Plastics Crisis – Action at the Community Level – January 2026

/

The weekly Plastics Crisis posts are dominated by what I am doing as an individual to reduce my plastics exposure – but I am also acting at a community level as well; my plan is to post at least once a month to document those actions. Looking back at January, there was a bigger variety than I anticipated at the beginning of the month.

Beyond Plastics Ozarks is ramping up! We added a few additional members, and I hosted my first zoom meeting for the group. I experimented with annotating the Zoom generated summary rather than writing up my own notes; it seems to work reasonably well but I will still take plenty of notes during the meeting!

I was part of a meeting with a Springfield Councilmember organized by the Show-me less plastic project.

I  recorded a segment of the KSMU Growing the Ozarks podcast about Microplastics in the Environment. It was an adventure for me – going to the recording studio on the Missouri State University campus (taking some pictures as I waited in the foyer) and getting the recording acceptable on the first try thanks to my experienced interviewer.

During my travel to Lewisville TX, I noticed a lot of plastic at the hotel’s breakfast service…and used the survey from the hotel afterward to indicate my concern about Styrofoam plates and plastic utensils with hot food. I had stayed at the same brand/chain in St. Joseph MO and they had used ceramic plates and stainless utensils. The General Manager of the hotel responded: “We truly appreciate your suggestions about reducing single-use plastics and will share them with our leadership team for consideration.” I stay at the same hotel every month when I visit my dad so I will know if they make changes.

I helped with a lunch trash audit at a private school in Springfield organized by the Show-me less plastic project. The teacher was a fellow Missouri Master Naturalist and had done a great job preparing for the event – having the elementary students make posters for the initial sorting: food waste, non-plastic trash, reuse, and plastic trash. After their lunch the students put their trash in the correct bin.

We (the adults) moved to a classroom with tarps over tables and on the floor which would be used for sorting by students over 3 class periods. The third and fourth graders divided into 4 groups and used the tarp covered table for the non-plastic  and plastic trash respectively while the second graders used the floor tarp to sort reuse/recycle.

The sorting of the plastic trash was the most thorough – with a worksheet for each group to categorize pieces of trash as they counted. Some of it was quite small!  

The next action the school is considering is to do a plastic free lunch!

In looking back at January, I am wondering if there will be as much every month or whether January unusual. This type of volunteering has components that are new to me; my strategy is to let it develop rather than try too hard to determine its direction!

Zentangle® – January 2026

/

31 Zentangle tiles – one for each of the 31 days in January.

I chose to cut black and light blue cardstock for the month and skewed a bit toward the light blue as the month progressed. Most of the tiles I make are during the wind down of the day – the hour before bedtime. Many times my Garmin registers ‘rest’ during the time I am making them!

—

The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. “Zentangle” is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 31, 2026

/

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

12/5/2025 The Scientist The Ice is Alive: Uncovering the Vanishing World of Glacial Microbes - The ice teems with an invisible and thriving biosphere, lush with bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Scientists have estimated that the glaciers and ice sheets around the globe could contain as many as 1029 cells. The most dynamic … is the surface, where windblown dust mixes with microorganisms to form a dark, granular sediment known as cryoconite. Because this aggregate is darker than the surrounding white ice, it absorbs more solar radiation, melting the ice beneath it. This melting creates water-filled depressions called cryoconite holes that pockmark vast areas of the ice sheet. Cryoconite holes are far from simple puddles; they are oases of life in a polar desert.

2023 NASA History Office NACA to NASA to Now – A book about the history of NASA available free online from the NASA website.

1/14/2026 The Conversation Native pollinators need more support than honeybees in Australia – here’s why - Since the 1990s, the global decline of pollinators due to human activities, climate change and diseases has been a serious concern, especially in Europe and North America. The honeybee is so good at invading and proliferating in Australian landscapes, we now have some of the highest reported densities of feral honeybees in the world. Despite the global pollinator decline, honeybees haven’t disappeared anywhere in the world, even in countries with far fewer resources than Australia. Nor has any plant species gone extinct from a lack of honeybees. In contrast, there is overseas evidence of plant population declines due to the presence of honeybees and lack of native pollinators.

1/13/2026 Yale Environment 360 Photos Capture the Breathtaking Scale of China’s Wind and Solar Buildout - Last year China installed more than half of all wind and solar added globally. In May alone, it added enough renewable energy to power Poland, installing solar panels at a rate of roughly 100 every second.

