The Albatross

Every week I will find an animal, plant or famous person in history that inspired me.

I recently came across an article on BBC.com that referenced the photo of a dead albatross taken by Chris Jordan in 2009 on Midway Atoll, a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The photo became famous and displayed for the whole world to see how the poor creature had ingested all sorts of pieces of colorful plastic, likely confusing them with food.

So let’s honor the albatross with a more majestic, beautiful photo and learn a couple of facts about it: The albatross is an amazing creature that has the largest wingspan of all birds in the world and can travel for thousands of miles across oceans. In fact, an albatross can fly (more like glide) for years without ever touching land! Here are additional facts, from one of the largest environmental blogs out there, and one of my North stars for what I am hoping OneBeautifulPlanet.org will be one day: Treehugger.com.

Mindset

Building a successful blog or venture is like “chopping down a huge tree of immense girth. You won’t accomplish it with one swing of your axe. If you keep chopping away at it, though, and do not let up, eventually, whether it wants to or not, it will suddenly topple down.  

“When that time comes, you could round up everyone you could find and pay them to hold the tree up, but they wouldn’t be able to do it. It would still come crashing to the ground…. But if the woodcutter stopped after one or two strokes of his axe to ask the third son of Mr. Chang, “Why doesn’t this tree fall?” And after three or four more strokes stopped again to ask the fourth son of Mr. Li, “Why doesn’t this tree fall?” he would never succeed in felling the tree. It is no different for someone who is practicing the Way. —Zen Master Hakuin “ , quoted by Robert Greene in the book Mastery

In the Works

Many puzzle pieces go into building this endeavor. Here is a preview of some of the things I am working on:

• Started to put together a brand image. I am working with a designer to craft a logo and color scheme for the website, social media banners and icons.

• Working on an article on Plastics 101 and started doing research on things like polymers, how plastic is used, and recycled. My sources include a new course I am taking on Udemy on the fundamentals of plastics and polymers, and a book by Sarah Winkler, a long time blogger and environmental enthusiast from Australia.

• On the Action front, I did more cleanups (my all-time record by number of cleanups was Juneteenth, when I did three cleanups in a day, in different neighborhoods and parks: early morning, early afternoon and in the evening). Of all the tracking apps I am only using the top three, Clean Planet Project, Pirika and CSFN which I reviewed here.

• Also earlier this week I introduced my friend Beth Intoccia to Longwood Rotary Club, where I used to belong until 2013. Beth is the initiator and lead volunteer for the Litter Lifters of West Vincent, an active community group. We presented and spread awareness of litter cleanup efforts to about 50 people. So far Beth & co have removed 18 tons of litter in less than 3 years from local roads, streets and trails!

• Back to the Knowledge sharing topic, I recruited my kids to help with the effort! - they prepared illustrations for the piece I wrote a few weeks ago, on introduction to environmental science. One day we may update these drawings with a professional look, but for now they add some color to the article; plus it gave both them and me great joy to be involved!

• Administratively I have a lot to figure out, including more of the Squarespace web design features, and the whole SEO piece (search engine optimization). In a nutshell there is a way to write (really assemble) “content” (I do not like that word…) in order to make your website show up when people search the internet. No rush there as it will probably be months if not years until I will feel like my “content” is really worthy.

That said :-) if you found this helpful, please share with your friends, contacts and anyone you know who may benefit from following my journey.

Thank you.

Razvan