Last week was devoured by a try-out for A Gig I Probably Shouldn’t Talk About Here and my checking account collapsing into a frothing, twitching mess. Oh and my cousin was in town! Nothing like family to give you perspective.

On SundayI went canoeing on a Superfund site, Brooklyn’s own Gowanus Canal. Of course, yours truly volunteered to paddle the 32 foot shipping-style canoe around from where it was moored to where the kiddies and such would board.

And of course, since it had been raining off and on all weekend, the canoe was about 1/3rd full of water and so it fell to me and the unflappable Pablo to bail it out. With one 5 gallon bucket between the two of us.

Honestly, I had a smashing time and it brought back fond memories of Scouts. And I still love to be on the water, even if it is a Superfund site. Luger of UDEC (awesome people…adventuring eco-heroes) schooled us Greens on how corporations like Verizon and various manufacturers abuse the canal by dumping sewage, illegally filling in inlets, and utterly failing to maintain their piece of the canal bank.

UDEC conducts sting operations on these companies to catch them in the act, because EPA doesn’t have the resources and the corporations try to get away with whatever they can. Externalities. The devilry of our time.

The Superfund status lasts twelve years, and we’ll need to fight and scrap for the money and resources needed to get the estuary up to spec. The goal? We want the canal so clean you can eat oysters from it. Imagine being able to canoe, fish, and watch bald eagles in Brooklyn.

The reason I started this post (haha) was to log that I’ve set up auto-recurring donation buttons at Green Party of Brooklyn. That’s right, baby, we’re taking GPBK into the late-20th century. It took forever just to get our bank information in the hands of the current officers. But we’re moving along! And not too soon, either, as the 2010 election season looms.