If this isn't classical, then you and I are totally on different pages, my friends.

We are one application of superglue (which, yes, I forgot to pick up at Target yesterday. oops.) away from my completion of the Sculpture badge.

The requirement is simple (and referenced back in the saga of SassyCat): use clay to duplicate, or in some way make a piece related to, an antique sculpture. When you think antique sculpture, you may be imagining discus throwers or the Elgin marbles or something like that. Me too. However I was not the 1999-2000 Pennsylvania state Junior Classical League secretary (vice-president? I have no idea. Dude, this was ten years ago) for nothing. I made a few poor-quality efforts at bas relief, then remembered: the Cyclades.

For those of you who are less amazing than I am, you may not be entirely familiar with the Cycladic civilization. Shame on you! Really. What the hell were you doing when the rest of the world was learning about obscure Bronze Age Aegean cultures?

Let's leave it at this: the Cycladeans (I just made up that word, I think) were artistically distinct from just about everyone else. Their sculptures consist largely of white marble, flat-faced figures, standing with their arms crossed around their stomachs. Some people suggest these may have been religious in nature, but really, you don't expect me to know everything, do you? Regardless, these are pretty immediately recognizable figures, and they're startlingly modern.

Yes, they're also a lot simpler than the more immediately-recognizable classical sculptures. I will admit my weaknesses, though I will also couch them in intolerable pretension. Deal?

For my sculpture, I chose an image of an ibex, which is where the superglue comes in -- while the ibex is sculpted and baked and looking startlingly ibex-y, I chose to bake the poor little guy's antlers separately, since they kept collapsing down into his face. Tomorrow, once they're glued, expect to meet my ibex buddy.

So, I had this really terrible job in college

While I talk a good game about environmental protection (and am kind of a lunatic rearding food choices, shutting off lights like a lunatic, that kind of business), there's one eco-friendly step I really, really can't make: I can't handle compost.

I spent a semester or so in college working for the compost program, driving around in a remarkably stinky van from dining hall to dining hall, collecting the campus's food scraps and tipping them into a dumpster down by the soccer fields. I managed to make my clothing filthy enough that my roommate came in one day and wondered if there was an infestation of some sort in our bathroom, and I had a close call with a raccoon on at least one occasion. The $7.25 an hour (generous for student pay!) wasn't worth it, and I quit way, way sooner than I meant to.

Since then, there have been a few other composting endeavors, none of which were more successful than the first. There was the compost bin in a study-away house (mold), the backyard composting in early grad school (fruit flies), and on and on. I've totally given it up by now. Is this a good decision? Um. You could make a statement either way, I guess, but I do feel like I'd be a regular composter if only I were a better human being.

Now then.

In the Public Health badge, a scout is urged to learn where his garbage goes. This whole composting discussion? Pretty much a long-winded way of getting right to it.

I discovered, today, the most depressing video game ever: the Gotham Gazette Garbage Game. Sure, I've played it twice so far, but I don't think I have the heart to give it another go. It's engaging, no question, but would only have made ten-year-old Emily weep. (You think I'm joking? Hah. Just ask my parents.) However, when you decide to go play it yourself (which you will, I'm sure), you'll see the same thing I did: that something like 30% of New York's garbage is compostable in one form or another.

Holy crap.

That, my friends, is a lot of garbage. Imagine if every third week, you just decided, eh, heck with it, I won't bother producing any trash whatsoever. Yeah. Eliminating food waste in the garbage would pretty much have that effect.

For a slightly more well-thought-out reaction than "holy crap," I talked to Caroline Kruse, the development director at the Lower East Side Ecology Center, which offers composting programs in New York. (For the record, and especially in light of the iPad fever in the general public, they also have electronics recycling. I'm just saying.)

The LES Ecology Center has two major things going for it: volume and enthusiasm. Seriously. They started out twenty years or so ago at the Union Square Farmers' Market processing vegetable scraps, and by now they're collecting roughly 6 tons of food per week for composting at East River Park. (Now, when you're thinking of 6 tons, I'd like you to think, instead, of 3 male walruses. Or six and a half SmartCars. Or something. Um.)

Now. I started out explaining to Caroline that I don't compost. I have a small apartment with no outdoor space. I fell into a dumpster in college. All that. But she told me about something I will absolutely not try in my current place, but will maybe consider someday: a worm box. Now, I remember reading about this kind of thing back in high school, but really. LESEC holds regular workshops setting up non-composters (like me) with this kind of thing. Take a pound of red wigglers (the Cadillac of worms), add 'em to a slightly-ventilated plastic box, and add your weekly table scraps. (Caroline suggests that you stick to about 3 pounds per week, but also advises me that one might avoid weighing garbage if, instead, you just assume that 2 adults = 3 pounds. Sounds good to me.) This is a lazy person's composting -- no hauling food outside at night, no shovels, no angry raccoons. The worms go through your waste (no meat or dairy!), and in 3-6 months, you go from a mess of squirmy worms to a great big box of dirt. Go team!

But wait! Six month old garbage hanging out in your kitchen? You crazy girl. Aha! While I have no months-old indoor compost experience, she assures me all will be well. Caroline described her compost bin as smelling "like earth, or like when you go into a forest." I can handle that.

Well, I can't handle it right now. The combination of a teensy apartment (the compost box would have nowhere to go but actually on the living room floor) and one particularly aggressive cat (who would imagine nowhere for himself to go but into the compost box) would mean trouble. Maybe someday, though? We'll see.

All this, and I've still avoided discussing landfills. Hold tight, good buddies. Garbagefest '10 continues.

where have I been?

Note, please, that my post title is in the form of a question.

Yeah, so, I was missing from here for more than a week. Not because I am a jerk (which, well, I kind of am, but still!). But because of a small amount of travel. I went to Los Angeles for a game show. Note, once again, the formatting of my post title.

