A basket is a terrible thing to waste
Apr. 9th, 2008 03:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"Only after the last tree has been cut down,
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten."
- Cree prophecy
A poster emblazoned with this maxim hung in the bullpen of my college newspaper office. Often, when I was sitting in front of a blank screen (or crossword puzzle) my eyes would drift up toward the poster and imagine that it was hung there decades ago by an idealistic young student hellbent on changing the world, one square foot of wall space at a time; or perhaps by a more recent undergraduate expressing ironic dissatisfaction with the university's dining plan.
The poster's message takes on added relevance with each passing day, as Mother Earth passive-aggressively defends herself against the diffident attitude of humanity (perhaps proving, once and for all, that Mother Earth is Jewish).
I usually approve of and participate in recycling programs. At home, I take care to appropriate newspapers, plastic, alumninum and glass to the proper receptacles. I get a little twinge of guilt every time I am walking down the street with nowhere to responsibly dispose of a soda can. And I instinctively look down on anyone who purchases bottled water for any purpose other than as a contingency against biochemical warfare.
Until recently, my office had a frustratingly lax approach to recycling. On my first day I was issued a small paper recycling bin along with my standard wastebasket. And for years I would dutifully separate standard white paper from colored, glossy or heavyweight stock and put it in the special bin.
Then, not long ago, I was working late enough that I saw the building's cleaning crew come around to my office with a giant garbage can. I watched the custodian dump the contents of my wastebasket into the can, and then she picked up the recycling bin and dumped those papers into the can as well. I felt as if cumulative hours of my life had been wasted for nothing, to say nothing of the self-satisfied "Good Samaritan" feeling.
But apparently the District of Columbia is now cracking down on trash disposal. Earlier this year the building's management company received a scorching memo from the district's Recycling Department of the Department of Public Works announcing random audits, stiff penalties and stern lectures. The management company in turn passed this terrifying memo along to we tenants, and now my forehead starts to bead with sweat every time I have to throw something away. The safest thing to do would probably be to just shred it, but I am frightened of getting my tie caught in the machine.
But that is not the real casualty here. No, the bigger issue is that the environmental crisis and related commitment to recycling has rendered extinct one of life's few uncomplicated joys: the wastepaper basketball shot.
In simpler times, a person could just crumple any old sheet of paper into a nice round ball -- there didn't even have to be anything on it! Ah, those were the days -- and give your finest hook shot/free throw/slam dunk into the garbage bin. It became a cliche: the wastebasket surrounded by numerous wads of paper. The activity was popularized in television ads. It was exploited for commerce.
And now the custom is disappearing. Recyclable paper needs to be filed neatly in its bin, and the nonrecyclable stuff just doesn't crumple right. And that's not even mentioning the deeply unsatisfying click of a computer's "delete" command. Just when it seemed like the Internet was giving us amazing new ways to goof off at work, global reality has extinguished an old standby.
He shot. He scored. The end.
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten."
- Cree prophecy
A poster emblazoned with this maxim hung in the bullpen of my college newspaper office. Often, when I was sitting in front of a blank screen (or crossword puzzle) my eyes would drift up toward the poster and imagine that it was hung there decades ago by an idealistic young student hellbent on changing the world, one square foot of wall space at a time; or perhaps by a more recent undergraduate expressing ironic dissatisfaction with the university's dining plan.
The poster's message takes on added relevance with each passing day, as Mother Earth passive-aggressively defends herself against the diffident attitude of humanity (perhaps proving, once and for all, that Mother Earth is Jewish).
I usually approve of and participate in recycling programs. At home, I take care to appropriate newspapers, plastic, alumninum and glass to the proper receptacles. I get a little twinge of guilt every time I am walking down the street with nowhere to responsibly dispose of a soda can. And I instinctively look down on anyone who purchases bottled water for any purpose other than as a contingency against biochemical warfare.
Until recently, my office had a frustratingly lax approach to recycling. On my first day I was issued a small paper recycling bin along with my standard wastebasket. And for years I would dutifully separate standard white paper from colored, glossy or heavyweight stock and put it in the special bin.
Then, not long ago, I was working late enough that I saw the building's cleaning crew come around to my office with a giant garbage can. I watched the custodian dump the contents of my wastebasket into the can, and then she picked up the recycling bin and dumped those papers into the can as well. I felt as if cumulative hours of my life had been wasted for nothing, to say nothing of the self-satisfied "Good Samaritan" feeling.
But apparently the District of Columbia is now cracking down on trash disposal. Earlier this year the building's management company received a scorching memo from the district's Recycling Department of the Department of Public Works announcing random audits, stiff penalties and stern lectures. The management company in turn passed this terrifying memo along to we tenants, and now my forehead starts to bead with sweat every time I have to throw something away. The safest thing to do would probably be to just shred it, but I am frightened of getting my tie caught in the machine.
But that is not the real casualty here. No, the bigger issue is that the environmental crisis and related commitment to recycling has rendered extinct one of life's few uncomplicated joys: the wastepaper basketball shot.
In simpler times, a person could just crumple any old sheet of paper into a nice round ball -- there didn't even have to be anything on it! Ah, those were the days -- and give your finest hook shot/free throw/slam dunk into the garbage bin. It became a cliche: the wastebasket surrounded by numerous wads of paper. The activity was popularized in television ads. It was exploited for commerce.
And now the custom is disappearing. Recyclable paper needs to be filed neatly in its bin, and the nonrecyclable stuff just doesn't crumple right. And that's not even mentioning the deeply unsatisfying click of a computer's "delete" command. Just when it seemed like the Internet was giving us amazing new ways to goof off at work, global reality has extinguished an old standby.
He shot. He scored. The end.
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Cree philosophy
Date: 2008-04-11 03:40 pm (UTC)Re: Cree philosophy
Date: 2008-04-11 04:24 pm (UTC)Re: Cree philosophy
Date: 2008-04-11 06:00 pm (UTC)