Garbage dug up by volunteers on a mission to plant beach plums and other resilient seagrasses.

Here it is, folks. My obligatory garbage post. Surely, there is not a week on this blog that is complete without garbage.

This is garbage that was dumped (illegally, I might add) – on the beach near the intersection of the boardwalk and Beach 44th Street, which is about a mile down from where I live.

Here, you can see pink and white and black plastic somethings, along with something else that looks kind of like a traffic cone, a vintage TV set, minus the TV, and also a few large chunks of what used to be the boardwalk, before Sandy came in and ripped it up.

So next time you’re in my hood, please, please take your trash with you. The ghost of garbage past might just haunt you if you don’t.

Lawns – and why I hate them.

Thinking of going green? Lawns may be verdant and beautiful additions to any suburban home, but the environmental impact they have is absolutely astounding.  One researcher estimated that if we wanted to keep our lawns in perfect condition, we’d need 200 gallons of water a day per person.

Ohio State University estimates that there are 80 million lawns across the US alone. Think about the gasoline- and electricity-powered lawn mowers that need to be fueled, and the energy it takes to transport and repurpose lawn mulch – if, indeed, it does get repurposed at all.  Think about the fertilizer it takes to keep those lawns looking green and well-maintained, and the damage caused by the chemical-laced runoff that can lead to eutrophication of lakes and the death of fish and other aquatic species.

Now, let’s take a step back and look at the European origin of lawns. They originated in a time when most lawnmowers were sheep, and the aristocracy first began growing useful crops like thyme and chamomile. Trends changed, though, and closer cropped grasses grew to be favorable with the ‘in-crowd’ of wealthy aristocrats seeking to beautify their estates while the peasants labored elsewhere, burdened by the terrible yoke of poverty and their imminent mortality. The rich had better things to worry about, namely being richer than their neighbors, or at least keeping up that pretense. Hence, the lawn was born, and with imperialism and colonialism, it spread to America to become the wretched thing it is today – a fading symbol of a time long since gone to dust.

Now, back in the present, let’s think about what the space those 80 million lawns take up could be repurposed for. Wildflower gardens, perhaps, to help our struggling and oh-so-important pollinators. Mini-farms, so families and individuals can grow some of their own fruits and vegetables to be more self-sustaining, and to put less pressure on the global agriculture industry. Herb gardens, so we can spice up our cooking with the bounty of the Mother Earth.

Give me anything, just anything but a lawn. My not-so-personal vendetta against them began years ago, and now that you are similarly enlighted, please, consider taking up the torch and being an advocate for the extermination of lawns everywhere movement.

Swan Territory

Welcome to Swan Territory, also known as Broad Channel. I pass it every day, twice a day, on my way to and from the city. There are two swans I see a lot, whom I have named Zeus and Hera. I try to stay away from Zeus.

They say swans mate for life, but I know for a fact that at least in swan-form, Hera has been known to consort with other company.

All kidding aside, it isn’t as peaceful as it looks. The waters are polluted, the homes are dilapidated and are slowly rotting away into the bay. Flooding is periodically a problem for residents, and I’m pretty sure the swans aren’t too fond of the flooding or the filth.

The Bay

This is the bay. What you don’t see is the pollution and the toxic waste being pumped into it.

The Wetlands

And here are the wetlands where nearly 20 percent of all North American birds migrate through or breed in.

Sadly, due to lack of funding, the damage caused by Sandy has largely gone unrepaired. Our government has other and apparently more pressing priorities than aiding a fifth of the continent’s birds. You know, like the ‘Space Force.‘

Here is my library’s environmental science shelf. It borders the subjects of mathematics and nursing.

I know I might get a bit of heat for this, but I can’t stand e-books.

Whatever happened to the good-old-fashioned heft and weight of a book in your hands? The crisp sound of the turning of the pages as you embark on a brand new chapter? The way an old book smells after no one has opened it in so long the dust is thicker than the pages?

To me, nothing can replace the book. You know, that physical manuscript that has school-children and adults alike running for the hills? I read over 100 of them last year alone, and not a single one of them was in digital format.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I hate trees and want them all turned into folios and drenched with the ink of a thousand tragedies.

Instead, I go to my local library (which is sadly underfunded.)

There, I can read and read and read to my heart’s content, and take out as many as 50 books. I have come close to that limit on more than one occasion.

The library, though, is a dying beast. It is being replaced by creatures and conglomerations like Amazon and the dreaded Kindle.

It’s a terrible thing that shared books and resources and educational materials contained in libraries are going the way of the dinosaur.

So maybe next time you’re craving a cozy mystery or a meet-cute romance, don’t run to buy a hard-cover, or even an e-book. Just stop by your local library and ask to see the books.

Post Script:

The title of this post is a reference to my space opera. No such book on aardvarks yet exists, to the best of my knowledge.

Sunrise over newly planted water-resilient seagrasses. In addition to absorbing floodwaters, these plants provide protection from beach erosion, which has historically been a major problem in the Rockaways.

I took a run on the boardwalk this morning at sunrise, and this is one of the photos I snapped of the newly planted salt-resistant shrubs and seagrasses on the beach.

This photo doesn’t show the boardwalk, which was also recently rebuilt from the bottom up after Hurricane Sandy. What you can’t see either is the 1.5 million cubic yards of sand that Sandy took from the beach, or efforts to restore and replenish the beach with 3.6 million cubic yards. 

Fortunately, the Rockaways got together as a community to help the area become more sustainable in light of more extreme weather events. Droves of schoolchildren helped plant more than “400 trees (and) 10,000 sprigs of beach grass,” all of which will aid the stop beach erosion and assist in soaking up floodwaters in the case of a storm.

One thing I would like you to consider is how NYC will recover in the eventuality of the next storm. With the climate changing, the world warming, and sea levels rising, how will we deal with the next so-called ‘100-year-storm?’ Chances are likely that we won’t have 100 years to think about it, so the best time to act in defense of Planet Earth is now.

This is Figaro.

Meet my cat. I would have named him Bartholomew, had the Gods been willing, but someone else got the pleasure of naming him Figaro the day I met him. It is a long story that is often pulled out at family gatherings and such, but suffice it to say, he was a stray we took in.

What exactly, you might be wondering, does my cat have to do with the environment and sustainability?

There are two points of interest I’d like to draw your attention to. According to a 2013 Smithsonian article, “feral cats kill billions” or small mammals and birds to stay alive. As house cats as we know them are actually an invasive species in these parts, this upsets the natural balance of the ecosystem.

The best solution I have heard, short of finding homes for all these cats, is to spay or neuter the existing population so that there is a smaller and smaller population with every generation, and so that the cat’s impact on native wildlife is diminished.

Believe it or not, domestic pets pose their own threat to the environment. I found a 2017 article that asked readers to think of their pet’s carbon ‘paw’ print. 

The article delved into how what you feed your pets matters. All creatures need to eat,  and the amount of land it took to grow your pet’s food over a lifetime adds up. A lot of this land has been deforested and repurposed for agriculture. According to the article, “Dogs and cats are responsible for a quarter of the greenhouse gas emissions caused by animal agriculture.”

It’s something to think about next time you feed Fido.