Many years ago, I wrote the following post after encountering the incredible amount of snails in our garden. In the intervening years, the snails have vanished. Now, my youngest son and I look forward to a particular patch of succulents on the walk to school that, when spring comes, turns into Snail City. It’s been dry for months, and then suddenly, this week, we came around the corner on a misty day and there they were in all of their glory. Here’s one that was particularly glorious.
It is springtime, and the snails are upon us. They are upon the lemon leaves, and the stucco walls, and the umbrella stand. Somehow, they are upon the closet doors, which happen to be inside the house. They are upon the roof rack of the car as it travels six hundred miles north to Mount Shasta, and they emerge unscathed.
Beware the person who steps barefoot into the grass at midnight. The ten yards to the bathroom now seems much preferable to the sickening crunch of a shell beneath the heel.
This is the first place I’ve lived that had so many snails. During the first few years in this house, I heard an odd sound at night, a cross between a scratch and a squeak.
One rainy evening, I looked up. Dozens of snails slid along the greenhouse that shelters our dining room table. (The greenhouse is the addition of the man who lived here previously. I have been to his new house, where he installed an even larger one, facing west. Ours, a prototype, is south-facing, and in the winter it is lovely and warm. In the summer, it is hot.)
The brown garden snail lays as many as 80 eggs a month, and can breed six times each season. No wonder it feels as if we’re being overrun.
Snail eggs
We planted three successive patches of sunflowers the summer before last. Each time, the shoots pushed up hopefully through the ground. Then they vanished in a single night. Only when we put a band of copper around them did they grow to tower over the greenhouse, blocking out some of the sun.
The copper works, people think, by creating a response in the snail’s nervous system that’s like an electric shock when the snail’s slimy foot crosses its path. But this technique has now reached its limit—it seems unreasonable to fence our yard entirely in copper. So last month, I bought a “natural” snail defense that I sprinkle around the base of the lemon and lime and blood orange trees.
At first I thought this was a deterrent just like the copper. But once I sat down to do some reading, I learned that the iron phosphate I’ve been shaking on like powdered sugar makes the snails ramp up their mucous production. Their metabolism slows, their bodies slow, and they find a place to die. A shiver rattled down my spine.
I am a hypocrite, I know. My primary method of snail destruction is to send them off to an uncertain end in the green waste bin. They likely feast until the truck from the city arrives, and then, I imagine, they meet the fate that Luke Skywalker and friends narrowly escaped.
I’ve never tried using two of my favorite things—caffeine and beer—as snail repellent. The caffeine may be toxic to the snail’s nervous system; the fermenting sweetness draws the snails in close, and then they drown. I’ve never tested either of these, perhaps because I don’t want to share, perhaps because the effect on snails is too similar to the effect on me.
I could try stopping snails with snails. The decollate snail, with its long, elegant shell, has the good taste to feast on the eggs and young of brown garden snails. (Unlike me—even though brown garden snails were introduced to be a food source, and could become high-protein, low-fat escargot, I have no desire to make them part of my garden’s bounty.)
I live in one of the citrus-growing counties where the decollate snail has been approved for use. The idea is appealing. The idea of even more snails in my yard, both of which eat lettuce, is not.
In fact, there are so many ways for snails to die that I started feeling a bit sorry for them. In truth, land snails are tiny warriors, nearly every part of their bodies fighting a battle against evaporation. Their shells shield their thin-skinned bodies; their slime attracts water; they can crawl on the edges of their feet to reduce water loss; they can estivate during heat and drought.
And yet, it had been raining all weekend, and the only afternoon activity that sounded appealing to the resident three-year-old was a snail hunt.
I picked them off of stucco walls and garden fences, off lemon leaves and lime-colored buckets. I lifted them carefully by the fragile shells. I pulled gently until they released their feet. I pointed out the four tentacles that help snails see and smell.
My son asked if he could look at the foot of the snail, and so we peered closer. The edges of the snail’s foot rippled like a ribbon. I thought about how finely balanced snails are, how small in a world of crows and droughts and hands that appear out of nowhere. And then carefully, so carefully, I dropped each one into the green waste bin.
