Or maybe you are not in the closet. Norma Nunez-Langlois of Goshen is proud to be one. (In case you are wondering what the forbidding word “conchologist” means, it is a person who collects and studies seashells.) To see part of her collection, go to the Goshen Public Library and look in the Community Collections Showcase in the Lobby.
Norma, a retired school social worker, and former long-time member of the Goshen Library Board of Trustees, grew up on a beautiful Caribbean Island, the Dominican Republic. She lived not far from a beach, but she did not have a particular interest in seashells at that time. It was later in life when she and her husband Jim were on vacations in places like St. Martin or St. Croix or the Bahamas that she became an early riser who wandered beaches, smelling the salt air, feeling the sand between her toes, looking across the ocean to watch the sun rise and looking down in a search of beautiful shells. Why? “Because they are beautiful and they are keepsakes, reminders of beautiful places.”
But these walks have not been so pleasurable in recent years. If she gets out on the beach in the early morning now, she sees plastic bags, plastic milk containers, yogurt cups, and plastic straws. In coves that are not part of a hotel property, the debris collects, piles up, turns gray, brown, and black. At times, there are dead fish and even birds caught in the deadly web of plastic. Perhaps this is part of the reason Norma now is so concerned about protecting the environment. She tries to reduce her dependence on plastic. One small example: she no longer uses straws; instead, she asks wait staff not to put one in her beverage as they are trained to routinely do.
Did you know that great cities like New York once daily piled their garbage onto barges which were towed out to sea and then the garbage was dumped into the ocean? Or that today cruise ships and smaller vessels sometimes illegally dump waste in the ocean? You can imagine how hard it is to police this kind of behavior.
Is Norma going to continue to add to her seashell collection? No. But her niece Natalie, age 6, loves to organize them and will probably inherit them someday. Until then, Norma enjoys their beauty, as you too can by visiting a portion of her collection in the Lobby of the Goshen Public Library.
If you have a collection of anything you find interesting or beautiful, please contact Jim Tarvin at jtarvin@hvc.rr.com. Be a part of this community sharing experience. Your collection does not need to be “valuable,” just some things that give you joy.
Jim Tarvin
Goshen