It's not easy being green

The end of the school year is a veritable frenzy of events and acknowledgements. It's all cakes and presents and details, details, details. I know it is only my imagination that I am in charge of all of these things, but it feels as though I am in charge of all of these things.

Today, with a start, I realized that I had not yet ordered the hundreds upon hundreds of service items required for graduation. Where there is cake and cider, there need also be plates and cups. For many years, we've been using compostable everything for this. The plates are made of grass; the cups are made of corn; the forks are made of potato. I don't know what the napkins are made of, but they are a very drab color, so they must be virtuous. I was given a price sheet from a different, slightly cheaper vendor this year and was all set to place an order when I noticed that they are in Brooklyn. When you are in San Francisco, having your compostable forks shipped all the way from Brooklyn is to miss a bit of the environmental point. (Mind you, it is also possible that only Brooklyn and San Francisco have ever encountered a compostable fork, which suggests we may be missing a far more daunting environmental point, but that's to ponder another day.)

Begrudgingly, I went back to our local green office supply vendor's baffling website and began the annual adventure of decoding their numerous product categories. After a longish time, I had managed to add the plates, cups, and forks to my shopping cart. But where, pray tell, are the napkins? They are not in kitchen/food service supplies. They are not in paper supplies. Indeed, they don't appear to be anywhere among the TWENTY-FOUR categories of products listed. Among these is the curious office supply option of Art&Nature/Wildlife Photography Gallery. I clicked on it. For all I knew, they were hiding the napkins in there. Nope. Here are the subcategories:

Images-Bears
Images-Birds and Owls
Images-Other Wildlife
Images-Sea Life
Images-Scenics


So, if you're having a party where you need plates, cups, forks, and [presumably recyclable] images of bears, you're in luck. I know just the place.

You need napkins? You're wrong. You don't need napkins. Anyway, we don't sell that kind of thing around here. Wipe the frosting on your skirt and move along.