Because every good movement starts in the bowels.
Please visit out new, re-designed site at www.thePOOPproject.org, and join us in honoring World Toilet Day (I didn’t make this up…) at Home Sweet Home this November 19th!
Peaceful pooping,
The Puru
(New website graciously hosted by VII Designs.)
Click here to learn more and wash your conscience clean!
Did you know that washing your hands with soap is one of the most cost-effective health care solutions on the planet? Though nasty germs are everywhere, the ones on your hands can come into contact with (and thus spread disease through) innumerable other objects, eventually gaining access into your body when you scratch a small cut, rub your eyes or eat with your fingers. Indulging in soapy, foamy, wet goodness all over your hands, between your fingers and under your nails (washing for at least 20 seconds) can drastically reduce the rate of infection, keeping adults at work, children in school, and all of us feeling productive, prosperous and happy. Isn’t that grand?
Unfortunately, for much of the developing world, there’s a lot more at stake than a missed day at school. According to UNICEF figures, close to 29,000 children under the age of five die every day from preventable causes. That’s 21 children each minute whose lives are lost to diarrhea, respiratory illnesses (pneumonia), malaria and many other dreadful illnesses that could be kept at bay through fairly simple means. While some of these challenges are best met with vaccines and medicines, one pump of soap and a little bit of water is incredibly effective at stopping the spread of typhoid, cholera, giardia and infections–especially when done habitually after using the toilet. (For more exact statistics, see the Handwashing Fact Sheet).
School children in Bolivia make a handwashing unit out of old plastic bottles. Photo: Matthias Saladin
Before you put away that celebratory champagne, remember that today also happens to be Blog Action Day 2010: Water, sponsored by Change.org. (I am happy to be posting today as a part of that.) While every man, woman and child has the right to clean drinking water, it’s important to note that “clean water” is often a euphemism that really means “poop-free water.” Every gram of feces can contain 10 million viruses and one million bacteria, so when people don’t have toilets and poop gets in their water, or when they use the toilet but don’t wash their hands with soap, it only takes a little bit to cause big trouble.
All hands on deck! (Photo: USAID)
Water is the stuff of life; it sustains us, cleanses us, it’s what we’re mostly made of. On a day like today, I encourage you to take a moment and acknowledge how lucky we are to turn on the tap and drink without fear. If you can take a long shower, a hot bath, or flush a toilet, know that you might have it better than most of the world. So go out there, indulge in what we’ve got–use the bathroom freely, wash your hands with relish, and eat messy finger foods. With our thoughts, our donations, and our signatures on the petition line, soon the rest of the world will join us.
If “a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet,” then how do we sweetly name something that literally smells like shit?
Announcing: THE RENAME THE POOP PROJECT PROJECT: Turning POOP into a friendly acronym
Why rename POOP?
The goal of The Poop Project is to create public conversation around our often private business so as to heal the common cultural shame we feel around a natural bodily function. The problem is, a lot of people are turned off by the very mentioning of poop. If we can make the “poop” in our name an acronym, then we can use our short name for some things (i.e. shorthand, some press), and the longer one for times when some euphemisim behooves us (i.e. a listing of corporate donations or grants).
How can you participate?
We need your vote to establish an acronym for POOP that describes our important mission. To read more about The Poop Project and to cast your vote, please click here.
The winning name will be announced at our World Toilet Day Party on November 19th (please stay tuned for exciting details!)
Questions? Ideas? Please message us.
Thank you for your input,
Shawn “The Puru” Shafner and Rebecca “Number 2” Leibowitz
ContactThePoopProject@gmail.com
The Puru and his Number Two (Rebecca Leibowitz) recently took a friend (also named Rebecca), and took a trip to Curry-Ya. It’s a small Japanese restaurant on 10th Street in Manhattan that specializes in small, flavorful curry stew pots served with a molded mound of rice. The food was exquisite and the sake half-off, but what brought us there was the opportunity to try a Toto Washlet.
The lovely Jasmine (control panel not shown).