At the beginning of the year I got an email asking me to "join" an exciting new political action committee. They meant "donate to" but I knew that request would come later in the email. This bold (and unsolicited) endeavor invited me to rise up! For moderation! For too long, the message claimed, Seattle's politics have rocked between two extremes. But now we finally have a chance to stand up for what's right: the middle.
“We believe collaboration and dialogue beat purity tests and echo chambers every time,” the email said. In a followup email, the PAC's founder wrote:
"In simple terms, moderate is rational. It means starting with evidence, tradeoffs, and limits, not ideology. Moderates believe progress comes from testing ideas, fixing what doesn’t work and scaling up what does, rather than jumping to moral certainty or sweeping solutions. We believe in working within constitutional boundaries toward incremental reform. We favor pluralism, rather than purity and wisdom over outrage."
Right off the bat: moderates can't claim the concept of scientific inquiry solely for themselves. Who doesn't take in the evidence around them to make the decisions they think are right? There are also plenty of qualifiers in the sentences above. Staying within constitutional boundaries. Choosing only incremental reforms. They will fix what "doesn't work" without explaining how or why they should be the ones to do so. They don't ask who has tried to fix things in the past and what (or whom) kept them from succeeding. They don't consider why we should be forever duty-bound to a centuries-old document written by slaveholders.
This PAC isn't the only entity that claims a centrist righteousness. Third-party presidential candidates often put themselves between the parties' two extremes. Bill Clinton may have risen to the white house with his centrist Third Way-inspired campaign. Democrats in red states often push a moderate approach to governance. When two people argue about something, someone will stand between them and claim to be right.
who's in the middle?
Moderates pride themselves on having a flexible ideology. But it can be hard to know what about their views will flex and what won't. They express being open to idea and dialogue, but that can come with unspoken constraints. What is and isn't off the table? The decisions they make are rational in their minds. But even people we disagree with consider themselves to be rational. Each of us, not just moderates, filter what we perceive through the values we hold.
Moderates claim that neither side of an issue is "right"—the truth must lie somewhere between. It's convenient to believe that the best course of action is one that neither extreme wants. They push compromises where neither side gets what they want. Only the moderate does. By staking themselves somewhere along a spectrum, they get to decide what is the middle. But the middle ground isn't fixed. The Overton window is malleable to public pressure and shifts often. Sometimes that's for no reason, other times it's because of heavy lobbying and ad buys.
"First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
The appeal of moderation comes down to one thing: power. Moderates are rational. They with cooler heads get to decide what doesn't affect them. Moderates are neutral. They seek to "moderate" the gulf between the oppressor and the oppressed. But moderates aren't neutral. They have biases and privileges like we all do. They choose this power because they can dictate terms that benefit them the most and harm them the least. To paraphrase Dr. King, moderates can say they agree with you and still act against you. As I like to say, racist folks in the south will tell you if they're racist. Everywhere else, you have to figure it out on your own.
What the moderate doesn't seem to want is a true discourse of ideas. Instead they crave the position of correctness. While those of us slug it out with our ideas and hopes and dreams and visions, the moderate rests. They "hear" ideas that align with their own sense of morality. Then they declare a winner.
you're not a moderate
I don’t believe people can "be" moderates. There is no clear middle between two extremes. The extremes aren't fixed. They're limited to our own worldviews and thoughts about an issue. No matter what position we hold, it isn't a moderate one any more than it's a natural one.
We all have skin in the game. We all have a point of view. Moderates can't call themselves the only rational thinkers across the entire political spectrum. Moderates in the halls of congress face huge public opposition. We see what one party is trying to get away with. We can't meet with compromise the destination they want to take us to.
If you consider yourself a person whose politics straddle two extremes, decide where you stand. Describe your values, what you believe in, what you want the world to be like. Be honest about your goals and the experiences that shape them. Claim your positions without claiming the higher ground by default. Most of us believe we’re being rational. Almost all of us consider evidence, tradeoffs, and limits. But we’re not politicians. We don’t need to take a middle road with our opinions. If you have something to say, say it. But don’t call it the moderate position. And don’t expect everyone else to agree that it’s moderate.
