Christina Hunter
Bio
Author, Mother, Wife. Recipient of the Paul Harris Fellowship award and 2017 nominee for the Women of Distinction award through the YWCA. Climate Reality Leader, Zero-Waste promoter, beekeeper and lover of all things natural.
Stories (51)
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Sacred Space. Second Place in Dream Date Challenge.
The day collapsed into evening with a sigh of relief from the group. The workers were tired, not just from today, but from all the days that came before. Their hands were raw and chapped from exposure and dust particles flying up with each passing car. Some had splinters from the wooden posts they carried as they paced along the shoulder of the highway. LOCKED OUT, the signs read. It had been months of the strike with no end in sight. They watched as the season turned from winter to spring. From snow pants and extra gloves to sunglasses and on the warmer days even t-shirts. At the beginning there was outrage from the community, and the support from passing vehicles was heartwarming. Cars honked, good samaritans dropped off coffee and donuts, even pizza on one occasion. But the community was getting tired of the rolling strikes, and it was taking it’s toll on the morale of the workers too. First it was the teachers, then the nurses, and now the factory workers. It seemed to be an ongoing issue with different sections of the town, each group putting their lives on hold. Ali had mixed feelings about it. As the youngest in the crew and only one of two women she felt she had to stand her ground with the crew men. She didn’t want special treatment, and while some of those harsher winter days out on the picket line were enough to make her want to quit, she never would. She felt a camaraderie with what she now considered her group. The other woman, Marg, had spent her life as a factory worker, her skin weathered with age and stress and even her voice had deepened to that of the men’s. Ali on the other hand was Marg’s opposite; young, petite, fragile. Some of the men would shield her from the winds when they came, other times they’d offer her their coats or extra mitts. When it was her turn to lug the wood to the burn barrel someone usually stepped in to take her place. The only one that treated her the same as the others was Mack. When it was Ali’s turn to collect the signs at the end of the shift and place them in the back of the pick-up truck, Mack would joke “better you than me!” while he sat scrolling his phone. Something in the way he smirked when he said it made her understand that he wasn’t being a jerk, he was showing that he saw her as his equal. She had heard him say that very sentence the day before to Al, the elderly worker. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why it made her feel better about the situation, but it did.
By Christina Hunter5 years ago in Humans
The World Was Duped
Plastic, originally named bakelite by it's inventor Baekeland, was created in 1909 if you can believe it. But our love for plastic didn't explode onto the scene until the middle of the century, when women began working outside of the home, and the consumer industry had a lightbulb moment that they packaged and sold as "convenience".
By Christina Hunter5 years ago in FYI
A Nut-Milker's Dream Come True
As an avid zero-waster it pained me each week to reach for that carton of almond milk from the grocery store dairy aisle. It felt as if the naysayers of the community were peaking around corners tsk-tsk'ing at my waxed-cardboard carton of deliciousness. Of course that likely wasn't the case, but I felt like an imposter who openly shares my views of cutting back household waste and then (not even discretely) adding wasteful packaging to my very own grocery cart. BUT - smoothies... am I right? I couldn't just cut almond milk out of my life. It was my one Achilles' heel in the zero-waste world.
By Christina Hunter5 years ago in Feast