Toto describes the Washlet, also known as The Chloe or The Jasmine, as, “a very luxurious toilet seat.” They’re not kidding. On the newest models, plastic, anti-microbial toilet seats and lids go up and down automatically, or float their way back down with a “soft close,” so you’ll never hear a banging noise. The sound of birds chirping or water bubbling may begin to play. When you sit down the seat’s already warm, but it doesn’t run full-time because you can program it on auto and it will learn and follow your schedule. These features are also present in the Toto Warmlet, but clean-up time is when the Washlet really shines.
Bliss is just a button away.
Press the button marked “Rear Cleansing,” and a wand, after being sterilized by a blast of hot water, will emerge from the bottom of the seat, and a small stream will shoot out to, well, cleanse your rear. Try “Rear Cleansing Soft” for a more soothing experience, or press “Front Cleansing” and the wand will poke out further, providing a rinsing obviously designed for women but surely useful to the opposite sex when looking for a tickle. Not sold yet? Sample the pulsating and oscillating options, or change the angle of the wand so it really hits the spot. Once your bath has bottomed out and the automatic deodorizer done its job, set the temperature on the dryer and take a few deep breaths. Life is but a dream.
Apparently it was holding up traffic...
These toilets, ubiquitous in Toto’s home country of Japan, have been slowly trickling into the US, and may best be remembered for their short-lived 2007 ad campaign, “Clean is Happy.” You remember, the one with the smiling butts and the public demonstrations. But (ahem) Americans, satisfied with the status quo and put off by the idea, have been slow to try them. Those who do are quickly converted, and most can’t wait to tell their friends.
YouTube videos with names like, “The Truth About Bidets is Self Evident” and “Hodding Carter & the Toto Washlet—A Love Story” extol the virtues of its design. One online reviewer, Kwaichi, comments while showing the cleansing stream shoot out: “Wonderful. Beautiful. Lovely pressure.” He pans the camera to show the wooden door opposite the toilet, dripping from top to bottom. A man with a wry grin faces the camera and raves, “I got something this week that’s gonna change my life.” With a price tag of $484 to over $1,500, just for the seat itself, it better change your life and make you coffee in the morning. At least you’ll be saving on toilet paper, if perhaps not on your water consumption.
Let’s say you can’t find the cash or a penguin to install it. Those wishing to pamper their derrieres without mortgaging the children or raiding zoos can make a habit of dining at one of many fine restaurants, like Curry-Ya, that offer a Washlet in their water closet. The Toto website lists options for those residing in New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta and San Diego, and having seen one at a Korean restaurant in New Jersey, I’m sure there are others out there. (Incidentally, Yelp just released a guide for interesting New York bathrooms, including the Washlet.) You can also find them for sale at housing goods stores, or get an idea by taking a virtual tour of the Neorest, the Washlet’s uber-bourgeoisie compact toilet cousin.
But back to 10th Street with two friends both named Rebecca. After both of them had come and gone, and then come back refreshed and excited, I excused myself to use the toilet before the food came out. I only had to pee, but of course I sat down. Ohhh, the seat, so pleasantly warm—great now, but no doubt amazing in winter. And the jets, pulsations, the warm, drying air? My only regret is that I couldn’t stay longer.
What do you do when you have to pass gas? Let it out and pray that it’ll be dead on delivery–no sound or smell? Or perhaps you excuse yourself from the room to duck behind a wall or out on the patio, pretending you’ve spied a little bird. You could cough, scoot your chair back, abstain permanently from beans. Or perhaps you are astonished, shocked, and have no idea what I’m talking about.
Nary a noxious fume for Miss Manners.
You wouldn’t be alone in your denial. Seeking etiquette advice for just such a dangerous situation, I turned to Emily Post, whose search engine could find no relevant pages. It seems that neither “flatulence” nor “gas,” not “poot,” “fart,” or even humble “wind” has ever entered her vocabulary or life circumstances.
Paul Spinrad’s The RE/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids, quotes Miss Manners in 1983:
“Unacceptable Noises. Miss Manners does not plan to mention them, chiefly because they are unmentionable, but you all know who you are. What they are. At any rate, there are noises that are acknowledged by neither the noisemaker nor the noise recipient, because socially they do not exist.”
Yet scientists proclaim that each of us are cutting an average 14 chunks of cheese per day. What should we do?
