Up Up and No Way

If you're from Baltimore, you think of several things as springtime approaches. Lemon sticks are there at every festival and church bazaar; they are simply a lemon cut in half with a peppermint stick stuck in it to use as a straw. Doesn't take long for lemon juice to commingle with peppermint on its way to your delighted taste buds.

Pro tip: you finish the peppermint and save the 1/2 lemon. Next stop at any festival will be the beer truck. Have that big man draw you a cold one, and drop the lemon right on in there. Now you got yourself something to drink, hot-a'mighty!

And the other spring thing we spring on you around here is the spring Balloon Ascension. Very popular at schools, because they can sell a balloon full of helium as a fund raiser. The hook is that the balloons have an index card hanging off them with a card asking that the farmer in Grand Forks or the fisherman in the Grand Strand or the music lover at the Grand Ole Opry who finds the sad remains of the deflated balloon return it postpaid, and the person whose balloon traveled farthest wins a Hebrew National salami.

Thing of it is, the nonbiodegradable balloons themselves are hazardous to wildlife. Just on the beaches around here, they can get caught up in the throat of a sea turtle, and the strings that once moored them to the table where they were sold can wrap themselves around turtles’ flippers and necks.

SO Virginia, our neighbor to the south, is taking steps to ban the practice of intentional balloon releases. Lawmakers there passed a new law that would fine violators $25 per balloon. Next stop for the bill is the desk of Gov. Ralph Northam.

Conservationists, environmentalists, and shoreline residents tired of picking up all those empty balloons and strings are behind the pressure to get bills passed.  Here in Maryland, it's already illegal in Montgomery County to let one fly. The fine is a whopping $750.

There is always one in every crowd: in the Virginia Senate, Sen. Bill Stanley (R-Franklin) babbled on about whether "police would be hiding around the bouncy house" to look out for people sending balloons aloft. 

The voice of reason came from Sen. Jen Kiggans (R-Virginia Beach), who said the police would not be dispatching balloon squads, but the point of the bill is to raise awareness of the unintended, but still wildlife-unfriendly, consequences of balloon ascensions.

As always, the trade group involved touches the discussion with a note of humor. The Balloon Council, a national balloon trade group (!), told WAMU radio that while it supports efforts to stop people from doing balloon releases, it does not support bans on balloon releases.

I love America.