Plastic Forever

We've moved

2011-09-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

We have moved and we have a new look.
Please visit http://beachplastic.com to keep up with our plastic adventures both on and off the beach.
Our blog can be now be accessed directly through our website
http://beachplastic.com/blog/

Big thanks to Eli Lang for getting us up-to-date and up-to-speed with his great website design and for getting us connected to Twitter and for creating a Beach Plastic Facebook page.

Shoot Your Wad

2011-08-02T13:34:00.000-07:00

Wads are used to encase shot inside a shotgun shell and are one of the most pernicious pieces of plastic that we find on the beach. We have thousands of them in our collection. The walls of the wad protect the pellets from the charge restricting the shot pattern to a more coherent pattern. They shoot out of the gun and remain in the landscape long after the ducks and the hunters are gone. They float their way down rivers, from the wetlands to the sea. We have never been to the beach when we don’t find these in great numbers. Historically they were made of compressed paper, but with the advent of cheap polypropylene, they are now made of exclusively of plastic.

This print will be auctioned at the Bolinas Museum benefit auction September 17th at the Buell's historic barn. It's a great summer party for a great cause. We hope you will join us.

One Beach premiers September 20

2011-07-21T11:07:00.001-07:00

Making Beautiful Art out of Beach Plastic

2011-07-15T11:28:00.000-07:00

Making Beautiful Art out of Beach Plastic

Birthday Beach

2011-07-14T06:20:00.000-07:00

As one might imagine- the favorite place to celebrate Judith's birth is the beach so we headed there Sunday for the special Abbott’s Lagoon to Kehoe Beach trek- an all day sojourn that traverses a part of beach that we rarely visit- usually once a year.

Since this section of Ten Mile Beach is a prime nesting ground for the endangered Snowy Plover, Jeff Wilkinson, the greeter, is at the trailhead educating folks about the importance of not transgressing the fenced area that protects the nests. He entertained us with this song he wrote himself.

We did this hike the first time for Judith 50^th birthday- on the left at 50 and years later on the right at 61 enjoying almost the same spot on the trail.

It was a glorious day- sunny not exactly balmy but warm enough to enact our ritual skinny-dip baptism - the water so chill that our calves seized up immediately- but a naked frolic in the waves is just the invigorating a 61 year old woman needs.

There was plenty of plastic to be found- almost simultaneously Richard pulled out of the sand a bright yellow French fry and Judith found a Lego-like clinched fist from an action figure. We each strutted our treasures proclaiming we each had found the best.

But the pièce de résistance was a metalized plastic balloon- the reflective Happy Birthday inscription was faded but still discernable- Hey, it’s party time!!! But those balloons are not fun to wildlife and they don't biodegrade. Hey, the balloon party’s really over!!!

Although it is the off-season for plastic we found more than we could carry so we rigged up a “trailer” to haul back a weighty clump of a buoy.

On the 13th, Judith's actual birthday, we enjoyed a tour of the Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris at the DeYoung Museum with curator Timothy Burgard. Wonderful to experience Picasso’s prodigious creativity. Bulls Head 1943 has long been an inspiration- a revelation of form and function- a recognizable bicycle seat and handle bars recontextualized into a bull’s head. With that playful gesture he set into motion the idea of the objet trouve – which we continue today.

Pink Flamingo

2011-07-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

Conjure up the tackiest, most unnecessary plastic product ever made and the pink flamingo lawn ornament may come to mind. It's seems like they have inhabited front lawns forever, but pink flamingo-ness was born in 1957, the brainchild of Don Featherstone of Leominster, MA.

Featherstone was a recent art-school grad in the mid-fifties who sculpted the original flamingo out of clay after trying out various birds—ducks and geese that would have been more in keeping with his New England landscape, but they never "took off" like the flamingos. The official copy-written birds come in sets of two, one bending its sinuous neck to eat and one upright alert. Over 20 million have been sold by Union Plastics alone. There are knockoffs, of course. But we believe the head we found on Kehoe beach is authentic. The plastic is thick and sturdy. As the years unfolded the plastic became ever thinner and more and more red. Though to authenticate we'd need the whole body intact since Featherstone's signature appears on the underside.

They turn up everywhere, most recently as a marker that US soldiers had been around, like the "Kilroy Was Here" graffito of WWII. A couple of flamingos grace the now-dry fountain at the US Embassy in Baghdad.

Why flamingos?

We think maybe the flamingo mania came with a 50's romance about retirement to Florida, though flamingos are not endemic to Florida. A flock of the Caribbean variety was imported to the lake in the center of the Hialeah Racetrack in the 20's, where a flamingo ashtray souvenir may have started the craze or maybe it was Don Featherstone's desire to escape the New England winter.

Bugsy Siegal's trademark Las Vegas gambling palace hotel is the Flamingo. Crayola introduced the color Pink Flamingo in 1998. John Water's movie Pink Flamingos (what better name for bad taste) is the benchmark by which all things vulgar are measured. The Flamingo's biggest doo-wop hit in 1959 was "I Only Have Eyes for You."

We've been lucky enough to see real flamingos in the wild, a sparse flock in a volcanic lake in the Galapagos Islands and spectacularly huge flocks at Lake Manyara in Tanzania.

Combs and Toothbrushes

2011-07-06T13:32:00.000-07:00

Along with billiard balls, combs were some of the first items made from plastic. The first plastic combs were made from nitro-cellulose or celluloid and later the "unbreakable" comb arrived in the 1940's made of nylon. We find combs and brushes almost every time we go to Kehoe.

Some of the very first combs were used not for grooming but mainly for hygiene. Nit picking. Getting parasites out of the hair. Fine wood and silver combs for this purpose have been dated to 5000 years ago and it's been theorized that the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe was passed along on nit-picking combs.

Because of their rarity we particularly cherish doll's combs and brushes. We have found only two Barbie combs in all these years—amazing to see that tiny thing in the welter of debris washing in. We've got a pretty good bunch of toy plastic brushes. We found a sparkly little comb from a Ty Girlz doll. Cutesy tween-age girls, the main feature is the style-able hair. Hey, com'n get 'em: there's Pretty Patty, Totally Trish, Punky Penny. And just off the assembly line, you once could buy a set of the two Obama Girlz. It was a big controversy when the dolls were named Sasha and Malia, the actual names of the Obama daughters. The Girlz were recalled and are now called Marvelous Maria and Sweet Sydney. An unre-called pair sold on e-Bay for $3000. The dolls are brought to you by the folks who generated the Beanie Baby frenzy.

It's said that combing or brushing the hair is healthful not only for bringing luster and vitality to the hair itself but the act of stimulating the scalp has an acupunctural effect. We don't have data on this idea but it sure feels good to unsnarl the hair and run the nubs of a brush or comb along the scalp. Anyone who commutes would do well to have a scalp massager comb on hand to keep the driver alert.

The toothbrush is a part of this family as well, hog bristles on a wooden handle was the first iteration going back to China in the 1600's. Hogback bristles were widely used until the invention of nylon and in 1938 the very first use of nylon was a toothbrush —Dr. West's Miracle Brush. Toothbrushes are another thing we've found on every trip to Kehoe. We have hundreds. These days you can buy handles with replaceable heads—good ideas are coming along.

Tips

2011-07-05T06:43:00.000-07:00

By the tens of hundreds, we find the ivory colored little tips from Tiparillo cigars. Any trip to the beach, no matter what season, we'll find at least 10, often many more.

They arrived on the smoking scene in 1962 from the General Cigar Company "improved" with a plastic mouthpiece so the cigar doesn't get chewed up and nasty—however, the plastic tip is often chewed to a frazzle end. We try to imagine a lonely fisherman pacing the deck worrying that little bit of plastic. Or an artist sculpting a Nike of Samothrace. Or maybe Tiparillos are just used because they are easy- the plastic tip could be clenched in the teeth leaving the hands free for tying knots, setting hooks, etc.

BUT, why are there so many?

Tiparillo's became most famous for the 1964 ad campaign "Should a Gentlemen Offer a Lady a Tiparello?" This was the peak of smoking culture and the dawn of the liberated woman. The ladies in the ads were hardly what we'd call liberated—they were always showing lots of cleavage. "Should a gentleman offer a Tiparillo to a violinist?"depicts a 20 year old blond in a nightgown open to the waist barely covering her nipples. Her long pink-polished fingernails holding a violin and bow would never be able to press strings to make a sound. The infantile oral fixation married to smoking, focused on her bountiful chest comes to us almost as a joke. But it represents a historical moment. The anonymous hand proffering the cigar is a cast toward additional oral fixation.

There were scuba diver babes with unzipped wet suits. The dental hygienist, holding the mouth mirror like finger pondering, should I? So weird. The copy says "the dentist is a little late, hey, why didn't you have a toothache sooner?" More cleavage, more blond hair. Twin busty census takers had you seeing double. The ad with a naked librarian with a book held up to her breasts says, "Maybe she'll have to put the book down if you don't offer a light."

These days the Tiparillo is used to make blunts. The cigar skin is emptied of tobacco and filled with marijuana. The flavored paper of the menthol variety is a particular favorite. In San Francisco we see them littering the gutters on their way to sea. We are also starting to find the empty wrappers for flavored papers made from plasticised aluminum which will last forever. Now you can dispense with the tiparello altogether.

FLESH

2011-07-02T16:04:00.000-07:00

In the studio we sort first for color- the subtle gradations of rust to red, from fuscia to pink. When presenting our collection of plastic we are frequently asked if we did something to the color? Never!!! From the brilliant yellow of a toothbrush handle to the cobalt blue of single use water bottle lid- the unlimited hues are what makes for a great palette of plastic.

In his poem FLESH, Richard muses on his childhood relationship to crayons and color.

FLESH

It wasn't that the color didn't match

‘cause it wasn't called skin.

It was called flesh though it seemed flesh

didn't have much to do

with the color of skin.