Likely from the 1799 publication, "Praise of the fart: historical, anatomical, and philosophical dissertation on its origin, its antiquity, its virtues, its shape, the honors paid to it by ancient peoples, and the jokes to which it has given rise"
The Egyptians and Romans, at least according to the French, created a mischievous Godling for the recognition and worship of intestinal sounds. Whether truth or satire, he is said to be referred to as Crepitus Ventris, or “noises of the bowels.” The word “crepitus” also referred to other sorts of ancient noises–such as strange coughing, the scooting of a chair, or Cicero’s fingernails clawing down a blackboard.
While it’s not impossible that such a deity existed in ancient times (Roman emperor Claudius did consider passing a royal edict to allow gas passing at dinner), this god’s probable origin as satire may say more about the way we view the occasional toot. As far back as the 4th Century, (Pseudo) Pope Clement I wrote appallingly of the Egyptians: “others (among the Egyptians) teach that intestinal noise (Latin: crepitus ventris) ought to be regarded as a god.” It’s the original “You smell!”
(Crepitus may not have had temples to his name, but he did get a nice Wikipedia article, and an academic blogster has paid him some mind.)
That said, nearly everyone appreciates a fart joke. The opening scene of Aristophanes’ The Clouds hinges on it, as does the final scene of “The Miller’s Wife” in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Even royalty gets in on the act, perhaps epitomized in this story about Queen Elizabeth I recorded by anecdotal biographer John Aubrey:
“This Earle of Oxford [Edward de Vere] making his low obeisance [bow] to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a Fart, at which he was so abashed and ashamed that he went to Travell, 7 yeares. On his returne the Queen welcomed him home, and sayd, ‘My Lord, I had forgot the Fart.'”
(Further examples in this fascinating essay on Class and Swearing from the Online Encyclopedia.)
Yet hold that up to another Miss Manners story, also about Queen Elizabeth (again quoted from Spinrad):
“The Queen and another chief of state were reviewing troops on horseback when a loud fart came from her direction. She immediately apologized for her horse’s having broken wind, and her host graciously brushed it off but then added that had she not mentioned it, he would have actually thought the horse had done it.”
Something tells me it's a stinker...
Polite or not, acknowledged or assumed, it probably is best for us to go ahead and do it. Greek physician Hippocrates wrote:
“It is best when wind passes without noise, but it is better that flatulence should pass even thus than it should be retained.”
Benjamin Franklin sought freedom even for flatulence, and felt the unpleasant scent was the only reason farting was forbidden.
“Were it not for the odiously offensive smell accompanying such escapes, polite people would probably be under no more restraint in discharging such wind in company, than they are in spitting, or in blowing their noses.”
He continues by challenging science, “to discover some drug wholesome and not disagreeable, to be mixed with our common food, or sauces, that shall render the natural discharges, of wind from our bodies, not only inoffensive, but agreeable as Perfumes.” (Further excerpts from and information about Franklin can be found at Things that Stink.)
I’m sorry to say that I haven’t yet come across a potion that can do that (Beano might be the closest…). But I did find the portrait work of Hsin-Wei Hsu, who turns farting into art.
Ye olde apple a day keeps the leeches away.
I know it might be hard to believe, but there’s a lot more to say about farts. For now, let’s leave with a simple rhyme that comes from Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum, a collection of wisdom from the medical school in Salerno, Italy in the 15th century. This particular version comes from a 1608 translation by the very same Sir John Harington who invented the modern flush toilet twelve years earlier. It reads:
79.
Great harms have grown, and maladies exceeding,
By keeping in a little blast of wind:
So Cramps and Dropsies, Colics have their breeding,
and Mazèd Brains for want of vent behind.
Besides we find in stories worth the reading,
A certain Roman Emperor was so kind,
Claudius by name, he made a Proclamation,
A Scape to be no loss of reputation.
Great suppers do the stomach much offend,
Sup light if quiet you to sleep intend.
Thank you. And to all a good night.
This past December, I moved into an old three-story house with five other people. All of us were interested in a slightly alternative living situation, and this grand Victorian manor with a meditation room and backyard–smack in the middle of Brooklyn–definitely fit the bill.
The Puru and Housemates with their backyard compost bin.
