342. Greening 2019

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AIDS Walk 2019

Yesterday was AIDS Walk, which went really well again. For one thing there seemed to be an over abundance of us. I only worked four hours because we were done early. I reminded everyone of the factors that can make this event go sideways -- an abundance of “free” mixed stream boxes a producer of lube always gives the event, and overly enthusiastic volunteers who will pull bags too quickly that still need to be sorted. 

I arrived just as the walkers were returning and the entertainment was starting. I quickly determined that the Chevron area was creating the most mess so I worked there until it was time to start taking down our eco-stations. The problem here was that Chevron was mixing plastic flatware and lots (LOTS) of little condiment packages with the paper plates of food. So I was pulling out the plates -- with some food and a few cups -- after knocking off the plastic items. This resulted in a bunch of bags filled with my usual nearly 100% compost while the contamination built up at the bottom of the containers. But this was a nearly perfect event for me as I got to sort down the four stations in the Chevron area myself.  After getting out as much of the good stuff as I could reach, I would pull the bag and add it to the next station, slowly getting more and more of the food that had fallen to the bottom. By the final station there was just a mess of plastic and some food that I was happy to toss into the landfill. Then I moved on to shut down other stations that I had not been maintaining.

This was in Golden Gate Park’s Sharon Meadow. This being July, we didn’t get any sun until almost the end of the site cleanup. Typical summer in SF. 


One interesting, and surprising, thing happened yesterday. The new woman last year, who at this event was annoyed by my pulling out compost she had just sorted, praised my method. Either she finally noticed how it works or she finally noticed that I have “special” status with our boss as the oldest employee (who remembers details like the lube boxes from hell from year to year). Don’t know which it is. Don’t really care.

Undiscovered 2019

Surprise! (for me) they moved it two blocks west. Luckily you can just catch a glimpse of the new location down Jessie. 

The new location is a little harder to get to but also more secure. And the event is now more like a baby La Cocina event. If it gets any busier we’re going to need more than 6 yards for the compost. 

I trained the new guy, who seems to be a quick study. Since it was already busy when we started, I was in sorting and pulling mode, so he, to my surprise, copied that as well as just the basic sorting. I was prepared to cover one of the eco-stations in the entertainment area, as well as the ones in the food area, but the first time I hit it he was already there doing what I would do. Happy day.

Because it was so crowded at my end, dropping my sorted bags in the toter at the south edge of the event worked well. It might have been easier for E___ to use the toter, instead of the wheeled round, for hauling, but that would have left the bag stash more visible -- though I’m not sure anyone would have cared.

The only problem at the end of the day was that my head-lamp batteries had died so I had to improvise to do the final sort of the station bags. That and the mess left by some vendors.


I pulled a single blue glove from the compost -- just to mess with me, I’m pretty sure. And the event staff put a stack of pizza boxes in the compost without removing the plastic spacers or foil condiment packs because, of course they did.

Art & Soul 2019

Another greening season, another Art & Soul Festival in downtown Oakland. What I like about it is that it's the first of the Oakland events I work with James, who supervises another crew that does mostly hauling and grounds. That and that it gives me a chance to get warm in the middle of a cold SF summer.

What I don’t like is the amazingly consistent resistance of A&S goers to what we are trying to do. They insist on throwing their food and plates into the landfill, and if you call them on this some will tell you they do it on principle because sorting the trash isn’t their job. It, apparently, is the job of the Man. The food vendors are also total assholes, but that never really changes. I only had three vendor eco-stations to maintain this time so I would go in, sort them all out, work the street and concert areas for an hour, return and find the most ungodly and unlikely messes. Which took much longer to sort out than if we just collected their damn bags and sorted it and kept them away from the sorted bins. I’ve actually sent out an email suggesting we drop the pretense of “vendor self-sorting” but I doubt that will fly since people would rather believe that we are slowly educating the public and vendors. After twelve years of greening work I can attest that there is no change, especially with vendors. Though to be fair, every year at this time I have to ask what the Oakland bin colors mean because gray for recycling and burgundy (brown) for landfill makes absolutely no sense.