Flesh was the stuff under the skin,

and anyway people weren't white.

People weren't black or red or yellow.

The skin of people was brown or coffee

or pale amber or tanned pink.

And old Binney & Smith in 1903

when the first crayon hit the scene

the box only HAD eight colors,

the usual ones, but the post-war big-box

had Flesh in it with the other 47.

Flesh was changed to Peach in 1962

and no Negro color replaced it

or yellow-man color

which reminds me of sitting

in a Pittsburgh hot dog joint.

At the next table an African-American boy

playing I-spy-with-my-little-eye,

saying “Brown” and pointing to his sister,

his mamma says, "No, baby, she yellow."

opening my eyes to the austere hierarchy

invisible to most of us with pale skin.

And Crayola dropped the Indian Red name

as a political correction in 1958

even though it was named

for a kind of iron oxide found in India.

And stuck in my brain is a swirling rainbow

of color like oil on water catching the light.

Skin of the "colored man"

my mama said was coming by

to do the lawn.

Disappointed that it was the open-hearted Major,

though I was always glad to see him,

an African-American man who

was kind to kids,

and had really been a Major in the war,

these days, mowing lawns.

He was no colored man though I kept looking

and maybe my mama was right,

if he would catch the light just so. . .

To this day my mind holds a picture

tight to itself of the real rainbow-colored man.

Finally, it was that eight year old

holding a hard tube of crayon in 1956

and saying over and over flesh, flesh.

Flesh was meat and I half expected it

to have the flow of warm blood pulsing.

And even now when I hear the word flesh,

I think of that peachy cylinder.

As in, the way of all flesh,

or sins of the flesh,

or in the flesh,

or flesh and blood,

and flesh eating bacteria,

or pressing the flesh,

and flesh and bones,

and, "Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt . . ."

and that pound of flesh Shylock

hoped would be the heart of Antonio,

And, come to think of it, just

how does the dark substance of my flesh

become these colorful thoughts,

the flesh of this poem.

Richard Lang, 2011

Thanks to Sarah Ratchye for embodying the rainbow.

Maximum impact, minimum carbon footprint

2011-06-27T14:41:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet the images for our show Known Quantity- plastic from Kehoe Beach- were electronically transmitted to Singapore where the panels were printed. We are grateful to Jason Aspes for attending to all of the details. Viewable 24/7 until late summer.

Newton Circus Pte Ltd

138 Cecil Street #01-01
Cecil Court
Singapore 069538

The Plasticene Discontinuity at the Brower Center

2011-06-17T14:32:00.000-07:00

Our print The Plasticene Discontinuity is on display in the front window of the Brower Center in Berkeley until September 2.

The history of the Earth can be read in the layers of built up sediments. Each deciphered layer offers an understanding of a moment in natural history. In the year 2855 CE, geologists discover a vein of brilliantly colored substances people once called “plastic.” This anomalous geological bed (a discontinuity) is much like the K-T Boundary that signaled the demise of the dinosaurs. The PD is evidence of a culture awash with “disposable” items, the remains of a people who valued short-term prosperity over posterity.

2011-06-13T17:19:00.000-07:00

Summer Exhibition at the Brower Center

IN THE HAZEL WOLF GALLERY

June 16, 2011 – September 2, 2011

The Brower Center asked Bay Area artists to respond to David Brower’s quote: “Have a good time saving the world. Otherwise, you’re just going to depress yourself.” With over 500 submissions, we were inspired by the sheer breadth of the work. From traditional painting to installation to the conceptual avant-garde, this show is a powerful indicator of how pervasive social, environmental, and political concerns are among artists and the community at large. We hope that these 22 works — imaginative, contemplative, and playful — will also inspire our visitors to consider how we will all live in the future.

Artists include: Mari Andrews · Timothy Armstrong · Claire Brandt · Noah Breuer · Mark Bryan · Hagit Cohen · Alicia Escott · Lisa Espenmiller · William Harsh · Ryan Hendon · Anthony Holdsworth · Grant Johnson · Michael Kerbow · Kimberlee Koym-Murteira · Alexis Laurent · Jeff Long · Viviana Paredes · Ruth Santee · Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang · Esther Traugot · Michelle Waters · Stephen Whisler

Jurors: Lucinda Barnes, Chief Curator and Director of Programs and Collections, Berkeley Art Museum · DeWitt Cheng, freelance art writer · Amy Tobin, Executive Director, David Brower Center

Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704 Tel: 510.809.0900.

Mountainfilm in Telluride inspired by happiness

2011-06-08T13:36:00.000-07:00

Maybe it was the rarefied air with 17% less oxygen that made us giddy or maybe it was the action- packed days that started at 7:15 AM, early up and out, so we could make it to an 8 AM Coffee Talk or the action-packed days that ended late with drinks with new friends.

One Plastic Beach screened four times - once to an auditorium packed with students for the Mountain Film in the Classroom program- Making Movies that Matter, two times in the regular film festival, and finally, because it was so popular, it was selected as a TBA- for the last day finale- picks of the festival.

We did a Q+A with each screening. First thing, each time, we gave a big shout out to Eric Slatkin and Tess Thackara (directors/producers) with a big expression of our gratitude. It was their vision for the film and commitment to seeing it through that got us to Telluride.

We were glad to be such active Mountainfilm participants from our Q+A’S, the exhibition at AH-HAA, the Coffee Talk and the making of the trophies. Although we were always on the job- we even had a chance to enjoy a few movies.

We are big fans of the friendly Telluride style where conversations start up impromptu- while standing in line waiting for a film or over the breakfast table where strangers exchange stories and become friends.

Coffee Talks One Word – Plastic

Judith held her own with esteemed colleagues, David deRothschild (Plastiki), Andy Keller (Chico Bags) and Suzan Beraza (Bag It)

On Saturday the SF Chronicle had a big feature about Andy and Chico Bags and the lawsuits against him by plastic bag manufacturers.

We were so happy for all of the award winners. Especially happy that Roko Belic won two trophies for his movie Happy - as the Audience Favorite and the Student Award by the students in the Movies that Matter program.

Kudos to Prudence Mabhena who won the first Indomitable Spirit Award who rocked with her soulful rendition of One Love.

Along the way we collected some authentic Telluride plastic and fashioned one very special trophy for Bebe, festival director David Holbrooke’s daughter. Bebe saw our film on the Internet then sent it on to her Dad insisting that he had to have us at Mountainfilm.

Big thanks to Jeremy Baron for permission to use his photograph of Prudence at the award ceremony and of Judith at the Coffee Talk.

USA Today reports on Mountainfilm.

Mountainfilm Mission statement -

educating and inspiring audiences about issues that matter, cultures worth exploring, environments worth preserving and conversations worth sustaining.

Earth Day 2011

2011-04-25T15:33:00.000-07:00

The first Earth Day, April 22,1970 was organized by Senator Gaylord Nelson as a response to the horrible Santa Barbara oil well blow-out of January of 1969. Just one month before the spill, the most powerful image of the 20th Century, Earthrise over the moon horizon, was shot by astronaut Bill Anders from the Apollo 8 spacecraft. It was the first journey humans had made out of Earth’s orbit. Anders' Earthrise preceded the images of oil-soaked birds filling our psyches. Surfers emerging from the waves black from crude oil were cover stories all over the US.

The image of the blue marble in the black void was an unavoidable reminder of our commonality as citizens of planet Earth. In those days, the environment was not a political football tossed around casually as it is today—the decade of the 70's became a Golden Age of environmentalism — DDT was banned, the EPA was created, the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts were signed into law, the Superfund law—even Nixon gave speeches urging environmental legislation. In 1980 Reagan reversed the trend, cornering and Balkanizing environmentalism into becoming just another "special interest."

Just this April 7, 2011 The House, passed an anti-EPA bit of legislation forbidding regulation on greenhouse gasses. How hard is it to realize—no air, no water, no life? Anti-environmentalists argue that dire predictions made that first Earth Day never came true. Funny, but it was the legislation passed that brought that about.

So, here we are again headed out for Kehoe, feeling that maybe taking one miniscule bit of the planet, where the ocean meets the land, we can tell the story of what is happening planet-wide and maybe telling it with some good humor, some heart felt grief, and just the weird geeky-ness of having done this for 12 years now. Can this be a way to open the mind to action? Today we are not alone doing this.

The Environmental Action Committee of Marin and the Park Service scheduled a cleanup at Kehoe. It was a great success, our plastic buddy Richard James was handing out bags and advice at the trail head. People were readily going at the task and we met a bunch of folks to share the labor. There must be a gene for the "search and find" fervor. It's both the unexpected and then finding just the thing you've been looking for that floats our boat, and our little tribe of cohorts. By weight today, it was rope and line, hawsers and net. Getting that stuff that out of the waste stream feels most virtuous—a tangle-trap for birds, turtles and marine mammals.

Speaking of mammals, far down the beach was a harbor seal pup, very newly arrived, with fold-y skin and grey fluff all over. It'd remind you of a Shar Pei pup. It's in the tide line scootching up to keep out of the rising tide waiting for its mother. As this is the only beach on this side of the point that allows dogs, seems like everyone has a dog. Richard J. has been warning the dog people, as they headed out, to keep their pooches on a lead so's not to be harassing the poor thing. He told us, he had made a leash out of retrieved line for a dog on the loose.

And the Peregrines are seriously nesting up on a nook of the sheer yellow ochre Laird sandstone formation. We'd been seeing them play at it for last few weeks, but now they are paired up and ready for what they came here for—to make more Peregrines. There is a ledge and behind is a dark niche where the baby’s will be raised. The perch is a perfect look-out, where the female is perusing the whole scene—the ravens, the Redtails & we the plastic gleaners. The banning of DDT in 1972 allowed Peregrines, and most of the top of the food chain birds (eagles, condors and some owls) to return from the brink of extinction. Jeeze, they way they fly, veering up the cliff face, swooping, wings tucked in, then coming to a dead stop at the nest, it's better than Cirque du Soleil. We get a good look with the binos— We'd make that heroic confident bird the national symbol. Thank God our legislators had some sense to ban DDT.

