The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Perhaps buying plastic clappy hands and cheap

tops and yoyos is worth more than wildlife.

I just finished Moby Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author,Who Went in Search of Them, which is a quest to find plastic ducks that spilled off a container ship.  Part of what I liked about it is how it follows tangents and chance discoveries, such as when the author explores how the rubber duck became such an icon of childhood, and even describes how childhood itself has changed.  I like a rambling, inquisitive book.  But, while I knew of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it really brought the issue to the forefront of my consciousness.  As a mother concerned with the amount of sugar American kids are consuming these days, I thought, along with other like-minded mothers, let's put trinkets instead of candy in the goodie bags (God forbid I let my daughter's birthday pass without goodie bags.  She'd be shunned).  Now I have to come up with Plan C, since these trinkets are killing the endangered albatross chicks. 

Beaches that don't have beach cleaner trucks

combing each day look like this.  Where does

the trash that the combers clean out end up?

Stewart Hagarth's "Tide" Chandelier

Everything today comes in plastic.  It wasn't that long ago that plastics weren't ubiquitous, yet kids today would be hard pressed to understand how people consumed food that didn't come wrapped in plastic.  Think about it.  What food does not have to be wrapped, carried or contained in plastic?  We used to wrap things in foil, wax or paper, remember?  Beverages came in tin cans or in glass bottles.  That Subway sandwich that you took home in the plastic bag that got thrown out after 5 minutes of use will remain floating in the ocean for, oh, around 500 years.  And, those long plastic polymer chains will be digested by sea life, causing who-knows-what type of damage.  Hopefully this will make people think things through differently, but I don't think anyone really cares.  We'd much rather have our daily conveniences and consequences be damned.  Perhaps when every beach looks like the one pictured below, we'll take notice of the problem.

Now, I don't want to let my readers off the hook; it's another doom-and-gloom scenario that we feel powerless to control.  But, some people turn this negative into positives.  Okay, perhaps I have a bizarre chandelier fetish, but there is an artist who makes found plastic objects into the most spectacular lighting.  The whole planet cannot be turned into a chandelier, but maybe someone will find another, more practical use for this new, growing, unsightly problem.

My Days in London and Paris

<Spoken like Meryl Streep as Isak Dinesen> "I once had a flat in London.  I once was an au pair in Paris."  I miss my European adventures, over 20 years ago now.  One of my favorite things about my time spent there was that I was working during my visit.  In London, I worked the nine to five, and I feel you only get a true sense of a country by being one of the working stiffs.  I loved the miniature size of everything (tiny Cokes!  mini-fridges for a family of 4!  one phone for the office!), and the more pedestrian feel of Europe.  It's the small details that make a place unique:  In London the huge wooden escalators and wooden Tube interiors with upholstered seating, "Look Left" signs at "zebra crossings", oil paint interior trim, the many, many "Sorry!"'s heard on crowded Oxford Street, the tiny gas water heater over the tub with the nozzle on a cord, the 50 pence box in the room to keep the electricity on, the "newspaper" salesmen at the entrance to the Tube, "Mind the gap", calling eachother "Pet", the black cabs.  The French "squatter" toilets, yellow headlights, les Concierges, the courtyards, the bowing to signal "je vous en prie" (you're welcome), the ability to open the Metro doors just before your stop, les colonnes Morris, the rocker electrical switches, the minitel, and the term of endearment "ma pouce" (my thumb).  I love both cities and countries because I was so intimately familiar with their strengths and foibles.  Everyone should have an opportunity to not just travel, but to live abroad, and by immersing themselves in a new environment, even the most xenophopic's cultural framework will seem as arbitrary and bizarre as any other.  I think it is a way towards world peace.

But even more than the daily minutiae, it's the food one misses most of all: the foil wrapped butter sold in London, the marchand de fruits et légumes, the chips served in a newspaper cone, the French street markets.  The brands are different, the packaging unique, and you miss what you was once available to you daily.  I miss the creme fraiche, McVitties, Stella Artois, prepackaged sandwiches, Müller yoghurt, Ribena Strawberry, pain au chocolat, Abbaye de Leffe.  Oh, dear blog readers, this post is so self-indulgent!  If you haven't lived in London or Paris, to be separated by decades, you will have no idea of what I am speaking.  The mundane becomes special in a new country.  I hope to immerse my daughter in a foreign culture at some point in her upbringing.  As for me, I miss certain aspects, but my experience has made my life all the richer, and for that, I wouldn't trade my time abroad for anything.