Oh fine. I was on Jeopardy.

I can't tell you how I did (at all), but very simply, I buzzed in as much as I could, high fived Alex Trebek (seriously), and used this very site as my story-about-myself (tune on on April 6 to hear me chirp "and I have a website!" as Mr. Trebek moves to ask the next contestant something about Kevin Spacey).

I was hoping to be able to show you all kinds of potentially-scout-related LA business, but I learned something important on my trip: Southern California is not equipped for rain. At all. We saw floods, blocked up storm drains, standing water of all sorts, but very little of the standard California tourist-y things. (Could this relate to the Public Health badge's requirements to understand the sanitation of a camp? I think I addressed that sufficiently once before when I spent a lot of time talking about toilets, but then, I'm kind of grasping at straws here.)

Regardless, back to NY, back to the badges. This should be the last of the wintry distractions that's been taking me away from the handbook. So, hooray!

Recent search tags

So, I'm in the process of preparing for a trip out to LA (more coming soon!), but let me take a Friday night moment to share how people have found me lately:

"how to draw a housefly
"box kite frame"
"pathfinding merit badge requirements"
"is a hindenberg an air balloon?"
"be prepared that's the boy scout's marching song"
"typhoid asymptomatic channel"
"schaefer method of resuscitation"
"hate the word app"
"best trip for august"

I cut a few, sure, and the all-time search leader is "schaefer method" (by a mile -- I appear to be the world's leading resuscitation expert, according to google, which makes me fear for CPR students everywhere because, yikes).

In general, hatred for "app" is a close second. I find this delightful, way way more than I probably should. Because the only time "app" doesn't make me claw at my eyes in a very unscoutworthy way is when it's buried within the phrase "hate the word app." (In general, I know that I get on this kind of hating-things-way-way-too-much kick about certain things. "A Confederacy of Dunces." The music of Fergie. The word app.)

Back to waste management, coming soon.

Ooh! Ooh!

Hey, guess what! You went to the most happenin' event in the city today, right? Psh, not the no pants subway ride (seriously, maybe the Public Health badge is making me a little germaphobic, but I have seen a surprising amount of poo on subway seats, and I don't even like to touch the subway handrails. With my hands).

Duh. Today was Mulchfest.

I do not have a Christmas tree. In fact, I pretty much could not less have a Christmas tree. My apartment has a single plant, and it's an aloe that Charlie the cat ate half of at some point this fall. But I do know that, well, Christmas trees exist. It's impossible to walk a block without seeing them, forsaken and browning by the curb. And yet, while I was both being kind of bummed out by trees and by Public Health's requirement that I spend a little more time than I'd like considering the city's disposal of garbage, Mulchfest arrives.

With 81 locations (by the way, is that not an enormous number?), Mulchfest makes post-Christmas either a little less depressing or a hell of a lot gorier. For no cost (except the time it takes you to lug a tree a dozen blocks or so), a crack team of volunteers from MillionTrees will send your tree on a one-way trip through the woodchipper. (There's a kind of adorable flash video of a pigeon demonstrating on the Parks and Rec website. In real life, it's noisier and smellier, and with 100% fewer pigeons in jaunty hats.) The nearest location was a 15 or so block walk from my house, and while no one had a total for today's turnout (yet!), Prospect Park was pretty busy. Check out great photos from FlatbushGardener for the whole volunteers-with-shovels experience.

Best part? Free mulch, if that's the kind of thing you need. (This would have been amazing when I was a kid and neighbors were always in the process of remulching their landscaping, though I suppose that was more of a get-a-truckload-of-mulch and less the bag-your-own option available today). Saddest part? The frequent reminders to remove all ornaments and tinsel from trees. (People totally fail to do this every now and again, and it's a little bit heartbreaking, in a MacArthur Park, cake-in-the-rain kind of way.)

Anyway. Mulchfest is a good example of things that are right about NYC's trash disposal, though there's a good bit that's wrong with it as well (which I'll address later on). It's waste disposal week here at Boy Scout Handbook. How can things get any better?

I mean this in the least-weird way possible

But my lips are totally vibrating right now.

I'm back on the bugle. I've decided that practicing with just the mouthpiece is way quieter, and thus is totally acceptable for apartment dwelling. Therefore, I had my most-serious (which isn't saying much) bugle rehearsal in months. (John is a saint for this, or totally deaf. I'm leaning towards saint, though.) I've gotta keep it up, though -- otherwise, it's just temporary irritation with no payoff.

Coming back to public health, I'd momentarily hoped I could track down a volunteering opportunity with the board of health (and thereby identify the way a scout can cooperate with the BoH to prevent diseases), I learned, instead, about an organization I'd never before heard of. ServNY calls upon health care professionals (sadly, no scouts) to join an emergency response registry. It's a great idea, and one I need to learn more about in the next few days -- not to join, of course (I'm entirely unqualified), but to, well, learn something new. Let's see where this goes.

back in nyc

And back to work today.

The tree didn't survive a baking and a trip back to the city as well as we might hope, but I think that the liberal application of some hot glue might make things much, much better quite soon.

While I'm hardly much for New Year's resolutions (John and I tried the standard we-should-really-keep-the-counters cleaner, but then I went and left the paper bag my cannoli came in sitting right smack out in the open. So, you know.), I do feel like it's time to get serious about wrapping up two loose ends: the bugle and public health. Admittedly, the bugle dropped way off way fast -- like most people (every person?), I don't like doing things I'm not good at, and it led to a not-very-intense go at the bugle. (This was at least partially disguised with sympathy for my poor, poor neighbors listening to me bugle away.)

Anyhow. From here on out, if I'm going to bugle, I'm going to bugle right.

I'm back, dudes.