Spring break is upon us. College kids
are racing south, hormones raging like wildfire, visions of debauchery
dancing in their heads. But not all of them, fortunately. Some, as this
Washington Post article
describes, have more constructive things on their minds.
Like helping clean up and rebuild hurricane-ravaged New Orleans
-- and filling their off-hours sightseeing and nightclubbing.
Voluntourism, they call it. Grunting and sweating as they gut
devastated buildings by day, then blowing off steam by letting the bon
temps roule by night.
I had mixed feelings when I started reading this article. The concept
-- combining work with play to help clean up the wrecked city -- felt
strange. Then I thought about what other things these young adults could
be doing with their time. And about New Orleans, the city, and the zany
spirit of the place. What, above all else, has the Crescent City always
stood for? Bon temps roule. Play.
Could there be a more appropriate way to clean up and rebuild New
Orleans, to reawaken its crazy spirits?
Speaking of letting good times roll, tomorrow, as you may have
heard, is the peculiar day that we peculiar Americans, Irish- and
otherwise, celebrate by, among other things, injecting green coloring
agents into various liquids. Like beer. And river water.
Waste News Editor Allan Gerlat reminded me the other day that
Chicago's tradition of turning its river a limey shade of jade for St.
Patrick's Day began as an accident in 1962 when environmental workers
pumped emerald dye into the waterway in an attempt to trace the source
of some illegal sewage discharges.
Here -- courtesy of the Hitler Channel, er, I mean the History
Channel -- is a
miniprimer on Chicago's curious St. Paddy's Day custom.
From our Waste Import Beat, the Lansing City Pulse provides a
good, comprehensive
analysis of the Michigan-Ontario border trash spat,
which I hear Pentagon officials are thinking of renaming "The Long War."
Wait, I may be getting that mixed up with ... never mind.
Also on the topic of waste-import border tiffs, you may recall that
the other day I provided a link to a story about a local Wisconsin
troubadour who wrote a song about that state's recent squabble with its
neighbors over their escalating use of its very inexpensive landfills.
OK, you asked for it: You can listen to the song
here.
Lastly, the Washington Post, in an
editorial, bids a rather testy adieu to U.S. Interior
Secretary Gale Norton, who resigned last week. And the Borowitz
Report offers this typically skewed
take on her resignation. Mission accomplished, indeed.
Spring break is upon us. College kids
are racing south, hormones raging like wildfire, visions of debauchery
dancing in their heads. But not all of them, fortunately. Some, as this
Washington Post article
