Baker Park’s Cat Camp

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Our SOS committee, “Little Things Mean a Lot,” was considering a “flash-mob” cleanup of Baker Park.  Not having been there since last summer, I wanted to check it out first.   

The City and the river between them have done remarkably well there, at least in the improved section of park, and even in the unimproved.  There was very little old litter in the improved section away from the parking lot.  And the city had been cutting dead blackberries away from the sidewalk, though they hadn’t yet picked up the piles of stems they raked up.

My boots got soaked spreading chickweed at Greenwood and I was wearing clogs, so I couldn’t explore well too far from the paths.  As it was, I was stumbling on the beach rocks.  I saw some wet clothing on brush to pick up later.   

But it was not too littered for me to feel that I could clean it, and I picked up a couple of buckets before I left.  Indeed, I picked up a third one because I saw some litter in the brush near the parking lot as I carried the 2^nd bucket to the trash can and didn’t want the visitors to see me leave it.

At one point, a trail of litter called me behind the restrooms, where I found it more concentrated than anywhere else in the park.  Up against the backside of the building was a camp for homeless cats, AKA a “cat colony,” placed there by the Josephine County Spay/Neuter Society, who left a note asking people to respect their work.  I respected it so much I called our assistant city manager to report it.   

It might have fed cats if there wasn’t a woman who takes all the food for her dogs, or so I was told by a person who was walking with me at that point.  But they could have been feeding stray dogs, raccoons, and even cougar or bear, not to mention crows, jays and rats.  Do people who put food out for cats on public property think only cats eat it?

This one had 4 big bowls of food, at least 3 cups each, and two big bowls of water.  It also had a plastic bin on its side with a blanket, and a sagging cardboard box in a black plastic bag for really stupid cats to take shelter in and get eaten.

"TNR," or "Trap, Neuter and Return" a feral cat to where it lives, is a good idea.  Feeding them is not.  A fed TNR'd cat is not feral; it is an outdoor pet.

A feral cat defends its territory from other cats, because it needs a lot of territory to hunt in so as not to scare off the game.  A fed cat reverts to dependent kittenhood, and tolerates other cats like a kitten does its littermates.  It is no longer feral; it is an outdoor pet that still likes to hunt for pleasure, but doesn’t need a big territory to survive.  Other cats come to eat the food and join it, forming a colony that scares off all the game that we go to parks to see: birds, squirrels, and especially lizards.  One sees lizards only where cats are scarce, which, sad to say, is not in the city; there are plenty of cats surrounding parks.

No need for a flash mob cleanup at Baker Park, though.  I suggested the riverside below the Riverside Inn, where litter is thick and large, or below the Caveman Bridge in Riverside Park where it is thick and small.  Of course, there is probably nearly as much small litter below the Inn; it just isn’t visible from the Bridge.

Spreading Chickweed and pulling Foxtails at Greenwood

Sunday, March 16, 2014

This morning, I had the Greenwood Dog Park to weed, and some chickweed to spread around the wastewater treatment plant property before the city got to mowing it.  Schroeder Dog Park, my usual Sunday weeding, was just going to have to miss out this weekend.  So was the cleaning of the Intersection of the Redwoods, by extension.

After blowing the bark off the path at the entrance of the trail and picking up litter, I went straight to spreading chickweed from areas where it was thick to nearby spots that were still bare compost from what was spread along the trail last fall. 

Where the compost was not too thick for the seed to grow through, a mid-calf-high variety of perennial grass has sprung up thickly to join the perennial rye already there, a joy to see, as anywhere it grows is a place where a foxtail or heron’s bill is not growing and it’s relatively short.  We need more perennial grass and less annual fire and sticker hazard weeds out there.  Compost may well be the way to get it.

I’m spreading chickweed because it crowds out spring weeds; wilts down to a mulch that prevents summer weeds; only drops its plentiful seeds, rather than spreading them; and is exceedingly edible, even when seeding.  It’s a great spinach substitute on a sandwich, salad, or as a boiled green.

