2637. Leonardo’s plastic

Dulcie was an enthusiastic “save-the-planet” personage. She had possibly done more than the average Joe Blogs to protect the health of the environment. For example, she was vehemently anti-plastic; and good on her.

Fate has a way of arranging coincidences, and probably for a reason, as this story shall relate. Dulcie had just finished reading that Leonardo da Vinci had written over 13,000 pages of notes in his notebooks of which only about a third had survived.

Anyway, she decided to clean out her attic and came across a great wardrobe of notebooks. She recognized immediately what they were; they were the missing two thirds of Leonardo da Vinci’s 13,000 pages of notes. She recognized them because they were written in Old Italian backwards in Leonardo’s trademark “mirror writing”.

One of the things that had shocked Dulcie earlier when she read about Leonardo was that in 2003 Alessandro Vezzosi, the Director of Italy’s Museo Ideale, had come across in Leonardo’s jottings some recipes for mysterious mixtures. Vezzosi experimented with one of them. Lo and behold! It was the recipe for Bakelight. Leonardo da Vinci had invented plastic hundreds of years before it was officially “invented”.

Yuk! How disgusting. Dulcie was to do her bit for the planet. Over the next few days she took every one of Leonardo’s hitherto missing notebooks and burnt them in the incinerator.

Poem 107: Hear the knelling

(Happy New Year one and all! I’m going to try and write more poetry this year, so the first three days (at least) of 2022 will be poems. The form of these three poems is from France and called a Kyrielle.)

Dear friends, please stop and breathe the flowers;
Enjoy their many shades of smell.
Don’t waste, but while away, the hours;
Yet hear the knelling of the bell.

Forget the busy city scene;
Its cluttered mess, its noise, its yell.
Dream instead of landscapes clean;
Yet hear the knelling of the bell.

The hope of birds to build their nests,
Another brood to sing and tell
Of how our planet’s truly blessed.
Yet hear the knelling of the bell.

Far quicker than you think can be
The world will worsen into hell.
By all means dance your footfalls free
Yet hear the knelling of the bell.

To hear the poem read aloud click HERE.

1829. The birthday gift

Dear Nora,

Thank you so much for the birthday gift. First of all I would like to say that the packaging, thank goodness, is recyclable. There’s nothing worse than getting a gift and the box it comes in is wrapped in plastic or even cellophane. I mean, what is one meant to do with it?

Yours was most thoughtfully wrapped, and the coconut fibres used as packing I can give to my garden worms that consume the few scraps I have.

I noticed that the stamps on the package weren’t fully cancel-marked by the Post Office, so I managed to steam two of them off to use again. However, once I had steamed them off I saw that possibly they had been licked, so I am going to put them in my recycle bin. Can you remember if you licked them? Thank goodness I was wearing rubber gloves before I even started with that.

The instruction booklet that came with your gift was printed on glossy paper. Really Nora! We no longer have to do things the way they were done ten years ago in the Dark Ages. What gets into manufacturers’ heads that makes them think they can print these days on glossy paper?

And the glue on the spine of the book! I know it’s an old book, but it comes from the days when glue was made using cows’ hoofs. I couldn’t bear to open it and be party to the cruel practices of our forebears. I suspect the book must have some value, but a book on bee-keeping is so insensitive. We imprison bees, in effect, and then steal the honey they make. It is a barbaric practice.

All in all, Nora, thank you once again for the recyclable packaging.

The other day, as President of the Green Party, I received a letter from the secretary of the Dyers’ Guild. In it he said that the colour green was the least biodegradable of all the dye colours, and that includes green printer’s ink. Green is a quite inappropriate colour for those who care about the health of our planet. I wrote back and said he must have better things to fill in his time than worry about non-biodegradable dyes and their environmental toxicity. Isn’t it funny how people get hung up on such unnecessary and insignificant little things?

Regards
Norman

1465. Skinks, lizards, and geckos

Bertram collected reptiles. (To each their own). He collected skinks, lizards, and geckos. He didn’t collect snakes, crocodiles and alligators, komodo dragons, frogs, turtles, tortoises, or tuataras. Just skinks, lizards, and geckos.

He used to breed them for sale. He also used to capture wild reptiles and export and sell them. It was illegal. You’ve no idea the clever ways he used to surreptitiously transport them! He had done it all his life and never once been caught.

Selling reptiles was so lucrative that he had built a luxurious log cabin in the wilderness that had every commodity. He certainly lived the good life thanks to those skinks and lizards and geckos. It’s amazing to think that over the years he handled twenty-seven species that are now extinct. What an amazing record! What a great privilege to have been the last on the planet to see and handle those creatures! I’m quite in awe! I asked Bertram how he felt about it but he said he didn’t have any feelings. He was in it for the money.

792. Save the tree!

SAVE THE TREE! SAVE THE TREE! chanted Colleen standing beneath a derelict, old, and rather dilapidated gum tree.

The protest had raged for weeks. Years ago, a visiting celebrity had planted an Australian gum. It was to commemorate the union between the two countries; Australian troops had fought alongside local troops in some forgotten war. The gum tree was planted ceremoniously in the park. And now the town council wanted it removed.

The village had grown over the years. The road out of town had been straightened and widened. There was still a dangerous curve. The gum tree was in the way. It had to go to make way for progress.

SAVE THE TREE! SAVE THE TREE! chanted Colleen and her friends. Colleen even enlisted the help of her fourteen grandchildren. That certainly swelled the numbers!

The dreaded day arrived. There is an almost iconic photograph (forget the man in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square) of Colleen standing, hands on hips, brazenly blocking the advancement of a bulldozer. And she won! She won! What a celebration! The tree was saved for the enjoyment of future generations!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, a few months later a phone call came around eleven at night. Colleen’s grandson was killed in a car accident. His car hit a tree on a dangerous corner on the way out of town.

To listen to the story being read click HERE!

748. What a view!

Felix was delighted. His new house and outlook suited his style. He had always been passionate about saving the environment. And now… look! How wonderful is that view!

There, to the right of that grove of trees, can you see the waterfall? It’s just between the spectacular cliff face and the larch tree. See how it drops into the lake. The sunlight on the spray! Such rainbows! And the snow clad mountains beyond! What a treasure to have such a sight from the window!

And the wonderful thing is, the man who owns next door is also environmentally aware. It’s next to the road, but the view will never get built out. He too is zealous about caring for the planet.

Here he comes now!

What’s he doing? …

He’s put up a 40 foot wide billboard. It reads:

SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT!

Listen the story being read HERE!