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Red Dog/Bad Dog
by Jim Hightower for AlterNet

Big breweries are inventing their own phony microlabels, then using their multibillion-dollar marketing clout to knock local brands off the shelf.

They say it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks.
But whoever said that never met Red Dog.
Red Dog is the name of a new beer that's being marketed all over the country. But its colorful name and no-nonsense red-and-black label — featuring the head of a big, red bulldog with an attitude — are designed to make this brew seem like it's from one of the upstart microbreweries popping up all across the country.
These defiant local beers and ales are gaining quite a
following among serious suds connoisseurs who like a bit of
diversity and a heartier flavor than the pasteurized paleness of
the giant brands. I mean, why have a lite when there's Abita's
Turbo Dog from Louisiana, Goat's Breath Bock from Missouri, Moose
Juice Stout from Wyoming and my favorite label: What-the Gent-on-
the-Floor-Is-Having Ale from Florida?
These locals are tiny; combined they take only 1 percent of
the national beer market. But the Big Four breweries, which already
have 99 percent of the market, resent the 1 percent held by the
microbrews, and that's where Red Dog comes in.
The label on a bottle of Red Dog says it's made by the Plank
Road Brewery. How colonial! But don't believe it. There is no such
brewery, and Red Dog is no microbrew — it's made by Miller, the
country's second largest beermaker, which in turn is owned by the
even larger conglomerate, Phillip Morris.
The giants, you see, are inventing their own phony
microlabels, then using their multibillion-dollar marketing clout
to knock the real local brands off the shelf.
Bad dog, bad dog! It's not nice to play tricks on America's
beer drinkers.


Who’s Afraid of the Big Red Wolf?
by Sandra Martin
Maryland’s four microbreweries aren’t intimidated.

Maryland’s microbeers are so popular that local brewers aren’t afraid of either the big red wolf or the bad red dog.
Wild Goose Brewery of Cambridge, Maryland’s oldest new-age microbrewery, is “doing very well, growing at about 60 percent per year,” says brewery president Jim Lutz. Six-year-old Wild Goose brewed 10,000 barrels of four standard and two specialty beer in 1994.
Oxford Brewing Company of Linthicum has tripled its capacity to 6,000 barrels a year. ‘‘Our business is growing,” said Marianne O’Brien, general manager of the three-year-old brewery.
Frederick Brewery, which shares its name with its county, has enjoyed threefold growth from its starting level of 2,700 barrels two years ago. “We’re doing unbelievably well, selling all the beer we can make,” says vice president Steven “Frenchy” Tluszcz. Frederick’s four regular and four specialty beers — many of them bearing the family name “Blue Ridge” — are sold across Maryland, in Washington, in much of Virginia and in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia.
Maryland’s newest microbrewery, Brimstone, opened last October in an old National Bohemian building in Baltimore. “The big guys can spend huge amounts to get customers, but I don’t know how long they’ll stay around,” says Marc Tewey, Brimstone’s owner-brewer. Brimstone Brewing Company is producing about 150 barrels a month of its six beers.

Running with the Big Dogs
“It’s not been unusual for the big brewers to have an occasional specialty beer, like Coors’ George Killian’s Irish Ale, but they didn’t try to place them as hand-crafted microbrews,” says Teague, a beer expert from Illinois who cashed in part of a beer can collection to buy his house.
Since 1992, Miller Brewing Company has added Reserve Lager, Amber Ale, and Velvet Stout as well as Red Dog to its inventory of mass-market beers.
Now Anheuser-Busch is moving in, says Teague, “really trying to establish its place in the micro-community.” Among the more than 87 million barrels the St. Louis-based giant mass-produces each year are Red Wolf, Elk Mountain Amber, Elk Mountain Red. “They’ve corralled all the hot words, nature or wildlife and red, which was the last big beer gimmick,” Teague notes. What’s more, Anheuser-Busch has bought out one of the nation’s largest and most successful microbreweries, Red Hook in Seattle.
What’s drawing the big dogs to microbrewing? Wild Goose’s Jim Lutz explains “what seems to be happening.”
The microbeer industry represents about 1 1/2 percent of total beer sales, in excess of a billion dollars annually. “Micros are growing at about 40 to 50 percent a year, with industry gurus anticipating double digit growth for the next two to three decades. In a market that is flat at best, specialty and hand crafted beers are the only growing areas,” says Lutz.
“The big companies want to be a part of that. I can’t say I blame them,” the Cambridge brewer says.