I also filled my big weeding bucket, a 15-gallon pot, with chickweed and spread it in places with no good patches nearby.  But that’s a heavy pot, and I ran out of energy fast.

  

I gave up on that pretty quick and took the bucket inside the dog park to pull foxtails from under the locust trees.  Not many were blooming yet, so I only half-filled the bucket, which was pretty heavy with the dirt clinging to the roots.  There would be a lot more dirt to shake off if I didn’t wait until they showed their seed heads, and they would be a lot harder to pull.  So I only pull the ones that are beginning to violate code by blooming.  Our nuisance code tells us precisely the best time to pull most weeds: as they “mature” and “go to seed.”

Green foxtails, closeup, ready to pull.  The dying leaves at the bottom are unusual.

There are fewer loose ankle-twisting rocks in the dog park as I bury them or throw them away; they are natural litter, the disorder of nature in the wrong place, and hazardous to boot.  Likewise, I pick up boards, no matter how small; if it shows man’s hand, artificiality, it is disorderly in the chaos of nature or on our pavements and lawns.

I noticed that some litter actually disappeared from the river path and dog park between the time I walked Petey in the pre-dawn and when I walked down the trail later.  I’ve quit picking up litter while walking my dog because it’s not aerobic and I will do it later, but I’m not the only person who picks up litter while walking the trail.

Fairgrounds Events

Saturday, March 15, 2014

After the Run for the Law, I moved on to the Fairgrounds, which had been calling me for some time, with litter in the hedges behind the front fence.  There were two events happening on the 15^th: a music trading event, and a late afternoon wine tasting, First Crush. 

It was a good day for cleaning the front end of the Fairgrounds.  But not for cleaning the area between the fence and the neighbor’s retaining wall to the west; there’s too much big trash there, and I ran out of ODOT litter bags at Run for the Law.

I first parked and set up my sign in the front of the parking lot right in front of the Floral and Pepsi buildings, and started by picking up the parking lot.  When I was done there, I moved my truck to the other side of the entrance, for better visibility and to be closer to my work in the front hedges. 

I started with the plastic zip ties on the west side of the gate.  It seems that, when some people take down their signs, they just drop the ties.  After the music swap ended and they took down their signs, I found more.  Someone had left rusty wire still attached to the fence east of the gate, presumably from hanging a sign.

I was also finding the occasional string tied to the fence.  When I took one out of a tree with a soft balloon still attached, I understood where they came from. 

I worked the hedge east of the gate, all the way around to the gate, back of the office.  There was a bunch of wild lettuce back there that was starting to bolt; it may well be blooming by now.  It had quite a lot of trash back there, too.

The rest of the afternoon I spent mostly working the west parking lot and the hedges beside it, moving from one to the other as people arrived for First Crush.  I got a nailed-together contraption of 3 treated 2 x 4s that had been teasing me from the front side of the fence, dumped between the fence and the hedge, truly the most remarkable trash of the afternoon.

Early in the afternoon, before the event, I needed to use the bathroom and asked the person setting up in the Pepsi building if I could use theirs; no problem.   Later, after it started, I went looking for a bathroom elsewhere, not wanting to intrude.  The one back of the floral building was blocked by bird guano and locked.  I bypassed the admitting line at the entrance to the Pepsi building and asked the people working if I could use the bathroom.  Sure.  It seems that a Litter Cleaner tunic can open doors, or at least bathrooms.   

Run for the Law

Saturday, March 15, 2014

On this particular Saturday, I had registered to be in the SOS (Securing Our Safety) St. Patrick’s Day Run for the Law 5K/10K Walk/Run, but I didn’t actually walk or run the course.  I was after the litter in and around the staging area, Club Northwest. 

