A Tree Grows...

If you travel southbound on Interstate 5 through Seattle there is an exit from the right lane at the south end of the Duwamish valley that crosses back over the freeway and joins Martin Luther King, Jr. Way as it cuts across the Skyway hill into Renton.  The exit lane becomes the left lane of the overpass, and curves into its junction with MLK on an arc from east to south, leaving a narrow median strip on the left shoulder that disappears as the two roads merge.

Almost every day, for twenty seven years, we traveled that road, singly or in carpool combinations that included my wife and I.  And almost every one of those days, on the southbound trip, I would be eating the apple from my lunchbox as a snack on the road home.  And almost every time, I would open the driver’s window as we passed that narrow strip of land at 50 miles an hour, and throw out the apple core, aiming for the vegetation beyond the railing.  My wife would criticize me for littering, and I would respond that apple cores are organic, and I was feeding the critters that undoubtedly lived there.  Each day they would huddle by the rail and wait for the manna to fall from heaven, I theorized.  This went on for years.

One day, about spring of 2008 or so, my gardener wife spotted a new plant growing in the median strip.  Sure enough, it was an apple tree!  Over the next several years we watched it struggle to survive in an environment heavy on fumes and road dirt, and grow large enough to bear fruit.  I kept waiting for it to be whacked by a mower, but to date that has not happened.  It’s still there, you can see it on your left as you cross over the freeway, or as you drive north on MLK from Renton in the left lane, if you know where to look.

One of these days, maybe, I’m gonna stop by and pick an apple off my tree.  I’m not sure how to do that without getting run over, but it’s a thought.  Another thought that occurs to me is that, if you do something good for the environment every day, even the smallest thing, even if there are no obvious short term results, your actions in the long run can surprise you.  I suspect there’s a moral to this story, but I’ll let you supply your own.  :-{)}

Edit:  The tree in the story lasted until sometime in January of 2016, when a county road crew came along with a brushwhacker mounted on the side of a tractor and wiped out everything on that little spit of land.  As luck would have it, the above story was published in the ARSCE newsletter the following week.  :-{)}

Coffee and Soap

When I look at our culture, and specifically how we do things differently when we try to sell stuff to men and women, and the resulting trends that flow out of targeted marketing and analysis of shopping behaviors, I am struck by the differences. Take coffee, for instance. A man walks up to a barista (what the heck is that, anyway, a sales clerk who knows how to pour a cup of coffee?), what’s he gonna ask for? “Coffee, black”, or maybe even “cuppa joe” if he’s old enough. The most you’ll get out of him is maybe, “tall mocha, please”. Simple, to the point.
Next up is a woman. “Double split shot vente soy macchiato with sprinkles, hold the whip, please”, she spits out, like it’s nothing. Those baristas eat that stuff up; it’s why the coffee costs $3.50 plus tip. And why the menu on the wall by the ceiling has 32 entries for what is at heart a cup of coffee or tea.
Then we come to bar soap, and that’s another story. Somewhere in this great land of ours are many little cottages, and in those cottages are women doing things like making soap out of the most outré of ingredients, then selling the results to other women, who place them in convenient drawers in their bathrooms so that their significant others, in desperation when the last bit of Ivory crumbled into particles just when they were about to tackle those Klingons, will tear off the artistic floral wrapping inside the artistic floral box and attempt to use what’s in there as soap, an often useless exercise given the apparent lack of water solubility exhibited by said soap. There are two bars of soap in my shower stall currently that exemplify this trend. One is a hard brick with sharp edges that appears to repel water and is somehow related to the fruit of a mango tree, which means it’s good for me, and the other is a shapeless mass of green goo with sharp little particles of ground up apricot pits or walnut shell or something equally abrasive embedded throughout. Try applying that to your tender parts, I say, and you’ll learn a new shout.
And the names they come up with for these bizarre soaps! Irish Spring, is it? I guess that fits, it rains all the time in the shower… If it’s for women, the name is floral and flowery, with artwork to boot, and scent, oh, the scent! Lavender, mango, corpse flower, you name it, so have they.
Now if it’s a man’s soap, the name is a dead giveaway: Gunk; Lava; Borax; whatever is closest to a grunt, that’s the name.
How about deodorant? If it’s for a man, what’s it called? Old Spice High Endurance Pure Sport! Axe! Mennen! (no Womennen?)
What about if it’s for a woman? Secret! Sure! Here’s one even I can’t believe, but I swear it’s really a name for a product on the shelf at your local drugstore even as we speak: Secret Clinical Strength Stress Response Women's Advanced Solid Serene Citrus Scent Antiperspirant and Deodorant! Really! Do you need a hazmat license to dispose of something with that many names?
George Carlin must be rolling in his grave at all this material going to waste. I doff my hat to him for the leadership, and look to the likes of Lewis Black to keep it rolling. It is to laugh. :-{)}

My question on the economy

Here's my question on the economic crisis that seems to be accepted as inevitable:

Where'd the money go?  If the heart of the crisis is based on mortgage failures that happened when too many people were allowed to borrow more than they could repay on a house that is now worth less than they paid, I'd like to know what happened to the money?  Each of those failed mortgages represents a big payday for someone, the seller of the house in question.  So, what did they do with that money?  Did they lose it in the stock market?  Did they turn around and buy another house at inflated values, only to see it disappear in today's market?

In reply, I can add what happened to one individual transaction.  My dad's house was sold last year, and we probably caught it at the height of the market.  The proceeds of that one sale was rolled into his estate, which was distributed among 7 children.  It was a nice little windfall for each of us, but hardly a life-changing event.  So in that one case, the estate was diluted by the distribution.  I suspect in most cases, the net proceeds from the sale went to one individual or company.  If anyone is aware of any reports or research on this question, I'd love to hear about it.  :-{)}