I saw my mistress the other day, and it was divine because it was completely unexpected. The forecast was for rain---90% chance, to be exact, and nearby counties were under flood warnings. Foul weather does not agree with the love of my life, or me either, for that matter. So I was resigned to the thought of sitting around watching football instead of the possibility of a thrilling rendezvous. Thankfully modern technology intervened and made my day.
I kept a close eye on the weather.com on the off-chance I'd be able to get out after all. You're familiar with the screen: the patches of green, yellows, and reds that float along in time-lapse fashion, giving you some idea of the intentions of the wet stuff. Zoom out, note the time of the pictures, and plan accordingly. It's the high-tech version of looking out the window and looking at the dog and other animals for odd, weather-fearing behavior. Suddenly things were looking up! The north part of city seemed to have a mystical force field that kept the rain at bay to the west. The bands were simply moving north and staying away, so it was on!
I threw on the appropriate attire and zipped over to the park not far from my house. Predictably it was nearly empty, which is always a best-case scenario for our meetings. Seeing that the weather was touch and go, the desk clerk just handed my a key and encouraged me to see how much we could get in before the rain came. No, this wasn't a some bizarre outdoor hourly motel for cheaters, I was at my local golf course!
Golf is my lover and mistress. She can be frustrating, spiteful, petulant, and everything else, but I know one thing: she's always there for me. No matter the ups and downs of life and love with the human species, the game is there to take my mind off of all of these troubles. Sometimes I risk wasting time, money, or even jobs to enjoy moments with golf, but when I'm rewarded with the perfect outing, nothing in the world is more glorious! This was one of those occasions.
I grabbed a cart, and off into the free-wheeling round I went. The sky was gray, and the wind was intermittently gusting, but it was seventy degrees, and the course was almost all mine. No sharp angles of late-fall sunlight to annoy me, and enough wind to grant more of a challenge, but nothing too drastic. More importantly, a recent slight grip adjustment had me hitting it as clean as ever. This was one of those times where the game paid me back for five-hour plus rounds,when every shot was a questionable proposition , and I paid five times today's green fee. After launching my first three wood off the tee that Rory would gladly take, I knew it was there for me today. Pure thoughts and conditions meant each time I was over the ball the question wasn't if the shot would be good, but simply how good.
I was a kid again, except with access to a cart (!) that seemed like such a distant dream back in my adolescence, and allowed me to squeeze in a ton of shots in two hours. I was moving up to the ladies tee on short par fours to make them ridiculous par threes instead and shooting at the wrong greens to play with distances. I accepted applause from the random guy nearby who watched me stake one and realized that I was creating my own hole. We were in on the same secret today and loving it! The zone I enjoyed included flop shots off tight lies, because I could do no wrong and allowed very soft hands to simply make the shot they know how to make. It was almost like my Zen -like zone was keeping the rain to the west on its own. These are bonus times a golfer lives for, and they don't come along every day. I'm too broke to belong to a club and I live in a big city, so for me these days are even more rare.
I'm single at the moment, and this can be a lonely feeling at times. On the other hand, I can drop everything and seize moments like I did this day and not have to apologize to anyone. Guilt-free ball striking is almost as thrilling as a new love affair if you ask me, and it's a lot easier to find. I'm not sure if I'll ever marry, but I know that I'll always have a mistress. She's a little white ball that doesn't care who I am, sticks that serve as extensions of my body, and a walk in a park with a point. As long as I can walk so one will ever be able to take her away from me, and she'll never take half of my possessions. Life is good.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Saturday, November 26, 2011
My Doomed Phone
So the cops have my good phone, and they have possessed it since April 8th. I bought a crappy flip phone in lieu of getting it back, a unit with the old school keypad that makes texting a chore. Sadly, the wheels of justice in Asheville move quite slowly, so eight months later my case is still unsettled, and I was still rocking the shitty phone. Throughout all this time it hadn't occurred to me until few days ago that I could probably find a phone retired by one of my friends that featured a full keyboard. What with technology being so disposable anymore, perfectly functional phones are relegated to backup duty all the time. So I found one---my friend Jim's bulky old Samsung that was missing the back that kept the battery secure, but the price was right: free. All I had to do was take it to the Sprint store to get it cranking with a prepaid plan, because my ass is broke with ghetto credit. This is normally something I would put off a few days, and this was no exception. But a funny thing happened to get me motivated.
My old phone was set on vibrate, and placed on the dresser next to my bed. Normally the ringer would probably be on, but lately a bill collector seems to think he's doubling as my alarm clock. Also, I don't always remember to turn off the vibrate after AA meetings, so I'll miss calls here and there. Never once did I think this would lead to the death of my flip phone, but such was the case. I heard it rattling when half asleep in the early daylight, but ignored it. Bad move. When I rose to face the day a couple hours later I picked up my cup of water off the floor only to find a marinating phone. It had fallen off the dresser directly into the cup.
My first task was to remove the battery and try to dry it out a bit, but of course I pushed a couple of buttons just in case it worked anyway. (give me a break---I had just woken up!). I then went to YouTube to read what to do about a wet phone, and step one was to not push any buttons, lest it short circuit and guarantee the phone is toast. Oops! In any event, this episode obviously drastically increased the urgency to visit the Sprint store---good thing I procured the replacement phone a few days earlier!
The sales guy was polite to not laugh in my face when I showed him the phone, and pointed out that they don't offer broke-ass prepaid deals. He suggested I take my brick, err, phone to Metro PCS, or some other carrier that doesn't offer free roaming, etc. Luckily I was in a shopping complex that also hosts a Best Buy, so I figured I'd drop in there to see if they had a better option. I was happy to find this next store not completely overrun with Black Friday shoppers, and I was able to quickly find more phone options. Turns out had I researched at all I would've learned that a brand new phone costs, quite literally in one case, nothing.
The phone model I drowned was $9.99, and came with a prepaid credit of ten dollars, which made it essentially free. In addition, there was an off-brand, (Pantech), model that had a full keyboard and was only $59.99, with a ten dollar airtime credit of it's own. It was here that I also learned that I could easily top my $1.99 per day deal, (not including texts), I currently used on Verizon with a flat rate of $50, including unlimited texting. Now I had a decision to make: should I simply replace my old phone essentially for free and assume I'm going “up the river” in a month or two anyway? Or do I figure at the rate it's going I'll be out another three months and get the phone with the keyboard because my new calling plan will pay for it in two or three months? Did you plan on reading this sort of minutia when you started this? Sorry about that.
After much deliberation I pried myself out of my mega-saving mode and splurged for the $59.99 phone. No more dismissing incoming texts because I didn't feel like the cumbersome task of typing back, and no more worrying about the cost of photos sent to me that I couldn't see on the tiny screen anyway. So ultimately what began as an ominous sign of a crappy day to come---my phone in a cup of water---ended with a solution to my existing phone keyboard problem with a minimal cash outlay. Sure I lost all my numbers, but those aren't too hard to recover these days anyway.
What's most impressive to me is I didn't lose my shit over it and worry---just sort of took it in stride. I also enjoyed having a wacky story to tell all day, and even the Verizon guy had never heard of this one. The guy in the store tried to sell me a warranty for my phone “in case this happens again”. I told him if my phone ever falls into a cup of water again I'll come in and let him kick me in the nuts. I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid. And you can text me whenever you want, and I'll text you back---maybe even with a photo!
My old phone was set on vibrate, and placed on the dresser next to my bed. Normally the ringer would probably be on, but lately a bill collector seems to think he's doubling as my alarm clock. Also, I don't always remember to turn off the vibrate after AA meetings, so I'll miss calls here and there. Never once did I think this would lead to the death of my flip phone, but such was the case. I heard it rattling when half asleep in the early daylight, but ignored it. Bad move. When I rose to face the day a couple hours later I picked up my cup of water off the floor only to find a marinating phone. It had fallen off the dresser directly into the cup.
My first task was to remove the battery and try to dry it out a bit, but of course I pushed a couple of buttons just in case it worked anyway. (give me a break---I had just woken up!). I then went to YouTube to read what to do about a wet phone, and step one was to not push any buttons, lest it short circuit and guarantee the phone is toast. Oops! In any event, this episode obviously drastically increased the urgency to visit the Sprint store---good thing I procured the replacement phone a few days earlier!
The sales guy was polite to not laugh in my face when I showed him the phone, and pointed out that they don't offer broke-ass prepaid deals. He suggested I take my brick, err, phone to Metro PCS, or some other carrier that doesn't offer free roaming, etc. Luckily I was in a shopping complex that also hosts a Best Buy, so I figured I'd drop in there to see if they had a better option. I was happy to find this next store not completely overrun with Black Friday shoppers, and I was able to quickly find more phone options. Turns out had I researched at all I would've learned that a brand new phone costs, quite literally in one case, nothing.
The phone model I drowned was $9.99, and came with a prepaid credit of ten dollars, which made it essentially free. In addition, there was an off-brand, (Pantech), model that had a full keyboard and was only $59.99, with a ten dollar airtime credit of it's own. It was here that I also learned that I could easily top my $1.99 per day deal, (not including texts), I currently used on Verizon with a flat rate of $50, including unlimited texting. Now I had a decision to make: should I simply replace my old phone essentially for free and assume I'm going “up the river” in a month or two anyway? Or do I figure at the rate it's going I'll be out another three months and get the phone with the keyboard because my new calling plan will pay for it in two or three months? Did you plan on reading this sort of minutia when you started this? Sorry about that.
After much deliberation I pried myself out of my mega-saving mode and splurged for the $59.99 phone. No more dismissing incoming texts because I didn't feel like the cumbersome task of typing back, and no more worrying about the cost of photos sent to me that I couldn't see on the tiny screen anyway. So ultimately what began as an ominous sign of a crappy day to come---my phone in a cup of water---ended with a solution to my existing phone keyboard problem with a minimal cash outlay. Sure I lost all my numbers, but those aren't too hard to recover these days anyway.
What's most impressive to me is I didn't lose my shit over it and worry---just sort of took it in stride. I also enjoyed having a wacky story to tell all day, and even the Verizon guy had never heard of this one. The guy in the store tried to sell me a warranty for my phone “in case this happens again”. I told him if my phone ever falls into a cup of water again I'll come in and let him kick me in the nuts. I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid. And you can text me whenever you want, and I'll text you back---maybe even with a photo!
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Rock Eagle Men's Workshop (No Homo)
Despite the potentially salacious name for this outing, it was in fact an innocent gathering of totally sober men of all ages for a weekend of Alcoholics Anonymous-based fellowship. My involvement in this event is due to my internment in a halfway house, which requires intense involvement on AA as part of my recovery from substance addiction. In a larger sense, this is all a result of my recent arrest, but this particular blog entry won’t detail any of that. (You may, however, find such posts elsewhere at WitStream’s Trickles.)
While I am enthusiastic about AA-based recovery, I was less so about the prospect of taking a weekend to join some four hundred gentleman at a 4-H camp facility in the middle of nowhere. Alas, my AA sponsor and the lady who runs my halfway house came through with a “scholarship”, which allowed for 75% off the registration cost, thus making it doable for my broke ass. I was promised a fine opportunity for fellowship and networking, and in my situation any little bit helps. So I escaped a busy Friday afternoon on the courier trail, collected two of my fellows from my recovery residence program and embarked for Eastern Georgia, and no shortage of mens.
I was happy to make this getaway with one of my roommates, Brian, who is a very sharp lad who has fallen on some trying times. I enjoy his company, unlike the other guy who came with us, Ryan, who comes across as something of a lunatic. Happily, however, it soon became apparent that I had caught Ryan on a bad day when I gave him a ride home from the grocery store and he really appeared to have a screw loose. Alas, he turned out to be a delightful chap and a fine addition to our party. We finished the nearly two hour trek through a Friday Atlanta rush hour relatively unscathed and were able to get to our cottage with plenty of time to join in the opening festivity---a BBQ with hundreds of recovering addicts.
