CORONAVIRUS - Some Good Things  - March 29,2020

We are now in our second week of Sheltering at Home. It's kind of like what I imagine it would be like to be imprisoned for a crime I did not commit. Not a bad prison to be isolated in , here in California, but still confinement. And it's solitary for me, alas. Yet not nearly as bad as for those sick or dying, so I'll take it . 

A couple of good things I've noticed coming out of all this: 
1. People are getting better at communicating and keeping in touch with friends, relatives, loved ones and even old long lost friends. People are being nicer to their neighbors and learning to take more walks.

2. There's going to be another Baby Boomer generation coming along in about 9-10 months from now. I sure hope we leave them a better world than this one we have today. Babies are good.

3. There seems to be a worldwide cessation of big bloody Wars. With a few flare-ups here and there (Hamas of course) even the murderous dictators of the World - Putin, MBS, the Taliban, Erdogan, Al-Sisi, Assad, Khameini all seem to have taken a time-out from their usual sadism.

Or maybe the News Media doesn't cover it anymore?  Can't really say much when it comes to Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping or the Sultan of Brunei because they mostly do their mass-murders under cover; so we'll probably never know. On the other hand , some Countries are releasing prisoners they don't need to hold right now, and cannot protect in such close confines. Hopefully the USA will soon be one of them. So, good News, nobody appears to be invading anybody else for now. Maybe they are practicing Nation distancing ?

4. As I was reminded in my family Zoom call this Sunday, the Planet can breathe a sigh of temporary relief since cars and industry have stopped belching carbon into the atmosphere in mass quantities these past few weeks. Take a deep breath, Mother Earth, while you can. 

5. We don't have to sit through any more Democrat Debates about who has the better Health Care plan! That was soooo boring, and meaningless since none of them are going to get anything done for the uninsured unless we get MoscowMitch out of the Senate along with Trump. Why don't we just nominate Biden by Acclamation,  and get on with it.

I personally know about 50 million people that can't wait to cast their Vote against Trump. And they're not all women.

Anyone else noticing good things coming out of all this tragedy ? Please list them here, or on  Twitter feed :  @ElliotsWindow

Update from Home

 To My Loyal Cadre of Blog-fans




I'm currently working on my new book , "Not Too Late " , inspired by

Snoopy’s book which he titled “Things I Learned When it Was Too Late.”

He wrote on his manual typewriter atop his doghouse, kinda like The Bloom High Way was written in the unfinished attic at Hill House, on an old clippety-clop Underwood classic.

My new book is coming along slowly but nicely. Most of it is raw and personal. Some stories about my Life you may recognize, others you’ll learn for the first time .

But in the meantime, now that I'm stuck here at home Social Distancing from COVID-19,  for most of the next couple weeks I'm going to renew my BLOG efforts.

 In case you were wondering, I haven't been silent. No,  I've developed something of a Twitter mania instead.  Twitter : @ElliotsWindow

I feel compelled to get my ideas out there as quickly as possible these days, as if our democracy and the whole planet Earth depended upon it. Twitter is so fast, and I'm doing some of my best writing there, in 280 characters or less. It's a good exercise for a writer to keep it short and to the point .  Gonna work on somehow transposing it all from emails and Fb to BLOG format,  and when I do you'll be hearing from me again.

First out of the box, I'm working on a title called : My Conversation with a MAGA .
It's quite informative,  no matter which side of sanity you live on .

 Anyway, please watch this space for less moronic info than you'll get from Trump!

RECYCLING MUST BE DONE -- BY OUR GOVERNMENT


One day in 1970, picking through a wrecked-car lot looking for a tail-light fixture for my Volvo,  I had an idea then that so many things, nearly everything we use ought to be recycled or repurposed somehow.....and that if everyone did it we could save money and create less waste and more jobs.

Of course, it took decades before people smarter than I figured out how to do that,  and make it economically feasible. The CRV tax on cans and bottles was born, glass got collected, re-purchased and reprocessed. Soon after, it was paper & cardboard.  At first people resented the CRV because it was a tax , and they knew they'd probably not redeem the plastic and cans anyway.

But then things began to change, and the awareness of pollution and waste piling up helped change people's outlook and habits. Meanwhile, just about every industry has added packaging on top of packaging - mainly with non-CRV plastics - to the point where we are all inundated with useless pieces of plastic on everything we buy. There is no end to this in sight .