I was a bit late for the start of the race, but in a way, just in time.  I found a parking space a good block away and had put on my tunic and set up my sign when the runners started coming down the road toward me, a bright, colorful mass with their mix of clothing colors highlighted by apple green race T-shirts, the same color as my tunic. I quickly got out my camera phone and started taking pictures until they were mostly passed, which took a long time.  They just kept on coming.  450 people showed up; 400 were in the race, which is pretty good for a race or a demonstration of support for local law enforcement.

By the time I got my leaflets folded and litter bag marked and started picking up litter along the sidewalk up to Club Northwest, there were runners returning up the sidewalk. It was downhill from a vacant lot along one stretch, and rocks had been washing down the clay-silt hillside onto the sidewalk.  The runners truly appreciated me moving the rocks off the sidewalk. 

Officer Dave Daniels was one of the early returnees, moving fast.  I shouted “Run Dave, Run!”  He ended up winning his age class, but I was talking about his run for sheriff. 

As I got to Club Northwest’s first driveway, I found about half an 18-pack of Budweiser 12-oz cans full of beer, some in their half-ruined box that was resting on the hillside below the first parking spot and above the sidewalk, with the rest scattered along the sidewalk and gutter.  After I gathered them up, I had to stop picking up other litter as my arms were full, so I brought them into the race gathering, and laid the full cans out just past the finish line.  They disappeared before the end of the prize awarding, as I picked up litter amongst and around the people.

I got lots of kudos, including another $20 donation from Doranne Long, who also wanted to take some photos of me picking up litter for publication.  I said I need a new one for GPgardener.com for spring. 

I was picking up a lot of pieces of thin white and blue plastic, which at first I thought were flaking paint, they were so fragile, but some pieces were larger and didn’t break up.  After a while, I figured out they were pieces of triangular banners strung along a few booths that were disintegrating from age.  As things were being cleaned up, I heard that they were borrowed, but had been acknowledged as being tired by the folks they were borrowed from.  

As one man started carefully folding them up to return them, I vetoed that and offered my litter bag.  He went for that instead, and I made sure that none of those banners would be spreading litter any more.  I stuck around until nearly everyone was gone and I had gotten all of the litter in the race area.  Next stop: the Fairgrounds for two more events.  

I got to thinking that this could be another service offered for sponsorships: event cleanup: before; during; and after an event, for $100 per event, to be listed on an Event Sponsors page.  The camaraderie and kudos attending an SOS event are exceptional though, and I will continue to do their events for free, just to support the group effort.

I’ve left some litter

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Confession is good for the soul.  I’ve left some litter lying in the dog parks when I work there, but I’ve stopped doing that now.

This morning, as I threw away the third water carrier this week, I reflected that there is some litter that even litter cleaners leave, because it seems too good to be litter.  I’ve been leaving gallon or more water carriers that are left by the faucets that are not turned on in the winter.

I started throwing them away a few days ago, when I found two at Greenwood Dog Park.  They were accumulating. 

The day after throwing out the water containers, I found a bowl of dog food by the water faucet.  I don’t know who was thinking what there, but I saw no good coming from it; it went in the trash, bowl and all.  If you want to feed a vagrant’s dog, hand him a little bag of dog food.  Otherwise, you don’t know who or what you are feeding.

This morning, I found a plastic cat food container next to the faucet and water tub, presumably used to transport water.  It went in the trash.  I don’t know what I was thinking, leaving them for so long.  I don’t leave them anywhere else.

A person brings water to the dog park, empties his container, and leaves it next to the faucet, probably thinking he will bring it home.  But he forgets and leaves without it.  Will he pick it up next time?  Maybe; they don’t usually accumulate.  But the containers are always reused containers, usually milk or juice; they are free.  They are made to be thrown away; I may as well do it.

It’s interesting how people will leave clothing that they find on a fence or something where it is visible, in hopes that the person who left it comes back.  Sometimes, they do. 

But if I see the article more than once, I clean it up too.  Vagrants get their clothing very cheap or free, and they tend to discard them when they get dirty, wet, or too hard to carry.  One time, I found a pile of clean used children’s clothing and a plastic sack discarded on the disorderly edge of an otherwise well-kept yard.  