At the very end of my shift on Sunday I was scheming the pickup of a bunch of leftover food from the caterer in the VIP area behind the big concert area near me, while trying to wind down the vendors. Some had already left so I pulled the properly sorted compost and recycling toters and put them out in the street to be taken to our dumpster location. A bunch of MEN were sitting around the other eco-station talking and drinking while the women took down their setups. I couldn’t even get to the station because of the lounging men so I said screw it and headed for the VIP area. Which turned out to be a good decision as they managed (how?) to not know that their Sterno cans didn’t belong in landfill. So I collected them for reuse while my crew chief showed up for the food pickup I’d been scheming since the previous night, when we composted all the leftovers. (I was really hungry and they looked delicious.. But getting them home on the train is just too much bother.)

There was at least one funny thing that happened on Sunday. We have a worker who admits to being OCD and, while much better lately, has a tendency to be too perfect when sorting trash when it gets busy. But she’s the perfect person to sic on a dumpster that is obviously too contaminated. 

Anyway, the first time I worked with her and noticed her problem was at A&S many years ago. I was working the same area (around half a dozen public eco-stations plus the vendor stations) and she was supposed to be covering for me while I took a lunch break. I left her working a particularly vile BBQ place where they were giving away small, but free portions of ribs. Most of the ribs were going into the landfill, because Oakland, and she was trying to sort that out. I took my half hour break and returned to find her still at it. She had never left to cover the other stations she was so focused on getting this one perfect. Sisyphus had nothing on her. I was so pissed, imagining the state of the other stations, that I left her at it and rushed to clean up the mess she had inadvertently made.


Anyway, her soul sister was working Sunday and she too was focused on the landfill bags. It is hard to let all the good compost at the bottom of landfill bags go at A&S, but it’s a war you can’t win unless you stay at one station all afternoon. But at least I was keeping the four eco-stations in order (by quickly pulling out the bulky paper items on top) so she was actually helping, but in a way that doesn’t make any long term sense. This time I was just amused. I probably should have talked to her about it, but I’m not sure that’s really my job. And, except when she wore out the bottom of one landfill bag and left it leaking it’s contents onto the street, she was making my job a little easier.

Outside Lands 2019

I arrived an hour early at the usual service entrance but they wouldn’t let me in there. I walked miles -- around the event -- to the entry closest to where I was supposed to be working but they weren’t letting anyone in there. I finally tried the main entrance for concert goers but they didn’t like my backpack and water bottle. So I left. First time I’ve ever not managed to work my shift.

That was Friday and I’m next scheduled for Sunday. I will go in without my backpack or much of my gear and with little enthusiasm. This is my least favorite event anyway and now they’ve made it even worse.

Sunday
Well I did finally get in and to my work area, but it was a pain and took about an hour. I also managed to have my phone die on me -- for the first time -- so I couldn’t contact anyone when I was stuck short of where I needed to go. But then the coolest thing happened. While sorting bags of trash I ran into a brand new cable, still in its packaging, so that I was then able to recharge my phone. And it’s a neat little cable, much smaller than mine. So I ended up coming out ahead there. Of course I did have to pay $4 for a bottle of water since I couldn’t bring mine into the event.

As before, we got caught-up before the last set and they stopped bringing us more bags, so we had nothing to do until almost time to quit. 

Oh another cool thing happened: Almost at the end some people from a bar booth started bringing us their trash on a golf cart. There were bags full of beer cans -- and unusually for a vendor, they was nothing but beer cans so they could go directly into the recycling. I went to grab some more of the bags so I was too late to catch the woman tossing the entire, unopened bag into the dumpster. You have to open them up and dump the contents. Fortunately, I had a younger coworker to send in to get the bag. And he found a bunch of other bags that had no business in there. We had no idea how or when they went in. But the point is that, if not for the woman tossing in her bag, we would not have noticed the others. It SO worked to our advantage. Or at least my advantage since I wasn’t the one who had to jump in and fish them out.

Unfortunately there was no upside to the guy I helped dump a large toter of “recycling” into the recycling dumpster only to then discover it was completely mixed trash. We had to fish out all the trash and compost. The same guys had a toter full of compost that we opened the compost dumpster so they could dump it directly and they managed to do that in the worst way possible, so that stuff was draining out under the doors. Aside from those two idiots, it was a pretty good shift.

