Action 2 Impact Podcast Season 1 EP.1 Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage

Well the title says it all. Today I'm talking to Susan Bower about her wonderful group of ladies (a few men too) all over 70+ The Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage. They are cleaning up the lesser known but amazing underwater worlds of ponds all over Cape Cod and beyond. And get this, they work for cookies!!!!!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Hi there, everyone. I'm Gwen Jones and welcome to season one, episode one of the Action to Impact podcast. For all my friends who have followed me since 2019 of the I'm a Rotarian podcast, thank you so much. But just like Darwin said, the only thing that's constant is change and change is here. So that's why I started this whole thing off by saying season one, episode of the Action to Impact podcast with me, Gwen Jones. It's going to be fun. We're going to introduce you to folks all around the world that are turning their actions into impact. So join me, won't you? It's a whole new ballgame this week on the Action to Impact podcast. And I am so happy, as always, that you joined us. Welcome back, new year, new show, new name, everyone. Welcome to the inaugural episode, inaugural, such a word, inaugural episode of the Action to Impact podcast. We loved you, the I'm a Rotarian podcast, but we are moving on. And what that does is it opens us up to interview Rotarians, non-Rotarians, but most importantly, people in our world that are turning their actions in to impact. And what better place to start than old ladies against underwater garbage? That is right. That is their name. And I think that that has got to be one of the coolest names I have ever, ever come across. Susan Bauer is here with me today. And we're going to learn, ladies and gentlemen, they's and them's all over the world about the old ladies. I know there's some old men, but they're not included today. The old ladies against underwater garbage. Susan, welcome to the Action to Impact podcast. podcast. It's wonderful to have you.

SPEAKER_00: 2:13

Thank you, Gwen. I'm pleased to be here.

SPEAKER_01: 2:16

So First and foremost, how old do you have to be to be an old lady? I mean, I'm going to be 59 this year.

SPEAKER_00: 2:24

Is there? No, no, no, no. Oh, my God. Spring chicken. No, you have to be. It depends on who you talk to. But 64, 65. I'm 85. And I don't really want to be more than 20 years older than the youngest one. So age range is sort of creeping up. It was 64. Now it's 65. But it really is old

SPEAKER_01: 2:47

ladies, old ladies again. Against old ladies against underwater garbage. Well,

SPEAKER_00: 2:51

absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 2:51

So I'm too young to join. Okay. All right. Well, so I know that was probably not the first question you were expecting, but I'm like, I'm feeling a little younger already. Let's, let's keep going with this podcast. What is the old ladies better known as, as old. What was the name? Oh, log. So. Oh, log old ladies against underwater garbage. What is it? Does the name kind of say it all? No,

SPEAKER_00: 3:19

no, in a way it doesn't. The name scratches the surface. We're a group, we're now about 30 women. We're a group of women between the ages of 65 and 85 who seem to do one thing, but in fact do a bunch of other things. Okay. So the thing that we seem to do and do is to remove trash from the bottoms of ponds. I live on Cape Cod. Eastern Massachusetts, we have a ton of ponds, like 860, something like that. Wow. Now, not all of those are big and not all of those are swimmable, but they all have trash. From the surface, looks like an empty bowl of water. And when we approach homeowners associations or pond associations, we say, hey, we're willing to clean your pond. quite a few of them say, oh, thank you, but we don't need it. Take a look. It's beautiful. And we say, we've already scouted your pond. We know that there is trash. We know what it is, and we know where it is, because we're not going to jump into a body of water without knowing what's in there. And they're often quite surprised. And they'll even say, this is one of the cleanest ponds on Cape Cod. And then we pull out five tires, an Adirondack chair, part of a boat, golf balls, just about that number of Bud Light beer cans, nips, fishing rods, fishing lures, dog toys, the occasional bikini part, like it happens. But we will get one or 200 pounds of trash, depending on the stuff that we get, but hundreds of pieces from just about every pond that we've been in. There's a variation. Wow. So that's what we're sort of known for, this bunch of old ladies and old Trust me, we're really fit. We come in different sizes and shapes. You

