First, last week I wrote about car naming. Here are some of the responses I received and thanks to everyone who sent a message.
Gary ? enjoyed your article ? I have two cars; Toodles a MX5 and Clifford The Big Red Truck, a Ford 3/4 ton. Have fun … I hope you receive lots of e-mails.
Martha Steward
Enjoyed your comments re: naming cars. I have three vehicles, all with names. My Mitsubishi SUV is Mitsy, the motor home is Brunhilde, as it is large and I”m a Wagner opera fan and the little pickup I tow behind the motor home is Miss Twinkle Toad.
I had a Chevy pickup with a camper named Red Rover and my first car was a green Manza named Green Fang back in 1964. Lots of fun!
Marti Foltz
Hi Gary ? Loved your article in Saturday”s paper. I have always named my cars. Currently I own a gold 2008 Honda CRV and her name is: Goldie Hawn … Duh!
Have a great weekend!
Sandra West
Kelseyville
My dad used to call his old Chevy Apache “Big Red” and our orange VW bus was Ol” Betsy. He stopped naming them when he bought a car that wasn”t unique to him.
Michelle Hedin
We have a ”71 New Yorker we call “The Shadow.”
Patty Chandler
I”m one of those who has named every car. Glad to know I”m not alone. 🙂
Diane Gordon
Now ? for this week …
A few days ago my wife came home from work and was telling me about a story she had heard about a huge pile of plastic trash floating in the Pacific Ocean that, due to the currents, stays roughly in the same location and just continues to grow bigger. She didn”t say where she heard about it, but I told her it sounded like an urban legend to me.
With my interest piqued, I did some searches for the Pacific island of plastic, and I found that it really exists. Based on what my wife had said, I had envisioned a large, floating pile of plastic. But, it is really more of an underwater garbage stew and not an above water plastic island. It also doesn”t totally consist of plastic. There are many other types of trash in the mix. But, plastics do make up about 80 percent of the mass, according to researchers.
Interestingly, there are two large underwater trash dumps in the Pacific Ocean. One is located just north of Hawaii and the other is east of Japan. The two areas are not small. Both plastic patches are in what is called the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. It is a “slowly moving, clockwise spiral of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents.” Both areas combined are said to be the size of the Continent of Africa. The one close to Hawaii has been estimated to be about twice the size of the state of Texas. If you have ever driven across Texas, you know that it is big. According to marine researchers, the plastic mass is about 30 feet in depth.
If the fact that my wife told me about the plastic problem accomplishes nothing else, at least it brought to my attention just how poorly we human beings treat our oceans. And, by passing the story along, perhaps more people will think about what we have done and are doing to one of Earth”s greatest resources.
The world produces about 200 billion pounds of plastic per year. It is estimated that about 10 percent of all plastic eventually finds its way into an ocean. About 70 percent will sink to the bottom, eventually, to cause problems there. The rest continues to float and that is what has created the two Pacific Gyre plastic masses.
As we all know, conventional plastics; those made from petroleum, are not biodegradable. That is partly the reason why the plastic patches keep getting bigger. Plastic will photo degrade, but it takes many years and the fact that it is floating underwater adds time to the process. Photo degrading causes plastic to fragment into tiny pieces. The small, plastic shards are called mermaid tears or nurdles. They do damage to ocean animals by being swallowed or by being sucked up by filter feeding animals.
While some of the ocean plastic originates from ship traffic, experts think that about 80 percent is a land-based issue. Charles Moore, founder of Algalita Marine research Foundation, who has been studying what he calls the “plastic soup” since the 1990s, says that we need to change our lifestyle and quit using throwaway plastic products. According to Gwen Lattin, from the lab in Redondo Beach that tests Charles Moore”s water samples, “No matter whether you”re studying the surface, 10 meters, 30-meter samples or 100-meter samples, every sample that we”ve looked at in the Pacific Ocean has had plastic in it.”
Based on this information, if you believe the old adage that, “You are what you eat,” then if you dine on Pacific Ocean seafood, you can definitely say that you are getting more than your minimum daily requirement of plastic, and that is not what I would call a health food supplement.
Gary Dickson is the editor and publisher of the Record-Bee. Call him at 263-5636, ext. 24. E-mail him at gdickson@record-bee.com.