Pulled away to the Miracle Mile

Monday, March 3rd-9th, 2014

Boy, did I get behind in writing this.  We had a little family reunion over the weekend of March 1^st and 2^nd in Newport, celebrating Mom’s 85^th birthday, so I lost a day of litter cleaning on Sunday.  With writing a couple of gardening articles on Garden Grants Pass the following week, I got two weeks behind in posting about litter cleaning.

During the previous 2 weeks, I talked to Carl Wilson of KAJO/KLDR radio about sponsoring a site, and he decided on a section of the Miracle Mile, as he likes to call the first mile of the Rogue River Highway, where his station is, at 888 R.R. Hwy.  I told him that, for $500 a year, I could do the portion from his station to the light at Parkdale, a bit over a block, both sides, and one block in each direction from the intersection. 

I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew when I estimate new jobs.  I now know that I can do that block + his station + the Fruitdale Grange for that.  I need another sponsor for the other side of Parkdale along Umpqua’s and Grovers’ frontage and the next block of the highway.  All those shrubs and swales hold a lot of trash.

Having an actual Super Sponsor for a site has pulled me away from Redwood Avenue until I get a Super Sponsor there.  I still have only two days available for litter cleaning until I get enough sponsors to start letting gardening customers go.  I can still find time to work the Intersection of the Redwoods, though, and the 6^th and 7^th street bridges. 

I can see I will be doing a lot of cleanup at the Fairgrounds during events on Saturdays.  It’s time to do most of my litter pickup on Saturday-Sunday and gardening on Mondays.  But I like doing litter after Toastmasters.  We’ll see if I can pick up another Super Sponsor.

So after the reunion, I got out Monday after Toastmasters to do the Miracle Mile.  It took all afternoon to do the block from KAJO to Parkdale; I didn’t even get to all of the Grange property. 

First cleaning always takes a lot longer than weekly maintenance, and gives me a good idea of how much I can do for a single sponsor.  An afternoon’s work for initial cleaning is sufficient, I think, and ought to settle down to an hour after a few weeks.  Even that would be woefully underpaid at under $10 per week, but Super Sponsors are supported by regular sponsors and small donors, making this service far more affordable than hiring someone for the same work. 

That’s the theory; we’ll see how it works in practice.  So far, it’s helping to pay my bills; I haven’t had to borrow yet this month.

The next Sunday, it took only 1½ hours to do the same area and a bit more.  It will probably take a little less time this week, on the third cleaning.  The cleaner an area gets, the less trash gets thrown into it.  The more traffic it gets, the more it gets littered and attracts trash.  There are always the few who will throw regardless of neatness.

The Prize for NO OLD LITTER on that block was presented to two clerks at Little Pantry Market and gas station last Sunday.  I was picking up a bit of new litter at that station, but I can honestly say that there was no old litter, and not much new.

After working that block of RR Highway, I turned the corner and did the west side of Parkdale going south.  There is a business there that has the most discrete business sign I’ve ever seen in my life; it took some time for me to find it, etched into the glass of the door, and I had to walk half-way into the property to read its flowing script. 

I got to the end of my bucket before the end of that block, and went back to the truck.  Decided to go the next block on the Miracle mile, but only got through with Umpqua Bank’s frontage before the end of the day.

That was where I found the litter trees, as I like to call white paper bark birches.  Their bark rolls up, flakes off in big pieces, and looks exactly like paper litter.  I'd been finding pieces of it all the way down by KAJO, blown there by the east wind.  I found a stump about a foot tall, hidden in the shrubbery, but visible enough to look like a pile of trash in there.  A hypodermic needle was discarded right in front of it.  Ugly attracts ugly, and some people like their litter to have company.

