Green in New York

Sunday brought a terrible thunderstorm.  Now, normally I love these storms.  It is a great excuse to grab a book and cuddle up and spend the day inside.  But this one hit a little too close to home. When it goes from a low rumble to a snap and flash outside your window, it gets a little unsettling.  So I decided to check online to see what was going on.  Here is what I found:

"Severe Thunderstorm Warning:

...this is a dangerous storm.  If you are in its path...prepare immediately for damaging winds...destructive hail...and deadly cloud to ground lightning.  People outside should move to a shelter...preferably inside a strong building but away from windows."

I think the "deadly" is what caught my attention. I read on to read, "if you feel the hairs stand up on your body, duck and cover immediately, as you are in the line of the lightning's path."  I looked down at my hairy arms and decided to move away from the window.  

It was a great storm which took up most of the day.  It was fun to listen to the thunder. Sometimes just a normal rumbling.  Then sometimes it seemed as if it was distant and rolling closer to me.  Then there were the snaps which followed within seconds of the lightning.  This was not fun.  But it reminded me of being a kid, counting the seconds in between strike and sound.  

Today- I decided to take my recyclables to the closest depot, for the sake of this blog.  It is located at the Stop-n-Shop grocery store, a little under a mile away from the apartment.  As I walked, holding three bags of paper and two bags of glass containers, I thought of the absurdity of this system.  In Seattle apartments are forced to recycle or get charged.  This means there is recycling everywhere.  But more importantly, it is convenient.  A bin is never too far away.  But here in NY I get to lug my stuff to the depot.  But being from Seattle, I have been trained to care for our green world.  

When I got to the the "depot" I began to insert my bottles just to find that it was full.  After 2 bottles and a whopping 10 cents, the machine began to send the bottles back to me, asking me to come another time.  I then moved to the paper machine and was greeted with an electronic, "out of service, please visit another center."  Well, I had quite the dilemma.  But alas, I wasn't about to make the trek back to my apartment full handed, and I wasn't about to throw the items away.  So I placed my items on top of the machines, satisfied that it was someone else's problem now and I had no monetary gain to show for it.  If that isn't Seattle, I don't know what is.

A New Yorker watching the whole ordeal stated as I left, "You know they will probably just end up throwing that away."  I thought to myself, Fuggeaboutit.