Poems

A few days ago, my daughter was challenged to write a limerick. She didn't find it easy, so her brother, hoping to help her with the challenge, scanned our shelves and gave her a Book of Poetry he had gotten for Christmas when he was probably about 7. And probably never opened since that Christmas morning soo long ago.

Sob! (Thinking back to those days always makes me a bit misty eyed. I am one of those women who really enjoyed having a handful of little children under her feet.)

My son suggested that the following poem from his Christmas book might fit nicely on my blog. I agreed, so here it is:

Kindness To Animals

Little children, never give

Pain to things that feel and live;

Let the gentle robin come

For the crumbs you save at home;

As his meat you throw along

He'll repay you with a song.

Never hurt the timid hare

Peeping from her green grass lair,

Let her come and sport and play

On the lawn at close of day.

The little lark goes soaring high

To the bright windows of the sky,

Singing as if 'twere always spring,

Amd fluttering on an untrired wing-

Oh! let him sing his happy song,

Nor do these gentle creatures wrong.

Author Unknown

Recycling

I can't tell you how ridiculously thrilled I was when I found out that our new home was in a community that had mandatory recycling! Recycling has been my goal ever since I was about 11 or 12 years old, but in most of the communities that I lived in, I was a child before my time. In fact, I lived in the age when there wasn't even a deposit charged on a soda (pop) bottle. Now this is truly unique if you consider that when both my father and my children were kids, there was a deposit required on a bottle of soda(pop). I was the generation of children that grew up without this fundraising option!

In fact, when my family moved to a much more rural and farm-like area, I was looked at with scorn, and as if I was crazy when I asked them about recycling. "There's plenty of room at the dump." Bobby replied to my question with a look that said "what can you expect except dumb from a city slicker," and I hadn't lived any where near the city!

So, here I am, living in recycle USA and I'm still not happy! As Ricky Ricardo from "I Love Lucy" would say, "Wot hoppened?" When we first moved in, we always had more recycling than what the town gave us a container for. Before the town got their fancy shmanzy armed trucks for collecting the recycling, this wasn't a problem. Have more than what the container has room for? Not a problem, put the extra into cardboard boxes or into a plastic garbage can and put it at the curb with everything else. The men manually loaded it onto the collection truck. Home relatively clear to start the cycle all over again.

And then it happened, the Town decided to do single stream recycling, and humans would no longer load or recyclables onto the truck; a truck would do it.

They even gave each resident a nice, big, tan colored can that worked with the trucks lifting arm.

And what should be even more good news to me, the Town would be collecting even more recyclable categories, so there would be even less garbage! Though now, with the bigger recyclables can, the recyclables will only be picked up twice a month, instead of every week. Not good news for us.

Because now we are immersed in recyclables! We can no longer use cardboard boxes or trash cans for the overflow, because the truck arm can not pick those up.

So I called Town Hall, and they gave me a number to call, and eventually I will be able to get a recyclables pick up truck to come every time our recyclables can is filled.

It just hasn't happened yet. What has happened though, is the constantly staring at all this mess in my kitchen, in my hallway and on my back porch is making me change my mind on recycling.

But, that's another blog.




To be continued..........