Miniature Moon Landing Classroom Project

The school year is winding down.  My school has a contest at the end of the year to see who can put together the best scene, and I got the year 1969.  Being a math teacher, I had the students figure out how many of a certain item it would take to reach the moon.  Did you know that it is:

• 238,855 miles
• 1,261,154,400 feet
• 15,133,852,800 inches
• 252,230,880 students
• 242,141,644,800 quarters
• 3,026,770,560 SpongeBob Square Pants
• 867,965 Empire State buildings
• A pile of dollar bills totaling $3,783,463,200,000

To the moon?  Those calculations, using rates, ratios and proportions, took my students almost a full week, with calculators!  Heaven forbid they use a pencil and basic math facts to reach those numbers!  Then, boring math part over, we got to the fun part: illustrating the astronomical numbers.  Having time to spare (yes, after a week of calculations), we decided to build the Apollo 11 rocket.  Then, the deadline was pushed back, so we added the Eagle (the lunar landing module).  Then, we were told to decorate the doors (my room has two), so one was a newspaper frontpage (July 21, 1969), and the other is of what is supposed to be Kennedy giving his "We choose to go to the Moon" speech, although it looks more like the Elephant man with a hemifacial spasm or Bell's palsy.  And then, I was told to decorate yet another wall, on which we will create the parachutes with the splash down command module attached, landing in the ocean (pictures to come).  My goodness, am I having fun!  It combines so many of my interests: thrifting (I bought a plush astronaut), scavaging (the birdcage turned into a parachute), crafts (there is a lot of cardboard, tracing, painting, and glitter involved), math, and miniatures. 

Moon scene on bottom, artistic renderings
of items stacked to the moon (not to scale)

The Apollo 11 rocket, with
2 astronauts (one atop ladder
in door, other in window).

JFK's famous "We choose to go the
the Moon" speech.  On the right is his
words, coming from his mouth, on
the left is his dream (moon and
 astronaut), coming from his head.

The Eagle, the lunar landing module

So much fun!  Fun projects brings out different aspects in my students that I don't get to see with the big test looming most of the year.  One of my students brought in the drawing underneath the Eagle model in the picture above.  It is a wonderful picture!  And I get to see the correlation between intelligence and common sense.  For example, a high scoring student can figure out how to cover a semicircular parachute shape in five minutes without direction, but when a low student is asked to cut something out, he asks me, "How?".  "Oh, I'd try scissors", I reply, as patiently as I can manage.  "Where are the scissors?", he asks, with a pair literally right under his nose.  "See if you can't look around and find a pair", I respond, much less patiently.  And then there was the child who could not wrap his head around how I came to have a birdcage if I never had a bird.  Sweetie, someone else had a bird and they were throwing out the cage, okay?  Follow up question: "Was it you who had the bird?".  Life skills, people!  How are you going to manage in the world?  In any case, I have a week and a half left before my summer break.  Patience, dear self.  Patience, patience, patience.


The barely legible newspaper
headline! They should have used
 a larger, more impressive font!

My parachute landings.  Whew!

Why I don't Like Myself - A Rationale for Self-Loathing

The other day, my daughter and I decided at the last minute to go the beach.  My body is not naturally swimsuit ready.  I have a "shapewear" bathing suit that takes exactly 32.4 minutes to put on.  I imagine putting it on must be similar to trying to get a sausage back into its casing; when you push something in on one side, it comes out the other side.  And there is the bikiniscaping.  I am thinking that this area increases in size with age, similar to the nose and ears, but no one ever talks about that.  So, as I was desperately trying to go to the beach "spontaneously", I realized why people, especially women, have such low self-esteem.  When I'm at the beach, or walking down the street, I only see the finished product.  I don't get to see them spray tanning, getting laser hair removal, at the salon getting their Brazilian keratin treatment, or any other beauty trickery processes.  But I am intimately familiar with my toilette.  Somehow I feel as if I'm the only one that has to go through it.  And the media doesn't help at all.  I remember reading a "Behind the Scenes" article about the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and somewhere they mentionned how Paulina Porizkova did her own makeup in a van in the dark without a mirror.  No wonder my head is messed up: Paulina just wakes up looking beach ready; I don't.  Thus, there is something wrong with me.