1/12/2026 Compound Interest What are rubber ducks made from? - Scientists discovered polyvinyl chloride, or PVC for short, accidentally in the 1800s on more than one occasion. A hard and brittle plastic, PVC had little commercial use until it was mixed with softening plasticizers to make a much more moldable material. The modern rubber duck is not made from rubber, but from plasticized PVC colored with a bright yellow pigment.

1/13/2026 Clean Technica EPA Cooks the Books on Industrial Pollution Costs – They (EPA) will henceforth consider only the economic cost of the regulations to corporations, and if they are deemed to be too burdensome, those regulations will be softened in order to avoid undue economic harm to the polluters. This includes fine particulates (2.5 microns or less) that include microplastics and fossil fuel combustion products….contributing to many negative health outcomes.

1/13/2026 UPI U.S. greenhouse gas emissions growing faster than economy - For the first time in three years annual U.S. greenhouse gas emissions increased, climbing by 2.4% in 2025 as federal policy shifted back to fossil fuels. For the first time in three years annual U.S. greenhouse gas emissions increased, climbing by 2.4% in 2025 as federal policy shifted back to fossil fuels.

1/11/2026 Science Daily A room full of flu patients and no one got sick - n a striking real-world experiment, flu patients spent days indoors with healthy volunteers, but the virus never spread. Researchers found that limited coughing and well-mixed indoor air kept virus levels low, even with close contact. Age may have helped too, since middle-aged adults are less likely to catch the flu than younger people. The results highlight ventilation, air movement, and masks as key defenses against infection.

1/15/2026 BBC Rare images of Europe's 'ghost cat' - After several decades, this mysterious little beast is returning to our forests.

1/14/2026 NASA Earth Observatory Fires on the Rise in the Far North - In the far north, wildfires are breaking old patterns. Satellite data show that wildland fires once scattered across the Arctic are now surging in numbers—particularly in northern Eurasia—and many are burning more intensely than before. n the 2000s, fires north of 60 degrees latitude appeared across both North America and Eurasia, but starting in the early 2010s, their numbers skyrocketed, most dramatically in Eurasia. Even the icy island of Greenland entered a new fire regime during this period, experiencing more large fires, though still too few to be visible on these maps. Researchers attribute these trends to rising temperatures, which have made northern landscapes more flammable, along with a poleward expansion of lightning—the primary ignition source for these fires.

Jardine’s Hummingbirds

/

Sir William Jardine was a Scottish naturalist in the 1800s. He edited a series of natural history books; two of them (about hummingbirds) are the pick for this week’s eBooks. They were published in 1833 and 1836 respectively and are available from Internet Archive. I picked two images from each volume…many more are available in these volumes.

 The natural history of humming birds V1

The natural history of humming birds V2

Ten Little Celebrations – January 2026

/

Parts of January were not very wintery but later in the month, we got a significant winter storm that included snow! I celebrated winter activities, food, and scenes –sprinkled with some warmer days.

53rd wedding anniversary. So much of my day-to-day well-being is linked to my marriage that I sometimes just accept it as normal….but my wedding anniversary in January always prompts me to celebrate….be grateful that we’ve sustained our relationship by changing together!

American Beautyberry in winter. I celebrated the wrinkles and color of the berries – often in an otherwise brown bed at the Texas Welcome Center. I’m glad I have some small beautyberry plants in the yard that will be beautiful in a few years.

Big snow. It was a good time to be at home – celebrate the season (and my snow blower).

Dark chocolate for breakfast. I savored dark chocolate first thing in the morning – reverting to my favorite breakfast in the last years of my career. I celebrated that it was tasty and fair trade certified.

Meal in a skillet. Lightly sautéing veggies then adding a couple of eggs to make a ‘sauce’ and provide the protein – I’m getting used to the idea of eating it straight from the skillet. Celebrating food that is quick…nutritious…easy to clean up.

Potato skin. My husband likes the inside of russet potatoes and I like the skin. I always celebrate when there is a potato skin to top a soup or include in a stir fry.

Salmon salad with ginger, lemon, and honey dressing. Small cans of salmon have become a pantry staple for me. This month I celebrated a homemade dressing (fresh ginger, lemon, and honey) that made salmon salad my favorite.

Exercise snacks and treadmill walks. I’ve noticed that my mood and my back are better when I do short spurts of exercise throughout the day – celebrating that something that is good for me overall has some specific benefits that motivate me!

