Meet my worms 🪱
And more interesting links for you this Friday.
Worms. How many of us have them?
🙋🏾♀️
So one day a year ago I thought I'd write this whole series on recycling1 on Guam when I was a reporter. I set up an interview with Peggy Denny, the powerful force driving that iRecycle truck who successfully offloads tons and tons of aluminum cans from Guam to the states and to other recycling facilities.
There we were. Seated at Turé. Me with a coffee in a godforsaken plastic container using a forboden plastic straw across from Peggy eating her giant bowl of oatmeal.
Peggy, who is also on the Guam Solid Waste Authority board, talked about how everything arrives on Guam in cardboard basically and how so many things could be diverted instead of stuffed into the landfill.
She said the 3Rs—reduce, reuse, recycle—should be done in that order. We should be reducing what we consume, then find another purpose for things and then recycling.
Don't most of us just go straight to the recycle part of that phrase? Sometimes I think of reusing. And I don’t usually default to thinking about how I could reduce. I am a capitalist baby! I want MORE.
Anyway, the conversation was very enlightening. You know you had a good interview when you can't stop thinking about what the interviewee said even one year later.
I got into my carbon emission machine and drove back to the newsroom, with the word "compost" tumbling around in the recesses of my brain stem. My synapses were making tenuous links with what it was, but I didn’t know exactly what it was and how I could compost. In the days after that conversation I did my Googles and my YouTubes2 and the next thing I knew I was ordering 50 worms on eBay.
Some worms died valiantly in their journey but I would say about 40 survived.
They were very gross when I first encountered them.
I gagged.
But nonetheless, I was committed. So I put them in a container of bedding and bothered them3 for about a month, wondering if they were ok. Did they need snacks? (Yes) Do they need water? (No) Are they jetlagged? (Leave us alone)
Then I grew bored of them as they do not do any tricks nor do they wag their tails enthusiastically when you come home after a long day of work.
I gave them a few food scraps every week and they slowly, methodically made compost of my would-be trash.
I also realized I needed like 1,000 worms for our household so I tried to order more but ... it didn't work out. 4
Anyway, the worms kept working through the food scraps. Month by month I was able to add more food waste and more paper waste as the population exploded.
A few months ago I was able to move them into a bigger container and they kept composting and copulating which is the ideal situation.
I also have an outdoor compost bin sans worms and I pretty much use that for dry vegetable scraps, tea bags, coffee grounds and paper waste.5 I am pretty happy that about 85% of our food scraps and about 50% of our paper waste goes to the bins but I, of course, would love some way to compost 100% of our paper and food waste. In due time, I guess.
So does it stink?
No. It shouldn't. It should just smell like dirt when you open your worm bin.
Is it gross?
Kind of. But to me, it's also cool. 6
Where do you put a worm bin?
I had it tucked away in a linen closet on the bottom shelf. I think it's too hot outside on Guam to put one out there but I also haven't tried that.
As I type this there are 1,000+ red wigglers turning shredded cardboard and shredded paper and chunks of jicama into useable compost. Rumpelstiltskin could never.
While you wait for worms in the mail you likely still have food scraps that need to be composted and if you are reading this before noon today, there is some good news if you also live in Guam! Farm to Table Guam will take your food scraps literally today. This is such a blessing! That's why I've allocated all my exclamation points to this paragraph!
If worms aren't your thing and you're still here,7 here are some interesting things I came across this past week:
This video popped up on my feed. I hadn’t seen it before and thought it was fitting to share, especially for Earth Month.
I saw Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner on Guam maybe five years ago perform in person and it was life-changing. I didn't realize I had internalized years of discrimination and microaggressions just by existing as a Micronesian.
My best celebrity flex is that she followed me on Twitter before I deleted my Twitter account. My next best flex is that this past week Jennifer Dugwen Chieng, Yapese queen, who was featured in an Apple ad and is a literal OLYMPIAN, reposted my story on her Instagram.
Here is a screenshot:
I will be framing this.
Remember in-person events? This college had its annual Micronesian Festival.
Also, Palau was hit by Typhoon Surigae and is now in recovery mode. The Island Times reported officials estimate the storm caused $2 million worth of damage.
The Island Times also had this amazing account of a Palauan woman who was lost and survived a typhoon alone in the woods.
Also, another Island Times story: A Palauan man and his wife were exonerated 12 years after they were accused of murder when their baby died. ☹️
There was a lot to read in this newsletter today but I figured you're a reader since you're reading this.
Happy Friday. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Thank you for reading. Write to you again soon.
Cheers,
Jasmine
I never wrote the series because the pandemic happened.
Which most people count as deep scientific research
The worms hate this. They prefer to be left alone. It’s a very celebrity attitude they have, I guess.
One shipment of worms never made it to my place and the post office sent a note that said they're going to destroy it because it stinks. Another shipment of worms was put in a container WITHOUT HOLES so they literally died AGAIN. But worse, this stinky box DID make it to our place and our landlord called me at work and was like, "Uh, ma'am the post office delivered this stinky box you need to get it right now, it stinks." So I picked up my package of DEAD WORMS from my landlord and stupidly carried it to my house instead of emptying it into the dirt or whatever and unboxed it to find, as I suspected, 1,000 dead worms in an enclosed container with no air holes. And then the seller tried to get me to remove my less-than-stellar rating on eBay???????? It was a mess. A stinky mess, at that.
We somehow are in a perpetual paper waste state in this household.
You should definitely check in with your spouse if you are going to do this. Or do what I did and just get a spouse that is unbothered by whatever hare-brained purchases you make on eBay after speaking to Peggy Denny.
God bless you.