January 14 2017

Good morning! This morning, my marching band is performing in a local MLK parade. We are one of the first bands, which is great because we get done quickly. We are waiting under the shade of two beautiful lemon bottlebrush trees. The sad part is, while looking up the name of the tree, I was walking around the trunks, looking for identification, and I tripped over a bottle. I look down, and notice trash all over the ground, previously unnoticed. This saddens me because the trees are too pretty to be nullified by the trash all over. I went up to another of the fellow leaders in the band, and suggested that we do something about the trash. He waved me off, saying that we could do it the next time we come to this spot for the Strawberry Festival Parade in a few weeks. I asked “why not now?”, but he only said that we didn’t have trash bags or anything to put the trash in. But we both know that, with all of the parents around, we could gather enough grocery bags or trash bags. This is one of those annoyances that I have with everyday action. Rather than have every band member pick up a piece of trash, and clean the land quickly, people will opt to ignore the issue until someone comes by to manually pick every single one up, taking hours out of their day, which could be spent doing other things. We strive to make our lives easier and more productive, yet we avoid making simple choices which could make others’ lives easier and more productive. A little paradoxical, isn’t it? Anyways, I’m off to deal with a group of high schoolers who have no sense of reslonsibilty, acountability, or productivity- just like me! Until next time, さよなら

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