Flotsam & Jetsam

If you don’t know what to do, pick up litter at the beach. It’s never the wrong move.

At one point I am alone by the surf and this is where loud singing is released.

I went to Heceta beach in Florence to pick up trash and I remembered a Mary Oliver poem that goes something like:

Human: shit is hard and nobody loves me.
Ocean: bummer hey I gotta sync with the moon right now. 

I recommend looking at the actual poem: (I go down to the shore).

A man stopped me on the trail heading toward the beach with my bucket, and asked “what are you getting?” Garbage, I said. I realized it wasn’t maybe as impressive as hunting for clams, mussels, fish, crab. No, we were on a quest to harvest garbage!

SOLVE, based in Portland, organized this event.

SOLVE sorted all the stuff volunteers gathered. They send as much plastic as they can to this cool place to make art: https://www.washedashore.org/

SOLVE organizers: THANK YOU!

Volunteers: No, thank you!

SOLVE: No, thank you!

Volunteers: No, thank you!

Everyone thanked everyone a bunch.

It was my dog’s best ever beach trip. To go to the ocean in search of garbage!

I listen to Quakers and they told me about this beach cleanup. Of course, there were lots of non-Quakers also picking up garbage. We blended in together in shades of gray, walking around carrying buckets and looking for trash.

I’m reading about Trust. Seems we’ve lost a fair amount of it. This leads to losing our understandings around truth. Truth needs trust and trust needs truth. Pete Buttigieg wrote a good book about it, Trust: America’s Best Chance.

A couple came up to me with some urgency. “We’ve noticed a large piece of styrofoam sitting up on this bank for at least a year, can you go get it?” Sure. I scampered up the edge, found it, and went to pick it up but it was fused with a 4-inch thick concrete base. “Nope, can’t pick it up.”
“Oh thanks, at least it’s not going to go anywhere else. Now we know for sure.”

Even that is a trust building moment. A unified effort.

Buttigieg wrote that trust among each other will only improve if we engage in shared efforts from activism to service, to truth telling- and having trust in the power of this work to improve all of our lives. 

I watch the break of waves, one after another, they know the next will come through, they have a shared momentum. There is no break in trust.

Afterward I really wanted to go for beers and sing sea shanties with the Quakers but sadly that did not happen.

Kiss the earnest for they shall clean up the earth.

Flotsam and jetsam are words for the debris on the shoreline. Traditionally, flotsam is what washes up accidentally, like from a shipwreck. Jetsam is what is thrown overboard to avoid a shipwreck, to lighten the load.

The majority of trash on beaches comes from storm drains and sewers and beachgoers who leave things behind.