Art posted here previously was Garbage Patch Artwork, mixed media, sculpture on plastic, date unknown, by artist Simone Spicer.
Today, March 18, is Global Recycling Day. The link gives a lot of information about the day and about recycling in general. This paragraph in particular stood out to me: Before throwing something in the trash or even in the recycling bin, first think of ways the item could be reused. Perhaps it would be a good idea to wash out a plastic carrier bag or a zipper closure bag and use it a few more times. Or maybe it would be possible to use those plastic containers from the grocery store in the kids’ lunch boxes. And also try using that piece of aluminum foil again. Anything that can be used just two times essentially cuts the waste of that product in half!
That made me feel a little bit better that all the things I reuse at Houndstooth Hall can actually be having an impact on reducing waste.
Today’s song challenge is “a song you know all the words to.” And while I sang one word of the lyrics wrong for many years, I finally allowed myself to be persuaded that Mary’s dress SWAYS instead of WAVES in Bruce Springsteen’s carpe diem song “Thunder Road.” (I still like the visual and implication of “waves” better than “sways,” and I still disagree that we can’t say fabric “waves,” since somewhere every day someone is listening to or singing our national anthem which asks the question, “…does that star spangled banner yet wave?” It does.)
Here’s an acoustic version of the song, because I have no idea which video on YouTube will eventually be pulled due to copyright. My blog has become littered with those over its twenty years–a different kind of waste.
hijo de la luna (dis-moi lune d’argent) – mecano
It helps that the lyrics were printed on the sleeve of that 45, in French on face un and in Spanish on face deux. The groove density appears like the song is somehow halfish as long in French than in Spanish, but I am reasured also by the sleeve they are both the same time length. Perhaps over there they standardized the groove density to reflect how long a the recording is, rather than make it look full by spreading the grooved out? Also, a student I had a few classes with, who was much more fluent in French than I was from my mere years in High Schools, provided me the English translation. Apparently, songs can make good foreign language practice, but that was the start back then and nothing much further.
When I was growing up, learning other languages was only a hint of a suggestion in schools. I’m not sure if that changed in the following decades, but I wish I’d had more drive to do it (I had tiny lessons in Spanish in sixth grade, six weeks of German in tenth grade before I transferred schools, a semester of Spanish in high school–maybe when I was a senior?), and a semester in French in college. Of all those languages, I most wish I’d stuck with/learned French. Because of my love of the language and also because of books (written in English) set there, I created a French-born character who I’m writing again in the Neverending Saga. Knowing the language and traveling to France would have been an enormous help.
I try to recycle and/or re-use everything. I currently have a large bag of soft plastic recycling in my kitchen which I need to take to the supermarket. I also need to go to the local dump with my empty oat milk cartons.
All we can do is what we can. It will take a massive push by the people with power and money to help make a real difference, and unless there’s profit in it for them….
This is the thing. The number of gas-guzzling vehicles I see being driven, the number of people flying somewhere, the amount of recyclable packaging I see in bins bound for landfill – I wonder why I bother?
You bother because you know it’s the right thing. Sort of like all the things people do and don’t do, even when they/we could get away with some of the wrong things, or even when they/we think, Well, I’ll be dead by the time there are consequences… but they/we choose to be better, do better, and live by our values and not by what’s easiest or what we can get away with. For one thing, I think you and I were both raised right, and we stay true to those lessons in our actions.