SPEAKER_01: 5:27

can say that's the first thing. Is it kind of ageism when this fabulous, you said you're in your 80s, when you walk up to the homeowners association or whatever and say, we're here to clean your pond? Do they kind of look at you and say, oh, isn't that sweet? Let me help you cross the road. You know, I mean,

SPEAKER_00: 5:44

do they think no way? No, they don't. they don't because especially if we're in our bathing suits that that shoulder muscle um because when you're going to do tryouts you're going to do you're going to have to swim a half a mile in under 30 minutes and then you've got to complete the mile and if you are looking at a group of women who swim distance in cold water um they don't i mean this is what 85 looks like but That's not what they're used to. So nobody looks at us and says, are you sure you can do this? You don't show up

SPEAKER_01: 6:18

in walkers, in other hand. But you're not there with walkers and saying, we'd like to clean your pond.

SPEAKER_00: 6:26

Right. And sometimes they'll say, well, is there a charge? And we say, well, yes, you have to. bake us cookies. So we work for cookies, that's our economy. And so we want to interact with the people who live around the pond because we want them to see what is in their pond. We want them to get a little upset if possible, that we find a hundred golf balls there and they know who's put them in there. And we teach them about what happens to golf balls, maybe not the first year, But after 20 years, after 30 years, not good stuff comes out of the glue that's part of golf balls, especially spent fireworks with just leaking perchlorates. So there's some trash that probably wouldn't hurt to leave in the pond. Glass is pretty inert, although it does break. But the chemicals, the fish hooks, the treated lumber that is leaching arsenic and other metals. So we take those out of the pond and that's ostensibly what we do. But when you really look into it and you say, what is the response to this? In many environmental agencies, you get a response that's admiration. Oh, good for you. What a good job. What a good thing to do. How did you ever come up with that? Instead of being told that we're admired, we're loved. People will come up to me in the grocery store or to other members and just say, we love you. You give us hope. We love you.

SPEAKER_01: 8:11

Which is better than cookies. I mean, respectfully. Even better than cookies, wouldn't you say?

SPEAKER_00: 8:18

Oh, man, that's so hard because I really like cookies. So, yeah. My bad. Okay, I can just

SPEAKER_01: 8:26

bear with it. All right, the whole human connection thing. All right, all right.

SPEAKER_00: 8:29

Yeah, yeah, the human connection thing. Well, I spent a lot of time alone underwater, but cookies, oh, wow. Anyway, a huge part of what we do is to inspire women and men over 50, over 60 to keep active because they look at us and they say, you guys are freaks of nature. You know, how do you, I remember standing next to some onlookers at a beach and the wife says, I've never seen anything except a bandaid in this pond. And the husband says, this pond is a mile long. You ladies going to swim to the end and back? Well, yeah. Yeah, we are. Not all of us, but some of us can handle two miles without any problem. And so we do a tremendous amount of inspiring older people to keep active because we aren't unusual. We're sort of unusual, but this is what life is like if you keep walking, keep running, keep reading, keep, you know, mentally and physically fit. it's a lot more interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 9:45

So it's funny, Susan. So we're talking about, and you even gave us some different topics to talk about before we came on today. But what I think is funny is that the pawns are really just like one bit. The cookies are really one bit. The ageism is really one bit. The active at an older age is really one bit. Did this, start off as that is the plan or is that just kind of you know metamorphosed into this fabulous butterfly of all these different things you're active you're cleaning ponds you're getting cookies you're breaking the myths but did it start off of we just wanted to clean ponds

