Board Meetings

I need a can of Pam. The thought occurs to me every year on a day like today. 

We’ve just had our first snowfall, 2-3 inches of heavy wet heart-attack snow. A few hours from now, our wise-ass weather man predicts “snain” will start falling, which will become, by tomorrow, an icy, bumpy, frozen mess. I’m outside at 6:00 a.m., clearing the driveway old-school–with a shovel– because my snowblower is in the shop having its carburetor rebuilt. I’ve made a few passes, going slow, lifting with my legs, dumping snow at the edge of the driveway. Years ago one of my colleagues waxed poetic about cutting his grass with a non-motorized rotary mower. He was an American lit guy, very WWTD. What would Thoreau do?  We don’t ride the train; the train rides us. So true. The older I get, the more I like old-school, the work, the basics. Does every task today require a gadget? 

In the case of this snow, and the shoveling of it, the problem today is the dump. Half of the wet heavy heart-attack snow sticks to the surface of my snow metal shovel when I get to the edge of the driveway. It’s twice the work. It’s too much heavy lifting to be likeable. 

I read one time that Pam is the answer. Just spray your shovel’s surface with Pam and the snow will slide off like over-easy eggs. 

Thoreau, I trust, would not be a Pam-man. And I can just hear Tizi. 

“I don’t like that stuff. Is Pam safe?”

“I wouldn’t use it for cooking. It’s for my snow shovel. I don’t think it’s dangerous.”

“Yes, but chemicals.”

Does she mean dimethyl silicone, the anti-foaming agent, and the butane and propane propellants? “We’re just talking about a squirt here and there. It might save my life.”

“What?”

“Heavy wet snow. I’m lifting with my legs. But this is heart-attack snow. You just spray your shovel with Pam.”

When I went away to college my mother gave me an old cast iron pan. Some mornings I cooked eggs in it. I didn’t yet understand the concept of “seasoning” the pan, keeping it away from soap and water, oiling it, greasing it, caring for its surface. Fried in butter, my eggs always stuck and burned. I had to scrape them onto a plate, prompting me to scrub the pan even more aggressively with a Brillo pad and dish soap, malpractice that only made the problem worse. It made me hate breakfast. 

Back home at that time my grandmother had started to cook my grandfather’s eggs in a teflon pan, which he did not like. He said he could taste the teflon. 

“If not Pam, maybe I should look for a teflon snow shovel.”

“Does such a thing exist?”

“You ask?”

“That stuff is terrible.”

“To cook on, maybe. But on a snow shovel?”  

“Your grandfather was right. Teflon is bad.”

I have three snow shovels in the garage, all three sticky. When I think of them going to a landfill I feel ashamed–the waste, the pollution. You can’t recycle your old sticky snow shovels. I don’t think I can bring myself to buy another one. 

The Pam question is of a piece with an existential debate on the perils of contemporary life. How much technology–in the form of devices and product–do we really need? At what risk? Can we think clearly about risk?

A few years ago Tizi asked me to start using a plastic cutting board. Around that time, suddenly, without warning, wood was out. If you cut meat or chicken on wood, bacteria would adhere to it. Even if you washed the board rigorously with soap and water, you were taking your life in your hands.  Plastic washed better. So over the next twenty years I used plastic, bonding with two plastic cutting boards that washed better than wood. Then popular science declared war on microplastics, which could migrate from my cutting board to the chicken breast I was slicing, etc. Etc. Damn that etc. 

I transitioned back to wood. In short order, life was good again. 

Now at issue, a new danger: my sponge. 

I clean continuously while I cook. Anything on the counter or in the sink I wash with a sponge in soapy water, rinse, and put away. The pan I used to boil cabbage, I wash it and put it away. Or I wash it and re-use it for the rice we’re going to eat.  Robyn Samuels, writing for Crush Mag, observes, “Cleaning as you cook [can] be the difference between having a cute kitchen and it looking like a hoarder’s home.” 

When Tizi sees me at the sink soaping and rinsing, she says, “Put those things in the dishwasher.”

“I like washing stuff,” I tell her. WWTD?

“You put stuff in the dishwasher to clean and to disinfect.” I don’t think anything in our sink is “infected” but decide against arguing. She points at the sponge I’m wringing out and adds, “That thing is disgusting.” 

Once a year I spend $10 on a bag of 24 non-scratch, Scotch Brite sponges at Costco. They’re part of my regime of clean. 

“Plus,” she says, giving me an accusatory look, “microplastics.”

“In my sponge?”

“Yes.”

No. Please no. 

I do as I’m told. Right now, sitting on the soap dish at the edge of the kitchen sink is a loofah attached to a plant-based cellulose sponge. Just looking at it makes me angry. One, I hate the word loofah. Two, I hate the feel of the loofah in my hand. Three, I hate folding it and squashing it into a stained cappuccino cup. The distinct sensory pleasure in the act of washing dishes is gone.

In May 2025, in The Strategist section of New York Magazine, the kitchen and dining writer rated seven sponges for material, size, and function. Her goal: “the least amount of weird sponge slime” in her soap dish and minimizing the use of plastics in the kitchen. The winner (she calls it “best in class”) is the Skura style kitchen sponge, $15 for four of them. She says she sanitizes (disinfects) her sponges in the dishwasher (whereas Tizi lights ours up in the microwave oven). One sponge lasts three months. The Skura, along with the next two highest rated items, the Scrub-it and Jetz-Scrubz, are quick-drying polyurethane foam. Evidently she isn’t terribly worried about microplastics. Should I be? After the three winners come the eco-friendly foam-alternative sponges. Fourth place goes to the loofah model. And so on.

I’ll have to do something. My scotch-brite days are numbered. I’m tempted to try the Airnex Natural Kitchen Sponge, # 5 in The Strategist’s ratings. It’s dual sided with a coconut husk scrubber side. At $17 for 12 of them, they’re easier on the pocket book. Maybe coconut husk, which should make Tizi happy, will feel better in my hands than loofah.

A few days ago she said, “I think we should get a titanium cutting board.” She says it cleans better than wood. I was horrified. I tried a glass cutting board briefly. All the sensory pleasure in the experience was gone. The sound and feel was like nails on the chalkboard. Cutting, chopping, slicing, and dicing on titanium will be equal or worse. I’m not budging. I’ll live and die by wood.