Trash train, photo via lurvely.com

Yes, it’s devastating to be waiting late night, to hear that rumble of promise, only to discover it’s the freaking trash train. Delays suck. But really, will we throw less away just because we have no where to throw it? Sure, there’s evidence that if we don’t have trays to load up, we take less food in cafeterias. It seems like a leap, though, to apply the same logic to solid waste. Thoughts?

The women, including Lucy Wambui, featured in a video and report on Elmendorp’s site, collect plastic bags from the dump and weave them into marketable goods. In an area of the world ravaged by poverty, HIV, domestic abuse and drug addiction, these women are bettering their lives and educating the next generation on the income they earn selling recycled plastic. Lucy, for example, pays her grandson’s school fees with part of her income.

I find this piece particularly compelling because I have been to Nakuru, spent the night in the national park for which the area is famed and even spent a night in town without ever crossing paths with a community of trashpickers. Elmendorp’s shot of the dump site with flamingo lake in the background beautifully illustrates the contrast between the two worlds. It reminds me of this photo, which I shared here in 2010, taken from the shore of the same lake.

Lake Nakuru

How different the planet appears from the other side of the looking glass.

Dear L —

Fell asleep in a park. Started to rain. Woke up with

my hat full of leaves. You are all I see when I open

or close a book.

                                                                         Yours,

                                                                               M

I hope one day to send or receive such a perfect note. Finding value in old things, ruminating on the lives led by their former owners and never throwing them away forms one of the novel’s central themes. Smith fills the short chapters with hauntingly beautiful strings of words describing childhood memories in Alaska and adolescence in the Pacific Northwest, contrasted with a day in Isabelle’s present-day life as she navigates those delicious moments when a crush becomes a Real Possibility.

I discovered Glaciers at the one-year anniversary party of one my favorite literary organizations, Late Night Library, where the author read from the book. The Late Night Library podcast, produced by my friend Erin Hoover and her collaborator Paul Martone, features first books by emerging authors. I recommend subscribing if you love poetry, fiction, intelligent conversation and free content.

Photo by anthonyhallphoto.com

Tangentially related personal story:

These well-crafted boards are a far cry from my first and only skateboard, purchased from a dingy toy store in Harlem overcrowded with cheap plastic toys imported from sweatshops around the world. I wanted a cap gun, the kind the boys in my building used to run around shooting, but my parents forbade it. With regret, I gave up on that campaign and focused my lust on a thick wooden skateboard decorated on the underside with a Bruce Lee-inspired painting of a shirtless Asian man in jeans. I believe it asaid “Kung Fu” above his head, in Kung Fu font.

In retrospect, that skateboard was the first significant purchase I made with my own money. I saved my allowance for weeks and did extra chores for extra coin to reach my goal more quickly. Then, through much whining, I convinced my dad to walk me to the store on his day off and plunked down my money for the prize. I can still picture the shopkeeper taking my Kung Fu board off the display shelf behind the counter and handing it over.

Many happy trips to the park followed, where more often than riding the board upright, I would take it to the top of a hill, sit on it and grip the plastic hand grips on either side as I rolled to the bottom. It functioned mainly as a sled on wheels. It had a large red plastic bumper, which I could activate like a brake by lifting my legs up in the air, leaning back and using my butt to tip the end of the board toward the pavement. Good times.

A couple years later, a friend’s older brother declared my Kung Fu board a piece of shit and proceeded to prove its poor construction by slamming it repeatedly into the stoop until deep scratches stretched across the mildly offensive design and, finally, the flimsy wood splintered and split in two.

I guess the lessons here are that big brothers can be cruel and cheap things never last.

Kim White Red Southwest Bag

From White’s website:

Why are Kim White Handbags so special? Made from vintage automotive fabrics, Kim White uses dead stock never-used textiles intended for use in American automobiles: cars, trucks and vans. She fortuitously unearthed an entire warehouse of automotive fabric, which may be the last existing stock anywhere in the US, and she is the sole owner of these amazing textiles.

I took a photo of the bag, waited a week and went back for it. As luck would have it, Kaight advertised a “shop your values” deal on Twitter so I got a slight break on the steep price. I figure fabric designed for the inside of cars aught to last a while. It’s cute, right?

Kaz Oshiro's Dumpster (Flesh with Turquoise Swoosh) 2011

The photo appeared in the fabulous Walker Art Center‘s monthly magazine as part of a feature on a new show called Lifelike. According to the Walker website, “Lifelike invites a close examination of artworks based on commonplace objects and situations, which are startlingly realistic, often playful, and sometimes surreal.”

Check out an interview with the painter/sculptor here. My favorite bit is Oshiro discussing his choice of media:

If you know the construction of a painting, you have a wood frame and you stretch canvas over it. So that structure is kind of important, and you can’t really go beyond that. The objects I’m making are boxes. If you see the conventional painting frame, it’s kind of thin. But in my case, wood stretcher bars become a box and then I stretch canvas over it.

I’ve been making trash bins and dumpsters for awhile. Sometimes I’m not sure why. Somehow I’m really attracted to it. You see dumpsters everywhere in the United States on the street. I drive around town. In LA, I have to drive everywhere. Somehow I always see things on the street, and everything’s coming from my memory.

Why I paint them? First of all, I like the shape of the metal big box. You see all kinds of marks on it. The [form of the] dumpster allows me to paint the way abstract painters do. That’s one of the things I like about painting dumpsters. To me, it’s existing between representation and abstract painting.

Dumpster camera

It’s a twist on decorating a dumpster, rather than dressing it up, they transformed waste receptacles into beauty-making machines.

Photo taken by dumpster

Cathedral of Junk

Looks like a magical place and yet another reason I need to get to Austin.