Meanwhile,  Planet Earth is facing another crisis. We have been recycling so well over the last decade that there is nowhere to put it all,  and it's become more costly to recycle it than to throw it in the landfills. Turns out, we consumers are separating our trash from our bottles and papers but then they are all going into the landfills anyway. Recent articles in the LA Times and carried on Spectrum TV News have alerted us to the fact that the U.S.  Recycling Industry has reached critical mass - literally. It no longer pays for them to keep collecting, sorting , bundling and transporting the recycled waste of plastics, paper goods and glass; and there are not enough ways to re-purpose it once it gets to where it's supposed to go; and if there were it has become too costly to re-purpose everything . Additionally, China has just stopped taking our plastic waste, meaning 50% of it has nowhere to go now,  except to the dump.

Furthermore, our Planet has a gigantic problem with plastic floating in the Ocean in alarming quantities. It's not just whales and dolphins consuming floating plastics that is a problem, but plastics have actually formed floating plastic islands, one of which is as large as the State of Rhode Island .  Experts warn us that the equivalent of 2 two dump-trucks per minute of plastic is going into the Ocean. This is unsustainable. Our Eco-system is already threatened by Climate Change, and now this. Like Mercury, the fish are eating the micro-plastic in the Oceans and we are eating the fish .

These problems are Society's problems. The human race created these waste products and only we as a whole can solve them. Individuals can reduce their own footprint a bit, but the footprint of a Nation is much harder to reduce. This problem is too big, and too disastrous to allow it to go unresolved because of economics of business. Saving the Planet should not be an economic decision.

Recycling to save the Planet for future generations, should not have to turn a profit. But today, the Re-Planet corporation (under contract with the Cities)  has decided to close most of its retail collection stations in California,  making it impossible for consumers to do anything but throw their recyclable plastics ( #1 & #2 ), cans and glass into the trash again. At the same time , the # 5, 6 , and unnumbered plastics were  not being recycled, but tossed into the landfills where they will take up to 1,000 years to breakdown.  Now, with nowhere to send them and no-profit in recycling them , even #1 and # 2 bottles are going in the trash. This cannot be good for Mother Earth. Meanwhile, we are still paying our 5-cent  CRV tax per bottle, but not able to redeem them. Thus, the Recycling we pay for is no longer being done.  So where are those CRV monies going now?

So - my idea now is that the State of California needs to establish a new Agency: A Recycling Department. To help pay for it we put a CRV tax on all single-purpose plastics not currently recyclable, all styrofoam cups & boxes and packing peanuts; as well as the plastics used in packing and over-packaging consumer goods. Tax the bad stuff more than 5 cents, or make the manufacturer pay the tax on things that don't break down, ever.


This new Recycling Department needs to set up local recycling centers around the State, probably apportioned by population and by County. Let the local municipalities create Recycling Depots like the ones that Waste Management is closing, but that also take batteries & styrofoam, as well as glass, metal, wood & paper. These centers should not only collect and refund consumers for their CRV tax, but also deliver the recycled goods to manufacturers that will scientifically re-purpose it all. If there's not enough profit to sell the recyclables, let companies have it for free, as long as they re-purpose it.

If there is no profit in it, so be it. If there's a loss, so be it. Saving the our rivers and oceans, the land, clean water and air do not have to turn a profit. What cannot be recycled, ought to be safely deposited by the States into remote landfills that do not needlessly impact water supplies or wildlife.


To those who say we already have enough Government, I say this: Sometimes we need Government to serve us, and take care of what individuals and businesses alone cannot do. Like the Post Office, the Police & Fire Departments, our roads and bridges, the Coast Guard and the military - we pay them to do all that work for the common good. It is not Government's job to make a profit.

It is our job to make Government work for us, and for Mother Earth. .

We need to look at worldwide pollution problems the same way, starting here in our State, and elsewhere around the Nation. Furthermore, recycling by the States will create steady, good paying jobs in a growth Industry. These jobs will start at minimum wage but scale up like any growing Industry employing thousands in new and important jobs.


Save the Planet, create jobs, re-purpose our waste, reduce our footprint. It's a Win, Win, Win !!