Plants take the mic 🎤🌱
Plus, Earth Day 2023 and Vegas lights up with 420 weddings.
Spring has sprung, Earth Day is Saturday, and the Mojave Desert is exploding with color. For the first issue of Chutzpah, let’s get our creative juices growing.
This is my favorite season and not just because of the puns. It’s also the time of year when my flower garden brings its A-Game. 🌷🌵🥇
Technically, gardening is in my roots. My dad was a farmer with a knack for growing plants in unlikely places like the desert in Northern Israel and the Las Vegas Strip.
He had extreme empathy for plant life and never mistreated them. Judging from a recent Science News article, he may have been onto something.
Scientists in Tel Aviv recently discovered that plants may be voicing their needs, we just don’t hear it. Plants emit a high-frequency clicking sound when damaged or dehydrated, indiscernible to the human ear.
🔉Listen here:
Researchers don’t know if it's an intentional reaction to pain or involuntary, like a creaky joint.
You probably don’t have to worry too much unless your plant says, “Feed me!”
👉 Learn more? Read the full study in the science journal, Cell.
🤔Thoughts? Send me a message!
🙃🤪 COUNTERCULTURE
Love is in the air and the smell is potent
Cannabis-loving couples are headed to Vegas to say their “I dos” on April 20—a holiday for stoners and a popular wedding date every year, according to a rep from the Clark County Clerk’s office.
On an average day, the Wedding Capital of the World sees 219 weddings. On April 20, in the past five years, the number ranged from 402 to 811.
The Vegas Wedding Chamber president, Brian Mills, doubles as Cannabis Elvis at events. He says the chamber is currently blazing the trail for “effective operations of legal weddings” at pot lounges, which are expected to open in Las Vegas in May.
🔥 420 weddings go up in smoke. Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong impersonators will serve as best man and officiant for more than 60 weddings at Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel on the Strip.
💒 Quickie honeymoon to follow your quickie wedding? The “Seeds and Weeds” package ($420) from Las Vegas Cannabis Weddings and Tours includes a glass-blowing experience and a helicopter ride above the Strip, April 20-22. Each package sold benefits environmental non-profit, One Tree Planted. Call 310-722-7864.
🗣️🌹 QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Gardening is a dependent relationship between people and plants … filled with lessons from the earth about community, compassion, empathy, and patience. In a chaotic world that seems to only get more bizarre each day, many people may need them.”
-Tori B. Powell, Shondaland
💸👍 COMMUNITY KINDNESS
Fighting food insecurity
MGM Resorts International donated $500,000 to build the city’s first community-based urban agricultural farming facility and garden at James Gay Park in Las Vegas. The garden will provide jobs and a local source for healthy food in the Historic Westside neighborhood.
👉 BTW. The park is named for James Arthur Gay III, a deceased black leader who played a fundamental role in desegregating the Las Vegas Strip in 1960.
🧠🤯 RANDOM FACTS
Focus in on the color green
When you hear someone say, “go green,” you likely think of the modern day environmental movement (unless you’re a Michigan State Spartan).
But the idea of living a green life originates with the 19th Century Henry David Thoreau book, The Maine Woods. In it he calls for conservation and respect for nature (Pegasus Lighting). Here are some other fun facts about the color green:
🟢 Only 2% of the world’s population have green eyes, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO).
🟢 Humans can differentiate more shades of green than any other color.
🟢 The green top on casino table games originated in Venetian gambling halls during the 16th Century.
🟢 Kermit the frog thinks life would be easier if he was red or yellow or gold.
👉 Keen on green? Check out this CNN article on all the reasons we need the color green in our life.
Thank you for reading Chutzpah. If you aren’t already a member, please consider subscribing. And be sure to pass it along, if you have the chutzpah.