Chris Ozyck wants you to know that there are 90 million dogs in America, or one pooch for every four inhabitants. Only about 40 percent of their owners pick up after them.
That adds up to whole lot of doo doo that’s washing into rivers and streams and lakes, which is why we can’t swim in many of them, including the lovely Quinnipiac River.
You might find that gross. Or surprising. Or surprisingly engaging. Ozyck hopes you also take that knowledge and become a better steward of the environment.
A long-time neighborhood activist and the deputy director of the Urban Resources Institute’s (URI), Ozyck has now taken on the title of filmmaker, working on a new series of 50 short videos, about the environment and beyond.
Some will teach you about dog doo doo. Others will let you know that lemon rind both lightens your hair and can clean your cheese graters. And others relay that, when the lilacs come up, that usually means that the frost is gone and the earth is ready to receive the peas and other vegetables you want to plant.
And if you know that tidbit, that makes you a phenologist.
His video series is available most easily here on Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies URI page.
Ozyck is on day 20, or maybe it’s 21, of a 50-day challenge he has set for himself: Producing 50 three-to-four minute videos on a wide range of activities, large and small, which he does or thinks about doing better to improve his and his family’s relationship to the environment.
And then, if they resonate, maybe the videos will prove to be meaningful to you, too.
Why 50?
Because Earth Day, which marks the formal birth of the environmental movement in America, is 50 years old this year.
And because pandemics and shelter-in-place advisories meant that organizers had to, pun intended, shift gears big time from the traditional city-spanning Rock to Rock bike ride.
Those organizers, included Ozyck, had to come up with alternatives to the festive bike ride that raise consciousness about the environment and about the immediacy of climate change’s threats.
Here’s the way Rock to Rock organizers put it, and the challenge to which Ozyck has responded:
“We’re inviting participants to do Rock to Rock their own way, on your own or with your immediate household, any time between Earth Day (April 22) and the end of Bike Month in May. You can go for a bike ride, solo or with the people you are living with every day. You can hike with your partner or immediate family to the summit of East Rock or West Rock. You can take action from home on behalf of our environment. You can ride a stationary bike or set a new milestone for your home exercise routine. And we ask, however you are celebrating Rock to Rock, that you post videos and photos … “
Allan Appel photo
With a double assist from Ozyck’s videographically talented daughters, Grace and Adeline, who video their dad after their UConn online school work is concluded, Ozyck has now made going on two dozen videos that range from “Dog Doo-Doos and Don’ts” to “Lemon Aid” to “Phenology.” Thirty more are still to come.
“Everyone knows me as a plants person,” he told the Independent Thursday, “but I’m trying to mix it up. I’m trying to think of all the different things people do in the world, and almost everything we do has an environmental application.”
The Importance Of HOPE
Many of the videos have to do with Ozyck’s long-time expertise as a tree planter, arborist, and all-around gardening and environmental guy.
They include subject titles such as “Support Your Local Farms,” “Forest Killers,” abut invasive species, “Backyard Edibles,” and “Pruning Fruit Trees.”
One of my favorites is called “How To Stay Out of the Hospital,” which is of course something we want to do all the time, but especially during the pandemic.
The opening frames feature Ozyck wrapped in a thick jacket against a serious wind, He’s sitting at the top rungs of a ladder which he has climbed up to the gutters on his house. Those gutters, and the spring cleaning they require are not the initial aim of the work or the video. Pruning a vine that was crawling up the house in a place it was not wanted, that was the initial subject.
Then Ozyck wonders aloud, in his casual style, if, while he’s up there, maybe he should get at the gutters as well. But if you do that which you haven’t planned, and perchance leaned too far over, that’s how maybe you end up in the hospital, or perhaps with a swollen wrist or series of bandaids all about your abrasions.
Ozyck begins the video from the top of his ladder by telling the viewer he was inspired to do this one because a little earlier, before the filming, he had almost stuck a stick in his eye. He concludes the video by teaching us about HOPE, a mnemonic used by his crews at URI.
The letters stand for things to be mindful of when you do outdoor work: Hazard, Obstacle, Planning, and Evaluation.
And maybe doing the one thing you had planned, and not falling off the ladder.
Ozyck told the Independent by phone Thursday that he’s enjoying making the videos and has received a lot of fun feedback. He said the project has given him a chance to connect with his daughters as the whole family shares the staying-in-place requirement of our lives today.
Perhaps because of these pandemic circumstances, some of the videos, with modesty and no prepared script and just single takes, are also wandering onto ground trod by poets and philosophers.
Remember how Voltaire’s Candide ends? Yes, the world is a mess, each of us can do but little, and there’s no great insight, or drug, that will solve it all. However, the least you can is to tend your own garden.
For example, upcoming in this vain, Ozyck said, is a video on gratitude. In no small part it’s occasioned by his health challenges, including a kidney transplant a few years ago.
And also, when he was going through that procedure, he had to wear a mask because his immune system was fragile.
He thinks about immune systems and masks lately when he does the mile loop from the Grand Avenue Bridge to the Ferry Street Bridge around the Quinnipiac, he says, with his trusty dog Alvin, and on the way picks up all the trash they come across.
Plastic bottles, fast food wrappers, and cigarettes are always among the regular items, “but I’ve also been picking up [discarded] latex gloves and masks. A sign of the times,” he added.
“I’ve been doing that longer than the challenge, and I get a thrill picking up trash that might have gone into the ocean.”
At the end of our interview, Ozyck also confessed that another deep inspiration for the videos — in their relaxed style and high (!) production values — has been the recent revival of “News From The Compost Heap,” starring Paul Bass, the editor of this publication.
“Stay safe,” Ozyck signs off at the end of many of the videos, “and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Everyone in New Haven is so lucky that Chris has chosen New Haven as his "garden".
We in the Heights have 2 gardens at Clifton St. and Quinnipiac Ave. that URI helped us to install, plus there are numerous trees and shrubs creating glorious oxygen as a result of his work.
I'm looking forward to see all his videos in the near future.