Disc golf with computer disks

Monday, March 10, 2014

Saturday, I was cleaning up litter in Riverside Park after cleaning the Caveman Bridge, and started walking the disc golf course.  I had earlier seen pieces of floppy disc near the sidewalk and now I started finding whole floppies here and there along the course.  I suddenly realized what I was seeing: someone had been playing disc golf with computer discs.

Now, this is not your ordinary habitual littering of fast food trash and cigarette butts.  Some disc golfer, likely a teenager, got the idea to take a batch of old computer discs down to the disc golf course to play with them and then left them as litter.

Litter cleaning, if you have an active imagination, can be pretty forensic.  You see strange things, and you start to weave a story about how they got there, trying to get inside the head of the perpetrator.

It’s not easy.  I was raised to keep things neat and clean.  And yet, being lazy, I didn’t want to carry my gum and wrappers to a trash can, so I would roll my gum in its wrapper in a little ball and drop it discreetly.  Now I bend over and pop squashed wrapped gumballs off the pavement with my knife, paying for my youthful laziness.  At least they are easier to move than gum without the wrapper.

One summer, I met a man by the river in both of my favorite sitting spots, and talked to him when I did.  He would sit there, talking to himself, drinking wine, smoking rollies and little purple-wrapped cigars and leaving his trash all around him, which I picked up as we spoke. 

I started gently admonishing him about his littering ways, and he responded by breaking his wine bottles after I left, obviously to irritate me and make me work harder.  I picked up every little bit every time and got so angry that I didn’t talk to him for a while. 

One day, I told him at length and with great heat that I could tell where he had been just by his trash, I knew his habits so well.  I knew his wine bottles, his cigar wrappers, his rollies and papers.  This apparently creeped him out, because he stopped littering my part of the river.

One man told me he used to throw his trash to the wind, saying “The adventures of Litterman!”  Talk about youthful rebellion: he was his own anti-hero.

What started as rebellion hardened into habit and became unconscious.  He outgrew much of his rebelliousness, but it’s harder to stop dropping trash because he doesn’t see it when he does it, even after becoming a janitor and picking up other people’s trash at work. 

The really funny thing about picking up litter for donations is that, for me, it is addicting.  I’ve been trying to figure out the source of the addiction.  There is a certain pleasure in seeking and finding anything, no matter how worthless, but like all pleasure, it palls as soon as one is confronted with too much of it.

Most addictions are about relief from pain.  Pleasure palls, lest we eat ourselves to death.  But pain goes on unless the cause is removed or it is dulled in some way.  Relief from pain is, in itself, a pleasure.  Life is suffering, as the Buddha said, while pleasure is transitory.  We are really motivated by pain avoidance and relief, in the short term and the long, sometimes in shorter terms than others. 

I started picking up litter because I couldn’t stand to see the same trash lying around, day after day, while walking my dog.  I couldn’t stand the pain anymore; I relieved it by removing the source. 

But spending too much time at it without getting compensated for the service was a pain in itself, once it started to interfere with my gardening work.  I started avoiding walking down Greenwood Avenue with my dog and drove him to the dog park, once a week instead of every day, just to avoid having to pick it up every day.

But now, wearing the vest, I get the pleasure of cleaning up an area with the prospect of being paid.  Besides relieving my pain, the work appeals to my OCD and my ADHD, as I allow stuff glimpsed out of the corner of my eye to stop me in my tracks and turn to get it.

But like all addictions, it builds on itself.  I see litter all the more from searching for it so much, and it pains me any time I cannot pick it up.  I know that I will get to pick some of it up on particular days and times, but there is so much I cannot get.

Fortunately, I have the pleasure of knowing that, when wearing my tunic, I draw attention to the litter I am picking up.  The rest of you get to become conscious of litter; feel my pain, and perhaps pay me to relieve you of some of your pain, or at least clean up your own place yourself. 

There are many reasons why people litter; there is really only one reason why we clean it up or pay for cleanup; to avoid the pain of seeing it lying around, messing up our world.