What Makes a Micro?
As its name suggests, an authentic microbrewery has to be small. Microbreweries typically produce less than 15,000 barrels of beer a year (a barrel fills about 14 cases), while larger breweries can produce millions of barrels a year. Giant brewers benefit from economies of scale, but — say the microbrewers — their product does not. The larger the volume of beer, the smaller the diversity.
Microbeers are far more various than America’s standard, big-name beers. Each microbrewery typically makes a half-dozen brews. Range is far greater in the micros, too. Beers drinkers travel a vastly more complex route from, for example, Oxford’s Real Ale (“a keg-conditioned unfiltered beer, more for connoisseur”) to its Raspberry Wheat Ale, to its St. Patrick’s Day special, Old Bitter Red Ale than from Anheuser-Busch’s Busch beer to Michelob — even with dry and ice beers, non-alcoholic and malt liquors in between.
Wild Goose labels four very different beers year round — Amber, Golden, India Pale Ale and Porter — plus two seasonal brews, Snow Goose Winter Ale, which will soon yield to Wild Goose Spring Wheat Ale.
Even more diverse is Frederick Brewing Company. Its four standards, all surnamed Blue Ridge, are Golden Ale, Amber Lager, Porter and Extra Special Bitter Red Ale. Its four seasonals are Steeple Stout, out right now for St. Patrick’s Day; Dopplebach for April; Wheat Beer for summer; Hop Fest for October; and Cranberry Ale for Christmas.
Brimstone produces some particularly diverse brews: Honey Red Ale; Stone Amber Ale; Blueberry Wheat Amber Ale; Chocolate Stout; Brimstone.
Despite its name, their title beer “does not taste like licking lava, though its full-bodied, dry flavor leaves something of a chalky aftertaste that might make drinkers of bland beers think of lava or brimstone,” our taster reports.
Freshness is another distinction of microbrews. “More and more Americans are finding out that beer is better the fresher it is,” says Jim Lutz, of Wild Goose Brewery. Microbeers are neither canned nor pasteurized because, says Lutz, “if you heat the product, you’re killing the flavor. “
Micros get back to roots of beer in still other ways. They subscribe to reinheitsgebot or purity pledge to use only four ingredients: barley, hops, yeast and water, says Tom Teague, who has hosted annual beer tastings since 1967. While microbeers may add such flavorings as fruits or spices, America’s beer giants use substitute ingredients. “Major breweries have not used true barley for many years. Remember what Budweiser’s label says: ‘hops, rice and best barley malt.’ Coors uses a kind of corn flakes,” says Teague.
Microbeers come by their distinctions honestly: they’re inheritors of a long tradition. Immigrants to America — especially from German and Eastern Europe — found their brewing recipes and drinking habits crossed the Atlantic easily. Breweries and tap houses — each with their distinctive brews — were as common as corner groceries in some cities. Only in modern times have a few giants dominated.
Small brewing houses are once again springing up across America. “We’re reeducating the American public to what beer used to be. In turn, people are becoming very interested in the different styles and beers we produce. Our success is thanks to them,” says Frederick Brewing Company’s Tluszcz.
Microbreweries number over 500 nowadays, with about three-fifths of that number brew-pubs, typically licensed to serve their homebrews only on their premises. Maryland has four micro breweries and four brew pubs with construction about to begin on the newest, an annex to Ram’s Head Tavern in Annapolis. Even so, there are probably still nowhere near the number of breweries there used to be in the good old days. In consequence, being locally made “gives micros a cache,” says Teague.

