Yesterday was a brilliantly warm May day. Perhaps a little too warm, for in this ear of global climate change every bit of weather that seems out of the ordinary reminds me (rightly or wrongly) that we’re headed for very different weather patterns over the next few years.

Today, I’m headed off with the First Unitarian youth group on a retreat. We’re going to meet up with the youth group at the Unitarian Universalist church on Nantucket Island. Then we’re going to make a field trip to the dump. The Nantucket dump has some of the best “antiquing” (a.k.a. trash-picking) you’ll find at any dump anywhere. Since landfill space is at a permium on the island, they make a huge effort to recycle everything, and anything that’s remotely useable is set aside so it can be picked through.

So we’re taking a kind of an ecojustice field trip with the youth group. And maybe we’ll be taking a look at the future: already, our consumer society is so glutted with things that you can get just about whatever you want on the used market for free.

After thinking about these kinds of things, I’d be pretty gloomy if it wasn’t such a beautiful day outside.