Under the Caveman Bridge, Week 2

I had a little help in the third hour of cleaning under the 6th Street Caveman Bridge this week.  You can join the cleanup here, or just come down on Saturdays at 10am. 

I decided to be a better host and brought cucumber water and grapes.  Around noon, since no one had shown up, I offered some to a group that I kept passing between the bridge and my truck, saying no one had shown up, and a nice girl, Chelsea Bledsoe, offered to help.  She did for the next hour, which was about as long as I wanted to work on it that day. 

I let her use the litter grabber while I used the broom and screen-bottom dustpan that I got Donnie to make for this project, for sweeping butts off of loose soil.  Then we switched for a while, and switched back.

The first hour, I first cleaned the top, as usual.  It was no different than usual, except behind the parapet at the NW end near the Riverside Inn.  There was only one piece of trash there this week, a cup hidden deep in the blackberries.  Cleaning the bucket-full out of the shielding shrubbery last week might have made a difference.

When I got to the stairs and the tree at the bottom, I was glad to see that the area wasn't nearly as trashy as it was the week before, or even a few days before; I did a bit of work mid-week.  My main fear in this project has been that it would get so trashed between visits that we wouldn't be able to make progress.  But it takes money to make trash, and most people are not deliberate about their littering; it is subconscious.

As I was cleaning up around the tree at the bottom of the steps, a man who was sitting on the steps was greeted by his arriving friends.  "What's up, Mad Dog?" one said.  He replied, "My space is being intruded on.  Let's go."  And he and his friends headed somewhere downriver.

I don't like to intrude, but sitting on narrow steps is inherently rude and is intimidating to some folks, especially tourists.  It is one of the reasons that locals avoid the area of the bridge.  Unless one is walking to the park from the other side of the river, there is little reason to go there.  But I suspect that many walkers cross traffic rather than go down those stairs.

Before I even finished under the tree, I decided to go down toward the river and pick up the food trash that I know gets spread down among the rocks near the drain outlet, a cool place with a nice level concrete surface.  From there, I headed downstream a ways, and realized a lot of the trash there was falling from a path above.  I went back and took that path, and found more falling from level ground at the top.  That was where I found the biggest trash, discarded clothing. 

That filled my bucket, and I headed back to the truck, when I found help for the next hour with Chelsea.  I had planned to work on the 7th Street Bridge later, but I went home for lunch, had a leftover sandwich, and tasted bad meat in the last bite.  I made some slippery elm tea to stop any stomach trouble, but I was weak and gassy for about an hour and stayed home for the rest of the day.  Just as well; it was my daughter's birthday.

I probably won't serve cucumber water again; it seems to be diuretic, and it's a long way to the bathroom, with a lot of trash to clean up on the way there and back.  When one is wearing a Litter Cleaner tunic, it doesn't do to pass trash.  I'll serve lemon water next week.

Give Your Litter Cleaners Time and Tools

Litter cleaning takes time, a lot of it.  There is no such thing as a thorough once-over in litter cleaning.  One has to look at an area from different angles, and often be almost on top of stuff to see it.

The Litter Cleaner suspects that most workers doing litter cleaning are not given the time needed to do the job right.  They are probably not given any particular time at all; they are told to pick up all the litter and get back to normal duties.   This puts a worker under the stress of not knowing how long the boss thinks it should take to clean the lot, and makes for a quick once-over.

A litter cleaner should be given ample time to go over the lot not once, but twice, carefully.  One has to have time to look around and really see the trash.  Our subconscious protects us from ugliness and work by not letting us see it until we really want to.   Taking a second look tells it to let one see the trash, and let the joy of seeking and finding take over.

My favorite litter grabbing tool, the G4 Dot-Reacher 

Proper tools are important in creating that joy.  A broom and standing dustpan are standard equipment, but a dot litter grabber and a bucket are far easier to use except where there is a lot of small stuff in one place on pavement, which is relatively rare.  The grabber also excites our love of gadgets, and easily gets trash out of places that a broom cannot, saving a lot of bending.