It was a grey day, a bit heavy feeling with rain just at the horizon line, the wind out of the southwest—the rain wind. As typical this year, from several trips, the plastic has been intermittent. Today, we found all the usual things, oyster tubes, combs, tiparillo tips shotgun wads, lighters. Sadly, no soldiers. Dropping the focus to the smaller bits we got reminded about the color and patina that attracted us in the first place. We gathered a lot of tiny pieces. And, as the focus narrows nurdles come into the spotlight, pernicious little devils, packed with absorbed toxins. In 2009 we had gathered packets of 100 to send off to Japan for analysis by Shige Takada. The report came back that they were loaded with DDT. 40 years later DDT is still floating around in the ocean. Good thing Peregrines don't eat fish. Hey, we eat fish, fish eat nurdles, Who's endangered now?

Earth Day 2011. As we toil up the trail with a weighty load—we didn't just scout for stuff we like—today we picked up everything.

The Song Sparrows were chorusing in the Tule Marsh. The cliffs were ablaze with yellow—Cowslips, fragrant Lupin, Buttercups, Monkey Flowers and of course, California Poppies, the coastal variety. How many hues of yellow can there be? and our very favorite the lovely Tidy Tips.

New Logo for Our Website

2011-03-29T09:53:00.000-07:00

Earth Day and National Poetry event

2011-03-13T17:44:00.000-07:00

Join us Friday April 8 for a reading and presentation

with Lorna Stevens and Becky Foust

Marin Arts Council Gallery

904 Fourth Street

San Rafael

5:30 - 7 PM

Not quite the Ides

2011-03-12T18:40:00.000-08:00

March 12
It has been 45 days since the corn cutlery was planted in our garden...eager with anticipation, (drum roll please) we remove (with great ceremony) the cutlery. So here goes...unedited...the real dirt...

Bags Full

2011-03-12T17:29:00.000-08:00

It was sunny, a perfect day to enjoy the warm, first stirrings of spring. We had imagined that the tsunami would have brought in lots of extra plastic and maybe a few special pieces but to our surprise there were only our most regular items: shotguns wads, bottle lids, oyster tubes. Judith did find a purple tiparello tip. A first. We have collected them by the 10's of hundreds in an ivory color but a purple one - indeed, a rare find.

Our new bags hand sewn by Teresa Van Hatten aka the Green Bag Lady served us well...Judith is headed home with two bags full.

Unintended Consequences

2011-03-09T18:52:00.000-08:00

Unintended Consequences
is the title of temporary exhibition at the US Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia. The exhibition explores the notion of unintended consequences, both positive and negative. The exhibition was a collaboration between Ambassador John Bass and Assistant Curator Claire D'Alba.

We recently learned that our own Point Reyes National Seashore has a sister park in the Republic of Georgia. We never even knew that there was such a thing as sister parks. So we wonder about what is washing up from the Black Sea, washing up onto the shores of Kolkheti National Park.

From Larkin Street to Kehoe Beach

2011-03-04T15:00:00.000-08:00

It was a dream of a day come true.

Thanks to help from Intersection for the Arts and the caring and committed staff at Larkin Street Youth Sevices, a group of 19 of us made the trek to Kehoe Beach in the Point Reyes National Seashore. We were blessed with a stunningly beautiful day- no wind and warm. Yes, everyone did find plastic.

We wanted the Larkin Youth to go to the source - where the plastic that was used in our SFMOMA Natoma Street windows came from.

Several of the youth had never been to such a “wild” place. On the drive that took us through the rolling dairy land of West Marin, one youth exclaimed that he had never been so close to a cow before!

To Change the World

2011-02-26T18:20:00.000-08:00

Along with the premier of our film we were invited to be on a post-film panel to discuss: To Change the World: Art, Ecosexuality and Environmental Evangelism. Wow. Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens and Savitri D and Reverend Billy. We were a little star-struck to be on the same program and the discussion turned out to activate challenging and profound thoughts. Questions we've been mulling over for some time. How great it was to talk things over in public with other creative folks. Mostly about, how does art function in politics? Does art have a role in fostering political action?

Essentially, we've always thought of political art as an oxymoron. Art that tries to prove a point is essentially what advertising does —images and words that try to sell. The true political act is to think for oneself. To allow an idea though to its conclusion. Everyone has ideas but allowing an idea acquiesce—in writing, painting, any of the arts—is the most powerful human force on Earth, and that's a political act.

Our work has diligently avoided polemic. Of course, we have an agenda with the plastic we find. In the beginning it was a simple act of planetary housekeeping, we like a clean beach. And now we'd like to see single-use plastic banned, it's causing havoc to us, and to many other creatures. But, first and foremost, we want to excite the pleasure principle, because we believe that while people are activated by pain as a call to action, lasting resolve is fashioned by joy and love.

We are always trying to simplify, to keep true to the "stuffness" of plastic pollution. Not to make the plastic resemble something else, but to shape it in a way that creates its own context. We hope, with the stuff we create, to elicit at first, "Wow, that's beautiful. Wow, what is that?“ Then with a move towards recognition, "Oh, I had one of those.” Finally, with the realization, there is no away as in throw-away.

We have no use for snarky irony that can make you seem clever and the enervating cynicism that follows. Make it good to look at and people will look at it, after all, artists often forget they are in the entertainment business.

One Plastic Beach movie premier

2011-02-26T14:14:00.000-08:00

On February 25, One Plastic Beach had its world premier at the Geography of Hope Film Festival in Point Reyes. In an eight minute film Tess Thakara and Eric Slatkin vibed our project. We are grateful to them for the time and attention they gave to our crazy endeavor.

One Plastic Beach from Tess Thackara on Vimeo.

Knives

2011-02-26T12:15:00.000-08:00

We arrive at the film screening just off the beach — hair tossled, shoes sandy, pockets full of fresh finds – exuberant because the cold clear air has snapped everything into sharp focus and we’re rollin’-ready to evangelize about our eco- love story.

Days before there had been a great northern storm that had threatened snow to sea level. And although the flurries never made it- there was evidence of the gale winds. The beach was “blown-out,” meaning when a storm passes with mostly wind the sand blows over the big pieces of plastic – challenging our hunting gathering skills. Sometimes only a thin knife edge of a large piece is visible.

Since there was not much plastic where the trail meets the beach, we stretch it out, walk quickly all the way north to the end- the full 1,000 yards - then meander back.

Early on, in the art-making part of our journey together we made a piece from a toy plastic pirate knife. Both of us had 25+ years in the studio as solitary artists so to express the Venn diagram of both the love and the art, Judith made a piece to depict the process. With a knife set on end and a little filigree plastic butterfly on the edge- we called it "Collaboration." It's a dance on the edge with two strong egos at work. who've decided to not release anything until there is complete agreement. Today, eleven years later we find another knife; this time the fantasy has gone from pirate to commando. A plastic commando knife. Hmmm we need something else. Stay tuned.

We do gather three bags full of plastic, but distraction rules on a day so clear and a low tide to boot. Mussels (dipped in butter) for the party after the panel. At home the knife has gone to butter- hummmm from butterfly knife to butter knife- what’s the meaning in that message?

with old and new friends

2011-02-20T18:07:00.000-08:00

As distracting as it is from the job at hand to have other folks "on the job," distracting from the hard work of gathering it's a lovely kind of colloquy—friendships are always more alive when there is work to do. Talk, talk, talk and then we settle into the glean in earnest. These are accomplished people we are with. Makes us feel rich to know such people. Brewster is mastermind of the Internet Archive and his wife Mary founded the San Francisco Center for the Book. Their son Logan is an avid and very focused birder.

Logan has scope and binos and field guide at the ready. Richard mentions he had come to Kehoe a while back, on a weekday expecting an empty beach, coming over the hill to see, 300 people in green and khaki. Everyone had scopes and binos. A flock of birders here to see the Bristle Thigh-ed Curlew. The alert had gone out. Logan says, "Oh yes, that would have been in 1997." Wow!!! That kid is—focus.

Brewster and Mary we’ve known for some time. Their web connections are well worth your time. The Internet Archive is just that, and the Center for the Book is full of resources for hand bookbinding, printing—totally old school. We visit these sites often.

Daisy and Chris are new friends. Daisy came along to see first hand what we do as she’s the curator of the art space at 142 Throckmorton Theater in Mill Valley. Daisy will be showing our work coming up in a show she has titled From Now to Eternity, May 20 - June 30 with a reception on June 7 from 5- 7 PM. Daisy curated a show of Mary's book collection Exploding the Codex that is there right now through March 31^st.

Chris has been busy transcribing the interviews he’s been doing with Mort Sahl. Mort Sahl! We can’t wait to see that. Richard saw Mort at the Purple Onion in 1964.

Today there is the usual plastic: shotgun waddings, tiparello tips, black tubes from the oyster fishery. Plasticized food bags for chips, candy and "energy" bars are turning up in real numbers. A plasticized and aluminized Doritos bag holding 3/4 of an ounce is simply criminal. Where’s the EIR on that item? A thing that looks like a crab claw resolves to a pale horse head, hard to see, is snatched up by Richard and a little sheep, hard to see, is snatched up by Chris then an ivory colored knife, hard to see, is snatched up by Brewster. The competitive collecting spirit gets rolling. We are onto some real picking up, bags full to sort at home.