The camp facility was most impressive, as might be expected being affiliated with the University of Georgia, and its endowment. The grounds were well-manicured, with lots of benches here and there, and had very modern buildings and furniture in all of the common areas. The setting was also idyllic---in the middle of the woods, on a small lake, and there was a giant eagle formed out of rocks by Indians centuries ago that I didn’t bother going to see.. There were a few newly-built cabins as well, but the majority of them were clearly at least forty years old. Herein lied the problem for the middle-aged man: the accommodations. The older cabins had eight men to a bunk bed-furnished room, featuring a bathroom with one shower stall and an unfortunate musty smell. Suddenly, he reason for me balking at attending this workshop to begin with basically slapped me in the fact---but this was only the beginning. More on this later...
To be completely honest, besides the essential assistance the AA fellowship and meetings provides, one of my favorite aspects of my recovery is the presence of the fairer sex. I figure if my life is in the shitter, generally speaking, at least I can engage in one of my favorite pastimes: flirting with women. I mention this because this BBQ offered anything but this. While no surprise, this reality still a jolt, and keeping a happy face wasn’t the easiest thing to do initially. The chatterbox we ended up dining next to didn’t help matters either. While I tried to keep an open mind, sure enough the University of Florida hat proved to be an indicator of simply bad conversation, but I digress, (you'd probably have to live in the South to understand). Thankfully it’s easy to lose people, if necessary, in a group of a few hundred.
Luckily my snobbery was short-lived, as I spotted numerous fellow Atlantans that I knew from meetings in the crowd. I chatted them up in our new environs and they enthusiastically talked up what lay in store for the weekend. A “cabin meeting” followed, i.e. all of the guys in our sleeping quarters met for the first time, introducing ourselves so that bonding with those you have something in common would be easier. This normally consists of each person declaring his sobriety date, possibly his drug(s) of choice, how many of these events he’s attended, and what he expects out of the experience. Most keep it brief, but there are always those who enjoy hearing themselves talk and/or get a tad sanctimonious with their “sharing”. Our group of sixteen spanned ages of around twenty to over seventy, and most appeared to be cool people to be around. Unfortunately this encounter failed to expose the felonious snorers among us, which would’ve allowed us to quarantine them in the living room/spare bedroom. I’ll detail this dreadful dilemma a little later.
The Festivities Begin
Not long after the cabin meeting, all attendees descended on the auditorium for some welcoming words from the chairman of the steering committee, followed by the weekend’s first speaker. The building was nearly new, but more interestingly, we got free reign in the ladies room, since this was a men only event. Oddly there were no tampon dispensers installed, which I found to be quite odd. Anyway, there was abundant enthusiasm in the gathering, although I couldn’t help but think it because all these men had made an escape from their spouses and responsibilities for a weekend than anything the program offered. The fact is, when you remove drugs and alcohol from life, seemingly small things like a getaway with four hundred men feels like getting away with something. But I digress again---back to the proceedings.
A portly older gentleman with a scowl, a booming voice and a hair style similar to Bob’s Big Boy made his way to the podium to kick things off. Coincidentally, this guy is also my “grand-sponsor” in AA, although this doesn’t necessarily mean I come in contact with him often. Anyway, “Bob” begins by explaining how he was involved with this workshop fifty-nine editions ago and how he has twenty-nine years of sobriety. This is information we can use, and while certainly impressive, falls short of braggadocio. But then... Bob somehow works in that he recently stayed in a four star resort in Palm Springs for a recent AA-based event, complete with a Rolls Royce limo as transportation. Then he introduces a video, to play on the stage screen, of a marginally funny old Bill Cosby bit about drinking. All well and good, except Bob makes it clear that he knows Mr.Cosby personally, and that he gave him permission to use the clip for this occasion. In fact, the video begins with something like: “By permission to Bob’s Big Boy by Mr. Bill Cosby”. As if Cosby’s lawyers would track down someone for playing a video of him at some obscure workshop for alcoholics that isn’t being re-broadcast anywhere? Really?
I point all of this out only because of the stark contrast Bob made to the concept of humility, which is one of the basic tenets of AA. Far from sounding humble, this guy put off the vibe that he was in fact the Grand Poo-Bah, and you got the feeling if someone wished to crown him he would at least briefly consider the opportunity. (And things get even worse with this guy as the weekend unfolded, trust me.) Really, it was unintentional comedy at it’s finest, and a nice warm-up act for the evening’s keynote speaker: Randy, a classic redneck from the hills of Western North Carolina.
Randy wore a coat and tie that recalled a kid going for his senior pictures, and added a black beret-style lid that covered most of the bowl cut of his salt-and-papper hair. As he gazed into the audience through his yellow-tinted safety glasses I had to wonder if this was in fact a comedian opening for the night’s headliner. Lo and behold, this was the guy---an AA vet with nineteen years of sobriety and a large number of speaking appearances for these occasions under his belt. In fact, he was among those at the Palm Springs event our pompous host has mentioned earlier. Randy may not have been technically a comic, but I’ll be damned if he wasn’t a humorist reminiscent of Brother Dave Gardner, who was another Charlotte-area native with an alcohol problem.
Off Randy went, with the smoothest speaking style you’ve ever heard. No “ums”, or “uh’s” here---this guy was polished. He proceeded to go well over an hour with his story of torment and ultimately triumph, thanks to getting sober in AA. Along the way we learned that he had his own personal Curtis Loew in his small hometown, except instead of playing all day in exchange for wine, this guy didn’t play shit, but instead bought Randy the wine as long as he got some for himself. He also had a hard-working Mama, an old ‘59 hearse as his first vehicle, and referred to a the repo man and the “take-back” man. Overall he was most inspiring as a speaker and my enthusiasm for the weekend was duly lifted.
Into The Night
We then repaired to another building for snacks, which consisted of a little fruit and a shitload of doughnuts and cake to go with coffee and sodas. Much to my consternation, however, there were no napkins available, which kind of blew my mind. I had a word with a member of the steering committee, (my sponsor), about this transgression, and he explained that: “we’ve never had them.”, as if this was an acceptable explanation.
The next segment of our workshop were smaller groups featuring speakers on whatever issue might be pertinent, in my case this was being broke as fuck, for lack of a better term.
This consisted of a couple of guys giving uninspired speeches about how life had kicked their asses and how the steps of AA help them deal with the aftermath. While it was oddly heartening to realize I was not alone, this was hardly a good chance to network so that I might be helped out of my currently poor circumstance. It was still a worthwhile lecture on some level though, and a decent way to wrap up the evening. Unlike a lot of fellow “Rock” attendees, I was uninterested in staying up late and bullshitting with people because I was quite tired and preferred going to bed. Then the fun began...
My roommate Brian and I retired before all of the other six, climbing to the top of our bunk beds by using the frame for lack of a built-in ladder. At 6’6”, I’m a bit long for these accommodations to begin with, even though I sleep on my side. The ancient mattress and a room that smelled like dirty socks didn’t help either, but I got to sleep eventually. Until...
I was awakened by what sounded like a person having the last breath strangled out of him. A murder in progress? Not exactly. It was “merely” one of our roommates who suffered from sleep apnea, but had yet to get the machine with which he could be treated.
And so it went for the rest of the night---even though I had earplugs in and a spare pillow over my head. They tell me that the other poor saps in the room joked about the offender initially, but his completely random growls made them lose their senses of humor real quick. For good measure, there were also two other people in the room, one directly below me, who also snored. And the room still smelled like dirty socks, most likely mixed with an occasional fart, I’m sure---which certainly made its way to the upper reaches of the room before dissipating. Sure enough, my worst nightmare of why I was reluctant to come to this thing were realized. Check that---actually I would’ve loved a nightmare---because that would’ve meant actually getting to sleep! The net-net is I probably managed two hours of shut-eye total, and I ideally need about nine. Not exactly a promising start to the second day of enlightenment and fellowship!
Sleep Deprivation As A Drug
So day two started way earlier than normal for me: 6:30. Or did day one ever in fact end? What with the jackhammer menace to slumbering society in our cabin, who the fuck knew?
In any event, I went bleary-eyed to the brand new cafeteria to get some food. I ended up sitting with a couple of other chaps from my halfway house, one of whom is basically dropping a diving board cannonball on life. By this I mean he’s a “type A” personality multiplied by a thousand. Now I’m no morning person to begin with, and this guy is abrasive on a normal evening, let alone in this situation, but I was kind of obligated to sit with them because they caught me looking at them when sizing up my spot. It turns out I’m glad I did, because we laughed our asses off about nothing in particular. I was punch drunk, and spitting out lethal one-liners like it was my job. Looking back, that was probably the most fun I had the whole weekend. Funny how that works.
The day’s first event was at the auditorium with the wide-open ladies room, and we were treated to three different speakers who did about twenty-five minutes each. First up was a young whipper-snapper who had one of those frat boy haircuts that covered his forehead. I must say the lad looked good in a suit and tie, though, and he spoke with a grace that belied his years. His message of his AA recovery was pretty standard, and I must say it’s kind of tough to take seriously a story from a kid of twenty-two. He also went to the water bottle way too many times, indeed sometimes removing the top and forgetting to actually drink. I couldn’t help but allow this tic to distract me, along with somewhat evilly speculating to myself roughly when his first relapse will arrive. (If there’s one thing I’ve noticed in my four-month AA crash course, it’s that almost no one makes it on the first try.) “Sure, you’re riding high now, kid...”, I thought. Was it the sleep deprivation that made me a dick or am I simply an asshole in general? We may never know...
The next guy was certainly the speaker of the weekend in my book, as well as many others. He was a standard white guy in his mid-thirties, that is to say he looked exactly like a Mormon. You know the guy---hair sprayed like a politician, etc. He was exceptional on the stump too. High-energy, humorous, intelligent---this guy had it all, including several years of sobriety and a kick-ass message to the masses. I don’t quite recall what the message was because I failed to take notes, but I know it was solid. Hell, as good a speaker as he was I likely would’ve been on board if he proposed an ecstasy party later that night, three months of sobriety be damned!
Wrapping up the clumsily-ordered speaking trifecta was a guy who looked very much like the basketball coach Phil Jackson. He’s a fireman by profession, and I’m sure I’m not alone in being glad he got off the sauce, just for the sake of his jurisdiction. He was a low energy, Buzz Killington, which is why i question the order of the speakers. Don’t get me wrong---people with downer stories are important for learning in AA, just not necessarily as closing speakers. He was a wise man who had been through quite a lot though, but I don’t quite recall anything specific from his speech. Check that; I did remember one thing: that the guy was an “incest survivor”. Not to belittle this guy’s plight, but as a speaker, as soon as you drop this sort of information the audience’s minds are likely to wander. Personally I didn’t hear a thing he said for the next five minutes as I imagined what specifically he was talking about. Was it an Uncle? An unattractive big sister? As with this speaker, I probably shouldn’t have brought this up either...let’s just move along.
After this speaker event, the crowd split up into smaller groups, each focused on one of the AA steps. I wanted to attend the second and third step, because I’m still in dire need of spiritual guidance. Unfortunately that meeting was on one end of a large room while another meeting was being staged on the other, about sixty feet away. Too much chaos for me---much like a music festival at which two stages are too close together. So I tracked down the step one meeting, which happened to be right behind our house of horrors, err, cabin. It was a good meeting as these things go, most certainly because anyone serious enough about their AA “program” to come sleep in a barracks for two nights is going to say something half-thoughtful anyway. (AA meeting quality can vary, trust me!)