SPEAKER_00: 10:32

um It started off definitely without any plan at all, because that's the way I work. I back into everything. I'm a retired psychologist, even degrees and husbands and stuff like that. Oh, what am I doing? So I spent a lot of time swimming in ponds. And there's a story behind that. But I swam alone and I swam in the evening because that's when I would see turtles. The turtles I was interested in are crepuscular. They only come out like at six in the morning, six at night. And I would swim through the shadows and I would... see these turtles so often, musk turtles and snapping turtles, that finally they got to know me, I got to know them. And I'd give them names. I'd say, oh, there's the one with the spot on it, or there's Mr. Pear because he always loves the ladies, and there's Silver Patches because he has silver markings, or Goiter Guy. And pretty soon I'd swim down the length of a pond, and on my way back, One turtle after another would come and visit me and they'd tap me on the net mask. I have a dive mask that has a camera in it. And I would hold out my hands and they'd sit in my hands and I could take their picture. And I began writing little children's books about the turtle sisters and to teach kids about ponds. And at first, I really appreciated the trash. I was happy to have the trash because I was so scared swimming through this dark water in the evening with a muddy floor that I never knew where I was. And if I would see that golf ball, oh good, there's that golf ball. So you knew where you were? I knew where I was. These were markers on a water map. And so then I would go to the to the drowned chair or I would go to the drowned tree or something. And I even took to putting some white rocks or something and I'd drop them down. There, I've got some markers. But after about 10 years of that, I thought, I am tired of seeing more and more markers. I don't need the markers anymore. You needed one or two,

SPEAKER_01: 12:50

not 20.

SPEAKER_00: 12:51

Yeah, exactly. And so I didn't need... 10 golf balls lying on the bottom with their little puckered tops looking like poison mushrooms trying to sprout and proliferate. So one day I was just swimming with a couple of friends, which was rare, but I did swim with friends sometimes. And I said, hey, let's just... See if we can pick out this. I've seen sunglasses and all these golf balls. Let's get them out of the pond. And we grabbed a person who was in a kayak, popped a laundry basket in there and said, follow us. And we got like a bushel of trash. We thought that was terrific. Now we would hardly bother with a bushel of trash. We get, you know, at least a garbage, a couple of garbage cans of trash because no one's ever cleaned these ponds before. And the stuff's been going in for 200 or 300 years. So we get bottles, you know, blue bottles that were hand-blown that haven't been made in 150 years and that kind of stuff. So we got this guy and he followed us and we cleaned that pond. And one of us said, wow, we're a bunch of old ladies against underwater garbage. And the name stuck. And then nothing happened. Okay. That was 2018 and we did one more in 2019 and then the pandemic hit and suddenly all socializing has to be outside. That's the only thing you can do. So then we did a couple more cleanups And then it wasn't until 2023 that we heard from so many people, can I join, can I join, that we held tryouts. And somehow we understood that the only protection we had against liability, the only way we could keep these people safe was to really try. make them select just the best swimmers. So we had these very careful tryouts.

SPEAKER_01: 15:05

So let me, let me, let me stop you there if I can, Susan, because I think, I think people are so, cause there's two different things you've talked about. You've given us, we were, we were, everybody was listening to was swimming with the turtles. I think so. I was, I was like, Oh, I gotta go. I gotta go swim with some turtles.

SPEAKER_00: 15:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 15:24

Fascinating is that I think, I don't want to skip over the fact that I can't just go down to my pond and start this, that these people are actually, are they trained as well as have to try out to be a part of this group? I mean, there's this very angelic part that you've told us about, but let's not skip over that. You can't just go into a pond and do this. You actually should get trained and or be physically fit for it. Is that a fair statement?

SPEAKER_00: 15:54

Not quite. Not quite. Fair enough. Okay. What I thought you were going to say is you can't just go down to a pond and expect turtles to come to you. Well, no,

SPEAKER_01: 16:03

you can't. That's a regional thing, too.

UNKNOWN: 16:06

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 16:07

But no, once in 2023, sorry, we held tryouts, and we went from five people to 21. Okay. Wow. So these are all physically fit. But all we did was to find out that they could swim. find out that they could use a mask and snorkel, find out that they could dive at least to eight feet, sometimes more. And then it was turn them loose. So I would say, here's a map. You're going to go here. You're going to go there, send them all in teams. And sorry about that.

SPEAKER_01: 16:44

That's okay. A little, a little, a little drink is always good.

SPEAKER_00: 16:50

It's allergy season.