Eleanor Roosevelt

2011-02-13T21:02:00.000-08:00

Last week we were ready to cash-out and give it up—it's tiring and sad picking up other people's stuff, we could get really disheartened...but this week we bring our friends M. and S. who've never been to Kehoe. We are total show-offs, braggin' on our beach like it was a grand-baby. At our house, they toured the "plant" where we wash, sort and figure what to do with all this crap/treasure. They got to see the warehouse/barn where we store our inventory, sorted into bins of shoes, a box-load of the plastic inserts for baseball cap visors, shotgun wads, a bag full of toy soldiers, etc etc. I mean, you think we're gonna throw out the stuff we find? And, BTW exactly where is the "out" as in “throw out.”

At the parking area we are surprised to see A. who has been by Electric Works with his CCA printmaking students for a tour. "Is this really your beach!?" (on the tour I had told the story of our beach project). He had gotten to beach by being lost and just looking for a place he could walk his dog. Kehoe is famous for being one of two beaches where dogs are allowed. He tells the friend he's with our story—he's got it pretty right—he's actually read the blog. (Our hero! He recounted perfectly the story of finding the soldier in the garbage can.)

Sadly, for M. and S., the beach was not the horrible mess we had represented — we made excuses that Kehoe is a fickle mistress not showing us the full glory of the winter-time strew. It hasn't really stormed so far in 2011, The plastic lies buried under wind-blown sand. M. commented—"You know once you start looking there really is a lot." M. and S. have good eyes for the search—good pattern recognition honed as intrepid flea-marketeers. M. really wants to find a toy something and as Judith proclaims the "thing of the day" a yellow toy canoe, eyes are double-pealed. Judith then finds a lighter. The pressure is on.

S. finds a comb, the first of two for him, (combs were some of the first objects made from plastic) then Judith finds a soldier. OK, this is serious. Richard finds a soldier. M.'s starting to suspect we brought these from home. The canoe was pretty awesome, but soldiers? A lighter? “How'd you see those things?”

So follows, three of the Seven Deadly's rearing up—pride, avarice, and envy. Judith, sweet as she is, can surprise you getting a gloat-on when it comes to this project. She proffered a closed hand with a smug eyebrow raised—proclaiming her soldier in an opened palm.

M.'s design office is filled with the coolest things, each item carrying a whole story. We know he'd like to have found the canoe last made in the mid-60's by the Bergman Toy Mfg. not far from where Richard grew up in Illinois. The little boat was part of a set that included Indians on the war-path with raised tomahawks. Then M. finds the true “prize of the day,” an ocean-worn figure, enigmatic and eroded. It's evokes the Cycladic figurines from the early Bronze Age. It'd look good mounted on an alabaster cylinder inside museum vitrine. We look closer. No, we think it may be Eleanor Roosevelt.

Tar Ball

2011-02-07T09:41:00.000-08:00

Most times we’re pretty upbeat about what we do. The feelings of disgust and grief are back-burnered to the thrill of being on the hunt. Today with an abundance of plastic debris it should proffer the song of the joyous worker happily on task. But today it’s too much. Bending, bending…it gets you out of breath. Yes, there was lots of stuff to glean—some of it rare and envied and that inner wave of covetous glee was activated again and again. A soldier right off the bat, three lighters. Boom boom boom—stuck in the “treasure pocket” for gloating later. Lots of stuff. Three black Kodak film canisters show up holding our interest: these will soon be fossils from the Plasticene.

And the beautiful day, the first real warm day of the season, should evoke just a bit of uplift. But a lingering bitterness surfaces—its mantra: “picking up other peoples crap- picking up other peoples crap- picking up other peoples crap. All that does is focus the energy on an aching back. We are barefoot in the warm sand, then Judith steps on a big hidden tar-ball…I step on a smaller one. Ukk, this may be our last trip, feeling old and tired, we’re ready to cash out and fold.

Home, its better, we did find some good stuff, the tar cleaned with a “hair of the dog that bit you”…gasoline. The petrochemical circle. There were two wildflowers new to us and looking on the web for the names we stumble on the fact that the PRNSS is a sister park to Kolkheti National park in the Republic of Georgia. Hey! Who is having an exhibit in the US embassy in the Rep of Georgia? Hey! Field Trip! We are such suckers for uplift.

Baby Blue Eyes

mmmmmmmmmMussels

2011-02-04T18:29:00.000-08:00

This is high season for plastic plus it’s a beautiful, mild, windless day. So much plastic to choose from could turn us gluttonous. We go with son Eli who is back from sojourns in Africa (the kid's passport is 'bout a half inch thick with visas). It was Eli who accompanied Richard on the first Kehoe cleanup in 1996 three years before the fateful meeting of Judith. Judith had been gathering her own plastic from a place called Blackie's Pasture Beach, around the same time.

Eli in 1996

Lots of rubbery fish lures, which we love, lighters and two "army" men—a dancing Indian and an alien in a Hazmat suit. Maybe the most special item, a helmet from a Ninja Turtle. Judith again, with her skillful looking. Two doll brushes! In twelve years of doing this we've only found four total. We hefted home six bags full and at this writing we're still "processing"—washing and sorting.

Best of all, though, was the low tide. High luminous clouds reflected in the sheer of soft tide washing far up the beach. And the great bonus with the low tide, we were able to get to the mussel beds and gathered a bucket for supper. mmmmmmmmmMussels.

mmmmmmmmmMussels.

45 days

2011-01-25T13:54:00.000-08:00

Just because it is made from non-GMO corn, it is still single-use.
At Trader Joes’ sample bar - after that small tasty bite of Fettucini Alfredo - the fork goes into the garbage can. We planted one of these forks in our backyard landfill aka garden and will revisit this fork in 45 days to see if it is still cutlery or what?

Mark your calendar- March 11 is the day.

The term “bioplastics” adds to the confusion about recycling- some of the new plastics are compostable, some are biodegradable, some are recyclable. Each kind has different requirements (water, heat) for it to degrade- and then there is the question of no toxic residue. Worldcentric has a good explanation of the differences.

Coal

2011-01-22T12:42:00.000-08:00

At the end of the beach is a spill of granite boulders all bread loaf size. Rubbed soft round. White-grey speckled with black. The eye is caught by another round rock, very dark and sparkling in the late slant of sundown. Football size. It’s a 14-pound lump of coal. Rubbed with another piece of rock, and sure enough, it makes a black dust. It’s coal. Now how did that wind up on the beach? Coal doesn't float. How'd it get here?

One way it got here is from the Carboniferous Era 350 million years ago. It wasn't laid up here but from a time when high oxygen levels (almost 40% opposed to the 21% now) gave rise to giant insects and oozy fern swamps. Birds and flowers hadn't been invented yet. Anyway we haul it back home, wash the sand off, and weigh it. We lit a piece and it burned leaving a cinder and a gassy peaty smell evoking nostalgia of the winter coal smell—how we heated schools in the Midwest. In the 50's coal cinders paved every alleyway and the running tracks circling every football field. This piece probably fell off a cargo ship on its way to China, where coal burning is unrestricted. Its high-grade anthracite, shiny and burns with a characteristic short blue flame.

The space of Kehoe Beach feels like home ground, like our backyard. The cliff going into the water marks the end boundary of our walk. Here alluvial fans of debris from washouts have eroded to a shelf where pioneer plants have stabilized the sand. It’s a good place to find plastic washed in on the semi-annual super high tides. A lot of older and bigger chunks. Rising out of the skimpy dirt are three kinds of mushrooms. Two kinds of Inky Caps; one with a long pale cap, a smooth furled umbrella; the other already curling back to release spores. These disintegrate soon after they're picked digesting themselves into a black goo. We're told they're good to eat, but if eaten with alcohol they create a substance like antabuse, the pharmaceutical used to deter alcoholics. They make you quite ill, but aren't deadly. Hmmmmm who wants to try one?

Sandpipers, a flock of more than 100, scuttle on furious legs, a moving unison smooth and rhythmic as the wavelets they follow. The sheets of ocean glaze the sand like mercury and the pip-squeak birds double in reflection as they skitter as if one creature racing the wave-line. A wave too big and they launch in a fluttering chorus, float up on the breeze and double back to work the sand. White Dungeness Crab larvae litter the wrack line. We'd had a crab feast a couple of nights before.

Plate Tectonics

2011-01-12T07:36:00.000-08:00

Kehoe Beach is a textbook illustration for geology classes. The Point Reyes Peninsula is as "an island in time". The whole of the National Park is part of the Pacific Plate and is moving northwest, grinding past the North American Plate. We see lots of evidence at Kehoe. The layered rock of the Monterey Formation, the bleached pages of a book you see when you drop down to the beach at the trail end, match up with rocks 120 miles to the south. This chunk of land is on the move. Further north is the smooth wall of Laird Sandstone laid up on top of the Monterey Formation. The Monterey stone was deposited slowly with lots of microscopic critters lending their shells to the mix. You can see barnacle fossils too. The Laird Sandstone was deposited quickly and is so soft it can be scraped to write graffiti. Which depending on the season when hearts and pluses match up initials. Spring blooms lots of lover pairs scratched into the Laird Sandstone. All of this was laid on top of granite that appears to be similar to what has made the Sierra Nevada range.

The thing is, this mash up of rocks really happened and is backdrop of our recurrent trips to Kehoe. During one lifetime the cliffs seem solid, monumental and permanent but we've seen the slow crumble and slide as alluvial fans of granitic rocky debris slide onto the beach from the far end of the beach. Every year the beach slides toward differentiation. The Monterey Formation is the most solid though it is folded by years of pressure, as though it were rubber bands caught on a treadmill. The perpendicular Laird Formation peals off in slabs and dangerous chunks that have killed picnickers.

All of this tells the languorous and relentless story of change at the margins. Driving out to the beach you cross the famous San Andreas fault, here a valley filled in with waters of Tomales Bay. Change on a geologic scale may indeed be languorous, but periododically a lurch occurs as it did in 1906. The epicenter of that lurch was right here in Point Reyes where you can see a fence displaced by sixteen feet, left as a monument very near park headquarters.