Pruning chainsaw. I celebrated a new tool – realize I should have bought one sooner.

Plastics podcast. The recording of a short message about plastics had been in the works for months – and I celebrated that I finally got it done!

Zooming - January 2026

/

The zoomed imaging from this month were taking in my daughter’s yard in Springfield MO, my yard in Nixa MO, Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge, the Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield MO, the Lake Springfield Boathouse and the Texas Welcome Center on US 75. It was not a big photography month. I expect February will have more if the weather does not cause cancellations of winter hikes I have planned.

Favorite Chairs

/

My choice of office chair has changed over the years. By mid-career, I knew that I liked ones that didn’t have arms because the arms were never at the right height and seemed to cause poor posture. In my company provided office – I always had an office chair with a back but in my home office I had a Swopper chair with no back at all by about 2010 - a few years before I left my career behind; I can easily move from side to side and bounce. It is much easier to not sit still for too long in a chair like that! My first chair broke after about a decade of heavy use (the spring detached from the other main part of the chair) and I now have two replacements – one for the first floor of the house and the other for the basement garden room where my primary home office is located.

Recently I have discovered that a piano bench is my second favorite chair. I use a bench at a table when I make Zentangle tiles as part of my wind down at the end of the day. I do some back exercises before I start and can sit on the piano bench for more than an hour before I feel like I need to get up and move. Somehow it is easier for me to sit with good posture on the bench than a dining room chair with a back!

It’s a little surprising to me that relatively hard seats without a back are more comfortable for me – maybe it is easier for me to sit straight when I am not relying on a part of the chair to keep me upright!

Plastics Crisis – Travel and Plastics

/

I thought about plastics as I made my monthly drive from Missouri down to Lewisville TX and back. It might have been the noticeable plastic trash along the road – perhaps there was more of it because of recent winds.

The other reason I was thinking about it more was the breakfast set up. The same hotel chain we had stayed in when we went to St. Joseph MO late last month had used ceramic plates and stainless utensils – so it felt like a step backwards to have foam plates and plasticware. Both places had Keurig coffee makers in the room and plastic single used glasses. When I got the request for feedback to the hotel – I filled in several responses about the plastic in their hotel and pointed out that the bottle of water ‘gift’ is not as appreciated any more.

I have started carrying a ceramic mug in my suitcase…to make tea – avoid the Keurig completely and the cups they provide. I also carry a small water filtration pitcher to replenish my reusable water bottle and to make tea.

My eyes were itchy the whole time I was in Lewisville; when I checked, the air quality was yellow…and the hotel HVAC filter did not seem to help. The dominate pollutant type causing the ‘yellow’ level was PM2.5 which includes microplastics and products of fossil fuel combustion. I am considering whether I should travel with an air purifier like I did on road trips after COVID – when vaccines were still quite new.

The drive home was very windy with a front coming through (bringing ice and snow for the weekend) and there were several places where plastics were blowing in the wind. Not long after I got to I44 and was less than 2 hours from home, there was grass fire along the shoulder that seemed to go for at least ¼ mile…and the smoke was blowing across the road.  Another hit to air quality!

There was a bit of nature at the Texas Welcome Center where I stopped on the way down that I’ll use as a positive ending for this post even though it has nothing to do with plastics or air quality: the bluebonnet plants are above ground and the beautyberry still has a bit of color!

Sustaining Elder Care – January 2026

/

We moved my father to a new memory care place in early November, and we are just now getting his medical care transitioned to a new provider (since the new place is out of range from the previous one). It has been harder than we expected and there could be other challenges we just haven’t uncovered yet.

He is still having some difficulty finding his way around in the new place without assistance. The size of the place, his worsening eyesight, and cognitive ups/downs are all contributing to our observations and reports from staff of almost daily incidents – him thinking someone else’s apartment is his, him losing the key fob to get into his room, and him saying that he can’t find his room.

One of my sisters noticed that he couldn’t get his belt buckle open…and closed again. Maybe it was threaded around his jeans the wrong way? I hope that was the explanation since, if it is not – we may be approaching a time when he will need assistance in the bathroom. A year or so ago one of my sisters bought him some pull-on pants that did not require a belt – but he didn’t like them at all. He likes his jeans with a belt and a button front shirt (short sleeves for summer and long sleeves for winter)!

