Transplant Tries To Compost

Transplanting from New York City in March to West Haven has been interesting.

My daughter, her wife and her 1‑year-old baby showed up a month after we arrived in March. They left Brooklyn; we left Manhattan. Our two cars sit in our small driveway, still sporting their New York plates, the ones that keep us from being able to get into Lighthouse Point and other ​“public” areas.

We are fully quarantined. We have all had tests early and often. We have been podding. We joined a CSA. We bought a house. We spent four hours getting a beach sticker on one of our cars.

It doesn’t say ​“non-resident alien,” but it could. It costs more than the resident sticker. Very few of the beach attendants think it is real. So, one out of three times, when we park at one of the stunning and well-policed West Haven beaches, the attendant permits us, shrugging his or her shoulders. The other two times we don’t get in. ​“What’s that?” they ask. ​“It is a non-resident beach sticker,” we reply. They call their superior. The superior says the category no longer exists.

My 35-year-old daughter was prejudiced against Connecticut. When we told her we were coming ​“up” here, she said, ​“OMG, Mom, not Connecticut.” She said it in that upper-class voice she used when she starred as Auntie Mame in her high school play.

We weren’t prejudiced against Connecticut. We met at Yale three children and five grands ago. My husband has taught at the University of Hartford, while living in NYC, for 23 years. I have taught at the Hartford Seminary for five years. We both know that even Mame left Hartford years ago. We also have loved New Haven for its own Amistad, food trucks, Hill churches, grit and unions. The last time I was here I was the keynote at the AFL-CIO. Just sayin’.

The one serious gripe I have while havening is this. We were taking our food scraps to the public compost site outside the Sound School in City Point for almost six months, weekly, in our red bucket that we kept in the garage. It got full about once a week, and we put its smelliness in our cars, the ones with the New York license plates, dumped it out, took a walk on the trail there, and gave ourselves an environmental pat on the back.

In the city we had also taken our scraps for a walk to the Union Square market. We were used to plastic bags frozen or a bucket that only a worm would love. We hum ​“Alice’s Restaurant” for these rituals. New York did get brown cans for ​“living things,” but the second the pandemic hit, they stopped that and street cleaning. The rats loved the latter and hated the former.

Last week, I hauled the red plastic can to the vocational aquaculture school. Someone had locked the compost bins. Just locked them. I happen to know that no one but we transplants had hauled our stuff there. Is this prejudice? Is this an accident?

What shall I do? Where is there a place to compost in the Havens? How can you be a ​“Haven” without a composting facility? I know West Haven has gorgeous piles. I pick up dirt there regularly. They don’t seem to mind my license plate. But they don’t take food scraps.

Anybody who wants to help can contact me. I’m the one riding around in the parking lot of the boating school with the New York plates, looking for someone who will address this matter. I have called and texted and emailed the school. Like its compost bins, it is closed.

Rev. Donna Schaper is a senior minister at Judson Memorial Church in New York City. She has written multiple books, including Never Enough Time. Contact her here.