I enjoyed a lunch of processed chicken fingers in the ultra-modern cafeteria, joined by Brian and a guy from our cabin who looks very much like Jesus, only with shorter hair. He’s from Atlanta as well, and attends an AA meeting in Va Highland called “High Noon”, which is probably not the best name for a group of people trying to stay sober. We learned that Jesus has two teen-aged kids at home, and only later discovered that he’s gay and the kids are adopted from Asia. Not that there’s anything wrong with that---the guy could pass as the Messiah himself!
Brian and I were joined by another cabin-mate, (whose name escapes me, of course), for a leisurely stroll around the grounds and some good soberly fellowship. As we embarked on our walk we came across a frisbee whose owner was clearly nowhere nearby. Seeing that I forgot to bring mine, I had a very strong impulse to pick it up and use it on our walk, surely to put it back where I found it. The other two balked at this plan, our new friend pointing out something ridiculous like: “if the owner isn’t around to ask, I assume I can’t borrow something.” I countered with: “Well, we’re only going to be gone thirty minutes, and this frisbee is clearly idle.” Ultimately Brian cast the deciding “no” vote, and we left the fucking disc there. Luckily it was a beautiful fall day in a wonderful setting, so I got over the disappointment quickly.
Our walk took us past the small lake and the enchantment of about forty turtles of varying size , tightly lined up on logs basking in the sun. Half of them dove into the water when we got within two hundred yards of them, so I assume those were the French. We passed a couple of young ladies who were in for a much, much smaller church-based retreat and resisted the urge to chat them up. In retrospect I can’t tell you if they were attractive or not because being immersed in four hundred middle-aged dry drunks will straight-up screw with a man’s perspective. Susan Boyle probably would’ve looked hot at this point. The third guy mentioned he was originally from Philly, but somehow was unaware that Hall and Oates were also from there. In addition, he had never even heard of Cinderella. I probably shouldn’t have shoved him off the dock for this lack of knowledge, but fuck this guy. Just kidding---I didn’t make a big deal out of it.
The Highlight of the Trip
.
I wandered back near our cabin after lunch with intentions of joining a pick-up softball game, but it wasn’t to start for an hour or so. I considered a nap, but since that might detract from my punch-drunk state from sleep-deprivation, I decided to fight on with the waking world. Actually, it was more like I heard the young fellow who opened that morning’s speaker line-up playing a Widespread Panic song on guitar on the front porch of a cabin two down from mine. Theirs was a modern, deluxe version, which housed the steering committee members, (my sponsor among them), and the guest speakers, and it felt sort of off-limits to us commoners. Good thing I didn’t care at this point...
I introduced myself to the kid, named Chase, and sat next to him and we chatted about jam bands. He was friendly enough, but seemed a little off in a way. Right about the time I was going to peace out, out walked Marty, the entertaining speaker from the night before who had the same accent as my grandparents, along with the aforementioned Brother Dave Gardner. Well how about this luck! I was thrilled to leave the dud kid a-strummin’ and move over next to Marty and let the stories begin.
I’m not sure what was more remarkable: that he had worked at a nuclear power plant since he was an eighteen year-old drunk or that he’s left this slight detail out of his story when he was on the stump. I mean, he was essentially a drunk Homer Simpson wandering around split atoms for over twenty years. Perhaps his spectacles didn’t have yellow tinted lenses after all---it could be the radiation coming out of his head! But seriously, it turns out that former Entertainment Tonight host Mary Hart served on the host committee at the aforementioned Palm Springs AA conference, and Marty got an opportunity to see her famous legs. Not spread or anything---just modeled a little at his request. What a doll! Marty also mentioned the the Rolls Royce chauffeur genuinely scared him, and he and his wife took a cab to ‘ol Tony Bennett’s restaurant and back even though it cost him over a hundred bucks.
Soon enough we were surrounded by four or five other people, and while the conversation was still lively, my private audience with Marty was sadly gone. I must say the guy with the long beard with a fake spider stuck in it was pretty funny though, despite his obviously trying too hard with his prop. Which reminds me, there was an attendee here who wore a t- shirt: “Alcatraz Psycho Ward”. In my book it might as well have read: “I Try Too Hard; Avoid Me!”. Rarely is the good conversation found with someone who’s wearing a stupid t-shirt. I’m sure there are exceptions, but I’ll take my chances. I hung out on the porch for a little while longer before heading over for the pickup softball game.
I didn’t get to shag any fly balls beforehand, which is the excuse I’m giving for coming in on the first inning ball that shot over my head in center field. I also nearly struck out in my one at bat, and then took the opportunity to quit playing because it couldn’t be good for my hernia. Sadly, at age forty-six I pretty much need to stop playing every sport but golf, simply because they hurt. Anyway, I settled for joining the peanut gallery, making fun of the guys still playing, and flipping the frisbee around with some dude, (who owned it), and that was fun enough.
Next up on the official schedule was a Q&A session with a panel of all the weekend’s speakers. They were all in casual attire, which immediately made me wonder why they wore suits when speaking for our motley crew in the first place. Just as I wonder why TV sports announcers are required to wear a coat and tie to address a bunch of guys laying on their couches scratching their balls, but I digress. The guy with the fake spider in his beard read questions submitted by attendees since the start of the weekend, and all were regarding AA recovery. Mormon Guy was quick to answer almost all of the time, and the others piped up often as well. I must say it was tough to take the twenty-two year old seriously regarding life advice, but I’m sure it wasn’t his idea to be up there. And speaking of being up...
This session ended with the aforementioned Grand Pooh-Bah of the weekend---my grandsponsor “Bob”---getting up on stage to oversee the weekend's lone “passing of the hat”, for donations towards future scholarships. And by “oversee”, I mean: “darkly scowl, growl, and leer at the audience of hundreds as they presumably gave until it hurt.” I don't exaggerate when I say this felt like a mass trip to the principal's office, even though I tossed in ten bucks. The guy demanded silence from everyone as he stood there, sometimes with his arms crossed, laying on the most intense non-verbal guilt trip imaginable. He might as well have said: “You only threw five bucks into the pot? THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'VE DONE!” And this awkwardness went on for a good ten minutes, without even the benefit of background music, which most fittingly would've been Black Sabbath's “War Pigs”, or something. It was just bizarre. I'm not going to lie: (I'm still afraid of the guy, and this happened a month ago!)
“Fuck it---let’s leave!”
After the afternoon session, our impossibly loud snorer situation in the cabin took front and center in the proceedings. Brian, Ryan, and I decided to leave after the final program later that night, thus missing the final speaker Sunday morning and presumably getting a solid night’s sleep. We loaded our shit into the car to facilitate the “thief-in-the-night” style exit and then got down to exactly when we would leave. This was all well and good until I ran into my sponsor Eric, (who again is on the steering committee for the event), at dinner an hour later. After putting it off for a while I finally kind of threw it out there. “Oh, by the way, we’re gonna blaze out of here after the speaker tonight, so that we might get more than a couple of hours of sleep. That’s not going to make you mad, is it?”
Low-key Eric merely said something like: “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Sunday morning’s event is the best part of the weekend, blah, blah, blah.” This was a bitter defeat, and I was cursing my luck for finding the AA 12-step program, which encourages doing the right thing so often---so very annoyingly sometimes. In the past I would’ve have told Eric shit, and just took off as planned, simply fabricating if confronted later: “Oh, you didn’t see me at the closing program? Shit...I guess I should’ve waited to take that leak until after the lord’s prayer so it wouldn’t look like I blew it off!” Yes, the only thing good about this dinner proved to be the tasty pasta /cheese whatever the hell it was.
The fact is that for a while afterwards, I still intended to leave, even though Eric would probably fire me as a sponsee. We vacillated quite a bit before deciding to stay, and I felt like I was in the middle of some stupid reality show, with some orchestrated “dilemma”. I must say it was amusing though. Ultimately, knowing that our Halfway House Mom Debbie would likely be pissed, not to mention Eric went to the trouble of getting us steep discounts to attend in the first place. Leaving to save one night’s sleep would’ve caused more problems than it was worth. I was still not happy however, so if we were staying, the next challenge was to try to solve the problem instead. Clearly, the snorer needed to die. Just kidding.
We returned to our bunk to find several of the other victims hanging out and, needless to say, I took the bull by the horns. I immediately determined whether the main offender was there at the time, but he wasn’t. I then suggested we all vote the fucker out into the common room, which had some spare sleeping arrangements in addition to some couches. I was thinking about taking one of them myself, but it would obviously be better to cast out one guy as opposed to having the other seven have to worry about avoiding him. Seems only fair.
A roomie named John said he actually knew the offender, and would convey that we wanted him out, and get back to us later with the result. Good enough, I thought, despite the fact that John himself snores like a motherfucker, and was in the bed directly below me. Honestly, I should’ve told them both to GTFO, but I’m simply not that big of a dick. I was satisfied the problem would be solved at this point, and I could live with a merely rhythmic snorer as long as a dude who sounds like he’s drowning doesn’t wake me up every half hour. At this point Brian, Ryan, and I took our gear back out of the car and moved in again, much to the amusement of Eric, who saw us from the porch of his cabin. I don’t think he knew how serious we were about taking off.
The Soul Man
Now I’m not going to say this was a lily-white affair by any means, but it’s safe to say that that the percentage of minorities in AA is much lower than the population at large. In other words, this gathering needed an infusion of energy---soul, if you will---and boy did we get it!
This guy in his mid-thirties was a straight-up Baptist-style speaker, and he looked the part too, with a dark pinstriped suit accessorized with a gold necklace and big-framed spectacles. He was of strong build and carried a stronger message----one of survival from the streets of Tampa, along with the wrong side of prison walls. (This sort of spoke to me, and not because I’m from Tampa, I’m not.)
He had a speaking style that demanded your attention, and the cadence and voice of Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. His was a very polished message, and he had it down. No way this guy was resting on his AA speaker circuit laurels just because he was filling a racial quota---he brought game. More importantly, he did not do a: “the last time I saw this many white people in a room” joke, much to this comic’s relief. His overall message was one of accountability and perseverance, sprinkled with little asides of the good life he was living when he was running drugs and chasing tail. I’m not sure if he wasn’t used to his speaking time frame or not, but he seemed to go about fifteen minutes longer than he needed to. In addition, you could tell the parts of his rap that were relatively new because he would speak perfectly for a few minutes, and then suddenly be saying: “um”, “uhh”, etc. It was noticeable only because he was so smooth most of the time---a really great speaker.
Us attendees soon found our uplifted selves heading to the snack building for more messy doughnuts and cake with no napkins or paper towels. I ran into my sponsor Eric, who amusingly enough thought I saw him and tried to avoid him. I assured hum this was not the case, however, and we had a good conversation about the proceedings and how he was glad that my crew and I were staying another night. I ended up chatting with him and another dude a bit too long, and this caused some adversity because it made me late for my next lecture: “Dealing With Adversity”. I raced back to the auditorium and joined the crowd watching a video of a speech by a former prisoner of war.
Now while my lifestyle has been knocked down a number of pegs, I really don’t have it that bad. Sure, I have a possible prison sentence hanging over me, I’m bankrupt, and coming to terms with the fact that I’ll never catch another artificial buzz in my lifetime, but... At least I’m not in a prison camp in Viet Nam, living on rice and water, not knowing if I’m going to to ever be released, and even live or die. (Ninety AA meetings in ninety days is a similar test, but ultimately not comparable.) Yes, this program was just the tonic to make all of us feel better about ourselves---all the way down to the guy who looks like Phil Jackson serving as the discussion leader. It was all kind of like the TV show COPS, and the garbage like Maury Povitch: sure, I may be down, but at least I’m not that person!