His decline – mental and physical – is obvious…but not predictable. There are times that he seems to remember more but those times are happening less often. The decline of his eyesight is related. If he could see better, perhaps he would not get lost so easily even though his short-term memory has not been reliable for quite some time so the move to a new environment has been hard for him.

It is taking more effort for me to stick with my strategy of accepting him as he is in the moments when I am with him….try to encourage him to move about and talk. In the back of my mind when I plan my monthly road trips to visit him, I always think about making the best of the visit because it might be the last one.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 24, 2026

/

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

1/3/2026 The Scientist Polio Vaccine History: The Shot That Saved Millions - On April 12, 1955, when the Salk polio vaccine was declared “safe and effective,” church bells rang out, kids were let out of school, and headlines around the world celebrated the victory over polio. When asked whether he was going to patent the vaccine, Salk told journalist Edward R. Murrow it belonged to the people and would be like “patenting the sun.”

1/8/2026 Smithsonian Magazine Hundreds of Flowering Species Bloomed Across Britain and Ireland Last Winter - Citizen scientists in the British Isles documented more than 300 native plant species blooming in early 2025, a phenomenon likely caused by climate change. While it’s lovely to see so many wildflowers in bloom … it’s also a sad reflection of the way our climate is changing and the knock-on effects this might have for all the wildlife—bees and other pollinators, butterflies and all the larger creatures further up the food chain—that depend on plants. If flowering times are increasingly out of sync with insect hatching times, the consequences could be very serious.

1/8/206 People in Brazil are living past 110 and scientists want to know why – Brazil’s highly diverse population harbors millions of genetic variants missing from standard datasets, including rare changes linked to immune strength and cellular maintenance. Brazilian supercentenarians often remain mentally sharp, survive serious infections, and come from families where multiple members live past 100. Together, they reveal aging not as inevitable decline, but as a form of biological resilience.

1/7/2026 The Conversation Surprising number of foods contain microplastics. Here’s how to reduce the amount you consume - While eliminating plastics entirely from our diets may be impossible, making these swaps should help to reduce your exposure.

1/6/2026 Nature Defossilize our chemical world - Achieving net zero means eliminating fossil fuels, not carbon — the chemical element has a crucial part to play in powering the modern world. Defossilization means finding sustainable ways to make carbon-based chemicals. Alternative sources of carbon include the atmosphere and plants, as well as carbon in existing biological or industrial waste, such as used plastics or agricultural residue. In some cases, these chemicals will eventually return carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through burning or biodegradation. In principle, this will occur as part of a circular process, rather than one that has added greenhouse gases.

1/5/2026 Planetizen The Child Population in These Cities is Dropping Fast - The proportion of young children in western U.S. metros is falling faster than in other parts of the country. Lower birth rates can sometimes ease immediate pressure on housing and schools but also lead to challenges in supporting economic growth and elder care, as the ratio of working adults to retirees declines.

1/4/2026 Washington Post What we learned about microplastics in 2025 - For many scientists, 2025 was the year of microplastics. It’s only in the past year or so that we have begun to understand that the tiny plastics — including some that are impossible to see with the naked eye — are in our bodies and food as well.

1/9/2026 Science Alert Study Finds Microplastics Are Widespread in Popular Seafoods - In the Pacific Northwest – a region of North America renowned for its seafood – researchers have found particles from our waste and pollution swimming in the edible tissue of just about every fish and shellfish they collected.

12/18/2025 Yale Environment 360 After Ruining a Treasured Water Resource, Iran Is Drying Up - Iran is looking to relocate the nation’s capital because of severe water shortages that make Tehran unsustainable. Experts say the crisis was caused by years of ill-conceived dam projects and overpumping that destroyed a centuries-old system for tapping underground reserves. 

1/8/2026 BBC The animals saved in Greece's ancient accidental 'arks' - Shielded from development and agriculture, many archaeological sites have now become inadvertent safe harbors for plants and animals. In Italy, rare orchids flower around an Etruscan necropolis. In the ancient Greek religious centre of Delphi, researchers found what they believe is a new species of snail – just 2mm (0.08in) long – suspected to live only in that area. In recent years, two new species of lizard were identified in Machu Picchu that may have once had a wider range and today enjoy the relatively undisturbed conditions of the ancient sanctuary. To better understand the connection between historical sites and nature, in 2022 the Greek government launched the Biodiversity in Archaeological Sites research project. Over two years, 49 specialists in all kinds of plants and animals surveyed 20 archaeological sites that spanned Greek history. 

