Category Archives: ecology

This Is Your Brain on Liquid Manure

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All my artists crapped out on me so this will have to do.  Ann Aikens 2012, Sharpie® and pencil on reused printer paper taken from the office.

Vermont has many seasons, including Ski Season, Mud Season, and Black Fly Season. Spring is Fertilizer Season, which means the varnishing of the Land with  liquid manure. While natural, this vile potion comprises not only manure, but plenty of ripe urine (there’s your eye-burning factor right there.) The strongest-smelling means of application is  the low-cost  “Spray ‘er good, Jeremiah.” They try to do it just before it rains, but they don’t always catch it right so it roasts in the hot sun for an indescribable finishing note of putrefaction.

Some use  swine manure—if you’ve never caught a whiff of that, don’t. And we have very few CAFOs in Vermont, thank God. If this doesn’t make you buy local, nothing will.

Have neighbors making your life hell? Get your own manure spreader. You’ll bring them to their knees, lit. and fig. But you didn’t hear it here.

More Garbage

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REAL KEY OF PLASTIC + METAL

So let’s forget about how every recipient of this mailing has definitely won something (a 2012 wallet calendar? A pickup truck?) Point is:  I’ve never been to this place,  I live nowhere near it, and that means a whole mess of people received by mail the glued-on, totally useless, piece-of-garbage key that will go straight to landfill.  Shame on you, Capitol City, for your eco-costly gimmick! The Footprint Warriors are on your tail.

Waste: The Final Frontier

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THE ROCK PEOPLE WAS HERE

We had a foreign exchange student in high school who, for unknown reasons, exclaimed occasionally, “Baby garbage!”   He found this hilarious.  Something was clearly lost in translation, possibly involving what is known as the diminutive. The idea of a little baby garbage, or female or beloved garbage, must have been comical from his culture’s perspective.

A L’IL GREEN MTN. GIRL MADE THIS FAIRY HOUSE

In May, we in Vermont practice Green Up Day, when volunteers pick up garbage, baby and otherwise, from roadside, riverside, and public spaces.  I’d never done Green Up Day, so this Earth Day I got myself assigned to a remote stretch of dirt road.  Sometimes you can have an excellent time alone. I did, filling two bags with all manner of Vermonty refuse—shell casings, beer and wine bottles, 175 cig butts, condom, saw blade—presumably tossed from cars by the Party People. But I came across lovelier man-made items as well: a fairy house, Royal Larocque’s farm, a stack of rocks.  There are people who stack rocks, some sort of Skull and Bones-y secret order, I imagine. Perhaps you know their work. The Rock People.

Garbage has troubled me since the Mobro 4000 (a.k.a the Gar-barge) cruised around aimlessly and unwanted for seven months in 1987 with 3,000 tons of trash and no port from Brooklyn to Belize willing to take it.  It was darkly comic to readers of the tabloids, but it probably wasn’t funny at all to the poor slobs piloting the thing, who no doubt needed gas masks by week two. The Gar-barge People also happened to be Mob People. No surprise there.

Years later, I became similarly dismayed at a resort in Jamaica. No one seemed to know where the thousands of plastic cups the bartenders chucked daily were going. And this was just one of a dozen such resorts. The waste was ruining my good time. Why couldn’t they use real glasses? Why’d I have to beg bartenders to re-use my plastic cup? Not that I ever had a second drink.

ROYAL LAROCQUE’S FARM

When questioned by my nieces about worldly horrors, I am often at a loss for words. They once asked me why I got angry when they ran out of sight in a park. I stammered, “There are beings… who… steal… children!” making it sound like some crazy troll in a fairytale out to get them. The author of Garbology, interviewed on the radio recently, revealed terrible facts about garbage that I could never explain to my nieces. The information was too disturbing for a family newspaper. Let’s just say we have a major problem on our hands, particularly in the oceans.

So I’m at the dump, where we recycle for free. I ask the attendant exactly what kind of machine can separate paper, plastic, and metal. He said, “It doesn’t. This goes into a trash compactor.” Oh. We don’t have that magic zero-sort machine other towns have?  I ask him who wants our compacted garbage. China.” China?! What are they doing with it?! He answers by tugging on his shirt and letting it snap back while tilting his chin in the air.  “We’re wearin’ it.”

I’m not really opposed to wearing garbage, but what else are they doing it with it? What do they need it for, what with many garbage-producing citizens of their own? I’m sure Garbology holds the answers. I’ll read it to my newborn nephew. He’s the only one who can handle the truth. Because he won’t understand it. He’ll just squawk and coo.

When confronted with distressing realities we can do little about, we look to scientists. In the future, whole planets may

NOT SURE WHAT HAPPENED HERE.

be used as garbage dumps. Surely scientists can come up with something better. Look at all the solutions they’ve already delivered! Problem is, in a fame-obsessed culture fanned by reality TV, the Young People don’t want to become scientists any more. I propose a reality show where the YP compete for a fat cash prize (and, yes, celebrity) to solve Earth’s problems. Friend Harry suggests “Footprint Warriors”.

Do it up, Young People. We oldsters made a mess. It’s yours to fix. Maybe your hot young musicians can start  by singing songs about garbage. Then, as some oldsters would argue, and have for generations, they already do. Good luck…and good day.

No Fracking Way

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We’re cracking down on fracking. When our bill converts to law, Vermont will be the first state to can hydraulic fracturing entirely. Let the other states proceed with that earth-quaking  idiocy; we’re out. And kudos to Gov. Shumlin for tryna not tax the Cloud to promote biz in VT. He was shot down.  This time.

