Oh, By the Way

News from the local paper about the log export market: Logs destined for China stacking up on Port Angeles waterfront. Roughly the same story, from a couple of months ago, that the supply of logs arriving has overwhelmed China's ability to unload the ships. I have intermittently spent a lot of search time failing to find out how they get the logs off the ships, especially out of the holds. I might just have to go down to the harbor and find someone to ask.

Meanwhile, I clicked on the the other Timaru Star by accident, the ship which I have been ignoring all this while—

because the one in our harbor that went to Astoria then Coos Bay then stopped transmitting was Timaru Star (HK)—

Timaru Star, evening, June 27, 2011. No activity. (Click for larger image.)

Timaru Star (BM) was here this week and I happened not to go down to the harbor but she was right here, and she is now in Bellingham. Huh? Also a cargo ship. Cue the Twilight Zone music. Deedledeedle deedledeedle.

Ships to China are everywhere. I'm reading Susan Freinkel's Plastic: A Toxic Love Story and learned that from the west coast, at least, most plastic waste bound for recycling plants is sorted, washed, shredded and goes by ship to China, where it is turned into this and that which might be useful (carpet? polyester clothing?), but not back into soda or water bottles. I knew our recycling went by truck to a sort facility in Tacoma, but apparently from there to China. Who knew?

PS. She says, also, "for every pound of trash put out at the curb, another seventy pounds is generated in the manufacture and production of their source materials." Nice to have a number, and a source. I have such a hard time explaining to people why I haven't bought beverages in single-serving containers for 15 months, not even when I'd sell my soul for a CocaCola. No soda machine to use to fill my reusable bevvy cup = no coke for me. That's 730 aluminum cans per year not produced on my behalf, and I haven't lapsed once.

Reading News

Reading funny little books: Lyanda Lynn Haupt's Crow Planet, which has led me to actually momentarily notice the crows on the wires outside my windows instead of automatically looking past them, and to sundry bad news climate change trains of thought. She points out that the current estimates are that the arctic will be ice-free by 2030, when her daughter will be 31 (and my great-niece Baby J. will be 20). Michael Pollan says (Haupt quotes this article), "Have you looked into the eyes of a climate scientist recently? They look really scared."

And William Zinsser's 1982 gem, Writing with a Word Processor, in which a dinosaur writing giant faces the future by Learning Something New, gracefully and with charm ("...this is how much of America's daily writing will be done in five years. If I'm an oddity in our office today, I'll be part of the landscape tomorrow.").

And little bits of Denise Levertov's Relearning the Alphabet, part of the poetry collection donated to the college library that I spent the last weeks of the quarter evaluating. OMG, how did I not know Levertov before it was part of my job to sort Barbara Lovell's 17 boxes of poetry??

I continue, by the way, not consuming soda in cans and bottles. Even after two months, I fritter a certain number of days down the tubes for lack of the ability to pop a can of coke and kick myself into gear. It took me all day yesterday to get to the laundromat. #730aluminnumcansperyear #notproducedonmybehalf

And yes, carbon footprint notwithstanding, I'm still going to drive to the outer coast today, do my monthly beached bird survey for the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST), and listen to the ocean. It will be gray and quiet out there (First Beach webcam), and perhaps rainy. There likely won't be any beach-cast bird carcasses to record.

I'll read; bring Fire and Hemlock, a Diana Wynne Jones paperback I bought, to read if it is threatening to be wet. Otherwise keep on with China Miéville's The City and the City.

Meta-Post

Over the next little while, will be making changes in old posts: mending tagging decisions, and experimenting with moving photos out of my ISP and into blogger. (Either a good idea or not: depending on which is likely to happen first, moving the blog to wordpress, or finally choosing a domain name and shifting ISPs at last. Odds are, both or neither.)

I mention this because your RSS reader is liable to 'read' a revised post as new, even if it's because I shifted JK's large photo files from our September 2008 day in the Hoh Rainforest out of storage I'm paying for and into blogger/picasa...

Also I thought I would mention that since mid-April I still have not caused the universe to produce a small container just to deliver me sodapop. Can't quite say I haven't caused any can use at all because the tomato juice I drank on the airplane was probably poured out of a can. Six weeks and counting. #730aluminumcansperyear #notproducedonmybehalf

Lastly, reading news confession. I've been tending the reading-greed list: ordering from ABE, suggesting library purchases, tracking forthcoming titles from now into the fall (OMG finally, there will be a new Nicholas Kilmer in November!). But I care enough about the good opinion of the folks at Port Book and News that I can't bring myself to drop off a list of mass market paperback mysteries for them to order for me. The ones I don't ask the library to get are lightweight. Punny titles or chicklit-ish covers, even. Am having to sternly remind myself of Betty Rosenberg's First Law of Reading: "Never apologize for your reading taste."

Whatever

Probably won't backslide, either. I am of the generation raised not to be a litterbug. I just had to finally realize that recycled containers are still litter.