After the video ended the mic was somewhat awkwardly passed around the auditorium for people to share their thoughts about the video or their own tales of woe and how they’re dealing with those obstacles. It was really quite uplifting and inspiring. I grabbed the mic at one point and after pausing a few seconds, said: “I really don’t have anything to share, I just wanted the people seated near me to feel slightly awkward because everyone is looking this way right now.” (Actually I didn’t do that, but the thought did occur to me.) All in all, it was a great way to finish up the day’s events, and I was glad to have stuck around because our earlier plan had us skipping out by then.
Bunk Funk: The Conclusion
While the majority of my fellow Rock attendees stayed up late kibitzing and rekindling old friendships, I was on the back end of a day-long caffeine buzz, so I was going to bed. Upon returning to my musty sleeping quarters, my lower bunkie informed me that he was unable to locate Offensive Snorer to inform him that he's been “voted off the island”. I checked to see if any of the beds in the common area
were available, only to find they were all claimed. Seasoned veterans off this sort of dilemma, no doubt! Anyway, realizing my options were severely limited and I was tired as hell, I just took to my bed and hoped one of my other roommates had him killed or something.
As it turned out, the snorer never re-surfaced in the room that night, although the guy below me still sawed logs like you read about. That was small potatoes by comparison, though, and I got a decent night's sleep. In fact, I slept until 7:30, whereupon Ryan woke me up in time for me to dash to the cafeteria and shovel down some food prior to the weekend's final program. It turned out the coffee in our portion of the chow hall was on empty, so we had to invade the other side to take some of theirs. This made me feel like I was getting away with something, and also feel like a dirty old man, as there were some young ladies around, thanks to the aforementioned church retreat. All of them looked like “10's” at this point in the weekend, I can tell you that much.
The final gathering of the weekend commenced, with the subject naturally being spirituality. The guy doing the speaking was seemingly nice enough, but he didn't really come across as a real spiritual guy. Frankly, I expected him to start talking about his DVD series at any moment, given his plentiful amusing anecdotes and sales jokes. (I would later discover that the steering committee has struggled to replace a guy who was an ace in this Sunday speaking slot, and that can't be an easy task.) This isn't to say the speaker was bad, it's more to express some disappointment that we stayed an extra night in a locker room for the privilege of hearing it.
The weekend's events was brought to a close in fine fashion, however, thanks to the Grand Poobah giving new instructions for the Lord's Prayer that closed the session. We were to keep our eyes open and survey the brotherhood instead of looking down in meditative fashion. Indeed, the resulting emotions were quite powerful. The prayer was the most remarkable parts of any of the gatherings in the auditorium, as there's a certain power and moving nature in hundreds of formerly broken men joining together arm-in-arm in reverence of their higher powers. And I'm far from a fan of the prayer itself or organized religion in general. It was simply not something I think can be seen and felt just every day.
After things wrapped up I bid farewell to my sponsor Eric and a few others whom I had met and high-tailed it out of there with Brain and Ryan in tow. We stopped quickly at a convenience store to buy some smokes, (go figure---an AA gathering that went heavy on the smokes!), only to find the black dude who spoke so eloquently the night before doing the same. We didn't stop to chat, however, and I don't know what it said about us that none of us could remember his name. One thing's for sure, though: none of us will forget the name “Rock Eagle”, nor how much trying to sleep in a room with seven other dudes sucks.
While I am enthusiastic about AA-based recovery, I was less so about the prospect of taking a weekend to join some four hundred gentleman at a 4-H camp facility in the middle of nowhere. Alas, my AA sponsor and the lady who runs my halfway house came through with a “scholarship”, which allowed for 75% off the registration cost, thus making it doable for my broke ass. I was promised a fine opportunity for fellowship and networking, and in my situation any little bit helps. So I escaped a busy Friday afternoon on the courier trail, collected two of my fellows from my recovery residence program and embarked for Eastern Georgia, and no shortage of mens.
I was happy to make this getaway with one of my roommates, Brian, who is a very sharp lad who has fallen on some trying times. I enjoy his company, unlike the other guy who came with us, Ryan, who comes across as something of a lunatic. Happily, however, it soon became apparent that I had caught Ryan on a bad day when I gave him a ride home from the grocery store and he really appeared to have a screw loose. Alas, he turned out to be a delightful chap and a fine addition to our party. We finished the nearly two hour trek through a Friday Atlanta rush hour relatively unscathed and were able to get to our cottage with plenty of time to join in the opening festivity---a BBQ with hundreds of recovering addicts.
The camp facility was most impressive, as might be expected being affiliated with the University of Georgia, and its endowment. The grounds were well-manicured, with lots of benches here and there, and had very modern buildings and furniture in all of the common areas. The setting was also idyllic---in the middle of the woods, on a small lake, and there was a giant eagle formed out of rocks by Indians centuries ago that I didn’t bother going to see.. There were a few newly-built cabins as well, but the majority of them were clearly at least forty years old. Herein lied the problem for the middle-aged man: the accommodations. The older cabins had eight men to a bunk bed-furnished room, featuring a bathroom with one shower stall and an unfortunate musty smell. Suddenly, he reason for me balking at attending this workshop to begin with basically slapped me in the fact---but this was only the beginning. More on this later...
To be completely honest, besides the essential assistance the AA fellowship and meetings provides, one of my favorite aspects of my recovery is the presence of the fairer sex. I figure if my life is in the shitter, generally speaking, at least I can engage in one of my favorite pastimes: flirting with women. I mention this because this BBQ offered anything but this. While no surprise, this reality still a jolt, and keeping a happy face wasn’t the easiest thing to do initially. The chatterbox we ended up dining next to didn’t help matters either. While I tried to keep an open mind, sure enough the University of Florida hat proved to be an indicator of simply bad conversation, but I digress, (you'd probably have to live in the South to understand). Thankfully it’s easy to lose people, if necessary, in a group of a few hundred.
Luckily my snobbery was short-lived, as I spotted numerous fellow Atlantans that I knew from meetings in the crowd. I chatted them up in our new environs and they enthusiastically talked up what lay in store for the weekend. A “cabin meeting” followed, i.e. all of the guys in our sleeping quarters met for the first time, introducing ourselves so that bonding with those you have something in common would be easier. This normally consists of each person declaring his sobriety date, possibly his drug(s) of choice, how many of these events he’s attended, and what he expects out of the experience. Most keep it brief, but there are always those who enjoy hearing themselves talk and/or get a tad sanctimonious with their “sharing”. Our group of sixteen spanned ages of around twenty to over seventy, and most appeared to be cool people to be around. Unfortunately this encounter failed to expose the felonious snorers among us, which would’ve allowed us to quarantine them in the living room/spare bedroom. I’ll detail this dreadful dilemma a little later.
The Festivities Begin
Not long after the cabin meeting, all attendees descended on the auditorium for some welcoming words from the chairman of the steering committee, followed by the weekend’s first speaker. The building was nearly new, but more interestingly, we got free reign in the ladies room, since this was a men only event. Oddly there were no tampon dispensers installed, which I found to be quite odd. Anyway, there was abundant enthusiasm in the gathering, although I couldn’t help but think it because all these men had made an escape from their spouses and responsibilities for a weekend than anything the program offered. The fact is, when you remove drugs and alcohol from life, seemingly small things like a getaway with four hundred men feels like getting away with something. But I digress again---back to the proceedings.
A portly older gentleman with a scowl, a booming voice and a hair style similar to Bob’s Big Boy made his way to the podium to kick things off. Coincidentally, this guy is also my “grand-sponsor” in AA, although this doesn’t necessarily mean I come in contact with him often. Anyway, “Bob” begins by explaining how he was involved with this workshop fifty-nine editions ago and how he has twenty-nine years of sobriety. This is information we can use, and while certainly impressive, falls short of braggadocio. But then... Bob somehow works in that he recently stayed in a four star resort in Palm Springs for a recent AA-based event, complete with a Rolls Royce limo as transportation. Then he introduces a video, to play on the stage screen, of a marginally funny old Bill Cosby bit about drinking. All well and good, except Bob makes it clear that he knows Mr.Cosby personally, and that he gave him permission to use the clip for this occasion. In fact, the video begins with something like: “By permission to Bob’s Big Boy by Mr. Bill Cosby”. As if Cosby’s lawyers would track down someone for playing a video of him at some obscure workshop for alcoholics that isn’t being re-broadcast anywhere? Really?
I point all of this out only because of the stark contrast Bob made to the concept of humility, which is one of the basic tenets of AA. Far from sounding humble, this guy put off the vibe that he was in fact the Grand Poo-Bah, and you got the feeling if someone wished to crown him he would at least briefly consider the opportunity. (And things get even worse with this guy as the weekend unfolded, trust me.) Really, it was unintentional comedy at it’s finest, and a nice warm-up act for the evening’s keynote speaker: Randy, a classic redneck from the hills of Western North Carolina.
Randy wore a coat and tie that recalled a kid going for his senior pictures, and added a black beret-style lid that covered most of the bowl cut of his salt-and-papper hair. As he gazed into the audience through his yellow-tinted safety glasses I had to wonder if this was in fact a comedian opening for the night’s headliner. Lo and behold, this was the guy---an AA vet with nineteen years of sobriety and a large number of speaking appearances for these occasions under his belt. In fact, he was among those at the Palm Springs event our pompous host has mentioned earlier. Randy may not have been technically a comic, but I’ll be damned if he wasn’t a humorist reminiscent of Brother Dave Gardner, who was another Charlotte-area native with an alcohol problem.
Off Randy went, with the smoothest speaking style you’ve ever heard. No “ums”, or “uh’s” here---this guy was polished. He proceeded to go well over an hour with his story of torment and ultimately triumph, thanks to getting sober in AA. Along the way we learned that he had his own personal Curtis Loew in his small hometown, except instead of playing all day in exchange for wine, this guy didn’t play shit, but instead bought Randy the wine as long as he got some for himself. He also had a hard-working Mama, an old ‘59 hearse as his first vehicle, and referred to a the repo man and the “take-back” man. Overall he was most inspiring as a speaker and my enthusiasm for the weekend was duly lifted.
Into The Night
We then repaired to another building for snacks, which consisted of a little fruit and a shitload of doughnuts and cake to go with coffee and sodas. Much to my consternation, however, there were no napkins available, which kind of blew my mind. I had a word with a member of the steering committee, (my sponsor), about this transgression, and he explained that: “we’ve never had them.”, as if this was an acceptable explanation.
The next segment of our workshop were smaller groups featuring speakers on whatever issue might be pertinent, in my case this was being broke as fuck, for lack of a better term.
This consisted of a couple of guys giving uninspired speeches about how life had kicked their asses and how the steps of AA help them deal with the aftermath. While it was oddly heartening to realize I was not alone, this was hardly a good chance to network so that I might be helped out of my currently poor circumstance. It was still a worthwhile lecture on some level though, and a decent way to wrap up the evening. Unlike a lot of fellow “Rock” attendees, I was uninterested in staying up late and bullshitting with people because I was quite tired and preferred going to bed. Then the fun began...
My roommate Brian and I retired before all of the other six, climbing to the top of our bunk beds by using the frame for lack of a built-in ladder. At 6’6”, I’m a bit long for these accommodations to begin with, even though I sleep on my side. The ancient mattress and a room that smelled like dirty socks didn’t help either, but I got to sleep eventually. Until...
I was awakened by what sounded like a person having the last breath strangled out of him. A murder in progress? Not exactly. It was “merely” one of our roommates who suffered from sleep apnea, but had yet to get the machine with which he could be treated.