292. Bastille Day, AIDS Walk, and Genji

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Genji

Something I’m really enjoying about this book is the short length of many of the chapters. They can be as short as a page or two. Almost like prose haiku. Genji is continuing to be an overly attentive guardian to Tamakazura. He is her music instructor now. I’ve learned to trust Murasaki S., but I do wonder what she’s about here. Tamakazura’s father has discovered another daughter by-blow (the Omi Lady) and brought her to his house, where she has become a source of amusement to everyone. Tamakazura and her ally within Genji’s household, we are told, now appreciate the wisdom of her not going directly to her father, but this seems a bit contrived as the two young women would seem to be nothing alike. And of course then her half brothers wouldn’t be falling in love with her -- not clear to me if they have actually seen or conversed with her. 

Genji’s day-to-day life as a Chancellor and older person longing for a life of retirement seems quite similar to his younger days except that now he maintains a compound full of past, present, and possibly future paramours. He is currently living with two daughters of men he knows and associates with, and I don’t think either of them are aware of this, I know Tamakazura’s father doesn’t know. Not sure about Murasaki’s father. (Yes he does. This comes out later when Tamakazura is mated off with the husband of another of his daughters.)

This would be a fascinating book to read with a feminist book club... though I would be a little concerned for my own safety. 

A few words about the binding of this edition of the book. The cloth cover is quite lovely, the spine is covered in purple cloth -- wisteria purple being Murasaki’s color and the meaning of the name. The majority of the cover looks like handmade paper or very subtle marbling and there’s a leafy symbol in gold at the top right of the front cover. Haven’t been able to determine what it means as yet, but it is quite handsome. 

All in all a very good looking book. The work is divided into two volumes which fit into a hard case which I haven’t looked at as yet.

Days later: I just noticed that the Knopf borzoi is embossed into the back of the cover. Lovely touch.

The Royal Outing
The Omi lady is yet another character who could have been written by Jane Austen. She has some Mary Bennett about her and perhaps a little Mrs Elton as well. If someone were to do a version of Genji set at a much later date, she could be the half-American daughter who doesn’t get Japanese customs. And Lydia Bennett! This only struck me at the end of The Cyress Pillar, but it’s probably the most apt. I retract the other suggestions and will go with Lydia.

As appalling as some of the gender relations are here, when you remember this is the 10th century it’s an amazingly civil society. A European equivalent would probably be even more appalling.

Purple Trousers
Besides the brevity of these chapters, the other remarkable thing about them is that almost nothing is happening. Mostly a series of interviews with poetry, where either Tamakazura or Murasaki are concealed behind screens or in another room and communicating through one of their women. I’ve started to imagine additional chapters in which the young lady is tipsy and flatulent. And her poems are rude limericks.

Bastille Day

Aside from our not having a single toter to help with carting around our equipment and the bags of trash, this event went quite smoothly. Most of the day was on the boring side. The turnout seemed better this year, I suspect because of the World Cup, with all the French expats feeling more French than usual. (See also notes on the following day.)

The entertainment started at 4:00pm -- maybe earlier than last year -- and was mostly cover bands. The last group was the best. They played popular music from the 1960s sung in French. I always hope for “French” music I haven’t heard before but always get the usual hits from the ‘60s but in French. The musicians were older guys, but the two singers were young women dressed in what I would describe as Carnaby Street fashions. They looked quite smart; and sang well. 

Since we are so much aware of our bad luck, I have to mention an instance of quite striking good luck. Recology provided us with four,  six yard dumpsters for the event. This would give us one dumpster for each trash stream plus a spare if we ran out of room for something -- or we could have made one a dedicated cardboard dumpster. Except that when we (not me personally) arrived, one of the dumpsters already contained a bunch of trash and a wheelchair. “We” sorted everything else, but left the wheelchair. 

At the end of the day we locked up the dumpsters so people don’t steal even more of the recycling and, more importantly, don’t contaminate what we’ve sorted. These dumpsters are quite battered, so if was hard to get even one of the two possible locking points to work for the three dumpsters we had used. But, finally we got them locked up and turned to the dumpster we had left empty except for the wheelchair. This one was so mangled we could do nothing with it. We so lucked out.

AIDS Walk 2018

(I think my 3rd AIDS Walk)
Walking down my hill on the way to breakfast and then work, I saw a mass of people blocking Powell Street opposite the Sir Francis Drake Hotel and heard, for the second day in a row, the strains of Le Marseillais. And that was how I learned the French had won the World Cup.