An Affair to Remember- New Year's Eve 2010

2011-01-03T17:17:00.000-08:00

It feels like that. An affair, a little naughty and mischievous. But on the last day of 2010 we head to Drake's Beach instead of Kehoe. Seven miles as the crow flies. We'd heard from Richard James,another beachcomber friend, that because of the strong southerly winds this year the beach facing into the wind had a lot of plastic. Oh! Kehoe, we still love you, but today we want to go on vacation.

The dilemma— do we tell anyone? do we mix our finds?

It's cold but not much wind, just above 40°. The damp of the ocean plus all the rain we've had sinks the chill right into the bones. Off we go and as promised there is lots of plastic in the wrack-line and the geology is very different from Kehoe. Lots of silty mudstone from the same age as the rock at Kehoe but smooth and crumbly. The Park Service warns to stay away from the cliff base—there is lots of evidence of rockslides and we know just a few years ago a falling boulder killed a kid. But, that's where the plastic has landed so we walk through boulders balancing like a couple of drunks—arms out, shaky small steps. Teetering like the codgers we are becoming. A few lighters, red cheese spreaders (thank you, Kraft Foods), super balls the usual stuff to add to the collection. But the best are a Barbie® arm and a green hand with the #3 becoming a post-modern adaptation of the Sistine Chapel's creation.

Rain starts in again so we hurry back to the car with a three-bag load. But then a break in the clouds and on the way home, we stop at North Beach at the southern end of "Ten Mile Beach." We've gone around the lighthouse point, which is Point Reyes. From here we can see all the way up the beach to Kehoe and beyond. Miles. Past the inlet of Tomales Bay, the rift valley of the San Andreas fault. All the way to the houses perched on the edge of Bodega Bay.

There are lots of people here weather notwithstanding, families for the New Years celebration. Being in nature sets a tone for the coming year. Tables are arranged in the sand, a crowded jumble of food dishes, beer six packs, coolers. Two big groups of 40 or 50, all ages, kids out in the cold surfing, shirtless boys playing football, most are bundled with puffy coats, scarves and hats. Guys tending campfires. A big pot of Texas Chili is cooking trail-style with a cast iron lid for coals put on top. Faces are bent to paper bowls digging into the eats with plastic spoons. One guy carefully slides brats down the tines of an eight-prong pitchfork.

One of the shirtless footballers sits on a Styrofoam cooler to get his warm clothes back on, crashing through. Crack! Heads whip around then the space is filled with laughter. A group of serious young girls, all stork-y legs and big suede Uggs on the feet, are away from the group with eyes cast back, making Talmudic commentary on the behavior of adults. They are gathered around a 50-gallon plastic barrel, wave crushed but with the top still on. It’s from a chemical company with the designation, S.A. Sociedad Anónima, the corporate designation for Spanish speaking countries.

Rain in the distance and the sun cracks through lighting Kehoe six miles down the beach, like a spotlight. A rainbow starts up shining right to our beach. Then when it doubles - shouts all up and down the beach start a chorus of "Oh my god, oh my god, double rainbow, oh my god."

"Oh my god, the rainbow” terminates at our strange pot of gold. Kehoe Beach.

If you are not one of the 30,000,000 million people who are in on the "double rainbow" phenomena - Please click here: Double Rainbow.

“

An Auspicious Beginning

2011-01-01T09:23:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Susan Cohn of the San Mateo Daily Journal for her report Museum gotta see 'um about our exhibition in the SFMOMA windows.

Syntimber

2010-12-31T18:58:00.000-08:00

A word about recycled plastic. “no deposit no return”.

We found a two-foot section of a plastic 2x6 on the beach, a cut-off scrap, most likely the end of a larger piece of decking. How to parse that one? This washed-up plastic board, made from trashed plastic, will never be anything other than plastic pollution once its usefulness has expired. Once the mix of all kinds of plastic is made into a board, it will never be another something—only more landfill, more toxins leaching out to the sea. And, if I have to replace my old redwood deck...? What will I do? I sure don’t want to cut more trees—oh boy livin' large in the age of trash.

Plastic is very seldom recycled it is either down-cycled or up-cycled. Confused? Up-cycling means making something more useful from trash like fleece from PET bottles. Down-cycling converts waste into something useful but less functional, like shampoo bottles into shipping pallets, into boards like this piece. Once the down-up has happened that’s the end of the line— a slight detour in a straight line toward the trash. No chasing arrows. Recycling means used over again for a similar purpose—an aluminum can becomes an aluminum can; a glass bottle becomes a glass bottle.

Feeling "green washed?" Just when you were feeling so virtuous tossing that plastic water bottle in the proper bin, you find out that the container industry has been hard at it putting the onus on the consumer—for years, instead of taking responsibility at the source, billions of bottles are spewing out. That terrible packaging for a new case for your phone, oy veh! The container industry has resisted putting a return tax, or bottle deposits and has actively moved to defeat bill after bill. Remember “no deposit no return.” The true costs of plastic are never fig'ered into the equation. But what happens next?

Cradle to Cradle >> http://epea-hamburg.org/

This is the most sustainable concept yet devised—make stuff in closed loops, feeding the natural cycle and the techno cycle. The natural cycle is about composting, converting "waste" to food or soil. The techno cycle is about true recycling—that a can becomes a can again idea. Creating plastic that can have several lives as the same thing. The sole of a flip-flop becomes a new sole.

And still, picking up a four pound piece of plastic and carrying it home feels like a tiny virtue. And telling about It, feels like a breath of sanity.

Winter Solstice Greeting

2010-12-21T09:44:00.001-08:00

Wasn't the Buddha's last instruction -

Make of yourself a lighter?

Chirstmas Bird Count

2010-12-18T20:00:00.000-08:00

After last night's howling winds and slashing rain and despite another major storm threatening (2010 is proving to be a wet year) we head out anyway. Maybe we'll get lucky and catch the trough in the storm. It's clear at 8 AM and the radar map looks free of rain clouds for a couple of hours at least. Who'd go to the beach today? We're surprised that the parking lot at Abbotts Lagoon (the beach just before Kehoe) is loaded with cars. Pretty rough weather coming, chilly but not too much wind yet. So many cars?

We start down the trail in our companionable silence. So nice to be together and quiet in nature and let the sounds in. Let the thoughts in. Surf in the distance, a lot of chirping in the marsh. We scare up a bunch of quail; their wing beats drum in the chest. Some paw prints in a slick patch of mud, fresh - we'd like them to be something exotic- fox, maybe weasel, but more likely a small raccoon. We have seen weasels here.

At the rise of the trail just before it dips down to the beach we see a group of four loaded with spotting gear—scopes and binos. They ask, "Are you doing the CBC? It's the 111th annual Christmas Bird Count." This explains the cars. "No, we're doing the Christmas Plastic Count," we say. They've seen Oyster Catchers, Kestrels, Virginia Rails and more. Numbers are rising and falling, mostly falling. We tell them about the Peregrine nest with four chicks we saw last spring.

After the night's windstorm, the sand has blown over everything: rocks,driftwood seaweed. It looks like a tan snowstorm. It's covering the abundance of plastic we expected to see. Still, we are able to gather a couple of bags full. The distribution for unusual things is so random. We find three soft rubbery fishing lures; white ones adding to the twelve-year total of 37, along with a coveted umbrella handle and a Mexican candy squeezer.

The water bottles we usually find are mostly local but there's one from China and then one with the label "Diet Aqua." Diet Water? Really? Yep, 0 calories. Turns out, it's from India, from the southeastern tip of the sub-continent near Chennai, on the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean. Chennai used to be called Madras. How did this bottle get here? Googling it, we get a YouTube of the purification process. Bottled water is a form of consumer madness here,but makes sense in a place like India where bacteria and parasites thrive in damp tropical heat; where over a billion human digestive systems are hard at work.

The road to the beach follows Lagunitas Creek, the last really viable breedingplace in Central California for Coho Salmon. On the ride back we stop at a good place to look for them, where for years we've watched salmon thrashing in a mating frenzy. Last year, though, none. There is encouraging news this winter—after two years of calamitous drop in salmon populations, there seems to be an upswing.This spot's become a Bay Area destination so the Park Service has put in an observation area- a parking lot and interpretive signs. It's stunning to see the bright red males, big as your arm flipping themselves up the rushing waters, the females whooshing the gravel in the streambed to make nests to lay eggs. Today there's too much silt in the runoff to see any fish but the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle had a big story about the increasing numbers. You really get a sense of deep instinct seeing the fish.

What got us up this morning into the cold and wet? Some deep, very human instinct to make something in this world. To make something beautiful, even out of the trash we find at the beach. We've lately been reading The Art Instinct by Denis Dutton.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PktUzdnBqWI

It surely is evident that the human will toward beauty and the hard, sometimes uncomfortable journey is as strong as those salmon swimming back to the bed of their making. We go the beach on a crappy day; the birders are out in numbers...people like something beautiful.

Numbers of feet

2010-12-17T12:38:00.000-08:00

We have boxes and boxes of shoe parts collected from our 1000yard stretch of beach. Boxes. Hundreds of heals, padded inserts, flip-flops, whole shoes.

A friend was looking at this part of our collection and found a shoe, a DKNY spangled sandal she had scrimped for as a teenager. Cinderella tried it on and it fit. Was it hers? She was amazed to see her teen-angst fetish object, the thing that would lift her into a dreamworld of glamour, in a box of rubbish. Oh! how the desire for being loved is manipulated and rubbed raw.

All these shoes washed out of the Pacific remind us of numbers of human feet on the planet. Let's see...over 6.5 billion people on earth right now, that would be 13 billion. How to think about that number???

Walking back from the beach loaded down with bags and bags, dragging tied together buoys and bigger scraps, tied with rope found at the beach, Richard started playing an arithmetic game. It takes the mind off the burden of the load.

Hmm, how long is a million seconds?? That'd be twelve days. A billion seconds, that'd be thirty one years ... Shoes feet time—big numbers made real (.. er) by a little arithmetic footwork.