The Prospector Returns

Thursday, February 27, 2014

I work at The Rocks (ODFW property across the Rogue River from Schroeder Park boat landing) on Thursdays now, before I work on my own house and yard with my daughter.  This Thursday, I forgot my new signs for the top of my truck, or I would have parked it on the road near the trash wood pile I was thinking of removing.  Instead, I parked down inside, as I usually do, turning around for an easy exit.  The space is small, and if someone else drives in, getting out can be tricky.

  

There was relatively little litter in the parking area.  Walking out onto the top rocks, it was quickly apparent that our prospector had returned, and had done much of his work where it won’t be washed away by anything but hard rain.  Holes, sand, and clumps of grass are strewn around the area where a couple of kids and their dad like to run their remote control trucks.  

I may have to get busy with shovel, broom, and blowers to restore some natural order to the area that can be healed by rain.  Maybe it will give the fellow a clue that his work is not welcome on that property.

It’s one thing to go digging holes where few people go.  But a place with a well-used parking spot, a place which is obviously well used for fishing, swimming, and playing on big, smooth, pretty rocks, is not the place to be prospecting.  And even in less used places, one must put the dirt back in the holes when one is done, not leave it strewn all over the bedrocks. 

He’d spread his share of litter, too, maybe all of it.  It included a pick-mattock with a broken corner on the mattock, and a piece of its handle, separate.

ODFW could post the place against mining and install some cameras around the parking area.  It would be easy to distinguish the miner.  Such posting would also discourage camping, supplementing the effect of regular litter cleaning.

I stopped at the upstream parking area to pick up that pile of wood trash, but after picking up along the road, it was time to meet my sister, who was visiting from out of town.  I also discovered some pallets at the bottom of the pile as I started to pick up branches from the top.  Too much work and too little time; I’ll try to get it next time.

Still Starting Redwood Avenue

Monday, February 24, 2014

Monday morning, Petey and I took our morning walk at the proper time, before dawn.  I noticed the flame from the Wastewater Treatment plant, and reflected that, when I don’t see it, the air is stinky between it and the river.  It’s burning odorless methane with a lot of stinkier gasses, so that fits.  I called and left a message for our Assistant City Manager to ask about how that works.  He called later and said that they have a pilot light that lights gases coming from the stack, but sometimes there aren’t enough gases to light the flame, but there may be enough to smell.  He didn’t say, but maybe the pilot blows out sometimes.

I was feeling good, so it was a work day.  Schroeder Park, its memorial pavers and its dog-dug holes waited.  So did Redwood Avenue.  I decided to skip Toastmasters and go to Schroeder instead.  I was supposed to give a speech, but those pavers needed to get off the grass.

Pavers are set in place, but still need more 4 x 8 sand around them to keep them in place.

There were two regulars there with their respective dogs when I arrived.  They left while I was moving the pavers back into their bed.  When that was done, I picked up the litter around the parking area, maybe 4 little pieces. 

I got out the wheelbarrow, a shovel, a rake, and my litter grabber and bucket.  Hung the bucket on a wheelbarrow handle and laid the grabber across both, also a good place for my adjustable rake once I was in the gate.  Raked up gravel from what was spread inside the entrance; shoveled a load in the barrow; pushed it out to the other side of the field where most of the holes were and filled them, raking dirt over the gravel where I could.

I did that 4 or 5 times, while several people came, played, and left with their dogs.  Everyone took a “Time to Crown Your Roses” leaflet.  One lady had a gardening question about alternatives to grass lawn with dogs.  I recommended creeping jenny (lysimachia) or blue star creeper. 

By the time I was done and got back to Redwood, it was 1:00.  I parked in the triangle at the Intersection of the Redwoods and cleaned up that and the south side of the road first.  I crossed to the ditch next to the Fairgrounds parking lot and found some litter that I’d missed the week before, and new butts on the roadside.

