Quirks

Everybody has their quirks. Some people can’t stand Capri pants. Other people get the chills when they hear opera music. Gregorific has a thing about water parks. 
 
Entertainment parks in general are not great for gregorific’s state of mind. The crowds, the glazed eyes, the outrageous prices, the underwhelming prizes, the hustle and bustle to get on the rides you want, to get a picture with each princess, to get sufficiently scared out of your mind on the scariest ride ever. 

And then the dreaded addition of water: chemically treated, endlessly regurgitated, weirdly-colored water.

I admit it. I’m a bit jaded re the commercialization of fun.

After roughly ten years, gregorific found herself and the whole gregorific crew  (minus dog) at an indoor water park. If I believed in desensitization therapy for phobias, then I would suspect Mr. Gregorific of creating the perfect storm for me. 

But of course, the gang just wanted to laugh while sliding, rafting, leaping over lily pads, bobbing on waves, squealing under sprinklers…you get the picture. They saw nothing beyond the fun. Bless them. Indeed, it is a shame to analyze the fun out of a water park. 

Yet. I see what I see. 

It seems incredible at first: the bells and whistles, house-sized buckets dumping water, the joyful squeals, the eyes wide with awe, the children bouncing on their heels as they wait to experience a peak of excitement unlike they have ever known.  

But after the initial glare of *wow*, the cracks show. You see a swirling mixture of humanity: never clean, run through the system again and again to lazy rivers and log plummets.

You spy a floating poop. You witness a careless injury. You hear a stressed mother berating her kid for not having enough fun. Or you are that mother. You see a guy teaching his kid to cut in line. The suddenly un-ignorable ugly underside stares right back at you with an insolent smirk. 

The unnatural tasting, looking, feeling, smelling water, the haggard life guards, the eight dollar hot dog that tastes like  chlorine,  It all screams- This is what you are. 

That's when you're ready to leave. If you're smart, you send a postcard right quick so that after the reality has faded, you can remember a glossy good time. 
 
That’s how I see it,
 ~gregorific

You guessed it- Vernal Pool. As you know from last year, gregorific is an avid fan of the wetland. I became involved in efforts to protect my community wetlands in an unusual way. I heard a rumor.

It was a rumor that an endangered tree frog was preventing future construction near my home. I was intrigued. I wanted to thank this frog. Maybe show my kids what it looks like.

I asked around. The rumor got fuzzy and then outrageous and then…Debunked. The rumor was false, ya’ll. No tree frog. No halt to development. I guess people had been reading The Lorax and got carried away. But I did track down the source, like the intrepid journalist I am.

Environmentalists were searching for a spadefoot toad that was said to live in the local wetlands. If they could find evidence of the toad, then development of that land would be limited, in order to protect the endangered toad’s habitat.

No one could find any toad. There was talk of taking samples of wetland water and analyzing it for spadefoot toad DNA.  Naturalists were desperate to find a concrete way to protect the local vernal pools. They were grasping at straws spadefoot DNA. 
Aside: Vernal Pools are seasonal wetlands created by spring rains. Amphibians come out of hibernation from the surrounding duff and migrate to the pools to breed. After breeding, they disperse. The pools dry up. Next year, spring rains cue the cycle again.

Once I became aware that 13 vernal pools were a stone’s throw away from my home, I got what you would call attached. 

Registered wetlands are federally protected. But, this protection, when followed to the letter of the law, only extends to the edges of the actual pool-- not the surrounding area. Common sense tells us that an ecosystem is not one part- it is a complex system. This is especially true of vernal pools.

The dynamic nature of seasonal change keeps the shape of the pools and the surrounding habitat in flux.

Back to the 13 vernal pools near me and their precarious fate. My town requires any development to keep some green space. Conveniently, the vernal pool land was designated as the green space. Please note that they couldn’t have built there anyway. Instead of having a distinct green space, they overlapped the green space requirement with the federally protected land. Now they want to build a park on the green space. 

A park in the traditional sense would ruin the wetlands. Sure, they can’t build a playground on a vernal pool. But they can on the rise surrounding the vernal pool. This would displace and destroy many of the species that the wetland supports, and that support the wetland. It’s a system. Disable one part and the system collapses. Dude, not cool.

So I advocate for a park that embraces the natural resources and upholds the intent of the law protecting the wetlands. I suggest a nature path. Maybe portable observation decks. Bird watching stations. Educational placards. Why not make it a learning laboratory?

I am not alone in this vision. Local environmental non profits are working hard to educate the community about their choices. A consulting firm has been hired by the town to make sure the park will meet the neighborhood and townships’ needs. This is all good.

Now it’s my turn to help raise awareness of what this land is.

It’s a gem. A treasure to be protected. We need to speak for the bulrush, the spadefoot toads, the Jeffersonian salamanders, the spring peepers. Our collective efforts can responsibly steward our neighborhoods so that our  children still have space to call green.

What endangered species live near you? Do they need your help?       

The challenge is yours,
~gregorific

Drape Effect

The second thing that I learned from my daughter’s birthday party is that there are not enough empowering images of fierce girls in the media. Before you say DUH, keep in mind that I wasn't browsing chic magazines, commercials, or sensationalized media outlets. I was googling the world wide web for images of little girl knights, ninjas, and mummies. Those are legitimate search words. Nothing sexy or weird about it. Seriously. 

I needed the pictures for a treasure map. With a quest you kinda have to have a map.  On ours we put the six rooms where the party goers would travel to complete each Magic Tree House challenge. On the map I wanted to use icons/pictures and not just words. Since the partiers were all girls, I wanted the map to have girl centric imagery.  So I googled and searched royalty free picture sites for girl knights, mummies, ancient Olympians, ninjas, and pirates. 

I did not type in woman or costume or cute. I knew that much. But, dang, all the world wants to see is objectified women. Why does that hold so much (negative) power? 

For the girl knight I could only find images with bare mid-drifts (who would joust in that?) and super sexy buxom knights. Women may not have been actual knights in those days, but I can find plenty of dogs dressed as knights. Sure, that’s funny. But if they think of putting a dog in a suit of armor, what about an American Doll or a Barbie? Or anything a girl can see herself as. 

I scoured the web for girl ninjas. Same problem. What kind of ninja is going to be showing that much skin? Ninjas in bikinis? No to the no. I found countless images of turtle ninjas. So what's up with that? And here’s a probing question for the creators of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…why no Mary Cassatt Ninja Turtle or Georgia O’Keefe Ninja Turtle—why all male turtles named after male artists? 

I had trouble finding girl mummies. Common sense tells me there should be mummies of both genders. 

I ended up having my older daughter draw the map. I hope she is always able to make her own way like that when the worn path is so unappealing and disempowering.

The map she created turned out awesomely and it successfully transported the party goers to many magical places. The girls found a Mama T-Rex's lost eggs, dressed up as mummies to fool a real mummy, jousted a pinata as knights, built a rocket to escape space, did the limbo in Hawaii  to outmaneuver hot lava, and were the first girls to compete in the ancient Olympics. My older daughter also dressed up like a pirate to  chase them between challenges. She was born for that role.

So. The first thing I learned was that a tree house cake is an *experience* well worth having. The second is that girls are really being cheated out of strong role models for their imaginative play. Sexist brainwashing starts early. And finally, I learned that if you want to mummify seven little girls you need approximately five rolls of toilet  paper and four adults. Also, little girls are not super psyched about being mummified tightly. They like a loose drape effect.

Always willing to share my life lessons!

As a bonus, I will remind you to be careful what you google for. Just sayin’. Gregorific had to wash her eyes several times. 

Keep having fun,
~gregorific