Party at Block Party

2010-12-13T18:04:00.000-08:00

On Friday the folks from Larkin Street Youth Services came to Natoma Street to see the installation of Block Party. It was a thrill to show and share the windows with the participants who tirelessly helped to string the many, many strands of plastic. They were excited to see the result of their efforts displayed in such a public venue - it definitely was empowering. After we viewed the windows, we had a docent tour of the Cartier-Bresson exhibition at SFMOMA. Needless to say, it was a fun and art-full day.

Birthday Beach

2010-12-07T20:00:00.000-08:00

Late start today and not arriving at Kehoe until just before 4 PM. The sun behind a mackerel sky is telling us, more rain is on the way. The sun lights the clouds to a papier-mâché stage set for a Kabuki drama. The mind always wanders in an upswing of salt-air and wide, unbroken space. If this were on stage, it'd be telling the story of the lovely princess held at ransom by a brutal lord demanding fealty from the head Shogun. The Lord's mind has been compressed into a knot by endless warfare. Then he falls into a madness of love with the princess, grace herself, who feigns suicide. But then her captor, in his shock and grief does the seppuku for real.

A complicated story of human dimension we contemplate as we walk home down the trail in the dark. We saw a lion here just this last summer. A mountain lion, big, swiftly crossing the road at dawn. We both saw it a few yards from the Kehoe parking area. They like hunting at dawn and dusk and that makes for a very uncomplicated story of eat or eaten. Oh, the imagination...!

It's hard to look for plastic today, and not much worth writing about— the beach at sundown is magnificent. It's a super low tide (which meant a big high as well washing the beach pretty clean). The acreage has tripled and the sky doubled by mirror wash of the sliding soft surf. The exposed stacks of granite, right at the tide line are full of mussels, barnacles, starfish and anemones. We'll come back at the month's end with a pick and pail and gather a bunch for a great winter solstice meal. But the sky.... pink and blue-grey reflected in the sheen of the low tide wash makes your heart skip a beat. The heart.

On the way to the beach, (it's my birthday today—what the hell) I decided to count my breaths all the way down the trail, keeping track using the joints of my fingers like prayer beads... I imagine the image of the melancholy Kabuki drama as I walk. It's also the anniversary of my father's death, a very full man, who died on this day so I'd remember.---Richard

Ghost Net

2010-11-30T06:49:00.000-08:00

The shape and content of these images was inspired by Jackson Pollock’s seminal painting Full Fathom Five, so named from a line in Ariel’s song from The Tempest:

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes;

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Line and rope from an enormous ghost net was unraveled to emulate the skeins of paint in Pollock’s work. Ghost nets are pernicious entanglements of lost commercial fishing gear. Birds, fish, and marine mammals get caught in this silent floating debris —trapped in what is called “ghost fishing.” The “catch” weighs the net down so it sinks. Scavengers consume the contents so the net floats again and continues to sink and rise forever. It is estimated that ghost nets, some up to 4,000 yards long, account for approximately 10% of all marine plastic pollution.

The ghost net used in these pieces came directly from the North Pacific Gyre. The gyre, an accumulation of plastic caught in circling currents in area northeast of Hawaii, is sometimes called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is estimated to be 300,000 square miles—making it larger than Texas. By both weight and size it is the biggest garbage dump on earth. Plastic is composed of polymers that never “biodegrade” —they are with us forever sloughing and breaking down to make a polymer soup that outweighs the plankton in this area by a factor of 30 to 1.

Project Kaisei, based in San Francisco and Hong Kong, is a scientific and commercial venture whose mission is to study and cleanup the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In the summer of 2009, when Project Kaisei returned from the gyre with a truckload of plastic debris they asked if we could store it. We are grateful to have the use of their collection.

For more than a decade we have collected and fashioned artwork from over two tons of plastic pollution gleaned exclusively from 1000 yards of Kehoe Beach along the Point Reyes National Seashore. For this project we gladly stepped outside of our usual geographical parameters.

These high resolution images were created and printed at Electric Works, a gallery and fine art print studio in San Francisco.

Our exhibition "Ghost Net" in the SFMOMA Artist Gallery Windows on Minna Street will be on display until June 2011.

Block Party

2010-11-30T06:24:00.000-08:00

After almost a year of planning and anticipating the installation of "Block Party" in the SFMOMA Artist Gallery windows on Natoma Street the job is done. All of the plastic you see here was collected by two people from 1,000 yards of beach, Kehoe Beach in the Point Reyes National Seashore. One piece at a time. Our collecting is limited to this one spot.

Since 1999, we have collected over two tons of plastic trash and have used it make prints, installations, and sculptures, finding this plastic pollution as a compelling art material. It was all washed onto the beach from out in the Pacific, the San Francisco Bay, and from the Russian River Watershed.

In 2005 the United Nations Environmental Programme reported that there are 46,000 pieces of visible plastic floating in every square mile of the ocean. This fact seemed like a good starting point to count and exhibit this representative sample.

Special thanks to Intersection for the Arts for coordinating the workshops with Larkin Street Youth Services. Even the rote task of stringing plastic was transformed by their individual creative approaches. It was exciting to see how seriously, and with great attention to detail, each person fashioned their strand.

From Larkin Street Youth Services:

Fredisha H.

Raymond J.

David W.

John S.

Zaire B.

Daniel L.

Mayco R.

Jose A.

Adrienne S.

Michael W.

Gustavo M.

Christian H.

Warren R.

Don Clay V.

Staffpersons:

Lauren Forbus Peer Vocational Counselor

Tyrone Smith Day Labor Supervisor

Megan Doherty-Baker Day Labor Manager

Peter Carpou Art Program Manager

Intersection for the Arts

Rebeka Rodriguez

Program Director, Education and Community Engagement

Ryan Biega Intern

Train Wreck

2010-11-30T05:53:00.000-08:00

We've been talking with each other lately more about “place” than “plastic.” Plastic pollution, the trash we pick up, one piece at a time gets us to the beach to add to our collection, but foremost among our desires is the lean we have to be in a place that is intact—unspoiled by the industrial global market place. Where the plants and animals are shaped by the forces of natural selection, where the terrain of the landscape is shaped by forces of plate tectonics - this place feels absolutely right.

The mood at the beach depends on the light and weather but it always feels authentic which in turn gets us talking about existentialism. Before the psychedelic roller coaster in the later 60's when reality gained mutability, it was the simple fact of pure being that moved us. Artists like Alberto Giacometti and Jackson Pollock were the heroes trying to show in paint and bronze what it feels like to accept existence as it is and to live a life navigating by your own lights.

On the trail to the beach where the ground has been continually disturbed, you do walk through a slough of invasive species: European Mustard and Hemlock and Italian Thistle, but once at the beach it feels intact, like out of a book on natural history.

In spring the marsh thick with native Cattail and Tule is whirring with the calls of Redwing Blackbirds. Last summer we saw a pair of Tundra Swans flying back and forth over the marsh. Long necks like arrows. As you approach the beach, European Beach Grass was planted to stop the motion of the dunes. That has done more harm than good. Now a pilot program has started to remove the invasive grass.... it’s a great experiment to see if a place can be put back right. Despite the flaws, all in all, this National Seashore is the most "right" one can feel. It'd be pretty close to perfect place were it not for the plastic.

On the beach we meet a pair of women who volunteer for Beach Watch a project of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. They've got clipboards and sheets of numbers–they are counting live birds and dead ones as well as mammals. We tell them that the Peregrine nesting site high on the cliff last spring had four chicks. Today it had a pair of young adult Peregrines calling chirrup-chirrup not the insistent baby hungry squawk they made when we last saw them. This sounded like love.

Kehoe Beach wasn't always here-some of the geology matches the granite rocks of the Tehachapi slip fault 300 miles south. Some from the Monterey Formation is from sediments deposited underwater, the earlier ones are bedded like pages in a book and the soft sandstone of the Laird Formation was laid down probably in riverbeds. Bands of pebbles from fossilized riverbeds are visible. It’s all been tumbled together as illustrated in this animation from UC Santa Barbara. http://emvc.geol.ucsb.edu/downloads.php There are lots of enlightening animations, this one used with gracious permission of Tanya Atwater, director of The Educational Multimedia Visualization Center.

What we think of as a fixed place in our visual world is always in motion. Where is here? Today the most spectacular sight is the cliff where the Laird Formation smacked into the granite. It looks like a train wreck with the cars piled up onto an immovable object—the light sandstone heaved up onto the granite.

Those cliffs lit by slanting light accompanied by the sound of booming surf – we are witness to big drama when the imperceptible motions of the Earth are made visible.

And to the plastic. Judith was supreme. A pink Dolphin—pretty easy to spot, but that tiny alien? How'd she ever pick him out of the strew?

The Season Opener. 12th Year Anniversary.

2010-11-09T09:23:00.000-08:00

There were no bands or speeches, no fireworks or singing of The Star Spangled Banner. But the sea wrack was a festive-looking bunting of green kelp cables confettied with bits of plastic shrapnel. Festive? Such a strange mix of feelings to be back on the job, both thrilled and at once, thoroughly disgusted. It's a sullen day of lowering clouds portending rain.

All of this stuff tossed away and now come back, sea worn, some of it from the 1940's when synthetics rose to replace vital materials for the war effort. We've found items we can date from that era, intact and completely identifiable. Time and forever. The long forever. And geologic time is part of the scene at Kehoe. The line of cliffs here make a horizontal time-line ranging from the Miocene (10 MYA) back to 100 million years to the Cretaceous.

Soon after we bent to the task (Judith found the first lighter of the season and right away Richard found the first cheese spreader stick) a group of forty came through the defile of the trail and down to the beach. Each with a printout of the 1000-yard silhouette of the cliff wall. The line drawing looks like so

me Levantine script. Geology class. We've seen dozens of these groups. Two TA’s carry square headed pick hammers.

