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."

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.

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.

Redwood Avenue, Day 2

Monday, February 17^th, 2014

This Monday was Presidents Day, with no Toastmasters meeting.  But I had an Eyewitness Report interview on KAJO at 9:25 AM.  It was short and sweet, and went pretty well.  You can find it in their archives. 

I parked in the center of the intersection of the Redwoods and picked it up a bit, as I hadn’t done so on Sunday.  I then started on Redwood where I had left off, at the other side of the main entrance to the YMCA, where a pile of big trash was calling to me from under the big wild rose bush and smaller blackberries nearer to the entrance.  I filled the trash bag too full to comfortably carry in the first 50 feet, and started using my little bucket to fill the larger bag in the back of my truck.

When I got tired of working in the big ditch, I worked other side of the road for a while, continuing to clean what I had done the week before and going a little further toward and along the Redwood Highway and down in the big dip between the two roads.  Moving up and down off the highway, conscious of the traffic and showing my bag or tunic when I could, I realized that I needed a sign to set on top of my truck, a sandwich board in the same style as my tunic, so people would know when they see my truck that I am cleaning litter in the vicinity.  I could clean out of sight and not worry about it.

I soon drove back into town to take a break at home and to order those signs, which should be ready this coming Wednesday, 9 days later, along with the stickers for my bags.  When I came back and continued, I found a discarded TV in the ditch next to the Fairgrounds parking lot, broken in two pieces and several smaller ones by impact.  I cut the wires that held the two big pieces together and put them in separate bags, along with some big cardboard, and left them up by the guardrail as I used the bucket to finish filling the two bags.

I got about to the end of the guardrail that day, and picked up 5 bags of trash.  I took them to the All-Sports Park again, this time going in the main entrance and dropping them at cans here and there.  The last two, with the TV and a 2’ x 4’ stiff sheet of fiberglass, were left next to the dumpster at Maintenance. 

Starting a Big Job: Redwood Avenue

Sunday, February 16^th, 2014

A week or so before this particular weekend, I called our Assistant City Manager and told him that I wanted to clean up Redwood Avenue, but it was scary; there is too much trash.  I needed a place to put it.  So far, I was doing okay dropping grocery bags of trash into public cans, but this job would take big bags, there was so much big trash.  He said he’d call around and see what they could do.

A few hours later, a nice lady from Community Development called and said that they’d decided to give me yellow bags like ODOT uses, and I could leave them next to trash cans in whatever park is most convenient to me.  The special bags would discourage people from thinking that they could drop their household trash likewise.  I quickly realized that they could be used for advertising, and ordered some stickers to let people know who had filled them.  In the meantime, I’m writing GPgardener.com on them with permanent marker.

It took most of another week or so before they got the bags, but this day I was ready to really work Redwood Avenue.  ODOT bags are made especially for litter cleaning: they are square, not so long as to drag; and they are tough.  Recalling my work crew days in 2010, I took a 2-foot marking stake I’d picked up the previous week and rolled up one side of the bag on it for easy carrying and filling, right above “GPgardener.com,” showing it off to passing traffic.

That was after doing litter pickup along my dog walking route and cleaning at Schroeder Dog Park, as I’d done Saturday at Greenwood Dog Park before going to work gardening.  While at Greenwood, I figured out to blow the bark a bit further off the path, to keep it from being kicked right back onto the pavement.  I noticed later in the week that it worked fairly well; a lot less was on the path than ever before.  By the next Saturday, it at least had not spread all the way across the sidewalk to the gutter.

At Schroeder Dog Park, a gentleman complained about people who don’t pick up after their dogs and those who sit and watch their dogs dig holes that his show dogs trip and hurt themselves in.  He suggested security cameras and signs warning of fines and banishment; it works at the Kennel Club.  After picking up after such people and filling holes with loose gravel frequently, I can’t disagree.  That is, once I use up the large, loose gravel in the large dog pen and replace it with 4 x 8 sand, a much nicer walking surface.

Earlier in the week, I’d noticed a china plate broken in several pieces in the middle of Greenwood at Rogue River Avenue, while walking my dog just as it was getting light.  Since I wasn’t picking up litter, I figured I’d come back later in the day and get it.  I should have at least moved it out of the road.  I forgot to get it that day, and on my way home Friday, I saw that it had been run over, divided and multiplied all over the street for half a block, like paper under a lawn mower.  I couldn’t pick it up Saturday in the time available, but I went back Sunday and swept it off the street after working Schroeder.

I didn’t stop to pick up litter at the Intersection of the Redwoods with Petey in the truck as I had done previously, since I planned to come right back and start Redwood Avenue that day.  I took Petey home; had lunch; swept up the broken plate; and proceeded toward Redwood.  But the litter on the Caveman Bridge made me stop on the other side and pick up both sides of it and the area between it and my truck.

While I was doing so, I reflected that the Chamber of Commerce could sponsor weekly cleanup of the Caveman Bridge.  Or another business could; one $500 Super Sponsor should be enough for that landmark.  Another could sponsor the 7^th Street Bridge, or the Parkway Bridge, or the Intersection of the Redwoods for weekly cleanup.  Several could sponsor Baker Park, or the underside of the Caveman Bridge.  Ideas were really flowing, because I had gotten my first donation in the mail (as opposed to being handed to me) a few days before.  I needed to set up sponsor pages and places to sponsor, and then start personally asking people to sponsor my work.  People with money like to be asked personally to give it to good causes.

When I finally got down to Redwood Avenue, I started at the beginning, where the divider between it and Redwood Highway starts.  The north side was very dirty with mostly small litter, it being all pavement at that point in front of the county fairgrounds property.  There is a lot of dirt and gravel on the pavement in the area between the parking lots and street, which attracts small litter but doesn’t hold much big stuff.  People tend to throw their litter where it will not look out of place.  The divider on the south held mainly cigarette butts; I moved back and forth as the mood took me and traffic allowed.  Cigarette butts show up first and everywhere; tobacco smokers are naturally careless.

Larger litter started showing up more where there were plants like blackberries to hide it, which there are in front of the grandstands, where there is also long, white “saw horse” barrier left lying on the ground, too heavy for me to set up straight alone, so I left it.  In the wide gravel stretch just before the fence, someone had scattered what appeared to be a 500-piece puzzle.  I did not have the patience for every piece; I figure I’ll pick up a batch every time I start down the Avenue, and get them all sooner or later.

Yes, I intend to start from the beginning every weekend.  I hate to let a place I’ve cleaned get dirty.  We’ll see how long that lasts, or how far I can get.

Lots of big litter started at the fence, with shrubs and taller weeds to hide food and drink trash.  I got as far as the main entrance to the YMCA in the four hours I was working on Redwood that day, and collected only 2 big bags of trash, which I dropped off in the All Sports Park at the trash cans near the tennis court and bathroom. 

Each piece of little litter takes as much time to pick up as larger litter, except where one can sweep them up.  For each piece of litter one can see from a car, there are 50-100 unseen pieces that must be picked up, one by one.  But even the smallest glitter of glass or balled-up gum wrapper can be seen by a person walking, and attracts more and larger litter, which is why they all must be picked up.