Cleaning the Fairgrounds frontage: no Carl; no crowd

8/9/14

I got to talk with Carl Wilson on his show on Friday about the campaign for Public Litter Cleaning and the Fairgrounds cleanup, but he said that he had business out of town and wouldn’t be there, though he asked his listeners to show up and help me. 

There had been some talk at the last cleanup, under the Bridge, that it was going to be hot out in front of the Fairgrounds in full sun.  I knew when Carl bowed out that no one was going to show up. 

There was a cooling breeze and I didn’t have to use my mister to wet down my sleeves and hat until noon. But no Carl, no crowd, despite Tom Ray's best efforts to call out some help Saturday morning.  The power of celebrity only works when the celebrity says he'll be there.

The first thing to do was clean the area around my truck, but not the trash pit between the Fairgrounds fence and the Flooring shop retaining wall.  We would have gotten it if anyone else had shown up.

Trash and goat heads (surrounding the butt at the bottom) at the corner of the flooring shop lot.  I cut goat heads on sight, in most places.  They are annuals which need not be pulled; just cut the crown off the root.

The trash pit between the fence and the wall, much of it old and buried.

The second thing to do was to clean the landscaped area around the entrance.  The heck of that area is that one can’t actually see the litter from the road; it is either chopped up by the mower or is between the retaining wall and shrubbery, though there was one cup in the top of the hedge.  There were ties and wire on the fence by people removing signs and balloons (or not, in the case of balloons), but they are not obvious. 

Balloon string and zip ties left in the fence after events.

Sign-hanging wire left on fence.  Cleaned it all off a few months ago.

I was surprised by one piece of trash.  It looked like clothing through the fence, but when I picked it up, it turned out to be the remains of a large balloon:

Still, I got about 10-15 gallons of trash from the hedges, most of a litter bag.  The wind blows it under the fence, but people also know that hedges are a handy place to stash trash.  Hedges that attract trash are forbidden under Portland nuisance code, which is apparently enforced as well as ours--not.  One frequently finds a lot of trash in hedges; the uglier and weedier they are, the more one finds.  Unless they are frequently trimmed and cleaned, they are inherently ugly and attract more ugliness.

Foot traffic in front of the fairgrounds is low in quantity and quality, mostly disorderly types that drop litter, including my leaflets.  I mostly didn’t offer any, unusual for me; I’m usually not picky.  One man who took a leaflet was pushing a shopping cart full of his possessions, heading for Crescent City.  He said that Medford has been taken over by tweakers, and is too violent.  He gave me a dollar right off the bat.  I don't mind taking a dollar from a poor man; his thanks are sincere.

He was once a groundskeeper for a California city, before they fired all their gardeners and hired contractors who don’t care, as most cities did in the 80’s.  City grounds keeping has not recovered from this disaster, and won’t until cities take back the work and do it themselves.  They can’t properly manage their landscaping contractors for building or maintenance, because they have no one among higher staff with knowledge and experience in the work.  I told him that there is a lot of demand for landscaping on the coast, which is why Chet’s garden center is moving to Brookings.

Since I had no one to help me, I knew that I could not do the whole frontage as planned, to the end of the west parking lot.  I decided to do something that would show, and clean detritus from the gutter along the sidewalk on one side of the entrance, creating a “before and after” picture in front: a roadside with grass clippings and straw piled by the wind along with scattered gravel and dirt from traffic, followed by a stretch of cleaned roadside to the flooring shop.  

It’s not a service; it’s a protest.  If I was being paid by the fairgrounds or county, I would not leave a job half-done.  Some glass had been broken in that stretch that had to be cleaned anyways.  Broken glass is something I clean anywhere at any time, stopping my car and turning around to do it if necessary.

I cleaned the litter, but not the detritus, from the north side of the front hedges along the parking lot west of the entrance, inside the fairgrounds. The detritus is thick there, piled by the wind to the west of each blue spruce.  I didn’t get to the north side of the east fence or behind the office at all, except through the fence. 

Detritus along the north side of the south fence and hedge, west of the front entrance.

I ran into a volunteer whom I know on my way back from the bathroom in the Pepsi Building, who takes care of plantings around the Fairgrounds, and wound up showing her the piles of detritus to the west of the entrance.  After she saw the piles, she said she was sorry I had shown her (because she now feels the need to clean them up).  I cried, “I know!  But I had to share my pain!”

I spent an hour or so cleaning the street, left a bit after 2:00 and didn’t go to another cleaning job; I was sore and had an upset stomach that I treated with slippery elm and chamomile tea.

 West frontage, before sweeping

West frontage, Sunday morning.

 East frontage, Sunday morning

Regardless of whether this Indiegogo campaign succeeds as a business, it has raised awareness of litter as a problem that can and must be solved, which is the most that anyone can ask of a protest.  If nothing else, a lot of businesses are posting “Give Your Litter Cleaners Time andTools” and might actually read it.  "#Litter is #tagging" is getting around on Twitter.  And Carl Wilson is telling people,  "Open your eyes and see the litter!" and "Don't let the authorities tell you that nothing can be done about it."