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."

Under the Caveman Bridge: Carl brought a group!

Caveman Bridge, downstream view, North Bank

8/2/14

I had a good radio show with Carl Wilson on KAJO on Wednesday, for about 15 minutes at the end of Eyewitness Reports.  On Friday, he called and said that he’d be working with me on Saturday under the Bridge, and had been asking some friends to join him.  I was thrilled and fairly certain that he, at least, would show up.

As I got in the truck on Saturday, packed for the cleanup, I heard him talking on KAJO about our project, and putting out a last-minute call to the public.  He told people that a litter grabber is recommended, as well as gloves and a bucket, and that he was bringing a box of gloves as well, which made me very happy. 

I got there in time to get my signs set by the entrance and get mostly set up with refreshments and sign-up list before he came, and the group started gathering.  I had them sign up and equipped those without buckets with yellow litter bags with my stickers and “Trash only” written on them, explaining that the city allows me to leave these bags next to their trash cans for disposal, but I have to write “trash only” to stop collectors from emptying them into the trash cans in search of returnables. 

Truly, the Bottle Bill is out of date; it is hardly worth the hassle of turning them in.  I don’t.  I give them to a man who is starting to think it isn’t worth the hassle of putting them in the machine.  I think that they cause more litter than they get cleaned up, making some think that it’s okay to throw them because some bum will pick them up.  I learned on work crew that even many bums don’t think they are worth returning; they slept next to piles of them.

We started on the top of the Bridge, which didn’t take long with the group doing both sides at once, and thoroughly with us changing sides and going back.  From there, we pretty much split up and covered the area, some going after the big trash down by the river, where people eat and hang out on the relatively private rocks; some went out on the disk golf course; some went after the small litter around the tree and the butt pit below.  I decided that the steps needed to be blown off and got my battery blower; I ended up getting a broom and dustpan by the time I got to the bottom; the dirt was thick in the corners and it piled up too much for a blower.

I didn’t get any pictures; my camera battery was dead.  Otherwise I could have gotten a shot of the broken plastic yard chair and twin-sized inch-thick plastic foam pad that Steve Roe brought up from the river.  I later found a fully-equipped fishing pole where I presume he found the furniture, and gave it away within 50 feet.

We stayed pretty scattered out, but four of us gathered below the sidewalk under the Bridge and worked on the butts and broken glass on that slope and especially at the bottom against the curved bridge support.  I used the screen-bottom dustpan that my housemate Donnie made for me to use on that spot, as the soil there is loose fine silt.

We worked there until noon, when Carl said he had another appointment.  Some had already gone home by then, and I thought we were the last still there.  Rebecca and Madison Anderson thereby each won a prize for being the last to leave, after helping me gather tools: their choice of the gardening hats in my bag.  They chose matching hats with large brims all the way around.

I stayed to work down by the river a little while and see what had been left.  At one point, I found glass broken on the side of a concrete pipe, and needed a broom and dustpan again.  As I was going to my truck to get them, I met one of our helpers, Carolyn Henderson, coming in with her tools, saying it was time for her to leave.  She’d gone home to get a rake at one point, and got back to work.  So she won a choice of gardening hats as well.

Carl and I will be working at the Fairgrounds this Saturday the 9th, cleaning the frontage from one end to the other.  I expect he will bring a group there

also, including some that showed up for the Bridge.  The Fairgrounds had the weeds cut along the west parking lot fence.  Hurray!  We'll be working under the Bridge again on the 16th.  Register at Volunteercleanup.org to join the cleanup.

Nine people showed up and participated.  Beside the above-mentioned, Trish Bull, Jiggy Bim, Jennifer Black, Marie Solomon and Kristi Roe worked to help make this “a city that looks safe and is safe.”

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.