AIDS Walk has always been a mess and last year it was a disaster. I had to stay over an extra two hours past the end of my shift just to get things in order so we could finally leave. But I complained and made a bunch of suggestions and, surprise, I was listened to. This year was almost easy.

There were still a half dozen or more trash boxes provided by a lubricant company on the field, but they were mostly backstage or on the periphery. Scores of these satanic objects were collected early on and tossed into recycling -- I had been harping about these boxes for the previous 24 hours. 

The problem with these boxes are that they are not part of our three stream system. People throw everything into them. And sometimes they aren’t even lined, so you can’t even pull out a bag of trash and sort it. You have to cart around the entire box full of mixed trash.

With these boxes mostly off the field, there were also fewer places for people to throw trash that we had to then sort. This is actually a good thing. When I arrived at 1pm, there was no pile of trash bags at the dumpsters and no one was sorting there. Last year at that point there was already a hopelessly large pile of bags, as volunteers were pulling anything close to a full bag and bringing it to the dumpsters to be sorted. This year, more of our people were sorting on the field and the volunteers were only hauling bags we had pulled and that didn’t need further sorting. The usual system. Yes, it works here too... surprise!

And the post walk entertainment this year was better. As I was walking up to the event, at Sharon Meadow in Golden Gate Park, I suddenly remembered just how awful the entertainment has been in the past. Usually it’s people who are famous (or wealthy) for something else who also have a cover band in their spare time. Last year, maybe, the lead singer really couldn’t carry a tune. But this year the final acts were people known for their participation on RuPaul’s Drag Race. I didn’t know them, but some were spectacularly good, and they could all carry a tune. For the first time I felt bad for the entertainers because so many walkers don’t hang around for the show. In the past this has been a sign of good taste and self-preservation. Plus the wind was getting fierce.


The main drama of the day had to do with someone hiding the keys to a rental truck in a place that was impossible to get to without having the keys. I had nothing to do with this debacle, so I just ignored it. I was cajoled into driving said truck, once the keys had been expensively retrieved, back to U-haul. I was supposed to put a couple gallons of gas into it before returning the truck, but, for the life of me, I could not get the pump to work. It’s probably been over a decade since I’ve bought gas, but you wouldn’t think the process would have changed so much. I still have no idea what I was doing wrong. 

178. Big vs Little Me

Previous - 177. Johnson & Montaigne

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The Big Me

This is Brooks's wrapping up chapter. He starts out talking about the cultural shift represented by Johnny Unitas and Joe Namath in Super Bowl III. Unitas represents the traditional "Little Me" values Brooks is advocating for, while Namath is a classic "Big Me" figure. He goes on to identify Unitas with moral realism and Namath with moral romanticism. He doesn't talk about 18th and 19th century romanticism. (If he had, he could have brought up the shift to valuing this world over the next. Brooks seems to have less of a grip on what is the source of the problem he's warning about than Dostoevsky had over a century earlier.) Instead, he sees the Greatest Generation as turning its back on moral realism as a result of the Depression and WW2. (If he were British, he would probably push this back to the Lost Generation after the Great War.)

All this puts me in an awkward position. I'm a realist (Burkean conservative) and I blame the Greatest Generation (or their parents) for the transition to an auto-centric national infrastructure following the war. I have no problem with Brooks throwing some moral stones in their direction as well.

This is similar to the (quite natural) tendency to blame those damn Millennials for everything wrong with the world today, forgetting that the Millennials are literally the children of Boomer values.


The Soul of Man Under Meritocracy
p251 The purification of the mertocracy has also reinforced the idea that each of us is wonderful inside. It has also encouraged self-aggrandizing tendencies... You have, like me, spent your life trying to make something of yourself, trying to have an impact, trying to be reasonably successful in this world. That's meant lot of competition and a lot of emphasis on individual achievement... moving toward success and status. 

How is this different from Johnson and the exemplar strivers in this book?

This competitive pressure meant that we all have to spend more time, energy, and attention on the external Adam I climb toward success and we have less time, energy, and attention to devote to the internal world of Adam II. [Still not seeing this.]

