coat closet: there are better things to do with one’s time. I could easily spend an hour walking through my own house with a garbage bag or box for Goodwill and come up with a cornucopia of objects of astounding uselessness. Although I always feel vaguely oppressed by my collection of worthless clutter, being under weather induced house arrest intensified the claustrophobia. Like Johnny Rotten, living in a sea of frivolous waste makes me want to shave my head and push safety pins through my ears in an act of rebellious contrition. My friend invited me to join her in the Buy Nothing New movement for 2009, and after my recent experience of being cloistered with my many possessions, I just may do it.

If a few snowy days can teach us some lessons on slowing down, reconnecting with nature, our families and our neighbors, it can also give us a moment of pause on what it means to be cooped up at home, isolated in our little bergs, bereft of basic services and mobility, and lacking in the goods and services we have come to enjoy. Yes, I believe a post-vehicular, post-consumer lifestyle. Yet, what do I do on my first day of freedom from the snow? I go for a drive and go shopping. Surely, I am reminded by the storm of the social, physical, and spiritual benefits of enjoying domestic comforts, walking my neighborhood, and patronizing the stores closest to my home. Yet, the temporary privation also induces the urge to binge: on food, on entertainment, on the exercise of freedom and mobility.

If a sustainable future means cutting back, it must also mean expanding in new ways. Yes, we've got to put a lid on our garbage, but let us do it in a way that preserves abundance for all of our citizens. Yes, we need to drive our cars less, but let us find a transportation solution that does not hamper our mobility around our great city. Choosing a life of simplicity: good. Being forced into an austere life bereft of options: bad.

Our civic leaders can and should expect our patience and cooperation in facing the problems of our city; however, when the citizenry feels neglected and hemmed in, there will be backlash. Greg Nickels suffered a blow of confidence in December by painting a rosy picture of his effectiveness during the storm, seemingly unconcerned that many Seattle residents experienced a week of house arrest. This recent storm has become a touch point for those who feel Mayor Nickels pursues lofty ideals over the needs of ordinary citizens. Trust for solutions to the big problems is built upon a foundation of trust gained during small emergencies. To respond to crises large and small, from a snow storm to an economic downturn to climate change--our elected leaders must inspire us with a vision of a truly better way rather than simply proscribing our activities and constraining our movements. We must nurture our lives as we reshape them with sustainable principles in mind.

Mayor Nickels, let’s you and I adopt some new year’s resolutions: I'll make sure to keep my waste in check; you make sure the garbage gets picked up. I'll take public transportation more often; you keep the busses running during all sorts of weather. I'll invest my time, energy and money into the people and businesses of my neighborhood; you invest your time, energy and policies in a sustainable future for all the citizens of Seattle, up and down the economic ladder. Let's both stay a step ahead so the next time we face adverse conditions--long or short term--we are not paralyzed in place with few options. Yes, the landscape of our future is constantly shifting, but if we play it right, we can skip the cabin fever and enjoy the wonderland of a world made new.

Michele Starkey

West Seattle