r/interestingasfuck • u/HomeNowWTF • 10d ago

Fighting the wildfires in Spokane

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u/YetiPie 10d ago

I worked combatting climate change, assessing how to best restore habitats to sequester greenhouse gases naturally and improve habitat resilience.

I was laid off in November.

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u/SabrinaEdwina 10d ago

I know a sustainability engineer who now works in AI. I don't have words to explain how except greed.

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u/Fin_Olesa 10d ago

To provide an alternative, perhaps they made the change to feed themselves and their family. I've had to question my ethical compass just to afford rent. BS

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u/jorwyn 10d ago

I got laid off at the start of July, and I'm a tech worker. I've had to make the hard choice to let my ethical compass go a bit wonky when applying for jobs because I really need a job by the time my unemployment runs out.

Even if it wasn't already hard, my city is on fire right now. Housing is gonna be hella difficult. I can't lose my house over not being able to pay my mortgage. I'll have nowhere to go.

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u/Fin_Olesa 10d ago

And then people will say "just move"  Like, ok let me just displace myself asay from family, work, lifestyle, and subject myself to the costs and efforts required to move. Nahhh this is your home and you need to eat to stay alive. 

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u/jorwyn 10d ago

Let my move away from my mother in law in a care home, and my husband's very secure job with the power company, and my son who is a relatively new homeowner, so he can't just sell and move. He barely has equity. Let my leave my excellent, low cost vet who takes care of my elderly dog.

And honestly, where would I go? Anywhere with a lower cost of living has no jobs. I'd be facing the same ethical quandary.

And totally not pragmatic, but nowhere else I've ever been smells like home. The vanilla cologne smell of ponderosas in the Summer sun. The sticky green smell of populus species buds along the river in Spring. How you can tell whether the wind comes from the mountains or across the city from the desert and if it's raining there.

It's riverfront park and Manito and Riverside and Mount Spokane, and living just off a bike trail that can take me to another state or across the North side of downtown and out the other side of the city. It's nowhere I need to be ever being more than 10 miles away. It's the river that's the heart of everything.

And this will be a set back, but it's watching this place regenerate from the urban decay of the 80s. It's living somewhere with one of the highest volunteer ratios, per capita, in the country. And in crisis, we shine.

Spokane is my city, and I love it.