Life Magazine in 1945

/

Internet Archive has digitized versions of many Life Magazines. I have been browsing through them – slowly since there was an issue for each week. As I looked at the issues from 1945, it seemed that the was pivotal: the atrocities in Europe were in the news more and trials were starting for German leader that had not killed themselves….the US succeeded in ending the war with Japan by using atomic bombs.  The industry that supplied the war was being scrapped or turned to civilian uses. (Click on any of the sample images below to see a larger version and the links to see the whole magazine online.)

Life Magazine 1945-01-01 - 5,000 tires wear out on the western front every 24 hours

Life Magazine 1945-01-08 - Evening of July 25 in Normandy (painting)

Life Magazine 1945-01-15 - Granite stones for Hitler’s victory monument

Life Magazine 1945-01-22 - Western Electric ad

Life Magazine 1945-01-29 - Vegetable of War in the Southwest

Life Magazine 1945-02-05 - Murder in the Snow (where Germans shot US prisoners

Life Magazine 1945-02-12 - Trench foot

Life Magazine 1945-02-19 - Dalai Lama

Life Magazine 1945-02-26 - Soldiers in Germany (winter)

 Life Magazine 1945-03-05 - Iwo Jima

Life Magazine 1945-03-12 - Glass manufacturing

Life Magazine 1945-03-19 - Germans crumble in the west

Life Magazine 1945-03-26 - German girl in ruins of Cologne

Life Magazine 1945-04-02 - Coca Cola ad

Life Magazine 1945-04-09 - American paratrooper….east of the Rhine

Life Magazine 1945-04-16 - Ford ad

Life Magazine 1945-04-23 - Roosevelt's death

Life Magazine 1945-04-30 - Hitler's hideout

 Life Magazine 1945-05-07 - Belsen

Life Magazine 1945-05-14 - Nazi suicides

Life Magazine 1945-05-21 - London goes wild on VE day

Life Magazine 1945-05-28 - Okinawa

Life Magazine 1945-06-04 - Battered face of Germany

Life Magazine 1945-06-11 - Middle East oil

Life Magazine 1945-06-18 - Americans battle for Okinawa

Life Magazine 1945-06-25 - Harry Truman's Missouri

 Life Magazine 1945-07-02 - Hitler's eyrie

Life Magazine 1945-07-09 - Japanese surrenders are increasing

Life Magazine 1945-07-16 - Caricatures of correspondents

Life Magazine 1945-07-23 - Berlin

Life Magazine 1945-07-30 - Postwar Jeep

Life Magazine 1945-08-06 - Empire State Building fire

Life Magazine 1945-08-13 - General Motors: refrigerators and airplane propeller blades

Life Magazine 1945-08-20 - Atomic bomb

Life Magazine 1945-08-27 - Victorious China

 Life Magazine 1945-09-03 - Planes scrapped

Life Magazine 1945-09-10 - Battered Tokyo

Life Magazine 1945-09-17 - Hiroshima

Life Magazine 1945-09-24 - Coca Cola ad

Life Magazine 1945-10-01 - International Harvester ad

Life Magazine 1945-10-08 - Masks worn in Hiroshima

Life Magazine 1945-10-15 - Nagasaki

Life Magazine 1945-10-22 - USS Battan in Panama Canal

Life Magazine 1945-10-29 - USS Enterprise I New York Harbor

 Life Magazine 1945-11-05 - Solar eclipse

Life Magazine 1945-11-12 - Waterfront fire - Chicago

Life Magazine 1945-11-19 - British brides

Life Magazine 1945-11-26 - Graveyard of US Liberty ships

Life Magazine 1945-12-03 - Berlin children

Life Magazine 1945-12-10 - International Harvester ad

Life Magazine 1945-12-17 - Housing shortage

Life Magazine 1945-12-24 - Tom Wolf and Asheville NC

Life Magazine 1945-12-31 - Big snow in Buffalo

Lake Springfield – January 2026

/

There was an ‘eagle’ event at the Lake Springfield Boathouse last weekend. The temperature was in the 20s and a little breezy…but I bundled up and headed out. The parking lot still had plenty of spaces when I got there. The spotting scopes were set up on the lakeside deck of the boathouse…but they were on ducks rather than bald eagles! Evidently there had been a couple of eagles sighted before the event started – from a nearby lookout, not visible from the boathouse. After watching the ducks for a little while, I opted to switch my photography to plants.

The sycamore at the edge of the lake was catching the light.