I already had a half-full bag of litter from raking pine needles for my parents on Saturday from Pinecrest (the place to go for clean pine needles from its wide gravel shoulders, where the wind blows the leaves away and pine needles stay, but there is a lot of litter in the ditches from people driving to the dump).  I left the bag in my truck and used my small bucket to start filling it the rest of the way.

From the truck, I crossed the other side of the intersection to the swale between the Redwoods, wide, shallow and seemingly fairly clean.  But the mass of cigarette butts just on the other side gave the lie to that; the going was very slow there.  I worked the upper edge near the highway, then went after the big litter toward the bottom, quickly filled the bucket, and crossed back to dump it in the bag.

I crossed to the other side of the YMCA’s driveway and was appalled at how many old butts I’d left the previous Sunday.  But then, that was where I had called it quits for the day, and didn’t get back to it Monday, continuing west along the ditch instead.  I started picking that area up in earnest, getting nearly to the gravel and its puzzle pieces before Crystal called for a ride home from work.

When I got back, I parked near the Fairgrounds main fence, where a fair bit of big litter had beckoned for days.  Got out a new litter bag and couldn’t find my marker, which bugged the heck out of me.  Worked a bit along the west side of the lot where I was parked, but the trash there was thick and calling me away from the road.  I didn’t have a sign for the top of my truck yet, so I went back to the front fence, noting the trash pit in the foot of space between the west fence and the block wall supporting the parking lot.  Not for today; I was working the roadside. 

I got halfway down the fence to the gate, working back and forth between the road and the fence, when I happened to look past the fence and down, near the base of the wall it was on.  The space between the wall and the ugly-hedged shrubbery was heavy with trash, not so much as the west side, but heavy enough.  I started working back along the fence, pulling it out with my litter grabber and filling the bag. 

I remembered that my marker was in my tool belt the whole time and put my website on the bag when I found a hard plastic sign and used it for a writing surface.  I finished working back to the truck and worked my way down the roadside to the gate, cleaning trash from the fence to the road, and then worked back along the fence, pulling trash from the other side until I got back to the place I’d left off.

I was also cutting strings and zip ties off the fence from signs that had been hung and removed.  My World's Greatest Gardening Scissors went missing at one point and I had to work back towards the gate again to find where they'd fallen from my belt.

It was time to move the truck and start a new bag.  I moved the truck to in front of the grandstand area and picked up along that fence there a ways.  Crossed to the decorative concrete divider between the highways and cleaned it up fairly quickly, this being the second time. 

Then I started into the east end of the big swale, where I had left off that day.  There were many, many butts, some larger litter, and as always, plastic pieces from accidents. 

This swale is next to a highway intersection, where traffic builds up at the light.  Drivers who smoke while driving but don’t like to use their ashtrays tend to throw out their butts and light up another one while stopped at a light. 

That is better than those who use their ashtrays and then dump them in parking lots or other people’s driveways.  That takes premeditation and is distinctly anti-social.  Those who thrown one butt at a time can be unconscious; they literally do not know what they do.  The unconscious litterer can be reached by seeing someone in a bright advertising tunic picking up butts one at a time.  The ashtray dumper probably cannot be reached save by a major epiphany or prosecution.

But it takes two for litter to lie; the one who drops it, and the person who does not pick it up off his property, rented or owned.  Those who let it lie are usually not conscious of it.  The subconscious sees all, but filters it for the conscious, which prefers not to see ugliness, especially ugliness that might entail work to fix, or that one can do nothing about. 

It appears that seeing someone in a bright green vest, cleaning up litter and requesting donations, makes some people conscious of the litter they have not been seeing, and drives them to clean up their properties.  A lot of litter has disappeared from occupied properties on Redwood Avenue over the few weeks I have worked out there.  Of course, it’s lawn-mowing season again, and people tend to pick up trash first.  But I’m seeing it disappearing from ditches and outside fences, as well.

The sun was setting before I could finish the swale, though the larger litter was gone.  This time, I remembered to stop at Riverside Park to drop off the two bags I had filled.