You guys are awesome! Boo, litterbugs!

Once upon a time, I used to canoe up and down a two-mile stretch of the Shenandoah River, picking up trash, old tires, and flood debris. The best finds were "river beers": unopened beer cans that had been lost by folks tubing on the weekend. So skunky, and so warm, but free!

Metachat: So skunky, and so warm, but free!

Awesome!

I have almost always lived a beach and do some clean up every time I walk down one.

Sometimes it makes me feel so angry to see all the rubbish. The local beach here they have to dredge through the sand now to attampt to clean it (on the other hand there are NO bins provided - which might help a bit ya think?)

One time my mother and I were walking at the end of Largs Bay Jetty (the tide goes really far out and you can sometimes touch the end pylons). A woman shouted out from the jetty for us to be careful because a child had just cut his foot on some broken glass where we were. We looked down and saw the glass - and picked it all up safely and put it in a bin.

But not before my mother shouted back at the people looking down at us from the jetty "Well why didn't one of you pick the bloody glass up then?"

She was always pretty full on about keeping the beach clean. Boo litterbugs indeedy.

Damn, LT, I picture you more as a lobbyist than an activist, but you gotta start somewhere. In your case, however, consider taking really big steps.

Final totals from today's cleanup by all volunteers:

We removed 141 pounds of trash from Jenness Beach today. The trash totals included:
2 gloves
7 nets
3 traps
1 buoy
8 pieces of fishing line
67 pieces of rope
2 condoms
5 metal beverage cans
5 balloons
7 straws
54 piles of dog poop(!)
16 plastic bags
11 plastic bottles
45 bottle caps
268 cigarette butts
12 styrofoam cups
3 strapping bands
75 misc. pieces of plastic
7 small pieces of rope
2 shotgun shells
And other misc. items, including a watch band, hair ties, an Army man, toys and pieces of styrofoam

(some items I bolded for emphasis)

Where did you find those totals, LT? That's interesting.

We also saw:
1 shiny sun
100+ happy people strolling the beach
30 dogs (estimated); including 1 catahoula
1 doz surfers (also estimated)
1 bazillion surf clam, razor clam, and mussel shells
1 googlyillion grains of sand
1 blue-shifting ocean
1 cormorant
some gulls
2 people looking worriedly out at the ocean because they thought a lobster bouy looked like "an animal wearing a life vest"
2 funny little kids who weren't quite sure why mom was making them pick up dog doo on the beach
and 3 awesome slices of pizza as reward at the end

I got an e-mail from Blue Ocean with the totals, Miko.

Awesome on you both for doing that. I am trying to figure out when the big spring clean-up is this year for the coast. Last year, it was the weekend we had out-of-state guests so we ended up unable to go, but I was really disappointed.

Supposedly I am on the email list to be notified for the clean-ups, but I'd be really sad to miss it again.

We always carry a plastic bag or two in the trunk of my car for when we are walking on the beach specifically because without one, our pockets and hands would fill up with the garbage we'd pick up, which would make it less fun.

One time, my boyfriend dragged this huge (20 feet or so?) piece of plastic from one end of a beach to where we were parked (maybe a 15 minute walk or so). He had a big beard at the time, and was dressed kinda like a sea captain, so I am certain the few other people on the beach thought he was a slightly deranged weirdo.

I was far enough behind him that I could see people's expression as they noticed him (he had a kinda angry look on his face because he was mad about the plastic being so close to seals) and it made me laugh until I had a stomach-ache.

I am glad that you had a good time and a good day at the beach!!

Now I know what happened to that bag of gold I lost at the beach...

Ah, when I was 15 I did a summer volunteer thing with the MA state parks, and one day we cleaned up a beach.

We found one of those free full beers that'd been baking all day in the sun and sand, and its discovery and subsequent sharing led me to one of the major moral dilemmas of that time.
Not whether to partake, no, but whether to turn in the 5 girls who each got 1 sip of beer.

I don't know if you can infer this, but I used to be kind of a goody-two-shoes.
(I didn't tell though.)

Y'all are too good. We have river and beach clean-ups. I need to get down there with my kids and sign up.