When it comes to recycling, one of the biggest barriers to recycling specific materials is contamination. Contamination comes in the form of other materials being mixed in with the material that is bound for recycling. For example, if you’re trying to recycle a cardboard box and there is grease or oil on it (think pizza box), the box can’t be recycled because of the oil. In addition, the more materials an item is purposely made…
Last fall, I became a member of the Arbor Day Foundation. Yay, trees! I love trees. I want to save trees. The Arbor Day Foundation loves and plants trees. Sounds like a membership marriage made in heaven, right? Not exactly. Almost immediately after becoming an annual member, like within a couple of months, I received a mailing from the Arbor Day Foundation asking me to renew my membership. What the what? Excuse me, I just…
I have seen the sentiment expressed multiple times online that the weeks we have lived in 2020 feel like years as the serious events of the year, including the pandemic, innumerable political events, and the death of George Floyd with the resulting worldwide protests, pile up on us. We barely have time to process major news related to any particular event when another hits and it’s all we can do to hang on for the…
I took vacation time this past week, which may seem like a strange time to take a vacation, what with a pandemic and all, but my brother was planning to visit this week and I had the time off scheduled. While he couldn’t be here for a visit, I still needed to take the vacation time or I’d lose it. Plus, given the recent stress of shutting down a museum and learning to work from…
It’s the beginning of the year. Where most people set resolutions, I review my ongoing list of goals and decide whether to dump any or add to the list. One of my goals for 2018 is to leave Facebook. Sounds pretty drastic to abandon a social media network that has billions of users and an addictive interface, but this feeling has been building for some time now. As Facebook has grown, it has shifted from…