Why is it that I’m riveted by the carnage inflicted by a shark attack, but wrench the radio dial as soon as NPR divulges details of a hot dog eating contest?

Maybe next year I’ll do a year of daily action for pigs.

Anyway, since I can’t face dealing with the Fourth of July beach traffic, I am postponing my seaside trash cleanup. Like any sane American, I decided to reflect on the meaning of freedom by purchasing something.

I wanted to see what I could do for sharks using just the random change around my house. All the forgotten dimes and pennies I rescued from the cushions of the couch, crumpled cash in the recesses of the desk, the dull copper squirreled away in canisters or lost in the shadowy depths of my bag came to a whopping $40.87

I am amassing shark stuff to sell at charity events like the Jaws 40th Anniversary reading I will be hosting in February. Today’s bounty financed 5 SAVE THE SHARKS bumper stickers (they are expensive, but handsome) and one Save the Sharks license plate holder from eBay.

Searching for change made me realize how much stuff I want to get rid of–that lovely  symbolic and literal way of losing the past and forgetting the self. Usually I just throw boxes of discarded things on the sidewalk, taking a weird pleasure in how quickly even the oddest collections of crap simply vanish. But the great thing about 365 days of shark action is that every or seemingly banal thing has a focus, purpose, possibility–i.e. selling my old junk at a shark-charity yard sale. That’s what I call good old-fashioned U.S. of A ingenuity. God Bless America’s sharks.