A shopping cart in Tussing Park
Litter is tagging in a very basic sense:
it marks the territory and builds the preferred habitat of the disorderly.
Most everyone is disorderly in some
way, and we all have our own sense of order as well. This gardener, due to her own disorderly
conduct in defying police, prosecutors and judges in continuing to petition and
spread leaflets in our (at that time posted) Public Market, being cited 4 times
for Criminal Trespass 2 when once would do, ended up spending two weeks on work
crew, and got to clean up abandoned houses and vagrant camps as well as
roadsides. This led to several years of
public property litter cleaning and study of litterers, to find out why some
people would leave piles of trash around their beds and even sleep on D cell
batteries under their beer boxes.
Most people who litter, or who let it
lie on their property, don’t purposely mark their territory and themselves as
disorderly. They just are disorderly,
and it shows. They might just be lazy,
cheap, rebellious, or just not care about order and cleanliness, but anyone can
see that they are disorderly by the litter that they spread or tolerate.
But some of the most disreputable
disorderly among us, vagrants and residents alike, know the power of litter to
disgust and repel the orderly and respectable, and use it purposely to claim
territory and imply that their place is not a safe place to be.
On public property, vacant land,
unmaintained property, and along railroads properties that are not maintained, when
one who is orderly comes across a place that is very littered, one becomes
nervous and wants to get out of there, even without obvious signs of
camping. Signs of camping make one feel
like one is trespassing. Cleaning up a
camp feels like stealing, because it is.
A camp behind the wastewater treatment plant, beside the river, along the river trail.
Many of the people who build these
camps know it, some consciously, most subconsciously. They use litter first to
find a place to camp. Old litter means
that no one cares about that spot and it is safe place to leaves stuff one
cares about, and to camp. More litter
makes it safer; broken glass is especially repellent to the orderly.
It is necessary evil to clean up camps and litter generally. It is evil because giving offense is always
evil, and the people who built that habitat will be very offended, feeling
robbed both of goods and territory. It
is necessary or the disorderly will take over our world, piece by piece. They claim property by leaving their stuff on
it; we must clean it up and reclaim our territory.
We are cleaning up under the Caveman
Bridge in Riverside Park. Disorderly
residents, homeless, and vagrants have long claimed that end of the park, hanging
out on the steps, littering the ground under and around the Bridge, up to the restrooms
that they use. Please call to find out where and when we are cleaning this week.
Special issue,
published in GPlittercleaner.blogspot.com,
free at KAJO/KLDR, 888 Rogue River Highway
Gardening
is easy if you do it naturally. #Litter is #tagging, marking the territory of the
disorderly.
Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener @AnRycke
541-955-9040 rycke@gardener.com
