I keep thinking about Chad Pregracke. The work he does with his non-profit, Living Lands and Waters, forces people to see the things they want to make disappear.

When I was looking at the Living Lands and Waters stats of things they’ve pulled out of the Mississippi, I couldn’t believe the stuff that people thought they could disappear by throwing it in the river – beds, fridges, cars – and that’s just the stuff people actually dump in the river. It doesn’t count all the crap that ends up getting randomly washed downstream.

What Chad does that’s real superhero style is not just clean up the river, but bring the garbage and the waste back into the light, where we can see the consequences of our actions.

When I was researching him and what he does last week, I never expected to find myself in a situation so much like his, but here I am.

I might not be able to single-handedly clean up Blood River, but I think I can get this party started.

Didn’t get a chance to go check out the recycling center last night, because, get this, at 10 o’clock at night, Aurora shows up with New Guy! And he wants to have a look at my car! Which I just mentioned to Aurora that I was thinking of selling!

Of course he thinks he’s being all friendly, all “hey buddy” and “wow, where did you get a classic car like this?” and “wow, absolutely no restoration work has been done, huh?”

What a jerk.

Anyway, at least Aurora looked embarrassed, that made me feel a bit better, but long story short, I ended up staying home and being depressed all night. Wasn’t a total loss though, because I got to toonify some pics, and I got reading all about this guy.

Chad Pregracke is this regular dude who grew up on the banks of the Mississippi River. He got sick of seeing all the garbage polluting the river, so one day, he started to clean it up.

That was fifteen years ago, and now Chad has boats, garbage barges, a team of helpers, and donations coming in from all over the world to help fund the clean-up of a bunch of major rivers in the U.S.

But the best part is that Chad hasn’t gone all corporate. He still just organizes community-based clean-ups, and pulls junk like bowling balls, major appliances, tires, mattresses, trash, and Styrofoam out of the rivers, trying to get them just a bit cleaner.

Fav quote from Chad: “I read in a book once that the earth is not destroyed as a whole, it’s piece by piece, and I think that’s the same way it needs to be fixed…little by little, it’s the little things that really do add up.”

And I think he’s exactly right. If you look at a big company like JoyTech, or a place like Ring City that’s just so massive it’s overwhelming, you feel like a bug that could never do anything but get squished. But if you look at the world the way Chad looks at it, you see that just plugging away, bit by bit, day by day, can change things.

As far as I’m concerned, Chad is a superhero, minus the secret identity.