Hey, Hay!

The items pictured in the photo above are plastic drinking straws, Dear Readers.

Take a good long look because they are soon to go the way of the dodo.

But allow me to digress for a moment.

….Two weeks ago, I saw the movie The Green Book.

Let me take this opportunity to tell you to go and see it.  It will make you feel good.

Set in the 1960’s, it’s the (more or less) true story of two men- one white, one black- on a concert tour of the still-segregated South.   Needless to say, they run into problems.

Have a peek.

Now if you watched the trailer- and I certainly hope you did- perhaps you noticed that at the very end of it, the driver Tony (magnificently played by an un-recognizably hefty Viggo Mortensen) casually tosses his Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried chicken bones blithely out of the car window.

Remember when we ALL did that?

Well, maybe not chicken bones.  But I certainly remember tossing paper hamburger wrappers and cups out of the car window.

And who didn’t flick a cigarette butt out as they sped along?   And that’s back when cars had fabulous tail fins, easy-to-neck-on bench seats and handy ashtrays.

(Not like today when they only have wussy cupholders.)

Any how, some where along the line, we all became aware that tossing garbage out of the window was a mortal sin.

And we stopped.

I lived in Colorado for seventeen years.  They take their beautiful environment seriously. Re-cycling there is a big deal.

And my son Nick lives in Seattle.

He has so many laws about garbage disposal and so many concomitant garbage cans, mulch-makers and trash bins in his house, that I am absolutely terrified to throw anything out- lest it end up in the wrong bin.

And woe betide he who doesn’t put the right trash in the right can in Seattle.  If found guilty, The Garbage Police then refuse to take to take away any of the aforesaid trash and the lawbreakers are then consigned to Garbage Hell for a very long time.

My son who fearlessly snowboards on stomach-churning, terrifying terrain and who thinks nothing of hiking to base camp on Mt. Rainier- is mortally afraid of The Garbage Police.

This is what Nick is NOT afraid of.

This is what he IS afraid of.

But what does that have to do with the straws that led off this post?

As you are probably aware, plastic straws have now been deemed the latest hazard to Mother Earth.  Thus the powers-that-be have declared them objecta non grata and soon, you won’t see them no more.

One of these powers is my very own my son-in-law, Zach.  He is the Director of Sustainable Communities Initiative and Climate Positive Development Program of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.

Started in the United States by Bill Clinton and now headed by Michael Bloomberg, Zach travels all over the globe on behalf of C40 Cities teaching other cities how to have a greener footprint.

He does great work, inspired work, and I’m grateful that he is such an altruist on behalf on the beautiful planet which we are all proud to call home.

But I just can’t give up my plastic straws.

I’ve tried.  Believe me, I’ve tried.  Most of the Lettuce Entertain You restaurants have already switched to these awful straws- made out of hay, they tell me- and I eat at these places often.

Lettuce plans to transition all of its 120 restaurants in nine states to alternatives, including paper, hay and even biodegradable plastic straws, though customers will be encouraged to not use straws at all, according to R.J. Melman, president of Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises.

“There’s always going to be some pushback, but that’s how change happens, right? Hopefully our customers understand that we’re doing what we think is right,” Melman said.

Nope.

Drinking through them is just like drinking through a straw that still has the paper wrapper on.

Yuck.

And so for the foreseeable future, I carry my own plastic straws with me wherever I go.

I’m not proud of it, but that’s tough luck.

I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I am nice to little old ladies.

Plastic straws have become my only vice.

You want to make something out of it?

(Just don’t tell Zach.)

And you don’t have to watch all the of the following clip, Dear Readers.  It’s real long.

(Just don’t tell Zach.)