And so it went for the rest of the night---even though I had earplugs in and a spare pillow over my head. They tell me that the other poor saps in the room joked about the offender initially, but his completely random growls made them lose their senses of humor real quick. For good measure, there were also two other people in the room, one directly below me, who also snored. And the room still smelled like dirty socks, most likely mixed with an occasional fart, I’m sure---which certainly made its way to the upper reaches of the room before dissipating. Sure enough, my worst nightmare of why I was reluctant to come to this thing were realized. Check that---actually I would’ve loved a nightmare---because that would’ve meant actually getting to sleep! The net-net is I probably managed two hours of shut-eye total, and I ideally need about nine. Not exactly a promising start to the second day of enlightenment and fellowship!
Sleep Deprivation As A Drug
So day two started way earlier than normal for me: 6:30. Or did day one ever in fact end? What with the jackhammer menace to slumbering society in our cabin, who the fuck knew?
In any event, I went bleary-eyed to the brand new cafeteria to get some food. I ended up sitting with a couple of other chaps from my halfway house, one of whom is basically dropping a diving board cannonball on life. By this I mean he’s a “type A” personality multiplied by a thousand. Now I’m no morning person to begin with, and this guy is abrasive on a normal evening, let alone in this situation, but I was kind of obligated to sit with them because they caught me looking at them when sizing up my spot. It turns out I’m glad I did, because we laughed our asses off about nothing in particular. I was punch drunk, and spitting out lethal one-liners like it was my job. Looking back, that was probably the most fun I had the whole weekend. Funny how that works.
The day’s first event was at the auditorium with the wide-open ladies room, and we were treated to three different speakers who did about twenty-five minutes each. First up was a young whipper-snapper who had one of those frat boy haircuts that covered his forehead. I must say the lad looked good in a suit and tie, though, and he spoke with a grace that belied his years. His message of his AA recovery was pretty standard, and I must say it’s kind of tough to take seriously a story from a kid of twenty-two. He also went to the water bottle way too many times, indeed sometimes removing the top and forgetting to actually drink. I couldn’t help but allow this tic to distract me, along with somewhat evilly speculating to myself roughly when his first relapse will arrive. (If there’s one thing I’ve noticed in my four-month AA crash course, it’s that almost no one makes it on the first try.) “Sure, you’re riding high now, kid...”, I thought. Was it the sleep deprivation that made me a dick or am I simply an asshole in general? We may never know...
The next guy was certainly the speaker of the weekend in my book, as well as many others. He was a standard white guy in his mid-thirties, that is to say he looked exactly like a Mormon. You know the guy---hair sprayed like a politician, etc. He was exceptional on the stump too. High-energy, humorous, intelligent---this guy had it all, including several years of sobriety and a kick-ass message to the masses. I don’t quite recall what the message was because I failed to take notes, but I know it was solid. Hell, as good a speaker as he was I likely would’ve been on board if he proposed an ecstasy party later that night, three months of sobriety be damned!
Wrapping up the clumsily-ordered speaking trifecta was a guy who looked very much like the basketball coach Phil Jackson. He’s a fireman by profession, and I’m sure I’m not alone in being glad he got off the sauce, just for the sake of his jurisdiction. He was a low energy, Buzz Killington, which is why i question the order of the speakers. Don’t get me wrong---people with downer stories are important for learning in AA, just not necessarily as closing speakers. He was a wise man who had been through quite a lot though, but I don’t quite recall anything specific from his speech. Check that; I did remember one thing: that the guy was an “incest survivor”. Not to belittle this guy’s plight, but as a speaker, as soon as you drop this sort of information the audience’s minds are likely to wander. Personally I didn’t hear a thing he said for the next five minutes as I imagined what specifically he was talking about. Was it an Uncle? An unattractive big sister? As with this speaker, I probably shouldn’t have brought this up either...let’s just move along.
After this speaker event, the crowd split up into smaller groups, each focused on one of the AA steps. I wanted to attend the second and third step, because I’m still in dire need of spiritual guidance. Unfortunately that meeting was on one end of a large room while another meeting was being staged on the other, about sixty feet away. Too much chaos for me---much like a music festival at which two stages are too close together. So I tracked down the step one meeting, which happened to be right behind our house of horrors, err, cabin. It was a good meeting as these things go, most certainly because anyone serious enough about their AA “program” to come sleep in a barracks for two nights is going to say something half-thoughtful anyway. (AA meeting quality can vary, trust me!)
I enjoyed a lunch of processed chicken fingers in the ultra-modern cafeteria, joined by Brian and a guy from our cabin who looks very much like Jesus, only with shorter hair. He’s from Atlanta as well, and attends an AA meeting in Va Highland called “High Noon”, which is probably not the best name for a group of people trying to stay sober. We learned that Jesus has two teen-aged kids at home, and only later discovered that he’s gay and the kids are adopted from Asia. Not that there’s anything wrong with that---the guy could pass as the Messiah himself!
Brian and I were joined by another cabin-mate, (whose name escapes me, of course), for a leisurely stroll around the grounds and some good soberly fellowship. As we embarked on our walk we came across a frisbee whose owner was clearly nowhere nearby. Seeing that I forgot to bring mine, I had a very strong impulse to pick it up and use it on our walk, surely to put it back where I found it. The other two balked at this plan, our new friend pointing out something ridiculous like: “if the owner isn’t around to ask, I assume I can’t borrow something.” I countered with: “Well, we’re only going to be gone thirty minutes, and this frisbee is clearly idle.” Ultimately Brian cast the deciding “no” vote, and we left the fucking disc there. Luckily it was a beautiful fall day in a wonderful setting, so I got over the disappointment quickly.
Our walk took us past the small lake and the enchantment of about forty turtles of varying size , tightly lined up on logs basking in the sun. Half of them dove into the water when we got within two hundred yards of them, so I assume those were the French. We passed a couple of young ladies who were in for a much, much smaller church-based retreat and resisted the urge to chat them up. In retrospect I can’t tell you if they were attractive or not because being immersed in four hundred middle-aged dry drunks will straight-up screw with a man’s perspective. Susan Boyle probably would’ve looked hot at this point. The third guy mentioned he was originally from Philly, but somehow was unaware that Hall and Oates were also from there. In addition, he had never even heard of Cinderella. I probably shouldn’t have shoved him off the dock for this lack of knowledge, but fuck this guy. Just kidding---I didn’t make a big deal out of it.
The Highlight of the Trip
.
I wandered back near our cabin after lunch with intentions of joining a pick-up softball game, but it wasn’t to start for an hour or so. I considered a nap, but since that might detract from my punch-drunk state from sleep-deprivation, I decided to fight on with the waking world. Actually, it was more like I heard the young fellow who opened that morning’s speaker line-up playing a Widespread Panic song on guitar on the front porch of a cabin two down from mine. Theirs was a modern, deluxe version, which housed the steering committee members, (my sponsor among them), and the guest speakers, and it felt sort of off-limits to us commoners. Good thing I didn’t care at this point...
I introduced myself to the kid, named Chase, and sat next to him and we chatted about jam bands. He was friendly enough, but seemed a little off in a way. Right about the time I was going to peace out, out walked Marty, the entertaining speaker from the night before who had the same accent as my grandparents, along with the aforementioned Brother Dave Gardner. Well how about this luck! I was thrilled to leave the dud kid a-strummin’ and move over next to Marty and let the stories begin.
I’m not sure what was more remarkable: that he had worked at a nuclear power plant since he was an eighteen year-old drunk or that he’s left this slight detail out of his story when he was on the stump. I mean, he was essentially a drunk Homer Simpson wandering around split atoms for over twenty years. Perhaps his spectacles didn’t have yellow tinted lenses after all---it could be the radiation coming out of his head! But seriously, it turns out that former Entertainment Tonight host Mary Hart served on the host committee at the aforementioned Palm Springs AA conference, and Marty got an opportunity to see her famous legs. Not spread or anything---just modeled a little at his request. What a doll! Marty also mentioned the the Rolls Royce chauffeur genuinely scared him, and he and his wife took a cab to ‘ol Tony Bennett’s restaurant and back even though it cost him over a hundred bucks.
Soon enough we were surrounded by four or five other people, and while the conversation was still lively, my private audience with Marty was sadly gone. I must say the guy with the long beard with a fake spider stuck in it was pretty funny though, despite his obviously trying too hard with his prop. Which reminds me, there was an attendee here who wore a t- shirt: “Alcatraz Psycho Ward”. In my book it might as well have read: “I Try Too Hard; Avoid Me!”. Rarely is the good conversation found with someone who’s wearing a stupid t-shirt. I’m sure there are exceptions, but I’ll take my chances. I hung out on the porch for a little while longer before heading over for the pickup softball game.
I didn’t get to shag any fly balls beforehand, which is the excuse I’m giving for coming in on the first inning ball that shot over my head in center field. I also nearly struck out in my one at bat, and then took the opportunity to quit playing because it couldn’t be good for my hernia. Sadly, at age forty-six I pretty much need to stop playing every sport but golf, simply because they hurt. Anyway, I settled for joining the peanut gallery, making fun of the guys still playing, and flipping the frisbee around with some dude, (who owned it), and that was fun enough.
Next up on the official schedule was a Q&A session with a panel of all the weekend’s speakers. They were all in casual attire, which immediately made me wonder why they wore suits when speaking for our motley crew in the first place. Just as I wonder why TV sports announcers are required to wear a coat and tie to address a bunch of guys laying on their couches scratching their balls, but I digress. The guy with the fake spider in his beard read questions submitted by attendees since the start of the weekend, and all were regarding AA recovery. Mormon Guy was quick to answer almost all of the time, and the others piped up often as well. I must say it was tough to take the twenty-two year old seriously regarding life advice, but I’m sure it wasn’t his idea to be up there. And speaking of being up...
This session ended with the aforementioned Grand Pooh-Bah of the weekend---my grandsponsor “Bob”---getting up on stage to oversee the weekend's lone “passing of the hat”, for donations towards future scholarships. And by “oversee”, I mean: “darkly scowl, growl, and leer at the audience of hundreds as they presumably gave until it hurt.” I don't exaggerate when I say this felt like a mass trip to the principal's office, even though I tossed in ten bucks. The guy demanded silence from everyone as he stood there, sometimes with his arms crossed, laying on the most intense non-verbal guilt trip imaginable. He might as well have said: “You only threw five bucks into the pot? THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'VE DONE!” And this awkwardness went on for a good ten minutes, without even the benefit of background music, which most fittingly would've been Black Sabbath's “War Pigs”, or something. It was just bizarre. I'm not going to lie: (I'm still afraid of the guy, and this happened a month ago!)
“Fuck it---let’s leave!”
After the afternoon session, our impossibly loud snorer situation in the cabin took front and center in the proceedings. Brian, Ryan, and I decided to leave after the final program later that night, thus missing the final speaker Sunday morning and presumably getting a solid night’s sleep. We loaded our shit into the car to facilitate the “thief-in-the-night” style exit and then got down to exactly when we would leave. This was all well and good until I ran into my sponsor Eric, (who again is on the steering committee for the event), at dinner an hour later. After putting it off for a while I finally kind of threw it out there. “Oh, by the way, we’re gonna blaze out of here after the speaker tonight, so that we might get more than a couple of hours of sleep. That’s not going to make you mad, is it?”