I walked around to look for seed pods…and anything else interesting in the plantings around the boathouse. The beautyberries were shriveled but still retained some color. A bush trimmed to keep it within the bed displayed a cracked stump. The browns and off-white colors dominate in winter but there were some green leaves of some bulbs coming up in one bed.

It was a short foray into the cold – testing out my gear from some winter wellness hiking over the next few weeks.

Project Feeder Watch – January 2026

/

My husband and I enjoy our time watching birds at our home feeders for 4 30-minute segments each week as part of Project FeederWatch. Something interesting always seems to happen – varying numbers and kinds of birds, relaxed feeding and then a round of bird frenzy,  the regulars and then silent/empty feeders (our theory when this happens is that our neighborhood Cooper’s Hawk is somewhere nearby). Our feeders are not situated for optimal photography…but I still take a few pictures.

We often develop profiles of the different birds; for example, the Carolina chickadee and Titmouse are the quick grab and go experts….the starlings come in mobs and bully everyone else!

Snack in Blue Tulip Glassware

/

I’ve had my set of Blue Tulip depression glassware for over a decade now. It is special because of how I got it – from some friends of my parents (from college onward) that collected it when they retired and sold it to me when they downsized from their last house. Although I don’t use the dinner plates very often – I do enjoy the small pieces frequently because they encourage smaller portions. One piece that I have only started using recently is in the shape of a shell with a center area for dip/sauce; I like pumpkin seeds in the center and fruit/veggies around the edge. It is just the right size of a hefty snack (when I am not hungry enough for a full evening meal).

The memories are a bonus – summertime visits with their family which included a daughter my age…observing a career dietician for small hospitals in action and the field work of a soil conservation professional in the 1960s. I remember outings with them to amusement parks and overnight visits to state parks in Oklahoma….digging up salt crystals at the lake near Cherokee, Oklahoma. The friends of my parents and their daughter are gone now – the last one going before my mother; my dad doesn’t remember them. I remember…and the Blue Tulip glassware is a wonderful reminder.

Plastics Crisis – The Personal Economics of Less Plastics

/

I’ve been making changes over the past months to reduce plastic around my house enough that I am now thinking about the benefits we are observing.

Our transition to bar soaps for showers and hand-washing costs less than the myriad of plastic bottled products…and both my husband and I have noticed skin improvements (less itching, less dry skin).

My electric tea kettle (only glass or stainless surfaces touching the water) is better than I imaged it would be – much better for making tea than the old coffee maker (that had a lot of plastic parts). I discovered that our water has enough minerals that the tea kettle developed scale quickly; putting a little lemon juice in the water (i.e. acid) solved the problem. I am using tea bags that are supposedly free of plastic glue but am considering cutting them open and using the tea leaves only. The tea makes it easier for me to cut back on soft drinks too! From a cost standpoint it is about the same as buying a new coffee maker.

I replaced all my plastic leftover and storage containers for food with glass (even though they have plastic lids….I don’t overfill the containers so that food never touches the plastic). The food is preserved as well as before and I find myself also using the containers for some items I previously put in Ziplocs (i.e. plastic) – like cranberries I am freezing and carrots I am taking with me for snacks on road trips. When I can’t buy a veggie except in a plastic bag (like carrots), I am starting to put them in a glass container when I get home from the store with the idea that the longer the carrots are in the plastic bag, the more microplastics they have on/in them. I also like that the glass dries better in my dishwasher!

The Rorra water filter is working well for us. We use it for drinking and cooking and the water fountain for the cats. There is no reason for us to buy bottled water any more. Of course – the Rorra and replacement filters cost something, but we are comfortable with our water at this point.

We replaced the type of humidifier we had with ones that use evaporation rather than creating a mist. This winter our house has about the same humidity level but without the white dust (and microplastics) the mist humidifiers created. Our air purifiers rarely go into ‘high’ mode now whereas last year they did any time we had them on near a humidifier.

Even though I have cut back on soft drinks, I still drink them occasionally….but they are in cans rather than plastic bottles. We have very few plastic bottles in our recycle. We have stopped putting some plastics in recycle even though our curbside service accepts them since we are aware that the materials rarely get recycled; even the milk and soft drink bottles/jugs (which are the most frequently recycled plastics) often end up in landfills…so it is good that we simply buy less in those containers these days.

I have stopped buying salad dressing since it is almost always in a plastic bottle. I am making my own. My favorite right now is a lemon ginger vinaigrette! It costs less and I make only what I need at the time.

