Madden Mischief

Tipping Mother Nature Keeps Beaches Sustainably Clean!   
Tip by Picking up, Carting Off Plastics Kids Leave Behind

When you walk, run or sun on the beach, just as there’s no free lunch, there’s no free crunch.  I refer to sand you scrunch under foot and that’s beneath beach chairs before brunch.   

No, it doesn’t have to cost much to leave a tip for dear Mother Nature upon your withdrawing from her throne, her majestic, once virgin beach.

And the sustainable currency by which to tip her is in the plastics kids leave behind.  Gallantly, we self-ordained Sir Lancelot’s and Lady Guinevere’s doth pick them up and dutifully cart them off in tribute to her majesty, Mother Nature.  

These were children’s play props discarded along with goggles, cigarette lighters, plastic bottles and caps carelessly strewn about, desecrating our noble beaches.

Then there are those colorful colonies of rakes and shovels, instruments kids use to build cavernous holes and majestic mountains, then forget them there, thus defiling Mother’s silky sand.

Alongside mountains are the intricate networks of canals leading to imperious hideouts in industriously creative youthful minds ever imagining new worlds.

Every time Rita and I walk on the beach, we stoop and pick up shovel after shovel, little toy truck after truck as tips to mother nature for serving us with the privilege to have a playfully creative beach beside our palatial condo, The Chalfonte, in enchanting romantic, but sometimes a bit too plastic, Boca Raton, FL.

Chalfonte was once the name of a majestic hotel on the famous boardwalk connected to the stately Haddon Hall which became Resorts Atlantic City, the first casino in the world’s playground where I grew up not far from the blue properties in Monopoly land.  

This was before Trump opened his Taj Mahal where I signed my first book SPIN MAN before it went belly up, not my blithesome book, but the mercurial kingpin’s casino hotel there.

Now wouldn’t it be great if everyone who enjoyed the beach actually paid for that rare privilege upon exiting such a wondrous place that will leave her sand clean of plastics, make fish in the ocean swim happier and climate above healthier?   

Let’s not leave our beautiful beaches that are so good and welcoming to us without at least tipping Mother Nature by picking up something that doesn’t belong there in return for all the sandy pleasures she provides in all seasons for the sweetest reasons.  Yes, beaches love our company . . . and appreciate tips.

So, let’s cart those tiny bits of left behind plastics off to trashcans or bring them home to add to a collection, perhaps a work of art like Our Plastic Playground.

It keeps growing ever larger as we walk and tip a lot.  And if it keeps up, we might have to move to a larger kingdom. 

Thus, tipping is sort of like paying homage, a tiny toll with mostly plastic currency, to honor and preserve our ever challenged, yet still magnificently pristine beaches.

So, let’s all pitch in to safeguard our trash sensitive shorelines while we deal with the carbon emissions assault on our environment and other problems plaguing our endangered home, our planet for which I created Planetary Lifeguard.   

In the words of another Planetary Lifeguard, Martin Luther King, Jr. “It is always the right time to do the right thing.”

So, don’t be stingy.  TIP large!  Right, Dr. King?

Beach trash becomes art 
One NJ man takes the saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” seriously as I do and for a good cause. 

Eduardo Jimenez starts his days off with a three-and-a-half to four-mile walk down the Brigantine beach every morning just 40 minutes before the sun fully rises.  Brigantine is just across the canal from Atlantic Citry where I grew up.  This all began for Eduardo during the pandemic when he and his wife moved to Brigantine from Monmouth County.

During COVID, the gym was not an option for Eduardo, so he opted for the long, therapeutic walks on the beach and the habit stuck with him just as it has for my wife Rita and I in Boca Raton, Florida. 

In the early days of starting his daily walks, the NJ resident noticed litter along the beach. This prompted him to do something to make a difference.

And just like Rita and I pick up discarded plastic toys and turn them into an art piece, Eduardo now makes it his mission too to pick up trash along his morning “trail” in an effort to promote and create cleaner beaches.

“I have a wish to never find trash,” the environmental cleanup advocate says.

And just like much of the trash he picks up winds up in art he frames and hangs on walls, ours goes into the “Plastic Playground” full of tips we’ve collected for Mother Nature that Rita and I have artfully created from our beach walks, which has become a showpiece in our condo apartment we’re very proud of. 

When I’m not walking on the beach, tipping or tipsy in front of his condo, I’m writing magazine articles, my weekly Madden Mischief blog and books, my latest, WORDSHINE MAN, about how to make writing more inviting.  I’m also the CEO of TransMedia Group, the public relations firm he started when he left NBC.  Recently I launched PlanetaryLifeguard to spread awareness to help safe our planet from drowning in carbon emissions and other environmental threats.