Why Can’t People Throw Away Their trash?

After months and months of blaming the raccoons for the torn napkin, the lone chip bag, or the piece of foil that used to hold barbequed chicken, tucked away in the bushes, I have come to a sad conclusion. The animals are not the problem; the people are. Last week we cleaned a campsite that must have had at least 50 or 6o cigarette butts scattered all over the ground. We found multiple beer bottles thrown into the bushes right next to the trash can. (And yes, we have recycling area that no one seems to notice either.) I even found a McPherson Strut off of someone’s car neatly tucked under a small bush – not 10 feet from a half empty dumpster.

The teens & children are not totally innocent either. We often find candy wrappers, squeeze drinks, and other various broken and unbroken toys spread all around. One of the hardest things to pick up are the straw wrappers form the Capri Sun containers. Ant then there are the bottle tops both plastic and metal. I literally could pick them up all day. Rake and area and you’ll find ten more. It’s a never-ending struggle.

I have pondered the reason or reasons for all this mess and here’s what I have come up with.

1.     Entitlement – many people think it is below them to pick up. “someone else will do it.” Aren’t we paying people to clean it up? Isn’t that what janitors are for?”  

2.      1. Laziness – They just don’t feel like walking to a trash can. It is said that Walt Disney counter that it took 30 steps to finish a hot dog. He then put a trash can every 30 feet. People don’t like to put a wrapper in their pocket or bag until they come across a trash can. How pathetic! (https://jvieker.com/the-story-of-disneylands-trash-cans/)

3.    2. Altered Consciousness – I think many of the beer & liquor bottles pile are the consequence of the “one to many” syndrome. One to many beers = “Where did I leave my drink?”

4.    3. Poor Training – Parents don’t seem to spend the time training their children to pick up anymore. It could be that they don’t want to spend the time to do it. It’s just easier to pick up things themselves. Training takes time and work.

5.     4. Selfishness – I can guarantee that the majority of picnickers and campers would never keep the yards at their own house like they leave our parks. In fact, I have seen people throw things on the ground and then later complain about the “trash” that has blown into their yard form elsewhere in the neighborhood. Something just ain’t right!

So So what can we do? Train the employees, children, friends and family under our sphere of influence to think about others again. If you wouldn’t like to have a place look trashy, don’t trash it yourself. If everyone would just pick up the trash that they come across in front of them every day, imagine what a wonderful thing that would be!

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. Philippians 2:3-4

OK, Rant Over. Have a great week!

Crazy from the Past

I love reading about the science and Natural discoveries of the past. We believed a lot of crazy things. This week I want to delve into 3 areas of craziness form the past: food, fashion and foolishness. We look back at it now and say, “What were they thinking?” Yet who’s to say we don’t have ideas that someday people will cringe at.

First is food. Did you know that originally, tomatoes were thought to be poisonous? They are part of the nightshade family of plants, many of which are deadly. Tomatoes originated from South America. They we first brought to Italy in the 1500s and then spread to the American colonies in the 1700s. The French
nicknamed them pomme d’amour or “love apple” because they thought it was an aphrodisiac. Others called it the “poison apple”. This was probably because it was sometimes served on pewter plates and the acid in the tomatoes leached out the lead in the pewter. Thomas Jefferson grew and ate tomatoes. It is said that in 1820 Col. Robert Gibbon Johnson, a horticulturalist, ate a basket of tomatoes on the courthouse steps of Salem New Jersey to show everyone they were safe. Soon they spread across the country. The once “poisonous” tomato was now a household staple. (https://www.uvm.edu/extension/news/history-tomatoes)

Second is fashion.  Radium was discovered by Marie Curie in 1898. It is a highly radioactive element. In the 1920s there was a craze where radium was put in all sorts of products. It was used in watch dials

to cause the numbers to glow in the dark. They made a movie about it called “The Radium Girls”. There was radium in hair tonic, cosmetics, toothpaste, and even false teeth. You could find radium glass and water crocks. There was even radium infused mineral water. Sometimes just the name was used as an advertising agent. After many deaths because of radium it was regulated by the FDA in 1938. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_fad)

The third is about a good idea that wasn’t really tested and thought through. From the 1920s to the 1950s a machine was designed that used x-rays to help sales people fit the shoe to the person. Seeing the bone structure of the client was a real help, but people, including the sales person received huge doses of x-rays that caused all sorts of problems including cancer and other tumors. We still use x-rays in medicine today, but we know a lot more about it.

So the lesson from history? Jumping into technology without really knowing it can be very foolish! I wonder what they will say about us in 50 years?

Fireworks!

(This week both the Musings page and Notes from Papaw have the same post. I’m either lazy or on vacation. Honestly, I’m not sure which.)

This Saturday is the Fourth of July. People around the nation will attend parades, have picnics, light of fireworks at their home, and if your city is having one, attend a professional fireworks display. There you can see bursts of wonderful colors and different shapes, golden showers of sparkles, and eye-widening kabooms!

Have you ever wondered how professional fireworks are made? Ya, so did I. So let’s take a look at the anatomy of a typical firework. When you see a firework display from the launching end, It looks like a bunch of tubes all lined up together. These tubes are called mortars. Inside the tube is the shell. The shell is made of two parts, The lifting charge and the color pellets. The lifting charge is located on the bottom of the shell that is usually made of black powder. It is there to lift the top section high into the air. This makes it easier to see. It also keeps the explosions, sparks, and any hot embers away from people and high enough to burn out before they hit the ground. The top section of the shell has the colorful part. It contains small pellets called stars. These can be made to produce different colors, shapes, and noises. Some of the designs are proprietary, which means they were invented by the firework makers, and the formulas are closely guarded secrets. There are usually at least two fuses. The first fuse lights the lift charge. Once the firework is safely in the air, a second fuse, sometimes called the timer fuse, causes the section with the stars to explode (the burst charge) and starts the stars burning also. They now can even create designs with the fireworks. One special firework that I have seen ends up making a smiley face!

The colors usually come from various metal salts. A salt is a combination of a metal and one or more nonmetals. Table salt is sodium chloride, made of the metal sodium and a gas called chlorine. Here is a list of the most commonly used salts.

Strontium: Red

Calcium: Orange

Sodium: Yellow

Barium: Green

Copper: Blue

Strontium + Copper: Purple

Magnesium, Aluminum + Titanium: White

(Source: https://www.ontariosciencecentre.ca/science-at-home/diy-science-fun/the-science-of-fireworks)

And to think these all started with the Chinese putting gun powder into long bamboo tubes. This is thought to have happened somewhere between 600-800 AD, during the Tang Dynasty.

For those of you who don’t have a fireworks display in their home town, here is a display from 2025, courtesy of the Happiest Place on Earth, Disneyland. Enjoy!