A very large lot with a lot of traffic, like Walmart, Fred Meyer, or Home Depot, should be patrolled by one or more litter cleaners during business hours.  All workers should clean up litter and thereby learn to neither drop it nor leave it, and management would benefit from a good look at the condition of the grounds once in a while.  A worker should periodically clean litter all day, with most employees doing a litter cleaning day on a rotating basis.

The same goes for parks and golf courses, along with having a few more tools and a cart to carry them: litter grabber; bucket; broom; dustpan; a battery blower; extra battery; cobweb duster, and trash bags, using the cart only for transporting the tools and supplies and charging batteries.  One should park the cart and clean an area thoroughly, then move the cart to the next area. 

My Black and Decker 18 V surface sweeper.  There are many battery blowers

Blowers are for natural detritus only, with litter picked up or swept before blowing.  All pavements should be blown and/or swept off at least once a month, more often in flower or leaf fall.  Detritus makes great mulch on soil but is ugly in the gutters.

Parking lots are where the most litter gathers.  Shelters also have lots of litter, as do playgrounds, picnic tables and benches.  One has to get off the regular paths and look for places in the trees where people hide their sex, drug use, and camping.  The riverside has litter left by fishermen and people enjoying the water, and occasional campers.

Smaller businesses with lots of traffic, like convenience stores, bars, and restaurants, need litter cleanup several times a day, with ample time to cover the lot twice.  All businesses should do litter cleanup at least twice a day, before and after business.  Set a minimum, not a maximum time limit to do the job right.

Cleaning under the Caveman Bridge

It's amazing how small litter disappears in a photograph.  

July 12, 2014

Volunteers joined me for cleaning under the Caveman Bridge on Saturday!  They were missionaries from one of the local churches that I had been talking to over 5 or 6 weeks.  The church, that is, not these particular missionaries; they came in pairs but one of them changed every time they showed up to talk Bible, until I had met 4 sisters in three visits.  We arranged several weeks ago to start the initial cleanup under the Bridge on the 12th.  I was hoping that they would all show up for the cleanup, but two entirely new ones showed up, a bit younger than the other four. 

I was given a link to VolunteerCleanup.org during the previous weekend, so I signed up on that and tried for more helpers, but probably no one in the Grants Pass area is signed up with them yet.  Plus, the notice was rather short. 

I had specified to bring a litter grabber, gloves, and a bucket, but they showed up with only plastic gloves.  I was able to provide one with a bucket, and the other with a yellow ODOT-style litter bag, and we set out to do the top of the bridge first, since my signs were set out on the roadway at the West entrance to the park, and I couldn’t have them up there with a littered bridge.

I took them along the east side first.  I showed them how my gardening scissors are a small litter grabber that gets butts out of cracks and saves 6” of stoop.  (The last 6 inches of stoop is the hardest.)  We cleaned to the very littered NE end and crossed to the NW end, where I showed them the place behind the curved parapet by the Riverside Inn where someone had dumped maple trimmings, making a less thorny but very ugly place among the blackberries to hide behind the wall, do business and pleasure and leave big food litter.  

We stopped between the first two arches long enough for me to tell them about the 3-gallon pile of moldy dog doo someone had dumped there Sunday, two weeks before.

I proceeded to tell them that the litter under the bridge is scaring off tourists, and about a letter from a Las Vegas couple that Councilor DeYoung had told us about at the City Council workshop: They said that they walked from the Riverside Inn into Riverside Park and they will never come back to Grants Pass. 

The easiest route for one to take from the Riverside Inn to Riverside Park is the west side of the bridge to the stairs at the SW end, down to the walkway under the bridge.  The stairs, the area next to them, the area under the tree at the bottom, and below the walkway under the bridge, is the most littered place I have seen in Grants Pass, bar none, mostly butts.  

It's amazing how such small trash disappears in non-closeup photos.

The letter mentioned something about transients hanging out, but the litter announces that disorderly bums own this part of the park. It’s been that way for at least a decade, since I came back to Grants Pass in 1999 after living here in the mid-80’s, when it was a very neat town.

Most Grants Pass and Josephine County residents can be forgiven for not noticing.  If one drives to the park, one has already passed the bridge at the west entrance and proceeds to park closest to one’s destination in the park.  There is nothing to draw one to that end of the park except the disk golf course. 