Low-key Eric merely said something like: “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Sunday morning’s event is the best part of the weekend, blah, blah, blah.” This was a bitter defeat, and I was cursing my luck for finding the AA 12-step program, which encourages doing the right thing so often---so very annoyingly sometimes. In the past I would’ve have told Eric shit, and just took off as planned, simply fabricating if confronted later: “Oh, you didn’t see me at the closing program? Shit...I guess I should’ve waited to take that leak until after the lord’s prayer so it wouldn’t look like I blew it off!” Yes, the only thing good about this dinner proved to be the tasty pasta /cheese whatever the hell it was.
The fact is that for a while afterwards, I still intended to leave, even though Eric would probably fire me as a sponsee. We vacillated quite a bit before deciding to stay, and I felt like I was in the middle of some stupid reality show, with some orchestrated “dilemma”. I must say it was amusing though. Ultimately, knowing that our Halfway House Mom Debbie would likely be pissed, not to mention Eric went to the trouble of getting us steep discounts to attend in the first place. Leaving to save one night’s sleep would’ve caused more problems than it was worth. I was still not happy however, so if we were staying, the next challenge was to try to solve the problem instead. Clearly, the snorer needed to die. Just kidding.
We returned to our bunk to find several of the other victims hanging out and, needless to say, I took the bull by the horns. I immediately determined whether the main offender was there at the time, but he wasn’t. I then suggested we all vote the fucker out into the common room, which had some spare sleeping arrangements in addition to some couches. I was thinking about taking one of them myself, but it would obviously be better to cast out one guy as opposed to having the other seven have to worry about avoiding him. Seems only fair.
A roomie named John said he actually knew the offender, and would convey that we wanted him out, and get back to us later with the result. Good enough, I thought, despite the fact that John himself snores like a motherfucker, and was in the bed directly below me. Honestly, I should’ve told them both to GTFO, but I’m simply not that big of a dick. I was satisfied the problem would be solved at this point, and I could live with a merely rhythmic snorer as long as a dude who sounds like he’s drowning doesn’t wake me up every half hour. At this point Brian, Ryan, and I took our gear back out of the car and moved in again, much to the amusement of Eric, who saw us from the porch of his cabin. I don’t think he knew how serious we were about taking off.
The Soul Man
Now I’m not going to say this was a lily-white affair by any means, but it’s safe to say that that the percentage of minorities in AA is much lower than the population at large. In other words, this gathering needed an infusion of energy---soul, if you will---and boy did we get it!
This guy in his mid-thirties was a straight-up Baptist-style speaker, and he looked the part too, with a dark pinstriped suit accessorized with a gold necklace and big-framed spectacles. He was of strong build and carried a stronger message----one of survival from the streets of Tampa, along with the wrong side of prison walls. (This sort of spoke to me, and not because I’m from Tampa, I’m not.)
He had a speaking style that demanded your attention, and the cadence and voice of Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. His was a very polished message, and he had it down. No way this guy was resting on his AA speaker circuit laurels just because he was filling a racial quota---he brought game. More importantly, he did not do a: “the last time I saw this many white people in a room” joke, much to this comic’s relief. His overall message was one of accountability and perseverance, sprinkled with little asides of the good life he was living when he was running drugs and chasing tail. I’m not sure if he wasn’t used to his speaking time frame or not, but he seemed to go about fifteen minutes longer than he needed to. In addition, you could tell the parts of his rap that were relatively new because he would speak perfectly for a few minutes, and then suddenly be saying: “um”, “uhh”, etc. It was noticeable only because he was so smooth most of the time---a really great speaker.
Us attendees soon found our uplifted selves heading to the snack building for more messy doughnuts and cake with no napkins or paper towels. I ran into my sponsor Eric, who amusingly enough thought I saw him and tried to avoid him. I assured hum this was not the case, however, and we had a good conversation about the proceedings and how he was glad that my crew and I were staying another night. I ended up chatting with him and another dude a bit too long, and this caused some adversity because it made me late for my next lecture: “Dealing With Adversity”. I raced back to the auditorium and joined the crowd watching a video of a speech by a former prisoner of war.
Now while my lifestyle has been knocked down a number of pegs, I really don’t have it that bad. Sure, I have a possible prison sentence hanging over me, I’m bankrupt, and coming to terms with the fact that I’ll never catch another artificial buzz in my lifetime, but... At least I’m not in a prison camp in Viet Nam, living on rice and water, not knowing if I’m going to to ever be released, and even live or die. (Ninety AA meetings in ninety days is a similar test, but ultimately not comparable.) Yes, this program was just the tonic to make all of us feel better about ourselves---all the way down to the guy who looks like Phil Jackson serving as the discussion leader. It was all kind of like the TV show COPS, and the garbage like Maury Povitch: sure, I may be down, but at least I’m not that person!
After the video ended the mic was somewhat awkwardly passed around the auditorium for people to share their thoughts about the video or their own tales of woe and how they’re dealing with those obstacles. It was really quite uplifting and inspiring. I grabbed the mic at one point and after pausing a few seconds, said: “I really don’t have anything to share, I just wanted the people seated near me to feel slightly awkward because everyone is looking this way right now.” (Actually I didn’t do that, but the thought did occur to me.) All in all, it was a great way to finish up the day’s events, and I was glad to have stuck around because our earlier plan had us skipping out by then.
Bunk Funk: The Conclusion
While the majority of my fellow Rock attendees stayed up late kibitzing and rekindling old friendships, I was on the back end of a day-long caffeine buzz, so I was going to bed. Upon returning to my musty sleeping quarters, my lower bunkie informed me that he was unable to locate Offensive Snorer to inform him that he's been “voted off the island”. I checked to see if any of the beds in the common area
were available, only to find they were all claimed. Seasoned veterans off this sort of dilemma, no doubt! Anyway, realizing my options were severely limited and I was tired as hell, I just took to my bed and hoped one of my other roommates had him killed or something.
As it turned out, the snorer never re-surfaced in the room that night, although the guy below me still sawed logs like you read about. That was small potatoes by comparison, though, and I got a decent night's sleep. In fact, I slept until 7:30, whereupon Ryan woke me up in time for me to dash to the cafeteria and shovel down some food prior to the weekend's final program. It turned out the coffee in our portion of the chow hall was on empty, so we had to invade the other side to take some of theirs. This made me feel like I was getting away with something, and also feel like a dirty old man, as there were some young ladies around, thanks to the aforementioned church retreat. All of them looked like “10's” at this point in the weekend, I can tell you that much.
The final gathering of the weekend commenced, with the subject naturally being spirituality. The guy doing the speaking was seemingly nice enough, but he didn't really come across as a real spiritual guy. Frankly, I expected him to start talking about his DVD series at any moment, given his plentiful amusing anecdotes and sales jokes. (I would later discover that the steering committee has struggled to replace a guy who was an ace in this Sunday speaking slot, and that can't be an easy task.) This isn't to say the speaker was bad, it's more to express some disappointment that we stayed an extra night in a locker room for the privilege of hearing it.
The weekend's events was brought to a close in fine fashion, however, thanks to the Grand Poobah giving new instructions for the Lord's Prayer that closed the session. We were to keep our eyes open and survey the brotherhood instead of looking down in meditative fashion. Indeed, the resulting emotions were quite powerful. The prayer was the most remarkable parts of any of the gatherings in the auditorium, as there's a certain power and moving nature in hundreds of formerly broken men joining together arm-in-arm in reverence of their higher powers. And I'm far from a fan of the prayer itself or organized religion in general. It was simply not something I think can be seen and felt just every day.
After things wrapped up I bid farewell to my sponsor Eric and a few others whom I had met and high-tailed it out of there with Brain and Ryan in tow. We stopped quickly at a convenience store to buy some smokes, (go figure---an AA gathering that went heavy on the smokes!), only to find the black dude who spoke so eloquently the night before doing the same. We didn't stop to chat, however, and I don't know what it said about us that none of us could remember his name. One thing's for sure, though: none of us will forget the name “Rock Eagle”, nor how much trying to sleep in a room with seven other dudes sucks.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
2011 NFL Preview - AFC
2011 NFL Preview!
What with the avalanche of information these days---more specifically regarding America’s favorite sport NFL football---I’ve decided to add to the myriad prognostications one can find almost everywhere. I’m not claiming to be an expert, I’m simply blending all of the prediction info I’ve been absorbing and adding commentary you won’t find anywhere else.. Helpfully, I’m something of a wiseacre, and I have no reason to pull any punches, as I’m not employed or supported by any asses to kiss. I’m shooting from the hip and throwing non-football related things in for the hell or it. (Call me a Simmons rip-off if you want, I don’t care.) Also, I’m guessing as much as any “expert”, because whichever teams survive the longest without key injuries will probably excel, regardless of how shitty their roster may look in the pre-season or how hard their schedule looks. This is a crap shoot. So without further ado, my off-the-cuff musings about each NFL team, whether I have my facts straight or not...
AFC East
Patriots
Always the odds-on favorite in my book simply because Belichick is smarter than most everyone else in the NFL. This isn’t to say he’s a genius, by the way, only that his intellect shines relative to the rest of the league. Let’s face it: if you’re particularly bright, how much time are you going to spend around football at any level in your life, let alone go into coaching? Spending endless, mostly thankless, hours surrounded by a bunch of dumb jocks, usually in challenging weather conditions? Probably not. But I digress... The Patriots have one of the top three QB’s in the league, and a bunch of guys who are buying what Belichick is selling, namely constant runs at the Super Bowl. This kind of shit is infectious, and this season will be no different for the Pats, regardless of how over-the-top annoying Boston fans are. Even a complete meathead, borderline murderer like Albert Haynesworth will sign on.
Jets
Jeff Sanchez is hot. He’s also in NYC. This is why, despite his crappy stats he is sold as being the kind of guy that will take a team anywhere. Tomlinson, (it took me ten years to realize the were two “n’s” in his name instead of one, btw. I can’t be the only one.) was washed up two years ago and I can’t for the life of me figure out how an aging near-legend can be a good apple in the locker room. Especially a guy who has questionable heart to begin with. Plaxico probably has way more left in the tank than the typical 34-yr old receiver because pumping iron in the joint really isn’t quite as taxing as his day job. The Jests will disappoint, and this will allow me a chuckle or two at their fans, who have enough of an inferiority complex as it is.
Dolphins
You may notice I start each of these things by remarking on the quarterback. This is because, besides being the hardest job on earth, it is also by far the most important component to any team’s chances. I mean, it’s insane how important the guy with the back of his hand under the center’s nutsack is. Given this, the Dolphins cannot be taken seriously simply because their signal-caller is Chad Henne. This is a guy who went 0-4 against his arch-rival in college. He appears to be dumb as the day is long, and apparently emotion-free on top of that. ‘Nuff said. Also, any coach with a name that close to Tony Soprano can’t be trusted, not to mention the dude wears sunglasses in a dome. Why not wear your hat sideways while you’re at it, dipshit? Confidence, you do not instill. Oh, and Reggie Bush getting the ball ten times a game and fumlbing twice is the answer, Dolphin fans. Probably. Also, nice job not even selling out your home opener!
Bills
I just reviewed this roster and I recognize about five names, and one of those is because he went to Georgia. Some franchises are ripe to rip on, but I just can’t bring myself to abandon civility in this case. The Bills always suck, and their dedicated fans deserve some slack because they live in a cold version of hell, (although the upstate is a lovely area during the two months that aren’t winter.) Quick riddle: you know why the Canadian side of Niagra Falls is the best? Because you’re looking at America! Fuck yeah. Anyway, at least the Bills have revamped their horrible uniforms---to recall their 70’s “glory” days when although they still sucked, at least they had the Juice. Left’s just thank the Bills for being a necessary whipping boy for franchises that have their shit together and move on.
AFC North
Stillers
I’m not going to lie: I hate the Steelers, which obviously means they’re great---probably the best franchise in NFL history. Pittsburgh is lovely as well, which begs the question: why is everyone I meet from there an asshole? And don’t even get me started on their legions of bandwagon fans.