SPEAKER_01: 16:53

Well, Let me ask you one other question, because one thing you've said also is that you've gone to these, quote, homeowners associations, you said, and you said that you knew where the ponds were and what was in those ponds. How did you know that? I mean, knowing where they are, that's easy enough. I can Google map where a pond is. But because these people seem very shocked with what's coming out of their ponds.

SPEAKER_00: 17:20

We scout every pond that we clean. We don't get them. show up and launch this huge effort with the kayakers coming and the garbage truck coming and the cookies, the cookies coming. We scout the ponds. And when I leave you today, it's raining and it's 63 degrees and I will be in two different ponds this afternoon with a bunch of other people seeing, is there enough garbage? Where is it? What kind is it? What do we need? So on the basis of that, I will, for my dives, the ones I'm in charge of, I pick the number of swimmers. I pick the routes. And this year will be the first time that other people besides myself will have organized these dives. We have 20 in a season. And Wednesday, I will be swimming for another, for OLAG, but for another team. And I will have to do what I'm told. And that's a challenge. It's okay. You can do it.

SPEAKER_01: 18:24

You've talked to turtles. You can be aware. So you scout these ponds. And these are my words as I ask this, but are ponds kind of like secret garbage cans?

SPEAKER_00: 18:39

No, they're like secret gardens that have a problem. And our job is to restore them to their secret gardens. Because they're all kind of the

SPEAKER_01: 18:51

ecosystem, aren't they? Ponds are like their own little ecosystem, right? Their

SPEAKER_00: 18:55

own little ecosystem, exactly. And everything in there works as closely as the parts of our body work together. They are fantastic. And they don't need a gallon of water. windshield wiper fluid and they don't need a car battery and they don't need rotting tires. So we take those out and restore it to a secret garden. I love that. I think of them as the last truly wild places, the last fragments of natural beauty on Cape Cod because no roads, no farming, no trails, no picnic tables, no graffiti. But that's our job is to make sure that there's No blemishes.

SPEAKER_01: 19:42

So this is a legit question, but how big is a pond before it becomes a lake? In other words, how big are these ponds that you're cleaning?

SPEAKER_00: 19:54

The difference technically between a pond and a lake is that anybody of water that is so shallow that a plant can grow all the way across is a pond. And that's maybe 30 feet deep. Whereas if... light can't get to the bottom because it's 60 feet deep. It turns into a lake.

SPEAKER_01: 20:14

Okay. Because I know there's somebody out there who's listening to this going, I never knew that because you got creeks and you got lakes and you got, you know. People call

SPEAKER_00: 20:25

local bodies of water are called whatever the people around them want to call them. Touche. On Cape Cod, Our 860 ponds include a 750-acre lake. So we've got two gigantic ones, and we have hundreds of four-acre, six-acre ones. We tend to do the sort of 30-acre and up. Okay. So I would say three-quarters of a mile around to... Seven miles around.

SPEAKER_01: 21:02

So these are decent-sized lakes. I mean, excuse me, ponds. Excuse me. These are decent-sized ponds. But let's just say I'm an average homeowner. I have a dear friend of mine who has a pond in his backyard that he's always complaining he gets algae or he always complains. But that algae, what you're saying, or that algae or that muck, his words, not mine, That's kind of its own little ecosystem. That's like we need to keep that. Is that correct? It's the tires we want out. It's the but the the natural growing of a pond is what you ladies are trying to save. Correct.

SPEAKER_00: 21:42

That's true. You also, if you have a pond with a whole lot of houses around it and they have septic systems, that fertilizer from the septic system is going to supercharge those ponds. That's not good either. It's very natural, but it means that the algae could be cyanobacteria, could be just normal algae and the water lilies and the pond weed and the quillwort, that's all going to grow much faster than it should. So all ponds try to become fields. They try to become swamps and they try to become fields. It's nice if we can let that happen very, very slowly so we can enjoy them for swimming for as long as possible.