They've come to see the bones of the earth exposed and laid out like some monumental "Fig. A" in the book of slow changes. Toward the end of the beach is a dramatic texture and color change as grey granite sits contiguously in contact with pale yellow sandstone.

The students seem curious and open-faced, bright and on task unlike some groups we see who, filling a science requirement, present a sullen overweight and disinterested manner. Today these Geology majors from UC Berkeley seem genuinely interested. We show a girl the bag of plastic we've collected, explain that the future geologists will describe our findings as fragments from the Plasticene Era. We ask the teacher, "How did 10 million year old rock get butted smack against 100 million year old rock?" He tells how the Monterey Formation was on a magma conveyor that collided with the granite. The granite is the same pluton bubble that made the Sierras. “Pluton?” Richard queries. The teacher responds, “The huge up thrust of deep granite. The borderline of the collision is called an unconformity or discontinuity. It's a violent event though in slow motion. Fossils are usually broken up. You rarely see fossils at the juncture but go look just past that dune and you can see a line of barnacles and mollusks." We do and there they are, the secret inner life of stone long in the dark, now exposed for us to see.

The Prof says he's never seen this anywhere else in the inexorable motion of geology. He is talking about time, big time. Yet, even in our short twelve years here, we've seen changes. This year the plastic arrived earlier than we've ever seen and last spring it stayed later.

Today we collect two bags of random chunks and the usual oyster tubes, sabots, tiparello tips. No soldiers though. We love finding soldiers.

On the trail back we stop to watch a three-foot garter snake moving sluggishly in the grass. Usually they vanish like water poured down a drain. This snake has a small rat inside made visible in the expanded girth about three inches below the head. We know it’s a rat cause some folks coming along behind us say they had seen the snake trying to swallow the rat. They couldn't believe it got the thing swallowed. I tell Judith I once saw a snake with a frog head in its mouth. Nothing but the head, the body already down the hatch.

At the trailhead next to the road there are two garbage cans – one for sorting recyclables, one for trash. Because of our strict parameters of “found on 1,000 yards of Kehoe Beach” we usually don’t do this but Judith took a look–see. In the can sitting up on a broken plastic Igloo cooler lid was a soldier. Right there, our first soldier of the season. Yea! It seems like some strange victory for the season opener.

Pyrrhic victory at best.

B-rrrrrrrr-iiing.

2010-11-02T18:05:00.000-07:00

Often, like any collector we sort and resort our treasures and in the latest sifting—a dollhouse phone popped out of the blizzard of bits and pieces of plastic debris. We didn’t notice it at first. We almost missed it. But, in our cleaning and sorting process we found it as one of the hundreds of miniature furnishings made by the Renwal Company. It was last manufactured in 1956. It looks pretty good as iPhone wallpaper.

B-rrrrrrrr-iiing. Sounds like a long distance call.

A phone within a phone within a phone becomes an infinite regress as it does in optics where an infinite series of receding images are created in two parallel facing mirrors.

B-rrrrrrrr-iiing. Sounds like a way long distance call.

Image and Text

2010-10-27T07:18:00.000-07:00

Keep America Beautiful

2010-10-23T17:32:00.001-07:00

We are all grateful for the KAB campaign to curb littering. The tag lines:

“Don’t be a litterbug”

“People start pollution, people can stop it”

“Every litterbit hurts”

Highway signs warning of $1000 fines for littering brought responsibility to the public. It was an effective campaign and good to bring consciousness to the problem of litter. Litter really was a problem. Still is. In the TV series Mad Men we were jolted by an early 60's picnic scene of historical realism where the mom casually shakes out the blanket on the grass and papers and cans go flying. Something we would never do today-dutifully and virtuously we throw trash into waste bins and even separate things into compost, recycling, and garbage. We've been trained by all those public service ads (paid for by the public)—Iron Eyes Cody shedding a tear for the lost innocence of a wild America.

But under the recast convention of keeping America beautiful the real action came when "bottle bills" found their way into public legislation. Manufacturers were scheduled to become responsible for the "no deposit-no return" containers. Fees were to be added to beer and soft-drink containers. The Keep America Beautiful campaign pointed the arrow of responsibility away from manufacturers and 180° back to the consumer. A very good move for profits and a very bad move for our world. Bottle bills were defeated over and over again, even recently in California where producer responsibility was cast as a culprit in "job loss."

We created Beauty Bar for an exhibit at the Berkeley Art Center. All of these beauty product bottles and tubes and applicators came to us washed up on Kehoe Beach on our 1000-yard stretch of beach. To really Keep America Beautiful, become aware of green washing and point the finger back at producers. Demand real bottle bills from your legislators.

Why do we insist profits are more important than posterity?

Mystery Revealed

2010-10-16T08:02:00.000-07:00

Many things we find are strange to us but when we find several of a type we know an opening to a revelation is at hand. This pile belongs to a category of candy delivery systems called Pelón Pelo Rico - plastic pushup squeeze tubes that squish out, through little holes, wormy squiggles of sometimes sweet sometimes very spicy candy gel. We had no idea what these things were until we saw one on the sidewalk in San Jose, California – it was intact with a tiny bit of candy still ready to be pushed through the holes. The treat originated in Guadalajara. These plastic remains were found on Kehoe Beach.

Environmental Grantmakers Association

2010-10-12T08:34:00.000-07:00

Richard and I are back from an amazing week at Asilomar for the Environmental Grantmakers Association conference where we presented a series of new works and spoke about the importance of adding love and beauty to the environmental conversation. After days of charts and statistics about the demise of species and our troubled planet, our talk offered a breath of hope and highlighted the important role that art can play as an activating force. Our latest series "What's for supper?" was in the good company of Chris Jordan's powerful images Midway: Message from the Gyre.

His stunning photographs of albatross chicks filled with plastic were displayed with our soup bowls filled with beach plastic, nurdles and baby binkys- the toxic meal being served to human babies. The show made for a one-two punch and was a real conversation starter for the some 300 conference attendees. We are grateful to Harriet Barlow for the invitation.

THE day…Coastal Clean Up Day.

2010-09-28T11:01:00.000-07:00

This is our Ramadan, our Easter, our Diwali, our Yom Kippur. And this is a day of days for us, we being the poster kids for the 2010 CCD.

Today is warm and windless. No fog. Glassy four-foot swells roll in… and in. . . For the novice the beach looks pretty clean, but for us, the slightest glimpse of shape and color gets us stooping and scrabbling in the sand. We have become virtuosi at finding interesting things, almost invisible things, lost in the sweep of sand. We're always on the hunt for things that open up the big story of plastic — the synthetic background of our world. In the fall when the plastic is minimal it takes a well-practiced eye to pickthings out of the organic debris.

A speck of blue pulled from the sand reveals bitty sunglasses from a Bratz® doll. The Bratz® family is burgeoning with over 500 members carrying names like Roxxy Spice and Sugar Shoes Dana. Bratz® superseded Barbie® as the #1 seller and she's blatantly sexualized even compared to Barbie®. She's a very liberated young woman all right, but seems liberated to dance around a brass pole. Her outfits come right out of a stripper catalogue. Fishnet stockings, platform shoes and leather miniskirts caused the American Psychological Association to raise an alarm in their report—APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls.

The Bratz® girls, it turns out, are also no strangers to the courtroom. She's endured many and ongoing copyright lawsuits, accusations of racketeering, and the National Labor Committee reports that workers who make the Bratz® line, labor 94.5 hours a week earning $48.20. http://www.nlcnet.org/reports?id=0254. After a year's hiatus, on 10/10/10, a new line of Bratz® will be released, keeping the flow of desire gushing. Oh, the world of manufactured desire, plasticizing the hierarchy of our profligacy, equalized by a glut of disposable goods.

We are always in a kind of Ayn Randian competition to be the supreme master of finding. Our animus for being the best began with "disposable" lighters but once we had found hundreds, our hierarchy inclined toward the most unusual, the hardest to spot, the piece that tells the best story. Today was a good day for all categories. The Bratz® glasses tell an international story of toy intrigue.

The beige bull, well camouflaged in the sand, emerging as if out of a prehistoric cave has all the look of a victor for it's concealed placement in the shadow of a log.

The toy tank with a crust of Bryozoan houses speaks of age and the allure of detail. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bryozoa/bryozoa.html

But, the diminutive pink spoon with a heart speaks of the part of this journey that is a love story.

The little pink heart...

When we arrived at the cliff that marks the end of "our part" of the beach—after all that stoop labor—we lay in the sand and slept for a bit curled like seals. As we walked back with our load for the day we were unintentionally silent. It's a fine thing to be with another in a silent reverie — continuing our vocation at Kehoe Beach.

Barbie's Comb

2010-09-21T16:31:00.000-07:00

Wherever there are people there are combs. Combs made of bone and shell and ivory survive from 5000 years ago. The first combs were made as decorative ornaments. They not only kept hair in place, but there is evidence that they were used to clean hair of parasites. Speaking of which, some say the bubonic plague was spread by fleas passed along in nit-picking combs.

The plastic comb arrived in the mid-nineteenth century when an early plastic, Parkesine or Celluloid, replaced tortoise shell and elephant ivory. In fact, one of the first uses of plastic was in the manufacture of combs.

In the welter of combs we've found over the years we have two Barbie combs. Imagine finding that tiny toy groomer in the vast expanse of sand and surf.

2010 Coastal CleanUP Day Posters

2010-09-08T07:16:00.000-07:00

For information about how to participate in Coastal Clean UP Day events:

http://www.coastal.ca.gov/publiced/ccd/ccd.html

Our poster designs are available for download as flyers from the California Coastal Commission site:

http://www.parksconservancy.org/calendar/volunteer-events/special-events/california-coastal-clean-up-day-25th-anniversary.html#Postcards

Back of the Bus

2010-09-06T09:55:00.000-07:00

Given this very public presence, we are thrilled that our art can play a role in addressing real world problems and in this case - plastic pollution. The back of the bus is not where we had ever imagined our work displayed but now we see that it is a site for big visibility and maximum impact.

