I don’t live or teach in Stamford, but I do both in the next town over.  And so I started reading Stamford Talk.

I never thought I was a material person, but now that my Civic and I are getting older, I find myself craving a BMW 6 series. I can’t afford that car, but I want that car, because I see some beautiful ones in my gym’s parking lot at 6am. That car has started to look normal- and, in my fantasies, attainable- to me. That car is not normal, and this area is not normal. We have some very, very, very rich people around here, and we have a lot of poor people. I’m in the middle and I feel pretty damn lucky about that.

If it’s hard for adults to keep perspective, it must horrible for kids. If I were a poor kid in Stamford, I’m not sure how I’d deal with seeing other kids driving nice cars, using their iPhones and talking about fancy vacations. If you have money, this area is awesome; there are so many ways to spend it. If you don’t… well, you’re stuck on 95, living in an ugly apartment, and unable to enjoy a lot of the activities around here. Thank goodness Stamford has some beautiful parks, the free summer concerts, and… uh, that’s pretty much all the free stuff around here, right?

Can you imagine living in this area with no money?

Valid points.  You can’t even imagine how valid these points are unless you’re in this particular part of CT, or something similar to it.  It’s crazy here (and I grew up in affluent Westport, just a few exits away on I-95).  It’s gotten worse, and it’s getting worse.

Meanwhile, we’re spending money on dumb things like water, which is a status symbol, a seemingly cheap manifestation of conspicuous consumption.  Check it:

This book looks really interesting (via Very Short List).

And have you seen Chris Jordan’s work? I can’t really explain it in any way that will make any sense, but he takes stats on American consumption and takes photos of the actual numbers.  His photo of the two million plastic water bottles consumed every five minutes, which is on the page I linked to, is staggering.

I’m never going to get people to stop thinking that having a lot of stuff is a good measure of their self-worth, but I’ll be damned if I stop trying to figure out how to discourage the sale of Poland Spring bottles in our school cafeteria.