SPEAKER_01: 22:29

So you're saying respect the pond. Cause I don't think a lot of, I think, I think as soon as a pond becomes a lake, which happens to do with depth as we just learned, you know, somehow a lake gets respect the ocean gets respect but a pond yeah that's just frogs and turtles which I happen to like both of those critters but I'm just saying no you're right ponds don't ponds are a pond you know so you ladies are to re-educate us on even the beauty of a pond

SPEAKER_00: 23:01

Yes, yes. We raise awareness about a lot of things. And one is the, I'm going to use your term, the hidden garden. These are the hidden gardens of Cape Cod. And they are simply beautiful. At the same time, I'm perfectly happy that most tourists go to the beach and the ocean and don't go to my ponds. Okay. But.

SPEAKER_01: 23:26

Well, yeah. Okay. So, so. There's a couple things that we wanted to touch on. First of all, I think you guys are great. And from 65 to 85 is the years of the ladies that you have. How many ladies make up the old ladies right now? 30. 30. Do you ever want to expand? I mean, because there's ponds everywhere,

SPEAKER_00: 23:50

not just in Cape Cod. We have five states that want chapters and two countries. So Sweden, Belgium... Texas, Illinois, Nevada, Florida, New Hampshire, Connecticut.

SPEAKER_01: 24:04

Well, let me tell you, Florida has a lot of ponds. I have family in Florida, and they could use some TLC.

SPEAKER_00: 24:09

And they have alligator snappers, so I'm not going to lead the training down there. I'm scared enough of the ones. We've got 50 and 60-pound snapping turtles here, and it used to be my job to swim out ahead and alert people to the snapping turtles, but...

SPEAKER_01: 24:27

Well, that is a very interesting question. So I have two questions for you. First of all, what are the critters that you have to come across? I know I went tubing one time in Maryland and there was a absolutely beautiful and thank goodness, very far away rattlesnake lounging on a rock in the middle of a place.

UNKNOWN: 24:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 24:50

What is some of the most interesting animals you've come across, and what is some of the most interesting things you've dug out of these ponds?

SPEAKER_00: 24:59

I'll start with the latter because it includes the former. The most interesting thing we dug out was an 80-pound blue toilet. Okay. Found the toilet, and it was really hard. We had to lasso the tank, and we couldn't re-find it, but we found it on the scouting. And that... Actually, that's one hell of a toilet. That made... And as we lifted it up for this picture, and we'd re-found the thing, and we'd gotten it in, we were so happy. Out comes a full-sized eel right from the throat of the toilet. You know, like, whoa! Um...

SPEAKER_01: 25:40

Wow. So that's the most unusual for sure. I mean, you did mention something as elegant as 100-year-old blue glass when we first started this interview. And you want to find something great. We

SPEAKER_00: 25:55

found a couch. Yeah, we found futons, a sink, a crib bumper, rugs. No

SPEAKER_01: 26:07

mafia bodies like up at Lake Tahoe and stuff, or Lake Mead, I think, here in California. They found all kinds of... They solved some interesting murders from way back in the 70s. Thank

SPEAKER_00: 26:18

goodness nothing like that. We are waiting for that day. We have found a sealed garbage can down there. We can't re-find it, but we wonder what's in that. And we found a bone once, but we're hoping it was from a deer, not from a person. But of course, every how You know, I want to go and buy one of those hands made out of bones, except the person who would find it would have an aneurysm and then it would be my fault. So I better not.

SPEAKER_01: 26:49

Yeah. I mean, you guys are you guys are up there. Let's not push it. You guys are doing great

SPEAKER_00: 26:53

at your age. Right. And they're very territorial, and especially in May and June, they don't want you in your territory. And we've learned, you know, you don't go between a snapping turtle and deep water. That's their escape route. You go way behind them and this sort of thing. It's interesting, though, what I hear most about from the women, and of course they've got eyes only for trash, is that... They are really very moved when they swim through a 36-foot school of baby perch or when they see an enormous bass with a hook still in its mouth or a little jaunty fish with a hook that is in its body still and it's swimming around, you know. And so there are many things. things that we see that that we're moved by the beauty we're we're moved by the sadness um and we're of course uh moved by righteous indignation to get the trash out so there's a

SPEAKER_01: 28:11

figure if the bass can make it with a hook in its mouth you can make it one more step and clean up a pond ah

SPEAKER_00: 28:18

You think there ought to be a better way, you know, either catch him or, you know, I mean, this was it looked like one where it was catch and release and the guy couldn't get the hook out. So he just cut it. And I say a guy, but it could be a woman. The fisher person. The fisher person. Yeah. There's no free lunch, and you can see that underwater. Everything that we do to entertain ourselves has a cost to the natural world, and we see that when we dive, as well as just the pure beauty.