As for football? They scare the shit out of me. The thought of a bunch of speed in the receiving corps and that absurd linebacking corps makes me shudder. Big Ben, while a supreme douchebag, (complete with the universal symbol: the backwards hat), is a top five QB regardless of his lack of grace. I know one should never root for injuries, but fuck that, and fuck the Steelers. (Ed. note: the author was raised a Browns fan)
Browns
You know you suck when your best player snags the cover of Madden and that’s pretty much the highlight of your (2.0) franchise history. It appears that the front office is finally getting its shit together, although Mike Holmgren may in fact be a retread who isn’t all “that” but simply had everything go his way in Green Bay, so in turn he’s a “name”. So was Butch Davis. Anyway, I always hated Colt McCoy at Texas, and now I have to live with him, so I hate him a little less. He does make shit happen, though, and it will be interesting to see how he progresses this year for the franchise of QB corpses. God knows they have a good break coming their way. Cleveland deserves Payton HIllis and vice versa: he’s a man’s man. Sadly, the NFL screwed Josh Cribbs and the Browns the most with their ridiculous new kickoff rule, so I guess it’s a push regarding whether God in fact hates them. Here’s hoping they get more breaks than not this year, because as usual they’ll need them. By the way---were you aware Bernie Kosar’s daughter is now doing porn? Also, fun fact: The Browns will either have a) a black punter, or b) a white punter who sounds like a black guy (Richmond McGee). You can’t get this shit anywhere else.
Ravens
Another team I loathe, but they obviously deserve respect nevertheless. Even though Art Modell is now out of the picture, I’ll never get over it or forgive the franchise in general, logic be damned.
I’m glad to see Ray Lewis is now two steps slow and counting so he can be knocked on his ass a lot more often. (This will be long-deserved karma for his contrived pre-game act all these years if you ask me. not to mention the murder.) Anyway, I’m still not sold on Flacco, and seeing him try to get by with a slow and old receiving corps may bring me some joy. God knows the Ravens’ plodding style won’t do the trick. And while we’re discussing Baltimore---why did the writers of The Wire never incorporate sports fandom into the scripts? You know a truce settled in the projects on game days. Screw the Ravens---let’s move on.
Bengals
I’m tempted to simply pass by this one out of disrespect for Mike Brown. I just feel bad for A.J. Green, not to mention the fine citizens of Cincy, who are fine innocent bystanders to this travesty. This franchise is exhibit A for the question: who the fuck said that simply being the offspring of someone successful means the success will be continued when they take over?
That’s a cool thing about sports: bumbling owners are exposed for all to see, and truths like being rich and being smart don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. But I digress. The Bengals are a disaster at QB, and unfortunately all this means is the Steelers and Ravens pick up easy wins. Even though this means the Browns will likely benefit from this horrid team in their division, that’s hardly a push in my book.
AFC South
Colts
Peyton is questionable, but then again, so am I. But seriously, this gig has to be just about up, and not a moment too soon if you ask me. I can’t be the only one sick of seeing Manning squawking at the line and going full dork with the photos on the sidelines after every series. This isn’t a man’s man, despite every NFL QB being the modern day equivalent of Mel Gibson in The Patriot. I’m tired of looking at him, and thankfully this team is officially old, they have a coach more over his head than Obama, and they are about to have their asses handed to them. And that’s probably with Manning in the lineup. With Kerry Collins as your backup plan, all bets are off. At least they have a dude named Al Afalava, from Hawaii, of course.
Jaguars
Their coach Jack Del Rio is quite attractive, which brings to mind one of my favorite quotes from writer PJ O’Roarke: “It’s always tempting to impute unlikely virtues to the cute.” I take that to mean that just because someone is good-looking, it doesn’t mean they are necessarily bright, honest, or anything else. Anyway, JDL has a track record of coaching as an idiot might, and that’s not what you’d hope for when you’re trying to win games. The front office also gave a huge contract to a mediocre, (at best), quarterback, and that can’t be good for the morale of those in the locker room with IQ’s above room temperature. Also, their little bowling ball of a running back has too many miles on him and their small market requires the team to tarp off half of the upper deck of their stadium so it doesn’t look like a Marlins game on a goddamn NFL Sunday. This team has less than no shot.
Texans
THIS is the year---we swear! As a Falcon fan, I tend to root against Matt Schaub. Not because he screwed us over or anything, just because of what might have been, despite the fact that we’re set at QB now with Ryan. As always, (lately anyway), they are loaded with talent, but who wouldn’t be when you suck every year. Schaub sneakily adds to the ‘04 QB draft class along with Big Ben, Rivers, and Eli, as a top-quality arm with the smarts to go with it. He may or may not bring the Texans over the hump, but even if he does Houston will still be a godforsaken metropolis. Not only is it nasty sprawl with horrible traffic and even worse humidity, but this is the same place that gave us that goddamn “Luv Ya Blue” era, along with that brutal theme song. This was thirty years ago, and I obviously should be over it, but that’s how bad it was. Anyway, I’d like to see Mario Williams continue to wreck people, just to piss off all the idiots who mocked the Texans for passing on Reggie Bush. Don’t ever let it be said I have no heart.
Titans
The first thing you think of is Jeff Fisher, the dashing former player on the sidelines. He is gone now, replaced by a pretty ugly guy, Mike Munchak. I suspect this change may be the catalyst to place the Titans at the head of this season's AFC South---let's win one for the ugly guy! (This shit is scientific!) Matt Haselbeck assumes the reigns in Music City, and he’ll probably do fine, but not well enough to snake enough wins to get them very far in January. I almost feel bad for their fans, but on the other hand country music sucks and they stole a team from another city, so screw ‘em.
AFC West
Chargers
A classic case of a retread coach who blew it in two other places, so...why not hire him here! I swear there are probably hundreds of high school coaches who could handle the NFL as well as a two-time loser can. I’ll never understand why retreads like Turner exist. Not to mention he still underachieves on the regular, yet still has a job. Go figure. Rivers may or may not be great---I’m still not convinced, and neither are people who’ve bet Chargers Super Bowl futures. All I know is I happened to see him doing one of those cheesy Q&A’s in the back of a magazine once---a hunting magazine. No offense to hunters, but let’s face it: it’s not usually from this group that we find intellects that can effectively dissect NFL defenses. The Chargers also are guilty of letting Darren Sproles go to the Saints, which not only pisses me off as a Falcon fan, but seems downright stupid because that little fucker is a badass. I don’t care what kind of cap problem it may pose, allot your money better and keep a stud, dumb asses. We can assume the Bolts will have another decent year, but it will be hilarious is they whiff on September yet again. And by the way, screw LA picking up this team---take one from a crap city like Jax if you have to.
Chiefs
Not sure you can bet against a team with a guy named Dexter McCluster, not to mention Amara Kamara, who will hopefully make the final 53. Seriously though, I heard a micro-stat the other day: Matt Cassel threw a shitload of “almost” picks last year, i.e. passes that should’ve gone the other way but didn’t. This can’t bode well because this kind of stuff has a way of evening out. I like the Chiefs though, and they have cool fans and a classic old stadium, not to mention nice unis. These long-suffering fans deserve a break, especially given that shit show they have going on across the parking lot from Arrowhead. You gotta figure the home team can finally deliver given their string of years with all the sweet draft picks. The dual SEC defensive backs Berry and Arenas would seem to be a pretty good finish to bolster the defense. But who am I kidding with actual analysis? You can get that a thousand other places.
Broncos
Tebow fell to fourth on the depth chart recently, behind the illustrious former Golden Gopher Adam Weber.This can only mean one thing for football fans: pretty soon we’re going to be relieved of having to hear about this toolbox. (Sorry, but I’m a Gator-hater). Even though I was a Browns fan before the interruption, I still respect the Broncos and their fans. I also encountered Elway once, and he was a cool dude and I’m pretty sure he was stoned. Anyway, he’s at the helm in the front office now, and I’d be somewhat pleased to see the Broncos have some success soon after that egomaniac lunatic Mike Shannahan took off. Unfortunately, I’d be surprised if this squad is the one to make any headway this year. Someone has to suck---and these horses will likely be in that group despite solid UGA connections, young (Moreno), and old (Bailey).
Raiders
Hue (sic) Jackson?? Are you kidding me with this shit? We can assume the guy is a stooge, because no one else would take this job. The only thing good that could come out of this is proving my potential theory that pulling a guy off the street to coach might be a better idea than a war horse proven failure like Turner. This team is too easy to root against, although wishing bad things on the mentallyl, (Al Davis), should be seen as dickish. Any team who loses their best player to free agency with no replacement and is led by Jason Campbell has less than no shot . Campbell is one of those guys who I wish I could’ve “shorted”, like a stock you know will tank, coming out of the draft. After watching him at Auburn, I was stunned that the Redskins were stupid enough to think he was the answer to anything. Then, of course, the Raiders pick him up because, well, what’s left of Al Davis is the only person in the NFL with a lower football acumen than Dan Snyder. Again, watching these guys bumble around with idiotic decisions in front of God and everybody is part of what makes following professional sports so fun. (Not that Godon Gee and Gene Smith don’t provide similar yuks via tOSU, of course) Oh, and Raider fans: you’re not rebels, you’re not clever---you’re losers, and everyone laughs at you. And your stadium is a joke. Raider Nation pffft.
When I get around to it: the NFC rundown...
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Recycling Makes Little Sense
Below is an article from a 1996 article from the New York Times magazine: (http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is-garbage.html)
I have taken the liberty to re-post it to allow for an easier read, free of clutter and advertisements. This being said, be sure to patronize sponsors of the New York Times online! ;)
The gist of the piece is that almost all recycling except aluminum is a waste of money, time, and energy. It's difficult to not be downright alarmed that this is pretty much the lone mainstream media expose of its kind. Why the silence?
__________________________________________________________________
Recycling Is Garbage
Do you see any pattern as I'm emptying it?" Miss Aponte asked.
"Yeah, it stinks."
"Everybody's chewing Winterfresh."
"A lot of paper napkins."
"It's disgusting."
"They're throwing away a folder. That's a perfectly good folder!"
"It's only half a folder."
"Well, they could find the other half and attach them together."
Miss Aponte finished emptying the last bag. "We've been learning about the need to reduce, reuse and recycle," she said, and pointed at the pile. "How does all this make you feel?"
"Baaaad," the students moaned.
Miss Aponte separated out two bottles, the only items in the pile that could be recycled. She asked what lesson the students had learned. The class sentiment was summarized by Lily Finn, the student who had been so determined to save the half folder: "People shouldn't throw away paper or anything. They should recycle it. And they shouldn't eat candy in school."
Lily's judgment about candy sounded reasonable, but the conclusion about recycling seemed to be contradicted by the data on the floor. The pile of garbage included the equipment used by the children in the litter hunt: a dozen plastic bags and two dozen pairs of plastic gloves. The cost of this recycling equipment obviously exceeded the value of the recyclable items recovered. The equipment also seemed to be a greater burden on the environment, because the bags and gloves would occupy more space in a landfill than the two bottles.
Without realizing it, the third graders had beautifully reproduced the results of a grand national experiment begun in 1987 -- the year they were born, back when the Three R's had nothing to do with garbage. That year a barge named the Mobro 4000 wandered thousands of miles trying to unload its cargo of Long Islanders' trash, and its journey had a strange effect on America. The citizens of the richest society in the history of the planet suddenly became obsessed with personally handling their own waste.