We never could have imagined that from 1 KM of remote sand, we would connect to an issue impacting the entire planet. Needless to say, we are grateful for the opportunity to present our story and hopefully will inspire others to start something too- even something so crazy as picking up plastic one piece at a time- now over two tons of it - picked up one piece at a time.

Coastal Clean UP Day is Saturday, September 25.

We hope that you will join us.

Imagine

2010-09-04T07:11:00.000-07:00

Imagine a handful of pull tabs from plastic drink bottles. Now imagine an overflowing bushel basket full of pull tabs. This is what we've picked up on Kehoe Beach. Now imagine choosing glass bottles when you go to the superette. Glass recycles 100's of times. Plastic almost never but sometimes once. What is the true cost of cheap plastic? Let's sharpen our pencils and do some figgerin'…

Gone Green

2010-09-03T13:52:00.000-07:00

Dear Kraft Foods,

Since our last communiqué we have continued to collect plastic debris from one kilometer of one beach, Kehoe Beach in the Point Reyes National Seashore.

To date, we have found many hundreds of the little red plastic spreaders used in Kraft Handi-Snack cheese and cracker kits. We are writing to ask once again that this bit of the plastic effluvia be eliminated from the flow into the oceans.- perhaps by making it from something sustainable like bamboo.

You can imagine our delight when last month we found one of your little sticks in GREEN plastic. “Kraft’s gone green!!!” we exclaimed. Maybe you are getting the message after all? However, dear Kraft Foods, you remain unclear of the concept.

The Golden Rule

2010-06-08T11:16:00.000-07:00

Dear Kraft Foods,

Yesterday on a little half mile of beach we found 18 of your little cheese spreaders from your Kraft Handi-Snak cheese packs. The week before we found 21. And 13 before that. Given the sea-patina and bleaching it’s obvious they have been at sea and not left by pick-nickers. Congratulations! you are having a great year given the empirical evidence we’ve found. Isn’t it time you followed the golden rule now that you have been given the free speech rights of a person granted by the constitution.

Peace and love,

Richard and Judith

“The US Supreme Court has struck down a major portion of a 2002 campaign-finance reform law, saying it violates the free-speech right of corporations to engage in public debate of political issues.” Christian Science Monitor

In the late 1880’s corporations were granted “person-hood” essentially giving them as written in the declaration of Independence…”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Although the progressive movement has railed against this idea of corporate “person-hood” by 2010 this genie is well free of the bottle. It’s a fool’s errand to fight against a wave that has long ago crashed ashore.

What to do?

While I am not a “believer” or a keeper of religious ritual, as an artist I feel myself to be a part of the 30,000-year continuum of humans engaged with the imaginal life. I feel engaged with the essence of human spirituality. Yet, in an age when religious fundamentalism is causing such havoc, it is treading on very thin ice to evoke any kind of religiosity. But, that said….

During the time of Jesus, Rabbi Hillel, when challenged by a gentile, who posed a question, as a taunt, saying, “I will convert, Rabbi, if you can explain your thinking while standing on one leg.” “Easy”, says Hillel, “Do to others as you would have others do to you. All our texts are commentary on that idea, now go and study them.” This simple moral code is the core teaching of all major religions on this planet.

There is no fighting the corporate nature of our global society, but we can insist that if corporations are to enjoy the rights of person-hood, it is time for them to adopt the one true moral compass of existence, “Do to others, what you have them do to you.”

~ Richard Lang

On every visit to Kehoe Beach we have found washed up on the sand these single use plastic spreaders from Kraft Handi-Snak cheese packs. These rectangular pieces of red plastic last hundreds of years in the environment.

Gorgeous Kehoe Beach is located 40 miles north of San Francisco in Point Reyes National Seashore . See Kehoe Beach on BlooSee satellite imagery here .

You can contact Kraft Foods customer service by phone at 1-877-535-5666, or in writing by clicking the happy snack logo. Tell them how happy you are.

On a Day in May

2010-05-17T15:46:00.000-07:00

Walking back to the road, we met an anthropologist on the trail heading toward the beach with her little spindly dog. Curious about all the bags and stuff we were dragging, she tells us she about her anthropologizing which she does for an eco-company in Sacramento. They do contract work for developers. When Native American shell mounds, burial remains and various artifacts, are uncovered in digging, California law stipulates any pre-European finds need to be investigated. We want to show her our artifacts, digging in our pockets for some of the champion things we've found today. Amazing day really, this late in the season—usually by this time of year, the California Current has returned, sweeping the beach pretty much clear. But we've found loads of things that are really top-notch for our treasure trove. Strangely, we loaded up with a couple dozen plastic drink bottles—all from Asia. We've never seen so many before from Asia, typically they are the water and soft drink bottles bought by the case at Costco.

We found (Judith found) four soldiers and a very sea-worn palm size Godzilla. Rare even in the high season, this many little figures. But best of all, Judith found a doll's hand with the two middle fingers pressed against the palm, index and pinky raised like horns, metal band style. The anthropologist brightens at the weird context, and something tiny laden with so much meaning. Heavy Metal baby doll? The horns of Satan? We comment - devil is indeed at work spoiling the world with his plastic crapulosity.

At home we do the usual web search and find the rock-n-roll sign but the thumb is holding down the two middle fingers. This little pudgy hand has the thumb out hitchhiker style. Oh! Of course it’s the sign-language hand gesture for I love you and we find a doll called the “Richard” with that very same hand gesture. Oh, sweet. But truly the day was sweet, finding amazing things for our project and best of all high on the sandstone cliff we saw the telltale white wash of a raptor's nest. And lucky us, a birder set up an excellent spotting scope so we could peer right into the nest,which she invited us to do. There were four baby Peregrines almost fledged out, puffs of down poking our under the flight feathers, like they'd put their cloths on over their PJ's. And double bonus, the swallows have come back. I'd been fretting for two weeks at their tardy return, thinking another loss was going to break my heart, but there they are, in droves. Lucky little love hand pointing the direction on a day in May.

This red piece is a small part of a much larger story- click here to read all about it. Amazing that eight years later this fragment just washed up.

To view the Nest Cam of Peregrines in San Francisco- click here

Naming the Floats

2010-05-12T11:43:00.000-07:00

Boat Brand fishing float. We have some fifty in our collection. A three-masted schooner sailing a sea above the "trade mark" sign. Why are they are the same salmon-y-pink color as the parts of Barbie and Kens we find? Who knows?

The "Lucky Brand" floats, which we also find, are a pale beige. Lucky Brand has a circle logo with the image of two fish, Pisces-horoscope style, swimming above and below one another. Now, just who decided what the things were going to be called? Is it wishful thinking?

Fisherman are a superstitious lot. There is some science to it all, and a good fisherman tries for the repeatability of science, but a friend of ours who worked for the Fisheries and Aquaculture Department of the World Bank told us a story of trying to introduce a little science to Malaysian fisherman. They scoffed—if Allah wants us to catch fish, we will catch fish. We pray to Allah for fish.

Bryozoans

2010-05-04T09:47:00.000-07:00

Looks like this little fella is from the Wehrmacht given his helmet and the rest of the kit he’s toting. Poised, ready to shoot, a cog in Der Fürer’s army. He’s been out there at sea a long long time, finally coming to rest on Kehoe Beach, home from the war. He’s sporting mineralized skeletons of Bryozoans.

Bryozoans have a varied gendered life cycle and body parts that show that they are the level of complexity of earthworms. They make colonies, distinctive little homes for themselves and are a sure tell that a piece of plastic has been at sea a long time.

Our little Wehrmacht Soldat reminds us that great armies rise and fall, but plastic is forever.

Pink

2010-04-24T14:15:00.000-07:00

What’re the chances?

It doesn’t take but a speck of red to turn bright white paint rosy. You discover that pretty quickly when you set about to learn to paint—pink, the girly color. It’s light red. So specific. There are names for light blue—baby blue, light brown—tan, light black—grey, but there’s nothing like pink to embrace the territory of the feminine. It’s like no other color. You think pink and you think girl.

It didn’t register when I picked up the pink pirate out of the chaos of beach debris but it did go in the pocket of the hiking vest where I stash special things, lighters, hair clips, bottle caps with Asian writing, toy soldiers. It wasn’t 'til I got to doing a high rez picture of the little guy that I thought ….pink pirate? Where would he fit in some kid’s fantasy play life? Pink Pirate….

Maybe when they were mixing up a batch of white some red got in? Maybe he got bleached? The high rez image shows he’d been chewed on and spit out, the tooth gashes show he’s pink all they way through. Not bleached. The World Wide Web may have a clue, anyway its fun to be sleuthing about.

Five minutes of www. And I find Classic Toy Soldiers "No batteries required . . . powered by imagination." A company not too far from Kansas City, MO but in Kansas. CTS as they call themselves. Yes, they had my little guy for sale in a pirate kit with five figures and accessories (cutlasses, a jolly roger, a treasure chest…) colors vary, vintage MPC (Multiple Plastic Corporation no longer in business) $23.00. The set shown is brown, black and red. Very not pink. Google to “Pink Pirate” and I get Pink Pirate Sword, $12.99 from Kohl’s which must be an accessory to the “Pink Pirate Dancer Adult Plus Size” $49.99.

I talk to my daughter Amelia to get her thoughts. Pink Pirate? “Well, it’s both good and bad. Soft risky. Do you remember my six-year-old Halloween costume?” “What do you want to be this year?” “A bat”—her little hands up as claws, “rrrrrrrrawwwwww! I want to be a bat, a pink bat.” We made her the pink bat costume. What are the chances? But two days later I find a pink bat at Kehoe Beach.

--Richard