fall

A couple of months ago I reached my 2 year car-free anniversary.
One of my "regular" bus drivers calls me the bike lady.
After a very unpleasant experience on the metro rail, I don't take the train to work anymore. I've been trying to get streetlamps fixed on my old walking route from the red line to my apartment. Amazingly this has turned into an effort spanning nearly an entire year with multiple forms filled out and council member contact. This city has some growing up to do.

4/3/10 - Fryman Canyon, Studio City, CA

downtown LA

1/24/10 - downtown Los Angeles, taken from the Verdugo Mountains 2 days after receiving ~4 inches of rain

we still have a great deal of work

rain power

1/18/20 - after the rains

bike and squak

red-lored amazon parrot, Burbank, CA 1/16/10

Upcyle Christmas Wreath

My apartment is one of the few in my building that faces an open courtyard. People stand across from my apartment, waiting for the elevator and facing my front door. As a result I like to decorate my door. In past years I've gone to Christmas tree lots and asked if I could have some of the branches they cut off people's trees. I was frequently told I could take what I wanted at no cost as the employees appreciated the fact that they didn't have to clean them up. I then tied them together and made a wreath for my door and decorated some of my doorways. It brought the smell of a tree in my apartment without buying a tree. This year I decided I didn't want to do that though, so I instead used things I already had around the apartment. I gathered a dry cleaner hanger, a bunch of random plastic bags in various shades of green and blue, a twist tie (from a bulk bin purchase) and a mesh bag from oranges and pulled together a wreath!





I used pliers and wire cutters to resize the hanger and make a smooth-ish circle. I cut the plastic bags into similarly sized strips and then alternated colors in a semi-regular pattern. I used probably about 7 bags, but most were much larger/thicker than a normal grocery store bag. You could easily do something more striped or a single color. When it looked full enough to me, I tied a bow with the mesh orange bag and attached it to the wreath with the twist tie!

Yellow Chevroned Parrotkeet, Toluca Lake, CA 11/28/09

Costal Cleanup Day 2009 - Balboa Park LA River site

I recently realized I never said anything about Coastal Cleanup day back in September!

LA River cleanups in the Balboa Park area are super easy to reach by public transportation. I caught the Red Line to North Hollywood and then got off one Orange Line stop too early (Woodley instead of Balboa) and just ended up walking to the next stop near the cleanup site. Although I was somewhat annoyed with myself, I did enjoy the walk someplace that I had never walked before.


walking over the LA River on Victory....


























Although I've walked from the Balboa Orange Line station to the LA River a few times, I had never realized the street was lined with pecan trees!




Growing up in Texas we'd go to the park and pick pecans in the fall. Then we'd go home and used the hefty nut crackers and have a supply of pecans for the next year.





The Cleanup site was well marked this year, which was exciting. Last year there was a little issue at this same cleanup spot and the people with the supplies were on the opposite of the street from when the rest of the people were for the clean up. It was a little weird and confusing though because the first thing I saw was a giant truck and people bar-b-queing



I'm not sure if this is where the money went from the Friends of the Los Angeles River cleanup a few months ago or what, but there were way more accommodations at this clean up than any of the others I've attended at this same site. There were lines of tents, more junk food than normal as well as tools! Some were more suited for different areas (like the rakes and brooms), but the shovels and hoes were much appreciated.













instead of wandering east where we had just cleaned a couple of months ago, we wandered east under the bridge over Balboa to the other side of the street.




































The large number of kids at this clean up when compared to some previous ones was encouraging














A peek into my bag. As usual most of the stuff was plastic - bags, straws, wrappers, random broken items. The hoe allowed us to more easily get at some thing that were otherwise unreachable during some other clean ups.






















At one point my boyfriend and I were digging away and a large group of kids, maybe around 10, came stomping through the plants declaring that there was no more trash! Oh no! I wish I had more time to educate them outside of saying "there is a lot more if you look closely!" I think my boyfriend and I spent about 20 minutes just in this area and we only left before we needed more water.























unreachable plastic hanging from the trees








Progress made with the aid of the shovels! A group of people were working on this for a while and they had trouble leaving this behind unfinished. I told them there are other cleanup events here throughout the years, so I hope they get a chance to come back and make progress before it's covered again...