I am going to start buying olive oil in glass rather than plastic as soon as I use up what I have. It will be more expensive, but I use it slowly, so I don’t need to buy a large container. I might have to buy it somewhere other than my usual grocery store just as I do my lemon juice(in a glass bottle).

I am buying fruits and veggies that are not packaged when I can - which means that I don’t buy arugula like before. I skew toward cabbage and squash and peppers and cucumbers and broccoli. In the summer I’ll eat violet leaves from my yard! The apples and pears and lemons I buy are not packaged; I do buy organic oranges in a mesh bag because that is the only way they come (and I give my daughter half of them). I take them out of the packaging as soon as I get them home.

In summary – I’ve made some investments (Rorra, glass containers, tea kettle, humidifier, a ladle to replace a plastic one) that are working well for us. They were not too expensive, and they will last a long time. On a week-to-week basis – costs have probably gone down buy a little – no plastic water bottles of water, body wash, or hand soap…and less soft drinks overall.

Fifty-third Wedding Anniversary

/

Still together after 53 years….

Our anniversary is not a big celebration in January; we don’t buy gifts; usually we just go out for a nice meal. This year my only requirement was that it be a place with interesting desserts. We chose The Village Inn in Springfield. He got pancakes and I got key lime pie.

I’m thinking about how we are accommodating each other more as we age.

  • Right now, he has a wrist bothering him, so I am doing more household chores that require two hands.

  • He keeps a pillow in his car for me because I haven’t been able to adjust the front passenger seat to avoid my back hurting on road trips.

  • Over the past year we have both sat in medical waiting rooms – doing the driving to and from an outpatient procedure.

  • When we travel, we both like to stop about once an hour; neither one of us likes to sit for a long time.

  • I do the grocery shopping, and he does the shopping at Home Depot/Loews and Wild Birds Unlimited (although I am loading the bird feeders with seed and putting the groceries away right now because those are two-hand jobs). In years past we shopped together but now we both enjoy the independence.

  • He has allergies to a lot of household products which we have been working with for a few years. That is dovetailing with my efforts to reduce plastics/microplastics in our household.

  • When one of us is on a solo road trip, the other is tracking progress with the Find My app. This is the one item on the list that we might have done earlier if the technology had been available.

  • When we travel, I always make the hotel reservations and pack the ice chest (mostly things for him these days). He always makes sure the car is ready to go and does all the driving; I keep volunteering to trade off driving, but road trips are generally more restful for me since he still wants to do it all.

As we get older, there will be plenty more accommodations we’ll develop for ourselves and each other. We’re already a lengthy marriage…have no plans of cutting it short!

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 17, 2026

/

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

12/28/2025 SciTechDaily Microplastics Burrow into Blood Vessels and Fuel Heart Disease - New research led by biomedical scientists at the University of California, Riverside suggests that routine contact with microplastics — tiny particles released from packaging, clothing, and many plastic products — may speed up atherosclerosis, a condition in which arteries become clogged and can lead to heart attacks and strokes. The team studied LDLR-deficient mice, which are genetically prone to developing atherosclerosis. Both male and female mice were fed a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet comparable to what a lean and healthy person might consume. Over a nine-week period, the mice received daily doses of microplastics (10 milligrams per kilogram of body weight). These exposure levels were chosen to reflect amounts considered environmentally relevant and similar to what humans could encounter through contaminated food and water.

1/1/2026 ScienceDaily This 100-year-old teaching method is beating modern preschools - Public Montessori preschool students enter kindergarten with stronger reading, memory, and executive function skills than their peers. These gains don’t fade — they grow over time, bucking a long-standing trend in early education research. Even better, Montessori programs cost about $13,000 less per child than traditional preschool. (My daughter went to a private Montessori school for preschool-kindergarten…she enjoyed it and did very well in her subsequent education/career so I am not surprised by the results of this national trial.)

12/31/2025 Archaeology Magazine Bones of Chaco Canyon’s Imported Parrots Reexamined – A reexamination of more than 2,400 parrot bones unearthed at Chaco Canyon suggests that most of the macaws and parrots that were kept by ancient Puebloans were likely restricted to the large, multistory buildings known as great houses, where they lived in heated rooms with plastered walls.