Park workers try to keep up with litter, but there are not enough of them and none of them are dedicated to litter duty; it is only one of their many chores.  They get most of the big stuff near the sidewalks, but a sea of butts and glass accumulated over time is intimidating to even a dedicated cleaner.  I didn’t want to tackle it without help; it’s lonely down there.

The sisters worked their way down the stairs while I got the slope beside them.  They had to work their way past a man sitting on them.  (He drives in and hangs out with his friends in the park.)  We cleaned up the area under the tree pretty well and started on the butt slope below the walkway.  That is the most intimidating part of the place, and they soon started to lag.  The stooping was constant; they really needed grabbers. 

When I announced around noon that it was time to go empty my 5-gallon litter bucket, they said they had another appointment.  I thanked them, said that I will continue this next week, and that I hope that they could get some more people to show up, even if they can’t.

It should be interesting to see how much accumulates under the tree by next week.  One cannot expect a single cleaning to do any good; it takes several weeks of thorough cleaning in a row to have any impact on behavior.  Some people hate to see their litter disappear and will avoid an area where it keeps happening, but it seems like they first litter overtime to try to mess it up again.  But there is too much litter still within sight to expect to have any impact yet.

After they left, I took a look further down toward the river.  Each area is distinct.  Between the walkway and the first wall under the bridge is the butt pit.  Between that wall and the arches was a lot of broken glass among scattered sticks and rocks on dirt.  

The level area beyond the arches is the disk golf course, relatively clean, the grass kept short by geese.  On the rocky slope to the river is the bigger food trash and discarded clothing, in full view of the jet boats and the Riverside Inn. 

I got one 5-gallon bucket full of that, not all of it by any means, and went to work on the glass area a bit, raking up the sticks to make it easier to sweep the glass and rocks.  I was working there only until 2:00, since I am working on the detritus cleanup on the 7^th Street Bridge on Saturday afternoons.  By the time I cover the whole bridge, it will need another cleaning; the bike lane portion already does.

I had to use the bathroom at one point, and worked my way there and back, handing out leaflets and talking along the way for about a half-hour.  There was a remarkable amount of litter; they need people working on it over the weekends. 

A lot of it was bread that the ducks and geese apparently don’t eat.  Donnie and I have been noticing that birds don’t eat people food like they used to anywhere anymore; natural selection must be killing out the ones who eat our junk.  There are few ducks by the river anymore, and geese prefer grass.

A litter grabber is a very useful tool that grabs a lot more than litter.  It can get stuff out of tight places.  It can grab an object off a high shelf.  It’s just the thing for cleaning up fallen fruit and nuts from trees.  It should be good for picking fruit.  And it saves a lot of stooping when cleaning up litter.

So if one is going to clean litter for even a few hours, from a place where it is highly concentrated, it pays to buy one.  Even the youthful will appreciate it after cleaning litter without one.  I learned this in my first hours on Community Corrections Work Crew; it didn’t take me long to decide to use one.  While my hands can usually grab better, my body prefers less stooping.  And some things one would rather not touch even with gloves.

Blowback from litter cleaning?

This looks a lot smaller in the photo.  It filled a three-gallon bucket.  It made a very big stink.

July 10, 2014

It’s hard to believe, but some litterers can be possessive about the litter they leave.  They are not discarding it; they are using it to claim a piece of land for their own use, and they get very upset when someone cleans up their stuff. 

Baker Park’s cat lady uses the space behind the bathrooms to feed cats.  She tried to house them there, too, but cardboard boxes and plastic bins were a bit much.  She actually caught me cleaning up her cat food bowls, and we had quite the argument, with her saying she had permission from a city official, and I telling her that that very  official had told me he was no longer going to tolerate it, and does she think that only cats eat that food?  Someone else had told me that a vagrant lady steals it for her dogs.

My housemate, Donnie, was telling me about a person at McDonald’s who keeps eating about 2/3 of each French fry, and then leaves the rest out on the ground outside to feed the birds, where he sweeps them up.  He actually saw her (another old lady) dumping them while he was doing lot cleanup and went right away and swept them up in front of her, which started an argument.  She said she was feeding birds; he told her that the birds don’t eat McDonalds’ fries, and they are not allowed to leave food lying on the ground. 