Will the Big Dog Carry Home the Bone?
Will the big dogs steal that cache?
It’s a danger, says Oxford’s Marianne O’Brien. “What’s bad for us is that because they’re so large, they’re able to undersell quite a bit, as much as $2 at the six-pack level.”
While big beer companies saturate the airwaves with alluring ads, micros can afford only the basics. Most limit their advertising to tours and such tavern or liquor store. “If a beer like Red Dog succeeds where true micros do not, you can look to that advertising. They have that power that micros don’t,” Teague agrees.
Therein may lie good news, too, as O’Brien hopes: “When Red Dog is advertised on TV, it makes people aware of other options.”
Brimstone’s Marc Tewey has high hopes, too: “Their advertising is promoting the industry. Microbrewing is a niche business. A lot of the buyers are home brewers and people who eventually want to know where it comes from and who makes it.
“Once they become involved in the real thing, it’s hard for dogs and wolves to stay too interesting. The big companies are not going to beat us up too bad.”

In addition to Maryland’s four microbreweries, beer is brewed to be drunk on site in four brewpubs. All have more or less formal tours; if that’s your pleasure, call ahead.
In Baltimore:
• The Wharf Rat at Camden Yards and Fell’s Point (410/276-9034), which both serve bottled and draft selections of x beers — plus their April special, Porter
Cherry Blossom, served at 58 degrees with no added carbonation — from the brewery at 206 W. Pratt St. 410/244-8900.
• The Baltimore Brewing Company, which serves its five beers on draft or in 2 litre bottles to go. The beer of the season is Maibock, which is ready March 31. 104 Albemarle St. 410/837-5000)
• Sisson’s also has their five brews on tap and will draw you one of their “growlers” (a glass jug that you can buy and then bring back for cheaper refills). Keltic Red Ale is their beer of the season. 36 E. Cross St. 410/539-2093
In Gaithersburg:
• Old Towne Tavern & Brewing Co. taps seven home-brewed beers from their collection of about a dozen. 227. E. Diamond Ave. 301/948-4200.

— This weekend most Maryland microbrews will be offering their wares for tasting at Camden ‘95 at Oriole park in Baltimore, a festival of Maryland microbrews. Festival hours: Fri. March 17 from 6-11PM; Sat. March 18 from 12-5 or 6-11PM. $25: 410-/787-2455.

NBT staff writer Betsy Kehne contributed to this story.

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Editorial

Say No To PST and Faraway Haulers
Maryland's Department of the Environment will decide soon whether to allow PST Reclamation Inc. to expand its landfill in Harwood by 45 acres.
The answer should be NO.
PST's operation has gone on long enough. Marylanders are tired of seeing Southern Anne Arundel County carved up like the underside of the moon to accommodate rubble, demolition wastes, old appliances, asbestos and maybe worse.
Is this what we want for Chesapeake Bay Country?
As you read this, trucks from New Jersey are barreling down I-95 toward Anne Arundel County. Each week, hundreds of them snake through the countryside and through the PST gate toward this massive dumping operation.
Do we want more of Newark’s refuse to become part of rural Maryland?
PST's owner, Presley Taylor III, has required haulers to change their routes in response to community pressure. For instance, trucks may not drive down Rt. 2 to get to the landfill.
Nonetheless, people who must cope with the roar of these trucks aren't assuaged. They’ve had it with trucks careening along any of the winding roads near the Patuxent River.
Rhonda Zinn, who lives on Sands Road, observed that the trucks pass her home coming and going. “They may have changed their routes, but they only shifted problems elsewhere,” Zinn asserted.
We don’t believe that requiring a polyethylene liner is a sufficient condition for permitting the expansion. While the landfill has turned away toxic shipments, we wonder whether its possible for a single county inspector to adequately monitor so much dumping from so many places.
There's more fishy business to think about. Last week, county parks director M. Joseph Cannon "withdrew" his concern that the expansion threatens a wetlands project across the road. Given County Executive John R. Gary's support for the project, Cannon’s change of mind is troubling and transparent.
What’s more, Gary's campaign received $1,000 from PST's Taylor. Others associated with Taylor also gave to Gary.
Somebody here seems to have forgotten that voters last November sent a message that they've had it with the money system that pollutes government and breeds political favors for the wealthy.
There's something broader to consider. Congress is hard at work scaling back environmental laws, limiting the ability of governments to regulate and reaffirming rights of property owners. The "Contract with America" intends it to become much harder for states and localities to regulate operations like PST.
By summer, PST soon will have loaded up 35 acres with the rubble and refuse from elsewhere. That's plenty of waste to have dumped in Maryland and plenty of profit for Mr. Taylor.
Before its too late, Maryland’s Department of the Environment needs to clamp down on out-of-state dumpers and begin worrying about what they’ve already brought here.