“Moderate” is as vague a description as “liberal” or “right-wing” is. That’s because the values underneath each of those descriptions change. Humans are malleable, persuadable, even when we think we’re not. Garfield teaches us that no one is immune from propaganda!
I too make decisions intending to be rational and thoughtful. I agree that collaboration and dialogue are essential to whatever we do together. But I'm not a moderate. Nobody is.
So You Might Join a Board..., written by Itai Jeffries and me, is out now. This book is for BIPOC, POGM, LGBTQIA+, and/or low-/no-income folks who are thinking about joining a board of directors.
People in one or more of these groups can use the discount code POWER at checkout to buy this book for $1. People who want to change their board at an organization with an annual budget of less than $500,000 can use code BOARD to buy this book for $50.
Nearly every Riz Ahmed project shares a certainty and a question: the certainty of Ahmed’s presence, of course, and the question of what his presence means, a query that is now so embedded within Ahmed’s career that it also requires an “of course.” More »
I grew up in Springfield, Oregon, not Portland (though I was born there). One thing that has happened here (I am here now) is that as housing prices have skyrocketed, even in this working class town, is that the large backyards created when this area was developed shortly after World War II are increasingly being divided up and turned into multi-plex housing, especially when the original house was falling apart and needed to be torn down (quite common around where I grew up). So I think this is an important story, focusing on Portland in this context:
Not so long ago, the house that Laurel Moffat owns in Portland, Oregon, would have been illegal.
Moffat’s 900-square-foot space is part of a duplex, sharing a wall with another home. And the two homes are both in the backyard of an older house.
“I’d been looking on and off for three years. I was frustrated. Homes in Portland are really expensive,” said Moffat, 30, a health policy analyst for the state of Oregon.
She could afford a house above $400,000, around her county’s median home price. But in that price range, she mostly found fixer-uppers and condos with high fees, until she discovered her duplex. “I could afford a much higher-quality house as a first-time home buyer. … For a new build, that wasn’t possible except for these infill homes.”
As the housing cost crunch has spread from coastal cities to nearly every town in America, and consensus has coalesced around the idea that an undersupply of housing is to blame, many communities have changed their laws to allow more “middle” or “infill” housing in existing neighborhoods. This makes for denser living than a single-family house on a lot, but far less dense than a big apartment building.
Portland now has duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and six-plexes. Townhouses that stack one behind another, going deep into a lot, rather than all facing the street. Houses in backyards and on wheels. “Cottage clusters” of tiny homes.
While other cities, counties and states have allowed these housing options, Portland has done more than most to create incentives for their construction.
“You can legalize any kind of housing that you want in your city. But whether or not it gets built depends on if it’s a financeable and sellable product,” said Francis Torres, a housing expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Portland determined that the key factor was square footage, specifically a measure known as “floor-area ratio.”
In most of the city, the updated regulations limit thesize of a single-family house to half the square footage of its lot — so on a typical 5,000-square-foot lot, the house can be a maximum of 2,500 square feet.
But if developers build something with multiple housing units, they are allowed to go bigger. On that same lot, a duplex could be 3,000 square feet, or a triplex could be 3,500 square feet, or a fourplex could be 4,000 square feet. And developers can count on making more money from those multiple units collectively than from a single-family home.
It seems to have worked: In the first year after the rules went into effect in 2021, 88 percent of new building permits were for middle housing and accessory dwelling units, far outpacing single-family homes. And fourplexes were three times as popular as duplexes and triplexes. The city said last year that it had permitted 1,400 of the denser homes in three years.
Anyone who opposes this is just flat out wrong. No one needs gigantic back yards. Build the housing!
Log in
Nearly every Riz Ahmed project shares a certainty and a question: the certainty of Ahmed’s presence, of course, and the question of what his presence means, a query that is now so embedded within Ahmed’s career that it also requires an “of course.” More »
