The world in 500 words or less

By Bob Gaydos

Maybe it’s just me, but:

Alyssa Nakken

— Major League Baseball had a red letter day recently when Alyssa Nakken became the first female coach on the field, for the San Francisco Giants. Well-played.

— On the other hand, there was yet another sign that the people running the game have lost all sense of what once made baseball America’s pastime. With Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw six outs away from pitching a perfect game and having thrown all of 80 pitches, LA manager Dave Roberts pulled Kershaw from the game. Kershaw later said he was OK with the move. I doubt it. Imagine yanking Gibson or Ryan or Spahn or Seaver or Koufax or even David Cone, for Pete’s sake, in that situation. Baseball used to be a game of historic efforts and legends. Kershaw had a shot at history and deserved the opportunity. Moneyball isn’t necessarily baseball.

— Part two of what used to be baseball. Say that Kershaw stayed in the game and pitched two more perfect innings, but the score was tied at zero after nine innings. Kershaw gets to keep trying to be perfect and goes out to pitch the 10th inning. There’s a runner on second base. Kershaw didn’t put him there; baseball did. Is it still a perfect game? What if someone actually sacrifice bunts the runner over to third and the next better hits a long sacrifice fly that allows the runner to score? Do you yank Kershaw now because he’s actually losing a perfect game? Or maybe he’s on the road and just lost a perfect game. I guess with pitch counts we’ll never know.

— Confirmation of the eminently qualified Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court was a red-letter day for America. Less celebratory is the fact that 47 Republican senators had to tie themselves in knots trying to come up with reasons to vote against her that did not include “she’s a woman and she’s black.” Another shameful moment for the former party of Lincoln.

— The only nasty thing Attorney General Merrick Garland has caught recently is COVID-19.

— In another effort to bolster his base by lowering the average IQ score of Republicans in the House of Representatives, Donald Trump endorsed Sarah Palin for Alaska’s lone congressional seat. Well, for what it’s worth, she can spy on Russia from where she lives.

— The Taliban forbidding females to get schooled beyond grade six didn’t surprise me. But banning the growing of poppies, Afghanistan’s traditional crop? What the heck do they do for cash?

— Didn’t see this coming: There’s apparently a fertilizer shortage created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. should be OK as long as Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz still get to give speeches in the Senate.

— I just don’t trust Elon Musk on buying Twitter. Buy Texas. It needs fixing a lot more.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce
As the weather warms, the tranquility of the Wallkill Valley is punctuated by the calls of red-winged blackbirds and the constant drone of lawnmowers. We put a lot of effort into our perfect lawns, but is it really worth it?

We pour 10 times more chemicals on our lawns than farmers use in their fields, according to my friends at Soons Farm in New Hampton. This makes lawns toxic to wildlife, soil-microorganisms and earthworms, and polluting local water supplies. Up to a third of bagged household waste going to our landfills is lawn trimmings and leaves raked from our yards.

Traditional gas powered lawn mowers are responsible for 5 percent of our air pollution according to the Environmental Protection Agency. One gas mower running for an hour emits the same amount of pollutants as eight new cars driving 55 mph for the same amount of time, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Even the innocuous Weedeater results in 21 times more emissions than the typical family car, while the leaf blower can emit up to 34 times more, according to Eartheasy.com.

All this adds up to about 800 million gallons of gas burned each year in the quest for the perfect patch. But, about 17 million gallons of that fuel doesn’t quite make it to the mower tank and winds up spilled on the ground. That’s more than the Exxon Valdez spilled in 1989, and chances are that most homeowners do not clean it up. If that spilled fuel is left to evaporate into the air, it results in smog-forming ozone when cooked by heat and sunlight, and seeps into our water supply.

If your mower happens to have a two-cycle engine, it releases 25 to 30 percent of its oil and gas unburned into the air, along with particulate matter, carbon dioxide, and other ingredients of smog. This unhealthy soup we breathe contributes to cancer, and damages our hearts, lungs, and immune systems.

Want to lessen the environmental impact of your lawn?

The “greenest” thing you can do is convert your lawn to a vegetable garden and replace the turf with lovely raised beds of edible greens.

If that is too crunchy for your taste, how about trading in those gas guzzlers for the old-fashioned human-powered kind of mower? Reel mowers are easier to use, quiet, non-polluting. And you don’t have to worry about spilling gas. With the money you save on gas alone, you could buy a good pair of clippers for the bushes and a scythe for whacking weeds.

If you want to take the work out of lawn care, consider investing in electric mowers and weed whackers. Electric mowers range in price from $150 to $450, and the average cost in electricity to power the mower for one year is about five bucks, with no spilled gas and fewer emissions. Propane powered lawn equipment is a good choice when your lawn is the size of a golf course.

Use your brain instead of herbicides. If your lawn has dandelions, then your soil has a high pH level. Lower it with sulfur, or spot treat individual dandelions or poison ivy with a shot of vinegar.

Set up a compost pile, or buy a composter for leaves and lawn clippings. Use your composted yard waste and vegetable trimmings to build healthy soil on your lawn.

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. www.WallkillRiverSchool.com