Turn over a new leaf - and write on it

This morning, while running in the park (it does happen sometimes - like lunar eclipses & finding a decent bathroom at Starbucks - these things happen sometimes), I found myself unavoidably shuffling through piles upon piles of leaves.

That's a lie - I blatantly avoided the clean sidewalk and ran straight for them, listening to the crunch and letting the midwest nostalgia take me far away from the task at hand.

And I thought to myself, in this day and age of environmental despair, and tree slaughtering - surely, surely there must be a way to make paper out of all these leaves. A whole lot of community collections, a bit of conditioning and flattening and smoothing, and it must be possible. What a brilliant renewable resource of paper - and a reason to keep the tree, not kill it.

People must do this. I had a kind-of-friend that went to university to be a paper engineer. Surely she must do this.

Anyway, these kids think it's fresh.