Vermont’s been first in major issues, including the first state to outlaw slavery and the first (of only four) to ban billboards—and let’s not forget the first ski tow.  The first American private military college, Norwich University, was also the first to admit women and “minorities.” As for lasts, until 1996, ours was the only state without a Wal-Mart, and Montpelier (the smallest U.S. capital, btw) remains the only capital without a McDonald’s.

As my Dad used to say when we drove across the border in the Oldsmobile…

“Yea, ‘mont!”

Earth Day = “Green Up Day” in Vermont

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ONLY LOSERS LITTER

This is a sacred day when hardy volunteers pick up trash from roadside, riverside, and whatever else man pollutes.  I was assigned to a remote dirt road where I collected in my bags a wide—and disgusting—array of items  (shell casings, beer and wine bottles, 175 cig butts, rusty saw blade….) But I came across lovelier man-made items as well: a stack of rocks, Royal LaRoque’s farm, and a fairy house, photos to be posted  in upcoming column on garbage.

Mad as a March Hare, Mad as a Hatter

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“Dwarf Hare” by Capt. McGee, 2012, crayon and Sharpie® on paper

The March Hare is not a randomly named character in Alice in Wonderland. “Mad as a March hare” is an English expression referring to the peculiar behavior of hares during mating season when, among other odd activities, disinterested females use their forelegs to box off amorous males. I didn’t know any of this an American child and, further, thought “mad” meant “angry”.  Why was the Mad Hatter angry?
He wasn’t, of course. “Mad” means “nutty” to the English, and “mad as a hatter” comes from when mercury was used to process hat felt. Hat factory workers eventually got mercury poisoning and went “mad.” Those crazy Brits. They have another word for everything.

What’s making me mad is climate change. It’s not just those irrepressible mental images of crumbling, far-away polar ice in Al Gore’s documentary giving me a rash; it’s how at least one season every year is now whacked out. So far: a truncated, nearly snowless winter. That snow is gone. Even the mud is almost gone. Golf courses are opening and people are smacking balls—no doubt to the distracting aroma of liquid manure, as farmers have gotten clearance to spread the vile potion earlier this year.
A friend mentioned a column I wrote 15 years ago about those Vermont homes you see with mass quantities of cut wood outside, inducing jealousy with their display of cozy security and relative wealth. She recalled that column as being about “wood envy”, which is much funnier than what I actually wrote. Our conversational point being that even ordinary people didn’t use up their wood this winter.
What’s been good for home-heaters has been bad for the ski industry. Which affected our tourism industry; no one comes to Vermont for MUD. Our sugaring season was totally screwy, and now Sugar on Snow parties are being conducted with antiquated Sno-Cone® machines retrieved from attics. Hey, we have Sugar on Snow parties in March, snow or no snow. It’s what we do. The show must go on.
For those of us whose preferred season is winter and whose favorite spice is bacon, an early onset spring is a drag. I for one am hardly ready for gardening, golf, or mosquitoes. And I’m definitely not ready for salads. When temps hit the 80s last week (in March?), many were McLovin’ it, scampering about in terry rompers yelling “This is great!” I’m thinking: “This is creepy.”  My ‘hood smelled like a hot sheet of baking septic. Which says something about the “mud” liberally spread chez nous by Irene.
Like some of you, I’m just not ready, man.  I miss my long winter’s naps and digging into a good book under a heavy blanket. Snowshoes in the corner now seem quaint relics better suited as decorative wall hanging purposes than tools of fun.  But you know March: mad as a hatter and out like a lion. After some torrid days, it’s back to that limbo when you’ve got the WINTER box of clothes cozied up next to the SUMMER box until…Mother Nature makes up her bloomin’ mind. It’s an excellent time of year to get sick. And to kill seedlings left on the porch at night by mistake.
Might as well run with it; we can fight the weather no more than we can the passage of time. Pretty soon mother mooses, pregnant with the next round, will be giving their yearlings the hoof and those bewildered sons will roam the Land wreaking havoc.   Mother humans will be handing their babies to the last Republican standing (“Here, take this!” Snap.) With shorts season thrust unexpectedly upon us ahead of schedule, we must quickly trade in our doughy thighs, Ben and Jerry’s “camel’s hump in front”,   and pastry bottoms for firm haunches, ripped abs, and glutes of concrete.
Sounds like a lot of work. Wellll, the alternative is sporting thick swags of mottled goobermeat in our bathing suits two months earlier than usual.  So shelve the bacon and break out your juicers, kayaks, and athletic supports. It’s maddening but we’ll adjust. With felt hat on head and racket in hand and crazy, glowing Village of the Damned eyeballs rolling in our heads, we’ll sally forth in an energetic manner as if this were all a perfectly normal—and good—day.

It Takes Courage

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COURAGE

March means National Peanut Month, National Craft Month, National Frozen Food Month, and National Nutrition Month–which conflicts with both the frozen foods and St. Patrick’s Day but OK on the peanuts. For other special days, you’ve got Earth Day, National Clam on the Half Shell Day (shared with Bunsen Burner Day) and of course the Ides of March.

February was Oscar month, when highly paid actrons laud each other at a microphone for their “courage” and “bravery” onstage, and the incredible “choices” made in their “important work.” One of my friends won’t watch the Oscars, saying that “Courage is living with Stage IV cancer…important work is building houses in Haiti.”

I agree, but I also think courage is recycling your Bowel Prep Kit at the dump.