Trashy Times Square

There's a news story on the wire about the trash left behind from the big New York Times Square celebration of the New Year. It reminded me of something I witnessed many years ago in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

This was after the divorce from my first wife, and I was dating a woman who was an ardent environmentalist.

Note: So much so that it was really her religion. I think she would have agreed with me on that. I didn't share many of her views, and in fact ultimately my lack of regard for her thinking on this and other subjects is what led me to break the relationship. But at the time I was in pursuit of other things, and intellectual compatibility be damned.

Anyway, we went to some environmentalist lecture there at the University of Michigan. I forget what the topic was -- deforestation, I think. I recall some misty talk about "tree spirits" and "mother earth" and I had to choke back my disagreement with the whole thing. But I recall the unbelievable trashiness of the lecture hall when the event was over. For a group of people who supposedly subscribe to preservation, conservation and recycling, they seemed remarkably unaware of the irony of thousands of paper leaflets and newsprint handouts being simply discarded on the floor.