SPEAKER_01: 28:55

Which, again, I think people think of ponds, and I think they perhaps, and I will throw myself under the bus here, perhaps I even forget. the beauty of a pond. I mean, the ocean can take my breath away, but I can't tell you when was the last time I went, what a beautiful pond.

SPEAKER_00: 29:13

That's because we haven't gone underwater. That's where the action is. You've got to go down into the garden. You can't just stop at the wall.

SPEAKER_01: 29:22

So I know you had talked about, before we came on, that you had written a book. So is the book about... some of these adventures. What is your book about?

SPEAKER_00: 29:35

The book is about, it's swimming with the turtles of Wonderland, how wonder reconnects us to the natural world. And it's about the 18 years that I swam by myself, probably covered about 1500 miles all seasons and swam with these turtles and how close I was able to get to them and began realizing that they were individuals, that they had different personalities. And still figured that I was the superior being and I was taking notes on these turtles. And then one day I was looking at the turtles and I know how to wiggle my fingers and get them to come up to me. And this male turtle was swinging back and forth and back and forth and just not doing what a turtle was supposed to do. He disappears. And in an instant, I feel these little pinpricks coming up the back of my wetsuit and the turtle disappears. grabbed onto my shoulder. I'm freaking out, so I'm trying to swat him off, but before I could get there, he gives me a poke, jumps into the water in front of me, and suddenly I realize I see this big bulge in his tail, and male turtles keep their private parts in their tails. I was being hit on by a turtle. He found me irresistible, and I was shocked and delighted, and all of a sudden, I just, everything turned. It just, my concept of life really turned around and I realized that everything in life, every tree, every blade of grass, every butterfly and bird and turtle was an individual and was as intent on living forever as I wanted to be, as I was. Wow. And I waded out of that pond into a much larger world that day. And the book is about the experience of what wonder, what enchantment, what awe, what that does to a person over time and how it does it. And being a retired psychologist, I could do some of the research as well as living it so I can get it from both sides. So

SPEAKER_01: 31:51

basically, a turtle turn on is what took you to a different level of understanding. Yes. Yes, that is exactly right.

SPEAKER_00: 32:01

I love it. I

SPEAKER_01: 32:03

love it. A turtle turn on. Hey, you know, I hope he still I hope he came a little closer with something maybe more of a shell next time, but it still made an impact in the world. Absolutely. It

SPEAKER_00: 32:15

certainly did. That was. Yeah, I suppose he's my co author.

SPEAKER_01: 32:21

Well, I love it. So, okay. Well, then you've got to tell us the name of the book and it isn't called Turtle Turn On. What is the name of your book? No, it's Swimming with the Turtles of

SPEAKER_00: 32:31

Wonderland.

SPEAKER_01: 32:32

Swimming with the Turtles of Wonderland. So, and like I say about my podcast, when I say to people, you can get my podcast wherever you get your podcast. Can we say that about your book? We can,

SPEAKER_00: 32:43

where can we find your book? Okay. It's being published by the University of Massachusetts Press and they will... Put it in independent bookstores wherever there are ponds.

SPEAKER_01: 32:55

Wherever there are ponds. I love it. Hey, you know, turtles. Who knew they were so frisky? Quite frankly, I had no idea. I had no idea. Oh, they have harems.

