<
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/2023/0731/Old-ladies-welcome-How-senior-swimmers-clean-up-Cape-Cod-s-ponds>
"The pond is silent – until the first cry: “Found something!” A septuagenarian
swimmer ducks into the water. She emerges, fist first, clutching a pair of
bright-blue children’s swimming goggles. These are passed to a kayaker, who
waggles them overhead, like a prize, before stowing them in a laundry basket
for safekeeping.
Over the next hour, on a cloudy Saturday morning in July, the team of 15 – all
over age 65, all women – hunts for trash across Mares Pond, a 28-acre kettle
hole near Falmouth, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, at depths of up to 8 feet.
They turn up wooden planks, silty beer cans, a plastic container lid, a
mud-caked fishing rod, a cement block, and countless other bits of garbage. The
day’s
pièce de résistance, though, is a 12-foot segment of aluminum flashing.
It requires the combined efforts of several divers to hoist on the back of a
kayak.
When the team returns to shore, they are smiling and laughing. They crack jokes
about the dive and their haul. “We didn’t even know what it was,” giggles one
swimmer, referencing the blueberry-cheesecake-flavored electronic cigarette
they found. “We have to ask a young person.”
These are the Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage (OLAUG). Since 2017, the
group – which accepts only older women as members – has removed trash, by hand,
from ponds across Cape Cod."
Via
The Fixer August 2, 2023:
<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/protecting-indias-imperiled-wildlife-3d-printed-teeth/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
