Old Friends

Simon and Garfunkel described old friends as sitting on a park bench "like bookends" in their song, "Old Friends." Luckily (perhaps) MightyIsis is not yet sitting on a park bench with old men, letting newspapers blow on her shoes. That's rather a depressing image, actually, when I think about it. Sitting on a bench with my old friend, and having garbage blow on us. Yuck.


(above right) Park bench. Image by JF Perry. (below) New York Times, a newspaper. Hopefully, not crumpled up on anyone. Public domain image (copyright expired in the US due to age).

In fact, this puts me in mind of the continual barrage of garbage on video monitors in the American Museum of Natural History. They have a lot of footage of landfill being bulldozed, which appears in films about evolution to show how we're killing species by smothering them with our old pop-tops and candy wrappers.

(right) Phylogenic tree of items we are probably killing with leftover plastic bags and motor oil, even as I write this. Public domain image by Tim Vickers. At least they no longer have to deal with pull tabs.

Remember pull tabs? They're a pre pop-top thing. No, really.

(left--pull tab. Image by Gam3.)

They used to litter the landscape, when they weren't being made into funky fashion accessories. As a child, I was particularly taken with the pull-tab vest. Although they are now making clothes out of pop-tops, the little doohickies that replaced the pull-tab. Yes, you can buy a pull-tab belt or bag. (No, I'm not kidding, but I'm not sure whether it's permitted after Labor Day.)

But I digress. This post is about old friends, and not just my oldest friend, who is an expert on recycling, and in fact, prevents me from throwing out trash during car trips until recycling centers are available. I'll bet she agrees with the Museum of Natural History staff that biodiversity is being limited by our trash. I agree with them also. We are limiting diversity by creating so much habitat that is fit mainly for things like roaches and rats, and not really great for other things like butterflies and songbirds. Not that roaches and rats aren't great in their own way, but how many piles of garbage does on planet really need?.

(right) Four of Darwin's finches. An example of biodiversity--note the differing beaks. Public domain image (copyright expired) by Charles Darwin.

In any event, some old friends have gotten back in touch, and now I may get to see them. Which should be fun, as long as we avoid talking about trash, but not pop-tops.