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Truly, the Bottle Bill is out of date; it is hardly worth the hassle of turning them in.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.”

Under the Caveman Bridge, Week 3: Back to the 50's

7/26/14

I was going to set up as usual just inside Riverside Park, but the West entrance was blocked off.  A couple of gentlemen came up in a cart and I asked them if all the entrances were blocked.  Indeed they were; a classic car show had taken over the park for the day.  But they said that I could clean litter from under the Bridge.

They had opened the entrance to the skate park on the other side of 6th Street/Williams Highway, and the Boy Scouts were collecting $3 for parking in it, apparently anywhere west of the Caveman Bridge.  The grass there is not watered, so parking couldn't damage it.

Indeed, apart from some mowing and hedging, it is totally unmaintained, and I discovered another patch of star thistle alongside the beginning of the bike/pedestrian path under the Bridge.  I got to thinking that the city needs to aggressively maintain the disc golf course, not use it for occasion parking.  Disc golfers are a messy lot even in a well-maintained area.  Ugly landscaping gives them more excuse for messiness, and maintenance workers less reason to do a good job.  No one likes to maintain ugly.

The Boy Scouts waived away my money, since I would be working.  I offered them some of my lemon water and grapes, and gave them leaflets.  Since I was parking in that end of the park, I had to clean it first, at least along the street and path.  

I quickly found a mess of auto glass where someone had apparently smashed a window, and went back for the broom and dustpan and cleaned it up.  Then I got to pulling trash out of the ivy and bushes to the south of my parking space, and kept going to the corner of Park Street.  

There were 3 bottles smashed along the sidewalk and in the parking lot around the spa place, requiring sweeping.  The owner ignored it as he drove out over it with a hot tub, just as he ignores the other litter and the weeds that infest his pavements.  But I was able to give a leaflet or two to people who saw me working on the glass.

I did all that even before walking the bridge, I think.  After cleaning the top, where I found a bit less trash behind the parapet, mostly old and grown over, I proceeded to the stairs, the tree, and then down to the eating area by the river to get the big trash.  

That's where I ran into Chelsea Bledsoe's brother, who offered to help.  I regret that I forgot his first name, forgetting to fix it in my memory by saying it three times or writing it down.  But the young Mr. Bledsoe helped me for about an hour and was good company. 

It being Back to the 50’s, I decided to skip the 7^th Street Bridge after my mid-afternoon break, but after seeing how dead the park was getting, I went there after all, cleaned the litter from the top, and got the last 2 sections of detritus on the East side.

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.

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.

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.

4 x 8 Sand for Parks

Tuesday, February 18^th, 2014

Every other Tuesday has been for the Parks department for a while, until I get done with special projects.  Then I will use that day to catch up on my own yard.  On this day, I planned to bring a load of 4 x 8 sand to the Office to finish the putting behind the fuel tanks, and take the rest to Schroeder, to rebuild the Dog Park memorial paver bed. 

It had been built with plain soil under and between the pavers, which grew loads of weeds.  A parks volunteer and some work crew slaves started weeding it one day in midsummer while I was weeding the dog park.  The work crew was brought without weeding tools, as they rarely do weeding; Community Corrections owned no weeding tools.  (They have a hula hoe or two now; see "Starting Out In the Snow.")  

I lent them some tools, but had to take them back when it was time for me to leave.  They and the volunteer left at that point, 2/3 done, and it didn’t get finished until I did it last fall over a couple of weeding visits.  I was thinking then that I should pick up the pavers, use the dirt to fill holes in the dog pen, and reset them in 4 x 8 sand, which would be much easier to weed, being looser than dirt.

4 x 8 sand behind the fuel tanks

At the office, I decided that the moss and weeds all around the fuel tanks had to go and be replaced by 4 x 8 sand, so I used a bit more time and sand than I had planned to.  But it looks good.  I also weeded a bit and blew the dirt off their concrete apron in front of the shop, reflecting that they need 4 x 8 in front of it to keep the dirt at bay.

It was starting into scattered showers by the time I got to Schroeder.  There was a lady there, reading while her dogs played.  I started picking up the pavers, laying them just far enough to the side to allow me to work, in the same pattern in which they were laid.  I rearranged a few for better fit as I went on; they were made with two different molds, and some are done portrait while others are landscape.  

Once they were out of the way, I used my flat shovel to take the dirt out that had been between them and flattened the bottom.  I didn’t need to go deeper than they had been laid; the box was deep enough to lay some sand down and lay the pavers on top.  There wasn't enough dirt to fill all the holes that had been dug in the previous two weeks; I will have to continue with the large, irritating gravel in the pen.  It's irritating because it is too large to walk on comfortably.  Some of it is large enough to turn ankles.

4 x 8 sand, screened 1/4"-1/8" rounded river sand, is great for laying pavers and flagstones because it doesn't pack like regular sand; it stays loose and pours like sugar. One can lay a rock on it, wiggle it, and it will set into the sand, filling the hollows and curves.  Laid an inch deep, it makes a great walking surface that is easy to maintain with a hula hoe and rake.  Laid deeper, it is like walking on a beach, but it makes a great driveway that eventually packs down for easy walking.

The young lady and her dogs were joined by relatives, who welcomed my latest leaflet, as she’d seen one before.  I asked her mother to take photos of me working for this post; she took a bunch.  They soon had to leave as the showers got heavier.

I got the sand laid in the bottom and started putting pavers back in, filling between them as I went.  I had enough sand and time to do about half of them; ran out of time to even lay the rest back in the box.  I had an SOS meeting to go to; no time even to go home and clean up.

I’m heading back there today, Monday the 24^th, to put the pavers back for now.  Next Tuesday, I will bring the rest of the 4 x 8, fill in between them, and spread some in the entrances to the dog parks and other muddy spots.  It’s great mulch for helping perennial grass grow, as well as keeping the mud off one’s feet.  That will complete Parks Projects for now, and I will start on my yard.

Raking Chips at Schroeder

February 2, 2014

After taking pictures of the mess at The Rocks and picking up several grocery bags of litter there, I went on to Schroeder dog park, finding a park ranger emptying trash cans from inside the big pen.  He allowed me to add my bags to a bag in his cart, and I moved on to look for litter inside the pens, this not being weeding season yet. 

It’s nice that Schroeder has two dog pens, one for big dogs and one for small.  Little dogs tend to be aggressive, and it is best to keep them separated from big dogs that can kill them with one shake.  It also allows one to take a larger aggressive dog in the small dog pen if no small dogs are around.

I think that weeding classes are going to be from March-October only; there’s too little action in February, even with some things blooming earlier than I’ve ever seen them.   I took my signs down a few weeks ago because of schedule changes and because they need a better font.  I’ll put up new ones before March.

I found a few butts and dog piles.  It was Super Bowl Sunday, and nobody else was there.  I picked up a bit around the parking lot and up the road, and policed the new playground.  

Schroeder Park's new playground, next to the dog park, before raking.  Someone left a sweater draped over the bench; I left it as well.

The fresh wood chips had been heaped deep around the equipment and in the open space by kids playing, and I decided to rake them flat.  A couple of boys came by on bikes and played on the equipment, escaping zombies, while I raked around them.  By the time I finished around the equipment, I decided that the other half could wait until next week.  It was time to move on.