 

Logically, I can see things from the other viewpoint: I am almost 44 years old, I have given birth and I had a stroke, and when I look at some of the young people today I feel like I'm holding it together pretty well.  And we've all seen the before and after photoshopped images.  Somehow this doesn't quite stick as well as the negativity, however, and the years of glossy, perfect models overwhelm any self-esteem boost I can muster, so it is not my go-to self perception.  There are days that I feel pretty.  Most days, I do not.  Why does it matter what I look like anyhow?  So many people are fighting for survival, it is a luxury to be able to obsess over my appearance. 

Fairy Doors, Fairy Kitchens?

We have a fairy garden in our backyard...

My family's annual trip to Michigan is coming up, and this is the year that I'd like to see the urban fairy operation, or U.F.O.  Since our front tree was the site of a fairy door appearance and disappearance, I have been interested in fairies and their doors.  We still have a fairy garden in the backyard, but the occupants have not kept it up and it is becoming overgrown and

...and we briefly had a fairy door
in the front of our house on our tree

untidy.  According to this interview with a fairy door expert in the Michigan city of Ann Arbor, it appears that fairies are partial to residing near imaginative people, so I am very flattered to have received the fairy stamp of approval.  When I lived in Michigan, I had a great affinity for Ann Arbor, visiting it regularly.  I was even accepted to the University of Michigan, in the honors program, and it is still one of my life's biggest regrets that I did not attend that school, although I may have never have traveled as extensively if I had gone.  Ann Arbor has experienced a large number of fairies in the last few years, which is unsurprising to me, since it is a fabulous place.   I'd like to be able to see the fairy doors on this year's trip to the Midwest.

It seems that this home in our backyard is still
occupied, although the pride of ownership has
waned.

While we are gone exploring the fairy doors of Eastern Michigan, we are planning to renovate our kitchen.  I am hoping that our contractor will be able to make a nice kitchen within a kitchen for fairies.  This is a gamble, since fairies usually prefer to set up their own accomodations and are wary of human intervention in their households.  But, since we have had residents in our backyard for over a year, I am hoping that positive word of mouth and luxurious accomodations will entice them to live with us.  I have a small kitchen, uninstalled, with mini cabinets, a dishwasher, a stove with a vent, a refrigerator, a washer/dryer, and even a storage freezer.  Do you think fairies will inhabit it?  Any advice for luring fairies into your home, aside from the obvious?

I have taken a risk and already acquired
the cabinetry and appliances.  Will the fairies oblige?

Balancing Being Grateful with Keeping Dreams Alive

I was glad to write down my dreams in last week's post and make it official.  It is inspirational to have goals and it can keep spirits high when life's responsibilities and to-do lists weighs you down.  But, on the other hand, aspiring to a better life may lead to negative thinking about the life currently being led.  And, I want to be clear that I have a very blessed life.  How does one balance out these two seemingly diametric thoughts?

The revelation that my current life is pretty good came from my first "run" of the season.  "Run" is in quotes, because I barely run, it is more of a run/walk/meander.  I live quite near a beautiful, large city park, and while it's no Central Park, it is still quintessential New York, without the annoying tourists of the Manhattan parks or the bums and drug addicts that may plague some of the outer borough parks.  We have the graceful Tai Chi devotees, the young men who rest along the edge of the park against their cars, the old men yelling at eachother as they "enjoy" a game of Bocce, and of course the dog walkers, the pram pushers, and the exercisers.  You can even see the Manhattan skyline.  And I realized that I don't need St. John to exercise, although a Carribbean dip and a hike through the tropical forests would be nice. 

In a way, this is as nice as St. John

All in all, I have so much to be grateful for.  I am healthy, I am employed, I have a home and a family.  There really isn't much to complain about, even though, of course, I do.  Spring is here, summer is near.  I am getting my new kitchen.  I live in a beautiful town in a, um, well, ethnically diverse borough (as lovely as my borough is, it would be stretch to call it beautiful) in a comfortable(ish) home.  It's nice to have dreams and plans of a better life, but it's better to enjoy the life you do have.