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Letters to the Editor

Glittering Generalities
Dear New Bay Times~Weekly:
Your editorial and feature article on casino gambling (Vol. III: 8) is a glossy piece of fluff filled with glittering generalities and partial truths. It would take pages to refute the thrust of your article. Consider these three points.
First, are you aware that the Maryland Restaurant Association opposes casino gambling? I count eight restaurants advertising in your current issue. If casino gambling becomes a reality, those restaurants probably would not be operating, let alone advertising.
Second, for a paper that prides itself on preservation of the Bay, it is most inconsistent to support an industry that would pollute our Chesapeake and its residents.
Third, the end never justifies the means! “Casino gambling is inevitable” only if the people are seduced by the “slick-shoed casino boys” and your newspaper. The Annapolis and Baltimore newspapers go it right: “Casino gambling is a bad idea which should be towed out into the Bay and sunk.”
—Donald Stewart
Fairhaven Cliffs, Md.

Businesses Helping Each Other
Dear New Bay Times~Weekly:
As an avid reader of New Bay Times~Weekly, I was most impressed at the drive-up window of Town & Country Liquors, located on Rt. 765 in Port Republic. When the owner handed me my purchase, he also handed me a copy of New Bay Times~Weekly and said: “Here’s something for your reading enjoyment.” After I thanked him and explained I already had the current issue, he replied, “This is a great community newspaper with great articles, and we try to hand it out to all our drive-up customers.”
It’s nice to see businesses helping each other.
—Janet Hall
Port Republic, Md.

How To Define Optimism
Dear New Bay Times~Weekly:
Instead of renewing my subscription for a year, sign me up as a lifetime subscriber. I’m an optimist.
—Glorious Shenton
Shady Side, Md.

Editor’s Note: Glorious Shenton is the daughter of “Miss Ethel” Andrews, hale and hearty at 106 years old.

More White Deer
Dear New Bay Times~Weekly:
I am writing in reference to Ray Brown’s letter to the editor and the editor’s note in the March 2-8 issue (Vol. III:9).
You know in Hanover, Pennsylvania, across the street from a fruit sales store — on the outskirts of town — there are a number of what my brother called albino deer. I can’t give you the exact numbers, but I seem to have seen three or four. They seem completely normal.
With reference to the editor’s alluding to genetic anomaly due to inbreeding in over-populated herds: as we know, there is a notable increase in the deer population, but I’m not competent to judge whether the editor’s comment is reinforced by this fact or not.
—Elvira P. Martin
Annapolis, Md.

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Burton

Hatching Sturgeon Holds Hope for a Devastated Species

One bumper sticker I saw recently read "Spawn for Life." A T-shirt urged "Spawn as Long as You Live."
Presumably, both were to be considered humorous pronouncements of sexual longevity among Homo sapiens. On a more serious note, their messages are more appropriate for our fishes.
People we have enough of, probably too many. Fish we could use more of if we are to feed all those people. From the beginning, spawning fish turned out sufficient hatches to satisfy human hunger. In the 20th century, things have changed.
If we are to survive, more efficient spawning among fish, and less among humans, is in order. Which brings us to the latest on the hatchery spawning front — including a budding effort to bring sturgeon back to the Chesapeake Bay. But first:

Replenishing the World’s Fisheries
As fish populations plummet not infrequently due to overfishing, humans are stepping in to help via, shall we say, spawning subsidies.
Who would have though 25 years ago that half the rock population of the Patuxent River would be fish that, in some way or other, originate from hatchery stock? But that's what has happened.
Let's think bigger. Only a couple years ago, who would have though that humans might consider stocking as a means to bolster diminishing stocks of codfish in their traditional waters of the North Atlantic? Yet several such projects are underway as fishing is closed on Georges Banks, the biggest cod "factory" on earth.
Looked across the seemingly endless ocean mocks such ambitions unless you listen to University of Maine resource economics professor Jim Wilson about odds. "We need three out of every 1,000 cod larvae to survive to harvestable size to make a hatchery economically viable," he says.
He and other scientists are working on just such a project. Meanwhile, in Canada, experiments are progressing to help restore halibut and haddock populations, which share the fate of the once mighty cod.
In Japan, spawn are being used to bolster fish stocks badly needed for human consumption. Fish are hatched under controlled conditions, then fed, and with each feeding ultrasonic signals are sent into the water. The fish associate the signal with food.
Later when they are free-swimming and on their own in the open ocean, fishermen in ships with nets dispatch that same signals. The fish remember, congregate, are swept into nets, and consequently feed Homo sapiens.
Inefficient, you might say, but remember Professor Wilson's words. Three out of a thousand larvae keep the cod species alive.
Fish life is the world's prime food source. As human numbers increase and fish numbers decline, we must be innovative. Which brings us to sturgeon in Chesapeake Bay.

Saving Sturgeon from the Dinosaur’s Way
Sturgeon, the large and unusual fish that eons ago swam with dinosaurs, were once an important food fish and commercial resource of the Chesapeake. Today they are more than rare and endangered; they are for all practical purposes extinct.
The last I saw were caught by a pair of watermen out of Rock Creek in the 1960s. They had netted two in the upper Bay, both as I recall, about four feet. Curiously, the netters didn't know what they had taken yet kept them. Both were legal; it wasn't until 1994 that state laws insisted sturgeon be 25 pounds or more.
Since last year, state laws dictate a minimum of seven feet, the approximate size at which females are believed first to spawn. Now it is suggested that all Bay sturgeon be protected, which doesn't sound like a bad idea until either, the fish are restored or go the way of the passenger pigeon.
Sturgeon stocking got a big boost at a workshop hosted by Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at Solomons last November. Twenty-six fisheries scientists gathered from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, state fisheries units of Maryland and Virginia, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, University of Maryland, and Maryland Natural Heritage Foundation.
Their consensus was that only relic populations of Atlantic sturgeon continue to exist in the Chesapeake, with limited reproduction only in the lower Bay. The sturgeons occasionally taken by watermen seem to be kept for personal consumption. They proposed a moratorium.
Under a moratorium, relic populations of Bay sturgeon would probably continue to decline or, at best, maintain at low levels. Finally, developing a hatchery-based Bay recovery program was recommended.
No promises of a quick fix were made, even with a hatchery program. Sturgeon grow slowly, especially when habitat and food conditions are not of preferred quality — as they are not in the Chesapeake and its sturgeon-producing tributaries.
Existing sturgeon populations of the Chesapeake are not sufficient to provide the basic brood stock even for a successful hatchery program, but there are alternatives. Stock from the Hudson River and Delaware Bay were suggested, the latter possibly preferred.
We must be reminded, however, that such a program remains in the thinking stage. This is an era of management by fiscal misers on both federal and state levels. Penny-pinching is rampant, and who cares about the sturgeon when scientists talk about a recovery program estimated to continue for at least two decades? Who cares? I do.
But many people today demand quick fixes. We want results, and we want someone else to pay. Lacking such ingredients, proposals go on the back burner — and for the Bay sturgeon that could mean too late. A male does not mature until between 9 and 12 years of age; a female not until 14.
Public support is essential for programs such as sturgeon rejuvenation, but alas, the average Virginian, Marylander and Pennsylvanian is not aware the Atlantic sturgeon was once an important Chesapeake resource that wandered up the Chesapeake, some to the Susquehanna well up into the Keystone State. Nor are they aware that sturgeon played — and can again play — a key role in the ecology of the bay.
Media and conservation organizations must be enlisted to educate the public and promote sturgeon recovery. Reclassifying the Atlantic sturgeon as a threatened or endangered species might help enlist public and federal support for a recovery program.