I've found in myself, and I think I've observed in others, a certain meritocratic mentality, which is based on the self-trusting, self-puffing insights of the Romantic tradition, but which is also depoeticized and despiritualized. If moral realists saw the self as a wilderness to be tamed, and if people in the New Age 1970s saw the self as an Eden to be actualized, people living in a high-pressure meritocracy are more likely to see the self as a resource base to be cultivated. The self is less likely to be seen as the seat of the soul, or as the repository of some transcendent spirit. Instead, the self is a vessel of human capital. It is a series of talents to be cultivated efficiently and prudently... The self is about talent, not character.

Once again, and hopefully for the last time, I would know what Dostoevsky was getting at here but with Brooks I'm at a loss. He seems to be praising classic middle class character and values while sniping at middle class meritocracy. 

p253 The shrewd [meritocratic] animal has streamlined his inner humanity to make his ascent more aerodynamic. He carefully manages his time and his emotional commitments. Things once done in a poetic frame of mind, such as going to college, meeting a potential lover, or bonding with an employer, are now done in a more professional frame of mind. Is this person, opportunity, or experience of use to me? There just isn't time to get carried away by love and passion... If you commit to one big thing you will close off options toward other big things. You will be plagued by a Fear of Missing Out.

Now, starting on page 262, we get Brooks's list of propositions that make up a "Humility Code" intended to address the flaws in our meritocracy. 1. has to do with "holiness" and 2. and 3. concern our flawed nature and tendency to sin. I love it when people jump into drawing up an ethics before tackling metaphysics or meta-ethics. Are we all supposed to be closeted Christians, just needing a gentle prod to follow Alyosha into the monastery? 

It's true of course that if this book contained a full-throated call to Jesus, I wouldn't be reading it, but this goes beyond burying the lede to not even mentioning the main point. I suppose he is leaving it to Dorothy Day and Augustine to speak for him here. And I have to wonder if his failure to include any Jewish people indicates he identifies Jews with the middle class world order he is attacking? That would surprise me, as he hasn't seemed to think things through that far in what he's actually written.

I'm in the middle of his "Humility Code" now. We are deep into "the struggle against sin and for virtue," "Character is built on your inner confrontation" and achieving "self-mastery." And all this reminds me of Dorothy Day's daughter Tamar. Granted, all I know about her is the few sentences Brooks has given us, but as I've already compared her to Lizaveta, I think I'm safe in using her as an example of someone who doesn't struggle with self-mastery and sin. It's interesting that people like this are of very little interest to people like Brooks. Someone who is a natural in this respect seems to be less worthy than someone who can only avoid sin (some of the time) with the daily help of Jesus and all the saints.

I'm still not sure what Dostoevsky meant to show by contrasting Lizaveta with the monks -- who were so like high school Mean Girls. Perhaps he simply wanted a moral opposite of Fyodor so he could breed them and get Pavel. Regardless, he presents her as someone who is naturally good. Just as Brooks gives us Montaigne who is naturally (or at least as a result of nature and nurture both) reasonable and comparatively untroubled. I'm actually surprised Brooks included him since he can do so little with him aside from contrasting him with Johnson.

AIDS Walk

Today I took the bus all the way out to Golden Gate Park to work only four hours at the AIDS Walk event. Take a moment to think well of me... I'll wait.

The truth here is that I missed Oyster Fest (not sure why) so when I saw this event posted my first thought was "Pass" but then I saw "at Sharon Meadow" and realized it would be an excuse to have a late breakfast at the Pork Store, where I haven't been since April when they raised their prices. So really I'm just getting paid to have my favorite breakfast and put in a fairly token four hours of work in the park. Or so I thought.

This is as difficult as an even gets without being Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Lots of sponsors buying too much food and coffee to hand out and then throwing the rest away at the end. And the walk started and ended late so the cleanup was also delayed. And we were as poorly organized as I've ever seen us. At the end of the day, no one was in charge. 

The result was a pile of bags and trashed boxes like we rarely see these days, and only a couple people left to deal with it all. Two additional people were called in to take charge while I stayed an additional couple hours and the others also worked past their scheduled quitting time.

I had almost forgotten how much I hate back-end sorting but doing some without tables to sort on or cans to sort into quickly reminded me. We also ran out of space in the dumpsters. It was a mess.

But here's what I don't know, Would it have gone better if I had been doing my usual roving sorting a couple hours earlier (and thus longer)? Actually I do know it would have gone better, but would it have made enough of a difference to prevent the mess at the end. Maybe. Maybe not.

Next - 179. What's wrong with TRTC?