Nature / Writing

Today I sent a brand new play out for some strangers to read. I had not read the lines out loud, or sent it to a trusted friend, or reviewed it any way. I hadn't even read the whole thing myself, start to finish. This is not, of course, the recommended way to do submissions. But such is the nature of entering 24-Hour Playwriting Contests, at least for me. It had been two years since I took on a play-in-a-day challenge, so at the last minute I decided to pay my fee and sign up for this year's Toronto Fringe contest.

(Cross-posted from my iNaturalist journal ) Last week a former co-worker dropped by the Arboretum and, just before he was about to leave, mentioned that one of his plans for 2019 was to do a personal “Big Year”, trying to see as many different bird species as he can in the province of Ontario in a single year. “I was thinking you should do it, too.”

A few months ago I first tried out an app called Litterati , which encourages people to not only clean up litter, but to photograph it, tag it, and place it on a map as citizen science, so that those who are trying to combat litter at its source have information on what kind of garbage is showing up where. The app also tracks your total count of what you've cleaned up so you can compare yourself to others and even create your own club for a little friendly competition and added motivation. View this post on Instagram Party's Over 🗑 #Litterati #litter #balloons #garbage A post shared by Marilyn Anne Campbell (@marilyn.cam) on Dec 3, 2018 at 6:16am PST I love the idea of the app, but it and my tablet are not getting along when it comes to mapping. That's part of why I stopped using it when I initially downloaded it in the summer. I decided recently to give it another go, but the problem persists. For exampl...