Marlon Meyer
Northwest Asia Weekly
The house has large panes of glass, like saucers that reflect part of the sky. But they were surrounded by charcoal-colored wood, cut in many places, and looked dusty.
“Is that the ban on Shoushan?”
Rick Satori, 53, walked up to the homeowner, who was loading drywall and other building materials into the dumpster.
The woman replied, “No.” They had to cut corners and couldn’t afford the expensive ancient Japanese technique of burning wood to extract the resin to make it fireproof.
This is an imitation. But for Satori, it was the beginning of a new phase in his life.
Like millions of other Americans who saw the pandemic as a time to question the value of their jobs and start something new, Satori started a new career.
In an interview with Northwest Asia Weekly last week, he had just had his first job interview on his new career path and was eagerly awaiting news of another opportunity (his name and some details had been changed to protect his economic viability as he has not but completely switched careers).
The change is long-standing — a slow hurricane gathering strength from the isolation of the pandemic, a questioning of values, a sense of despair over the murder of George Floyd, and the sting of a ruthless president resentment.
However, these insignificant sensations gave him room to regain his inspiration.
Change
Due to problems with his home, including a leaking roof, wiring issues, and general needs for renovations, he found himself watching videos on home construction and design.
He has always been interested in protecting the environment.
While kayaking on Lake Washington, he would lean over to pick up bottles and debris from the water, attach them to the net on the top of the hull, pack them up and recycle them.
But he has now discovered, in particular, from a video that 40% of the carbon waste we emit into the air comes from building materials and housing.
“Let’s say you go to the hardware store and you’re looking at a pair of four people. You have to think, what does it take to produce them, mill them, ship them here?” he said. “Then think about the same problem with a ceramic washbasin.”
He was also inspired by Greta Thunberg, a 13-year-old climate protection activist from Sweden.
Satori has gone from despair during the pandemic to believing that our personal lives and actions are “insignificant” to believing what Thunberg has always advocated – that one can make a difference.
“She played truant and sat alone outside the Swedish parliament,” he said. Later, she spoke at the United Nations, inspiring millions.
“She was willing to say to politicians very directly, ‘You are ruining our lives,'” Satori said.
Satori stands under a sprawling chestnut tree as we overlook Lake Washington from a small meadow that is neither a formal park nor private land. The wind blew, and he folded his hands on his chest.
He realized that his work was meaningless. He has worked in the high-end real estate market. He found a program that would train him in green energy and architectural design in the evenings and some weekends.
“I literally turn off my work computer at the end of the day, then sit on the couch and turn it on again and start doing my homework.”
He visited and learned about energy efficient buildings, green building codes, and even found an internship at the Green Builders Association. It was daunting, not only with the sheer amount of work, but with the wide variety of students in his class, who often had completely different backgrounds and weren’t always ready to collaborate.
For months, he had to constantly muster up the courage to look for the positive.
He was initially discouraged when his internship turned out to be nothing more than his cold call to invite to an event involving the building’s owner.
Then he turned around.
“It was a great networking opportunity,” he said.
Finally, one of his mentors introduced him to a potential employer. She owns a women’s company that helps businesses meet stringent environmental regulations in the region. Her only employee just left.
However, during his first interview with her, she talked nonstop for an hour.
“Don’t you think we need to talk more?” she said finally.
In the second interview, she whispered to him, interrupted him, and spoke on him.
“It’s a red flag,” he said.
Additionally, this is an independent contract job with only a minimum number of hours per week.
At this point, however, he was also conducting an informational interview, not to find a job, but to figure out what skills a candidate lacked in a position.
A classmate he was interviewing told him that his boss was looking for someone.
He hopes to hear back this week.
the meaning of it all
Satori, who majored in philosophy at Berkeley, believes his shift is part of a broader post-pandemic reassessment that is taking place globally.
During the lockdown, he said, he felt a strong sense of isolation but at the same time a sense of solidarity with the rest of the world.
“You see pictures from empty streets all over and realize they’re going through the same thing,” he said. “This global thing has had an impact on the planet since World War II, but even then it probably hasn’t reached every corner of Africa.”
It is this thought that transcends the despairing sense of insignificance. This is when he started taking a serious look at climate change and began to stake his life on avoiding it.
“We went to protests about George Floyd, and before that, we went to the women’s march after the inauguration. I seriously thought about being an activist, but I realized I didn’t want to be arrested, and here it is What you have to do and be prepared for.”
While his house was decaying, he also had a dream of one day building a sustainable house, though he didn’t know that in his wildest dreams he couldn’t afford it.
Still, as a hobby, he started designing a house, what it would look like, what building techniques it would use, how it would face the sun to save energy.
He began to spend all his free time on the project, working with unfamiliar computer animation tools that he was forced to become familiar with.
He shared his paintings with friends, wives and even some architects. It’s a beautiful, white, green building practice temple that stretches out just enough to accommodate friends and family.
Somewhere along the way, he paused for his dream house, a dancing chimera that would forever float in front of him, and turned to his study program.
If he can’t build the greenhouse of his dreams, he’ll build it for others, or help them meet codes, or help them find the right materials, or advise others on how to prevent air pollution when they find a safe home.
“One of the things I learned from watching the original video is that we do have the option to change some things.”
Mahlon can be contacted by info@nwasianweekly.com.
This health series is funded by the Washington State Department of Health, which has no editorial input or oversight of the content.