Once Upon a Time
Allow me to do my part in recalling the role the sturgeon once played in Chesapeake Bay and can — hopefully will — play in the future … if we undertake a successful program before time runs out.
The sturgeon was an important food source of native Americans and later of whites who first settled along the shores of the Chesapeake. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Bay sturgeon supported the second greatest caviar fishery in the United States.
However, by the end of the 19th century, high rates of exploitation drastically reduced populations. During the same period, the species in the St. Lawrence, Hudson River and Roanoke estuaries has been partially restored.
The very eggs of the sturgeon, sturgeon roe, is the prized part of species today, though the flesh — especially when smoked — is prized, all of which makes this fish vulnerable to overharvest. But those eggs are also the key to survival of the species.
Compared with many other species, the female sturgeon is not considered a reliable reproduction agent because she spawns only once every few years, though when she does her production is more than 10 times that of a rockfish or shad.
Decreasing sturgeon populations correspond to decreasing water quality in the Bay, much of it associated with nutrients. Keep in mind, the sturgeon is at the top of the food chain: top dog, top predator, thus tops in vulnerability.
Also, sturgeons require hard surfaces to attach their eggs. Urbanization, siltation and loss of forested areas and underwater grasses continue to reduce spawning habitat.
In the Chesapeake since 1955, virtually all sturgeon caught or observed have been between one and five feet, all juveniles who could be migrating from other waters. During the past two years, two large females were observed on the shore of the James River and the Eastern Shore, and several youngster were taken in trawl samplings in the mid 1970s from the James and York Rivers. Virginia has prohibited taking sturgeon since 1973.
The Potomac was once one of the best of U.S. sturgeon fisheries; the last mature one reported there was commercially harvested in 1970, but in 1972 a large female was taken by DNR scientists in the Nanticoke. Since then, no mature Chesapeake catches have been reported, though the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported sightings of large sturgeons below Conowingo Dam in 1978, 1986 and 1987.
In Fishes of the Chesapeake, first published in 1928 and reprinted by Smithsonian Institution Press in 1972, Samuel F. Hildebrand and William C. Schroeder tell us much about sturgeon and fishing for them in the days or yore. They enter, or did enter, the Bay in April, gradually moving into rivers to spawn. The eggs attach to brush, weeds, stones and other obstructions, and hatch in about a week; 64 degrees is the preferred water temperature.
The ovaries of a mature female can constitute one-quarter of her total weight and results in the deposit of from one million to two and one-half million eggs. The newly hatched fry average two-fifths of an inch but can grow to 18 feet, according to old records in Europe and New England.
When Fishes of the Chesapeake, was written, sturgeon and sturgeon fishing was on the way out, but in 1920, the reported Chesapeake Bay catch was 22,888 pounds, worth $5,353 dockside. That's about a quarter a pound; think what they would be worth today.
In 1915, a nine-foot sturgeon caught at Buck Roe Beach Va., weighed 275 pounds and carried about 90 pounds of roe, which when prepared for shipment sold for between 50 and 60 cents a pound. The waterman had difficulty in marketing the flesh of the fish.
Prices were better six years later when rubbed and salted roe sold for $3.50 a pound, but there is no mention of disposition of the flesh, though the average price then had increased to about 50 cents a pound. Smoked, it was considered a delicacy and worth much more. There were reports of sturgeon caught on April 26, 1922 at Solomons, but none were taken the previous year at Love Point and Havre de Grace.
Less than 50 years before, James River reported catches of 108,900 pounds of sturgeon; York River, 51,661 pounds, Rappahannock, 17,000. Best of all was the Potomac, with 288,000 pounds. Fish were said to have averaged 150 pounds each, which figures out to almost 2,000 sturgeon.
Sturgeon recovery promises nothing for sportsfishermen; rarely was one taken by hook and line even in their heydays — and then inadvertently when smaller fish were snagged. Indians took these sluggish fish occasionally with harpoons.
But let us not rank the importance of fish by whether they can be caught by hook and line, or even caught at all. They are a fish native to the Chesapeake, a part of the ecosystem, and a living creature. It would be nice to have them back.
Hatchery programs elsewhere indicate stocking works, so what are we waiting for?
Are you listening Newt and Parris? Enough said...