SPEAKER_00: 33:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 33:08

Well, you know what? There's like a whole bunch of harems. to go do my research. I had no idea male turtles were such gigolos. Oh

SPEAKER_00: 33:18

my God. Well, females turtles can hold sperm live for a year. So rather than having a mating season and then gestation and then eggs, it's mating season all the time, except when they hibernate. And up here, they hibernate in November, December, and they hold their breath until March. So there is no animal on the planet that holds its breath as long as a pond turtle in New England. And you'd say, I used to teach... turtle stuff to kids. And I would say, these are animals. They breathe. They come up to the top of the surface and they breathe. They need air. They have lungs. How do you live for five months without taking a breath? And then I told them the one fact that they will remember, the one, that they will remember the rest of their lives. And that is that snapping turtles do something called butt breathing. They pull water in and out of their butts and have little sacks that are able to get enough oxygen out of the water that just barely keeps them alive. So who knew turtles were so interesting?

SPEAKER_01: 34:35

All right. So for everybody who's driving in their car and listening to this podcast, we have gone from cleaning pods to butt breathing in about 10 minutes. And you're hearing this right. And I think we all should give turtles like a little bit of our time. as they are really fascinating. Ponds are secret gardens. Turtles are a heck of a lot more fascinating than we thought, to the point that, you know, I'm almost going to have to put an X rating on this show. But I'm sure your mission is more than just cleaning ponds and loving turtles. What's the overall mission for Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage?

SPEAKER_00: 35:20

What I think, you know, we've... had a lot of publicity. And so I've had the opportunity to talk to people who talk to environmentalists. And I always turn the question around. And I will turn the question around to you. And I say, you've interviewed all these people. What motivates them? And I've done these these radio programs and TV programs and podcasts all over the world. And what I get back is that if you're talking to the United States, the motivation is, I need a purpose in my life. I want to do something good. Let's help the planet. Okay. If you are up in Europe or Africa or United Arab Emirates, It's fear and guilt. Look at the mess we've made. It's our responsibility to clean it up or holy crap, the train's coming down the track of climate change and pollution and we are going to get badly, badly hurt. We better do something before it's too late.

UNKNOWN: 36:29

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 36:31

None of those, not righteousness, not the need to do good, not fear, not guilt, none of those are easy to scale up. They all cost. It's hard to get people to clean trash at the side of a highway. It's hard to get people to plant a thousand trees. Whereas we've got a waiting list of 45 women who Wherever we go, people want to join us. So what's the difference? And the difference is that we are motivated by joy. And that doesn't mean we just decide that we're going to be happy. When we're underwater, we are in something called, psychologically, it's called the flow or the zone. When you are physically challenged, you're a body, you're climbing a rock face, you're swimming in freezing ice water, you're... Cleaning a pond. Trying

SPEAKER_01: 37:25

to step through things you can't necessarily see. You

SPEAKER_00: 37:28

are so challenged right up to your max that you have no space in your head for your own concerns. You are liberated from your own concerns. podcast and chatter and stuff that goes on in your head. And for an hour, you are set free from the cage of yourself and you go through and you are just a body alive doing something very hard well. And you come out of the water. We are pumping our fists. We are smiling ear to ear. And everybody who sees us says, what are they smoking? Where do I get that? How can I join? We've got a way of doing good that helps us as much as it helps the pond. And that's easy to scale up. And that, to my mind, is the answer. That is the next chapter for all environmentalism. Figure out how to get people in the flow. It's not easy and you can't do it all all the time. But then you can't stop them. from doing good. We need that around the world.

SPEAKER_01: 38:43

We do. We do. In fact, it's interesting. I do talks around the United States and around the world about finding your why. Why do you get up and do this thing? Why do you join Rotary? Why do you do these things? So I think finding that joy, finding that why, finding that zone are so important to That then when we're out of that zone, it doesn't seem so bad because we know we can get back to that why. We know we can get back to that joy. It's there. It hasn't gone anywhere. We just got to get to a pond.

SPEAKER_00: 39:16

It's like rain and sun. You cycle through life. But once you understand that and once you understand that joy is as likely as will return as inevitably as sorrow, then you become more patient. So are you a better person? Hell yeah. And I would say that all of us weighed out of a pond a better person. We feel stronger. We feel kinder. We feel more ready to help.

