If things look a little greener around here this April, there's a good reason. Our editorial staff is busy expanding the ideals of Earth Day into a month-long celebration of energy conservation, alternative transportation, recycling tips and about a million ways you can be a better friend to the planet. Welcome to Green Month, Milwaukee.
All this talk about OnMilwaukee.com Green Month has made me crave lime JELL-O.
I'm not kidding.
As a kid, my favorite color was green. And even though I think, if I had to choose, I like brown more than green these days, I still have a fond place in my heart for green. Why, I'm not exactly sure.
Clearly, green is the color of some of my favorite things. It's the color of my garden. It's the color of a baseball field. It's one of the colors in the Packers' logo. It's a beautiful hue that's lush and full of life, and it frequently tastes good, too.
But when I was a little kid, I liked it to the point of being silly.
For example, I apparently convinced my grandparents to buy a green 1980 Mustang when I was 6. A few years before that, at age 3, when my parents asked me what color carpeting I wanted for my room, I allegedly said, "Green, the color of money." (Have a good time with that stereotype, dear readers.) I was also a big fan of Kermit the Frog, but who wasn't?
My favorite flavor, before it was replaced by "blue," as in "blue raspberry," was lime. And I certainly remember sitting at the counter of Oriental Drugs with my dad and ordering a Green River soda, which remarkably, one can still find at the Mars Cheese Castle.
Of course, any time I played a board game, I picked the green peg. Same went for this toy I had that was like a Big Wheel -- but not -- called the Green Machine. I rode that thing into the ground, though it's possible my parents still have it lying around in their basement.
It all makes me wonder why kids fall in love with a color. Do we identify with something about it, or is it just random? Maybe I'm overanalyzing this too much, but I think I've been intrigued that green is a mixture of blue and yellow (hmm, Brewers colors?), but combined, it stands on its own.
I'd like to think that reflects my split (some would call schizophrenic) personality a little, too. While a portion of my career involves creativity, through writing and Web design, I'm also ridiculously analytical and surprisingly able to put together spreadsheets and do math in my head -- even though I was a bad math student in high school. Who knew?
Or maybe I just like the color green. Now off to find me some lime JELL-O.
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