We set an intention to collaborate on a living space that was environmentally conscious and actively progressive. We banned paper towels and hung reusable shoulder bags by the door. We built a bin for compost, and started planting in the spring. The kitchen’s now filled with home-brewed kombucha, sauerkraut and kimchi. And closest to my heart, we don’t flush when we pee.
When people ask me what they can do to get involved with The Poop Project, I often tell them to follow the advice of former California Governor Jerry Brown. He promoted water conservation in the ’70s with the phrase: “If it’s yellow, let it mellow.” Upon which his enemies finished the phrase: “If it’s Brown, flush it down.”
I wish there was more we could do right now to put our “waste” to work, but composting toilets are not practical for most, nor is going toilet-paper free (stay tuned for more on that…). And then this book came in the mail.
Pee your way to perfect peas!
Of course! LIQUID GOLD!
I leafed through the slim book, and left it on the kitchen table. It wasn’t long before Rex, my housemate, came to me with watering can in hand, asking for a contribution. I was proud to do my part, spurred on by the amazing results Carol Steinfeld shows in her book. We’re talking seriously mean greens, no Miracle-Gro needed.
Not only that, but it just so happens that tomorrow, June 21, is Pee-On-Earth Day, bringing joy and celebration to Peecyclers everywhere! Don’t neglect your plants from getting the golden shower they so desperately deserve. There’s never been a better time to urinate all over nature, while nourishing it at the same time!
Still, progressive as we are, I don’t know whether we’re going to start collecting our household urine on a regular basis. Another housemate was a little grossed-out about what had just been in the watering can. But for those with the means and the desire, let me know if it starts working for you. As soon as Rex finds the best way to capture her own pee, I’ll let you know how it’s going for us.
Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000) dares you to say his name three times fast. He was an Austrian artist and architect who defied straight lines, designed buildings with “tree tenants” occupying entire rooms, and liked to lecture in the nude.
His vision was of a world where humans, buildings, and the environment all work together to support one another. He planned buildings with planted gardens growing on the roof, and designed the Maishima Incineration Plant in Osaka, Japan where they turn human biosludge (poop) into slag (a building material). In his Sacred Shit Manifesto he wrote:
Shit turns into earth which is put on the roof
it becomes lawn, forest, garden
shit becomes gold.
The circle is closed,
there is no more waste
Shit is our soul
Check out Hundertwasser’s Holy Shit and Humus Toilet, or some of these links for more information:
The Hundertwasser official website. Loads of info, including pictures and manifesto texts.
A Kiwi environmental/consciousness blog that contains the text: ” The Paradise Destroyed by the Straight Line.”
And on the sanitation site in Japan:
This guy toured the domestic trash and sewage waste sites, and wrote up an article about it. The Puru hopes to do the same one day soon.
This comprehensive Hundertwasser blog offers some video and pictures of the facilities in Osaka.
Click the picture to read a travel article on Hundertwasser's famous public toilets in Kawakawa, New Zealand. Among other features, the toilet boasts "A living tree is integrated into the structure and tufts of native grass adorn the roof - a fitting crown for this king of toilets whose golden orbs add a final regal touch."
In a sanitized culture that systematically renders the sights, sounds, and smells of poop invisible, the Poo Guru pries open the lid to enlightenment by proudly proclaiming: I’M A POOPER!
It feels good to let it out.
Now the Poo Guru—Puru for short—invites you to get the urge, and join The Poop Project: A Cultural Movement. Together, we’re flushing away the shameful stains that keep poop talk locked in the water closet, so we can look inside the porcelain bowl and ask some interesting questions:
-Is pooping into our fresh water supply the best way to manage our poop?
-Why do so many of us feel guilty about going to the potty?
-Is toilet paper really the best way to clean ourselves?
-Why are 42% of the world’s population (2.6 billion people) currently living without toilets, so that poop winds up in their water, food and homes?
-Why do we treat our poop as “waste” when we could be fertilizing our fields, building our houses, and generating our energy–all from something that comes out of our behinds?!?!
The Poop Project doesn’t have the answers, but it’s making quite a stink. So grab a bran muffin and head on down the hall to commune with the Puru lying deep inside of you.
–Shawn “the Puru” Shafner
October 30, 2010
The Puru
The Poop Project: A Cultural Movement 