SPEAKER_01: 39:50

Wow. Well, you ended that. You said the last words were more ready to help. I know you get paid with cookies, which is great. However, this has to... costs something. I mean, the first thing I think of is, and I don't know, maybe my mom raised me to worry too much, but I mean, a snapping turtle, they snap. I mean, injuries could happen. Things could happen. Worry

SPEAKER_00: 40:19

about that. We worry about that. Nice of you to ask. Really, It doesn't take much. People have their own kayaks. We have our own bathing suits. It doesn't take much to clean a pond. What about insurance or things like that? Liability insurance. Liability insurance. Okay. All right. And so we have a website, which is olog-ma.com. And we have a donation page. But personally, I am looking for... three organizations. I found one. I need two more who will donate like 700 bucks a year to us because our liability insurance costs 2000 a year and we don't have dues. We, you know, and if we could find three organizations that would, would donate 700 bucks a year to us, we would know that we can just keep on buying insurance and we can keep on creating chapters because we can't do that without the insurance. So what's your vision then? My

SPEAKER_01: 41:23

vision is not just the 700 bucks. Cause if anybody's hearing our voice right now, and if you want to give straight up the 2000 in your chapter, um, no, no, The old ladies against underwater garbage are not I'm not getting a kickback from the show. This is a straight up. If you wish to participate in the wonders, that is this this wonderful organization, they would love the insurance. That all being said, let's say that's already been manifested for the next, I don't know, 10 years.

SPEAKER_00: 41:55

My what is your what's your vision? Oh, I want a chapter in not every zip code, but I want five chapters in every state that has ponds. Which is all 50 states, isn't it? Does everybody have ponds? I would say there are a couple of states that don't have many ponds. Maybe Arizona. Yeah, more like. But anyway, oh my gosh, sorry about that. It's okay. Anyway, yeah, I would like a ton of chapters because I think it's because, not so much of the trash even, it's because we become so much better people, so much kinder people, so much more ready to help. My group goes on to do wastewater and urine diversion and pond coalitions, but they're so happy. If we can hapify, joyify, you know, 5,000 women, women over, Margaret Mead said there is no power in the world like the zest of a postmenopausal woman. If we can empower thousands of them, the world will be a better place.

SPEAKER_01: 43:14

Find more zest. Is that what you're saying? Find more zest, protect more pawns. and be an active person and get happy. I don't think that's, that sounds like pretty good. So Susan, you have this awesome book. You have this awesome mission. We need three clubs for$700. We're going to manifest that all of those things happen and are wonderful and hold this vision of a magical pond existence around the world. Does that sound good?

SPEAKER_00: 43:50

Yes, yes, it sure does. I

SPEAKER_01: 43:52

think that does sound good. So from the bottom of my heart, Susan Bauer, thank you so much. And please give our absolute best to all the old ladies against underwater garbage. Please be safe and please keep telling people that just because you're 65 or older, you ain't dead. You ain't dead, Susan.

SPEAKER_00: 44:14

Nope, nope. Action to, action to impact. Action to impact. That's so weird. Thank you so much. Good.

SPEAKER_01: 44:23

Thank you, Susan and all the members of the Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage. I love the name. I will forever love the name. And hey, if you're hearing my voice and you want to help them out, Google them. They are easy to get a hold of and Susan really, really needs a little help with the insurance. And hey, next time you go by a pond or do you have a local pond in your community, remember, Susan said way at the beginning of this interview that people are always surprised by what's in their pond. And for all the geeks out there, now you officially know the difference between a lake and a pond. But I still don't know what a crick is, but I'll work on that for a later podcast. Alright then, let's see. If you want to get in touch with my more musical side, check me out on Rotary Radio UK. And if you want to listen to another great pod Then check out this one next week, the Action to Impact podcast, where I introduce you to those amazing people turning their actions into impact. Until next week, everybody, the send-off is still the same. Take care of yourself and the world around you, and we'll hear you next time. Remember, on the Action to Impact podcast. I know, it'll take a little getting used to, but you'll get the hang of it. Hear you next week, everybody. Take care.