Likewise, when one cleans campsites, territorial markers and fire pits from the riverside, and calls cops on day sleepers in the brush, one might get a bit of blowback, but it’s not direct, because these people cannot claim charity for animals, only for themselves, and it’s not charity if you claim it; it’s theft.

Sunday, June 29^th, I was heading out to work in Schroeder Park and to clean the Intersection of the Redwoods when I saw what appeared to be a large pile of horse manure on the Caveman Bridge, centered between the first and second arches, against the parapet.  I decided to clean it up on my way back.  I ended up not doing the Intersection, because the bridge needed doing more and I had work to do afterwards.

I parked my truck, got out my signs and such, and took the necessary tools out on the bridge, cleaning up litter on the way.  When I got to the pile, it turned out to be big dog feces, moldy and mixed with dry grass.   Someone must have been filling a dog food bag for a while and dumped it right on the bridge where the tourists cross from the Riverside Inn to Riverside Park.  Stunk to high heaven.

I started to sweep it up into my standing dustpan and dump it into a bag-lined bucket, remembered I should get a picture, and dumped it back out, not spread out quite as far as it had been.  Got pictures from several angles, and started sweeping it up again. 

Our Mayor came along on his bike and asked how I thought horse manure got onto the bridge?  He must have been upwind; I told him it was a big dog, not horse.  Reaching for my most charitable explanation, I said it must have fallen out of someone’s pickup in a dog food bag; they came back, took the bag and left the pile.

But thinking on it since, I can’t see how that could happen.  Things fly out of pickups on curves, not straight bridges.  There is no way that pile could have accidentally landed there.

Yesterday, two strange events occurred, at the beginning and end of my day.  Down at the Greenwood Dog Park, someone had left wet dog food scattered in the turnaround, and big pile of soft dog doo on the sidewalk, along with other litter.  I had to scrape the dried-on food from the pavement with my hula hoe before sweeping it up, and wash the sidewalk with water and a broom after scraping up the dog doo.

A more worrisome kind of littering happened while I was attending the Commissioners Weekly Business Session, the evening meeting on the second Wednesday of the month.  Someone dropped a baggy full of push-pin tacks and other small, sharp objects (glass; hooks; curtain hangers; metal scrap) in front of my house, where traffic scattered it further, including me pulling forward and backing into my driveway.  I spent the next half-hour cleaning up the traffic hazard.  My tires have survived thus far, but the pins could take time to work in.  Fortunately, their shape, which makes them lay sideways, probably kept them from penetrating anything.

I have been displaying my two Litter Cleaner signs in front of my house for two days, since getting the Indiegogo campaign sign made.  Perhaps not a great idea, but they know where I live now, so there in no point in not displaying them.  It’s a busy street and good advertising.

Protesting disorderly drug bans that create black markets means that one offends the more orderly people in society, which is relatively safe.  Protesting the non-enforcement of nuisance codes and taking direct action against disorder means that one offends the more disorderly people out there.  They don’t like people messing with their stuff and cleaning up the marks they make on their world.

#Litter is #tagging, marking the territory of the disorderly:  Contribute to cleaning it at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/public-litter-cleaning/x/7551098#home/share.

Let’s Clean Up Grants Pass!

Join the Crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo
For one year of full-time
Public Litter Cleaning Demonstration
Deadline August 24th
Goal $25,000
Donations returned if goal is not met.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener and former anti-Drug-War protester, has been drawing attention to litter with signs while cleaning it from public property, two days per week since last December, while continuing to garden for customers three days. She has started this crowdfunding campaign to make the transition to full-time litter cleaning demonstrations.

Her working protest has been having an effect; properties are being cleaned up, and people are cleaning their neighborhoods. Doing it 40 hours per week will double the effect, and will allow her to clean very trashy places that are out of sight to traffic but not to visitors, and keep them clean. If this campaign fails, you’ll get your money back and she’ll look for a fast food job. Gardening is getting too hard for this grandmother of two.

Cleaning litter isn’t serving the people who don’t “bother” to put it where it belongs. It is reclaiming our property from those who mark it with their trash.

To donate online at Indiegogo
Go to GPgardener.com
To donate by mail
Call 541-955-9040
Working for “a city that looks safe and is safe”