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Earth Journal

Spring’s Right on Time

No need to force the spring: it’s right on time, giving us the annual pleasure of counting the order of the bloom.
Old news already are last week’s first tiny weed flowers: almost overlooked in every lawn: Heal-all’s tiny purple orchids sprout all along its leafy stem; and tiny white star flowers burst on spreading, leafy vines, greening winter-barren earth. Refusing to be ignored is an occasional sunny dandelion head.
All the herbs are pushing new growth through the green fuse of their roots: sorrel leaves are big enough for salad and chives big enough for a first trimming. Returning more slowly are parsley, oregano and lemon thyme. So too is catnip, judging by the wallowing cats.
The red tinge that’s been creeping into trees twigs and arching vines all month can no longer be mistaken. All the juicy woods are blushing for spring. The leaf-joints of mountain laurel are crimson, and dogwood’s cushion-shaped buds have just burst their seams. Less modest bramble has reddened into leaf. Maple blossoms, too, burst out of their red cells last week and are now blatantly fuzzy. Look up into a many-armed giant maple: you’ll see it waving thousands of red-tipped fingers into spring’s blue sky.
Spring has come in still more ways in the homeplace of a friend whose solace is planting. Joe Browder of Herring Bay reports flowering of witch hazel, a couple of non-native species of early honeysuckle, aconite and hellebore.
That’s just the old news.
Two balmy days opened purple crocuses in every sunny spot until it seemed a drunken eastern bunny had hopped by, scattering purple eggs out of a tipsy basket. Not to be outdone, daffodils threw open their yellow flowers. Jealously, iris and daylilies are growing all the harder, greener and taller.
People are out, too. Out in the streets visiting, basking as the sun shines in their faces. Breakfasting on sunny decks. Raking, rooting and uprooting. Roofers, red and shirtless, are up, as are new roofs, spreading under their hammers. Laboring men expose their chests, and women bare their white legs. Everybody and everything’s casting aside winter’s coverings.
Spring is loud as well as bright. Songbirds have tuned up and are now in fully symphony. Swans barkingly debate their departure. They formed, unformed and reformed great trial V’s on March 12. Gulls throw back their heads and whistle as loudly as a toy store full of third-graders.
“Close your eyes,” my husband said: “listen to the jungle out there.”

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Green Consumer

Green Consumer

Would you pay a little extra to help the environment?
There’s a good chance you’re already being asked to chip in to help some merchants in your area be more environmentally responsible. For example, your local dry cleaner or auto repair shop may be imposing a “Voluntary Environmental Cost Recovery Fee” on your bill to help them safely recycle waste fluids.
What’s going on here? Increasingly, companies are being required to pay more attention to what happens to the wastes they generate. So companies are turning to specialized waste-removal firms to help. That costs them money.
Small businesses — such as dry cleaners and auto repair shops — pay the most. So they’re asking you to help.
One program that’s catching on is WE CARE, sponsored by Safety-Kleen Environmental Services, based in Elgin, Ill. Its year-old program has more than 25,000 businesses, each of which asks customers to pay a small “voluntary” fee to help it pay for waste-disposal services.
How small? About $1 extra for a typical auto repair job, and less than 25 cents for a typical dry-cleaning ticket, says the company.
How voluntary? If you don’t want to pay the extra fee, you aren’t required to do so. But Safety-Kleen says about 98 percent of people pay the fee.
Here’s what happens with the money:
• Dry cleaners are given reusable garment bags instead of plastic bags and are helped to recycle metal hangers. Safety-Kleen picks up and recycles all dry-cleaning fluids.
• Service stations, auto dealers and oil-change shops have their used oil picked up and re-refined into new oil or recycled into other products. None of it goes into landfills or down the drain. Safety-Kleen also recycles antifreeze, transmission fluids and cleaning solvents.
• Photo processor and printers have their fluid wastes picked up and disposed of properly.
That’s not bad service for what amounts to the price of a newspaper or two with each purchase.
The fact is, we pay one way or the other. Without companies like Safety-Kleen — and all the businesses that belong to its WE CARE program — we might have to pay the price, through increased taxes and higher medical bills.
So pay now or pay later.
If you’d like a free brochure about WE CARE, call 800-669-5840.

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