12/31/2025 ScienceDaily Microplastics are leaking invisible chemical clouds into water - Microplastics in rivers, lakes, and oceans aren’t just drifting debris—they’re constantly leaking invisible clouds of chemicals into the water. New research shows that sunlight drives this process, causing different plastics to release distinct and evolving mixtures of dissolved organic compounds as they weather. These chemical plumes are surprisingly complex, often richer and more biologically active than natural organic matter, and include additives, broken polymer fragments, and oxidized molecules. Understanding how these chemicals evolve across different stages of plastic breakdown will be essential for assessing their long-term environmental impact.

1/2/2026 National Parks Traveler A Day in the Park: Assateague Island National Seashore – This was a great get away from where we lived in Maryland until recently. We’d cross the Bay Bridge, visit Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge and then be at Chincoteague and Assateague Island National Seashore after that.

1/2/2026 The New York Times A Study Is Retracted, Renewing Concerns About the Weedkiller Roundup - In 2000, a landmark study claimed to set the record straight on glyphosate, a contentious weedkiller used on hundreds of millions of acres of farmland. The paper found that the chemical, the active ingredient in Roundup, wasn’t a human health risk despite evidence of a cancer link. Last month, the study was retracted by the scientific journal that published it a quarter century ago, setting off a crisis of confidence in the science behind a weedkiller that has become the backbone of American food production.

1/2/2026 Smithsonian Magazine When the Bayeaux Tapestry Makes its Historic Return to England - Created in the 11th century, the delicate, 230-foot-long embroidered textile has been in France since 1077.

12/30/2025 YaleEnvironment360 2025 Was Another Exceptionally Hot Year - 2025 was the second hottest on record, surpassed only by 2024. It continues a recent trend of exceptional, unexplained warming. The last three years have been, by a wide margin, the hottest ever recorded. The recent jump in warming, which exceeded the predictions of climate models.

12/21/2025 My Modern Met Photographer Explores the Rich Complexity of Africa’s Great Rift – Photography of a place --- and an interview with the photographer.

12/17/2025 Washington Post These kitchen items may be contaminating your food with chemicals - Plastic ushered in a new era of convenience and filled homes with cheap, disposable goods. But it also has exposed ordinary people to tens of thousands of chemicals that slip out of those items into household dust, food, water — and from there, into bodies. Some of these chemicals are known to disrupt pregnancies, triggering birth defects and fertility problems later in life; others have been linked to cancer and developmental problems. “The problem is, none of the plastics that we have right now are safe,” said Wagner, of Norwegian University of Science and Technology. “That’s not a very nice thing to hear, but that’s what the data tell us.”

12/15/2025 Nature The best science images of 2025 — Nature’s picks – Educational and beautiful at the same time.

Mother West Wind eBooks

/

Four books by Thorton W. Burgess are this week’s book of the week. They were published between 1911 and 1920 – available on Project Gutenberg for online viewing. He was a prolific writer of children’s books and a conservationist. These are some of his earlies books and are well-illustrated.

Mother West Wind's Children

Mother West Wind's Animal Friends

Mother West Wind “When” Stories

Mother West Wind "Why" Stories

Our Neighborhood – January 2026

/

I took a walk around our neighborhood last week…looking for anything of interest in the winter landscape.

It easier to see abandoned bird’s nests in trees, buds on otherwise bare stems, seeds and pinecones in the winter because there is not a lot of other vegetation to distract the eye.

The occasional bright green of moss growing in muddy areas is a pop of color.

Lichens and bark and shelf fungus have color and texture to offer.

The temperature had gotten into the 60s but I didn’t see any turtles. There was a lone pair of mallards on the pond; they have ducklings every spring, but the turtles are too numerous for the young birds to survive. There was a Cooper’s Hawk that swooped over the pond and landed on one of the bridge railings; I think it is a resident of the neighborhood since I’ve seen in it my yard periodically.

Phoenix Vicariously

/

My daughter was at a conference in Phoenix last week and I enjoyed seeing her pictures of the area near the convention center. She went early for a workshop and managed to see a basketball game in the arena that evening!

She sent pictures of desert creature sculptures

And the sign for a pollinator garden – that obviously still has some plants blooming (daisies and lantana) – an urban garden.

My favorites were the images of architecture and murals. The one showing the white roof (along with a mural) was taken from her hotel window. I wondered how often the white needed to be refreshed to maintain its ability to reflect heat.

It’s been over a decade since I was in Phoenix and then I did more in the outskirts rather than the downtown area. Winter would be the time I’d pick to visit again!