Vocabulary Lesson: 'zip ties'

Hello, zip ties. Nice to finally remember your name.

Yes, it has been a while since I have been on the beach to pick up any plastic. (And, yes, I am going through terrible withdrawal from the crashing waves and soothing salt air.) But it's funny sometimes how unrelated parts of life have a way of relating to each other.

I was reminded today (by a WIRED article advocating zip ties as bike-tire traction for snowy days) of the name for these things that I had been simply calling "plastic ties." I just knew there was another name for them — it has been on the tip of my tongue, but eluding me all this time. What a relief!

World, meet "zip ties" — often found cluttering Montauk beaches, no doubt having some important function in the fishing world, but also great for riding your bike in the snow.

Vocabulary Lesson: 'sabot'

Learned a new word today. Some "sabots" from my November 5 beach walk.

A little earlier, I was browsing a blog called Plastic Forever, by two artists, Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang, who have been collecting beach plastic and creating art from it far longer than I have even been thinking about it. They are very inspiring — I mentioned them once before, though not by name.

Curiosity and a deeper web search led me to this story on the Fake Plastic Fish blog — in which the blogger spends the day with the Langs and also posts some fascinating photos of their studio, in which they have sorted their endless collection. It is there that I came across some familiar looking items — plastic things that I have also removed from the beach, but never knew for sure what they were. I mused in the past that they were perhaps pieces of fireworks, but it seems they are something slightly more sinister — something called "sabots."

From the Oxford American Dictionary Mac widget: "sabot — a device that ensures the correct positioning of a bullet or shell in the barrel of a gun."

What are these doing on my beach?