Another example of the work people did with the shovels and hoes! I happened to take a picture of this same bin when we went to a Friends of the LA River clean up earlier in the summer.






More people working until the last minute! This clean up was also weird in that the people sponsoring it had much of the 'stuff' they brought cleaned up and put away before noon, when the clean up ended. In the past it seemed like things didn't end so abruptly at noon.





A portion of the trash when we finished up at noon. Some of the trash had already been hauled away!

LA River

la river, studio city, nov 1, 2009

I've been walking a lot recently. Something about the night and the streets is very inviting.

10/24/09 - International Day of Climate Action - BBC Cleanup

Yesterday was the Internation Day of Climate Action. As part of this event, Siel from Green LA Girl and Sara from the Daily Ocean arranged a 20 minute Blogger Beach Clean-up, which is somewhat part of a large project that Sara has going on. Admittedly, my boyfriend and I did not take the most Climate friendly transportation to Santa Monica to join in, but it was the first time I had been out to Santa Monica since February and I was looking forward to meeting some people. I, as usual, had my camera on hand to tell my part of the story.




heading out to clean for 20 minutes!










I was surprised at the large number of cigarette butts scattered all over. It's like some people see the whole entire beach as a giant ashtray!












One of the two lifeguard towers that Sara focuses her clean efforts between.






Most of my recent clean-up efforts have been focused on the LA River or some of the areas near my home or places where I walk. I've learned that each place has the obvious trash as well as the trash that is possibly more harmful, yet easily missed. I quickly realized there were tiny bits of plastic all over the sand and that these wads of kelp and other sea stuff also contained hidden plastic bits within. This one had some white plastic ribbon stuff. Plastic stringy things are especially alarming as they easily become tangled around animals, especially the feet of birds. I see this all the time with pigeons, which sometimes eventually lose their toes, feet or lives due to infections. I really hope the shoes belonged to someone still at the beach because I left them behind.....






Another wad, this one with some black plastic straws mixed in with some little shreds of white plastic I soon realized were all over the beach and white fluffy stuff that looked like it came from a pillow or stuffed animal.







Remains of a day at the beach, thankfully with no accompanying plastic pieces left behind.
























Heading back to the meeting area after the cleanup we walked past the bathrooms and realized there was once again a large "jackpot" of plastic pieces and more cigarettes







A peek into my bag at the end of the 20 minutes. Most everything was plastic or Styrofoam including wrappers, countless plastic straws and tiny shreds or broken pieces of plastic. Based on the difficulties myself and others had at trying to figure out if what we saw was a piece of shell, plastic or Styrofoam or if something was a straw or the shaft of a feather, I can easily see how animals are confused as well. It's saddening and frustrating to see what we've done and how small careless actions can really add up.




After our 20 minutes of cleaning, everyone got together to hear some people speak briefly, including a representative from Heal the Bay, CICLE, and Sara from the Daily Ocean, while enjoying some of the complimentary snacks and drinks.












The Heal the Bay representative and the trash the group managed to pick up in only 20 minutes.
















Afterward we headed over to Pourtal for some drinks before I was seduced by the beauty of a sunset on the beach, something I don't often get a chance to see, but reminds you why consciousness of the problems and efforts to fix them are all worthwhile.








Thanks to Siel and Sara for putting together this cleanup event!

I think after all of these cleanup events I've realized that a couple things really need to happen. First, people need to become more aware of what types of things are passing through their hands and into the trash. There is no need to generate the amount of waste that we do. Theoretically, if everyone picked up as much trash as they intentionally or unintentionally dropped, there wouldn't be trash all over the place. Obviously that doesn't happen. I think some people also don't see the big picture or the cycle from the comfort of their cars and from their tv set. I think after many people reach this point, they also begin to realize that it's actually very difficult in some instances to work around this waste problem because the companies that sell the products that create this waste are not held accountable for the entire lifecycle of their products. What are all of these stupid tiny pieces of plastic? If every business that handed out straws for drinks had to make sure the straws ended up in the "right" place, I don't think they'd be so generous with the plastic tubes that might end up traveling to more destinations in their lifespan than the person that once placed their lips on them to sip their soda from a plastic cup.