Air Date: Week of January 5, 2007

Living on Earth dips into the mailbag to hear from listeners.

Transcript

[LETTERS THEME]

GELLERMAN: Time now to hear from you, our listeners.

[THEME UP AND UNDER]

GELLERMAN: Lots of you wrote in about our annual solstice shows featuring storytelling and songs. Gary Kline emailed to say the broadcast made him feel “warm and fuzzy.” Kate Hughes who listens to us on WSKG in Binghamton, New York, writes “Thank you so much for this program.” She called it “a wonderful treat” and she downloaded the audio from our website because her kids kept asking for it.

But we got a lump of coal and a bah humbug from Pat White who calls himself “Disappointed in Philly.” He says storytelling and songs aren’t why he listens to Living on Earth.

“Living on Earth –Love your show. The last two weeks I’ve been disappointed. If I wanted to hear music, I can find plenty of better music stations. If I wanted to hear storytelling, I can find plenty of better story stations. If you don’t want to work, then why don’t you just take the week off and give the job to somebody else.”

Sorry to disappoint you, Pat.

Our interview about the trash vortex in the Pacific Ocean where garbage, mostly plastic, accumulates in an area the size of Texas brought this two-bit solution from Eric Durland of Silver Spring, Maryland. He suggests a national bottle bill—a 25-cent deposit on all plastic, aluminum and glass bottles and cans, and a quarter charge for plastic bags.

Jim Clark called in to say we should harvest all the plastic. Not only would it clean up our oceans, but the plastic could be recycled into all kinds of different things:
“…pails, buckets, rain nets, and stuff like that to be able to provide a way to produce revenue for, these let’s say, these African countries or something like that.”

Well, you could always put a letter in a bottle and throw it in the ocean but we wouldn’t recommend it. Better email or write us. Our email address is comments@loe.org. Once again that’s comments@loe.org Or put a stamp on it and send it to 20 Holland Street, Somerville, Massachusetts, 02144. And there’s always our listener line at 800-218-9-9-8-8. That's 800-218-99-88.