Believing that there was no more room in landfills, Americans concluded that recycling was their only option. Their intentions were good and their conclusions seemed plausible. Recycling does sometimes makes sense -- for some materials in some places at some times. But the simplest and cheapest option is usually to bury garbage in an environmentally safe landfill. And since there's no shortage of landfill space (the crisis of 1987 was a false alarm), there's no reason to make recycling a legal or moral imperative. Mandatory recycling programs aren't good for posterity. They offer mainly short-term benefits to a few groups -- politicians, public relations consultants, environmental organizations, waste-handling corporations -- while diverting money from genuine social and environmental problems. Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America: a waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources.
The obvious temptation is to blame journalists, who did a remarkable job of creating the garbage crisis, often at considerable expense to their own employers. Newspaper and magazine publishers, whose products are a major component of municipal landfills, nobly led the crusade against trash, and they're paying for it now through regulations that force them to buy recycled paper -- a costly handicap in their struggle against electronic rivals. It's the first time that an industry has conducted a mass-media campaign informing customers that its own product is a menace to society.
But the press isn't solely responsible for recycling fervor; the public's obsession wouldn't have lasted this long unless recycling met some emotional need. Just as the third graders believed that their litter run was helping the planet, Americans have embraced recycling as a transcendental experience, an act of moral redemption. We're not just reusing our garbage; we're performing a rite of atonement for the sin of excess. Recycling teaches the themes that previous generations of schoolchildren learned from that Puritan classic, "The Pilgrim's Progress."
John Bunyan's 17th-century allegory features a character not unlike the garbage barge that left Long Island: a man dressed in rags who flees the City of Destruction, desperate to find a place he can unload the "great burden upon his back." Guided by the Evangelist, the pilgrim wanders the world trying to reach the Celestial City. His worst trial occurs in Vanity Fair, a village market founded by Beelzebub and inhabited by noblemen named Lord Luxurious and Sir Having Greedy. The market offers tempting wares, but the pilgrim bravely practices the first R -- reduce -- by shunning the products of the "merchandizers" and continuing on to the Celestial City.
Today's schoolchildren, though, might be confused by one character encountered on Bunyan's road to salvation: a man, the source of our word "muckraker," who is busy raking together a compost pile. This recycler of household waste isn't presented as a role model for the pilgrim. He's a symbol of moral blindness because, instead of looking up to see the heavenly rewards awaiting him, he "could look no way but downwards, with a muck-rake in his hand." In Bunyan's time, it would have been hard to imagine that pilgrims would one day be taught to search for salvation right down there in the muck.
The Day of Reckoning Foretold
"All I've been thinking about all week is garbage. I mean, I just can't stop thinking about it. . . . I've just gotten real concerned over what's gonna happen. . . . I started feeling this way . . . when that barge was stranded."
-- Opening lines of the 1989 film "Sex, Lies and Videotape," spoken to a psychiatrist by a woman whose real problems -- sexual and marital unhappiness -- have nothing to do with municipal solid waste.
AT THE TIME AMERICANS BECAME RACKED WITH GARBAGE GUILT, businesses were already recycling millions of tons of trash a year. They were voluntarily -- and profitably -- recycling newsprint, office paper, cardboard, aluminum and steel. But the barge's plight convinced everyone that voluntary enterprise was not enough. As Newsweek noted, the Mobro's saga was "to the trash crisis what the sinking of the Lusitania was to World War I." The magazine's cover story, titled "Buried Alive," warned: "With rare exceptions during wartime, Americans have not been adept at making individual sacrifices for the common good. That mentality will have to change. Otherwise, the dumps will cover the country coast to coast and the trucks will stop in everybody's backyard."
Suddenly, just as central planning was going out of fashion in eastern Europe, America devised a national five-year plan for trash. The Environmental Protection Agency promulgated a "Waste Hierarchy" that ranked trash-disposal options: recycling at the top, composting and waste-to-energy incinerators in the middle, landfills at the bottom.
The E.P.A.'s five-year goal, to recycle 25 percent of municipal trash, was announced in a speech in early 1988 by J. Winston Porter, an assistant administrator of the agency. Even as Porter was setting the goal, he realized that it was presumptuous for a bureaucrat in Washington to tell everyone in America what to do with their trash. "After all the publicity about the barge," Porter recalls, "I sat down with some engineers in my office to estimate how much municipal waste could be recycled. At that time, about 10 percent was being recycled. We looked at the components of waste, made a few quick calculations and figured that it was reasonable to reach a level of 25 percent within five years. It wasn't a highly quantified thing. Some of the staff didn't even want me to mention a figure. But I thought it would be good to set a target, as long as it was strictly voluntary and didn't involve a lot of regulations."
Politicians across the country had bigger ideas. State and city officials enacted laws mandating recycling and setting arbitrary goals even higher than the E.P.A.'s. Most states set rigid quotas, typically requiring that at least 40 percent of trash be recycled, often even more -- 50 percent in New York and California, 60 percent in New Jersey, 70 percent in Rhode Island. Industries were pressured to set their own goals. Municipalities followed the Waste Hierarchy by building waste-to-energy incinerators and starting thousands of curbside recycling programs -- all in the belief that it would be cheaper than landfilling. But the incinerators turned out to be disastrously expensive, and the recycling programs produced a glut of paper, glass and plastic that no one wanted to buy.
So recycling devotees hit on a new solution: if people aren't willing to buy our precious garbage, we'll force them. The Federal Government and dozens of states passed laws that required public agencies, newspapers and other companies to purchase recycled materials. These regulations, along with a wide variety of tax breaks and subsidies, have pushed the national rate of recycling up to Porter's goal of 25 percent -- an expensive achievement, since the programs lose money. But that's still not enough. Environmental groups are pressuring local governments to expand their recycling programs to meet the goals set in law -- goals that, according to the official who helped start the whole movement, are impossible to reach.
"People in New York and other places are tilting at recycling windmills," says Porter, who left the E.P.A. in 1989 and is now president of a consulting firm, the Waste Policy Center in Leesburg, Va. "There aren't many more materials in garbage that are worth recycling." Porter has been advising cities and states to abandon their unrealistic goals, but politicians are terrified of coming out against recycling. How could they explain it to the voters? How could they explain it to their children?
The Evangelist's Alarms
AFTER THE LITTER HUNT IN MISS APONTE'S SCIENCE classroom, it was time for a guest lecturer on garbage. A fifth-grade class was brought in to hear Joanne Dittersdorf, the director of environmental education for the Environmental Action Coalition, a nonprofit group based in New York. Her slide show began with a 19th-century photograph of a street in New York strewn with garbage.
"Why can't we keep throwing out garbage that way?" Dittersdorf asked.
"It'll keep piling up and we won't have any place to put it."
"The earth would be called the Trash Can."
"The garbage will soon, like, take over the whole world and, like, kill everybody."
Dittersdorf asked the children to examine their lives. "Does anyone here ever have takeout food?" A few students confessed, and Dittersdorf gently scolded them. "A lot of garbage there."
She showed a slide illustrating New Yorkers' total annual production of garbage: a pile big enough to fill 15 city blocks to a height of 20 stories. "There are a lot of landfills in New York City," Dittersdorf said, "but we've run out of space." Showing a slide of Flushing Meadows, a former landfill that's now a park, she asked, "Would you want to live on top of one of these landfills?" The place didn't look too bad, actually, but Dittersdorf explained that toxic threats could be hidden in a landfill. "Have you ever heard of a place called Love Canal? It was an old landfill that belonged to a chemical company, and they sold it to build a school on, and everyone who went to that school got very sick. There was poison in the dirt underneath."
A supermarket package of red apples appeared on the screen. "Look at the plastic, the Styrofoam or cardboard underneath," Dittersdorf said. "Do you need this much wrapping when you buy things?"
"Noooo."
"Every week," Dittersdorf said, "75,000 trees are cut to make the Sunday New York Times."
The children were appalled. A few glanced reproachfully at me sitting in the back of the room. I didn't try to justify my -- or your -- role in this weekly tree-slaying, garbage-generating, earth-defiling ritual. The children were in no mood for heresy. Dittersdorf had masterfully reinforced the mythical tenets of the garbage crisis: We're a wicked throwaway society. Plastic packaging and fast-food containers may seem wasteful, but they actually save resources and reduce trash. The typical household in Mexico City buys fewer packaged goods than an American household, but it produces one-third more garbage, chiefly because Mexicans buy fresh foods in bulk and throw away large portions that are unused, spoiled or stale. Those apples in Dittersdorf's slide, protected by plastic wrap and foam, are less likely to spoil. The lightweight plastic packaging requires much less energy to manufacture and transport than traditional alternatives like cardboard or paper. Food companies have switched to plastic packaging because they make money by using resources efficiently. A typical McDonald's discards less than two ounces of garbage for each customer served -- less than what's generated by a typical meal at home.
Plastic packaging is routinely criticized because it doesn't decay in landfills, but neither does most other packaging, as William Rathje, an archaeologist at the University of Arizona, has discovered from his excavations of landfills. Rathje found that paper, cardboard and other organic materials -- while technically biodegradable -- tend to remain intact in the airless confines of a landfill. These mummified materials actually use much more landfill space than plastic packaging, which has steadily been getting smaller as manufacturers develop stronger, thinner materials. Juice cartons take up half the landfill space occupied by the glass bottles they replaced; 12 plastic grocery bags fit in the space occupied by one paper bag.
Our garbage will bury us. The Mobro's saga was presented as a grim harbinger of future landfill scarcity, but it actually represented a short-lived scare caused by new environmental regulations. As old municipal dumps were forced to close in the 1980's, towns had to send their garbage elsewhere and pay higher prices for scarce landfill space. But the higher prices, predictably, encouraged companies to open huge new landfills, in some regions creating a glut that set off price-cutting wars. Over the past few years, landfills in the South and Middle West have been vying for garbage from the New York area, and it has become cheaper to ship garbage there than to bury it locally.
America today has a good deal more landfill space available than it did 10 years ago. Landfills are scarce in just a few places, notably the Northeast, partly because of local economic realities (open land is expensive near cities) but mainly because of local politics. Environmentalists have prevented new landfills from opening by propounding another myth. . . .
Our garbage will poison us. By mentioning Love Canal, Dittersdorf made landfills sound like the Slough of Despond, Bunyan's dread swamp. But it's not fair to compare modern municipal-trash landfills with Love Canal, an old industrial dump filled with large concentrations of toxic chemicals that seeped into the ground when a school was, stupidly, built on the site. (Even so, it's not clear that any of the schoolchildren were poisoned. Exhaustive scientific studies around Love Canal haven't detected any increase in cancer rates.)
Today's landfills for municipal trash are filled mostly with innocuous materials like paper, yard waste and construction debris. They contain small amounts of hazardous wastes, like lead and mercury, but studies have found that these poisons stay trapped inside the mass of garbage even in the old, unlined dumps that were built before today's stringent regulations. So there's little reason to worry about modern landfills, which by Federal law must be lined with clay and plastic, equipped with drainage and gas-collection systems, covered daily with soil and monitored regularly for underground leaks.
The small-time operators who ran the old municipal dumps can't afford to provide these safeguards, which is why corporations have moved in, opening huge facilities that might serve half a state, typically in a rural area with few neighbors. It's a prudent environmental strategy and it provides jobs for rural communities, which is why some of them have been competing to attract new landfills. But the availability of landfill space in the countryside has created an awkward situation for cities committed to more expensive alternatives like recycling programs and incinerators. Environmentalists have responded with a mythical imperative. . . .
We must achieve garbage independence.
When Dittersdorf told the children that New York City was running out of landfill space, she was technically right. Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki have promised Staten Island that its municipal landfill will close in five years, and there's no logical place in town to put a new one. But why should the city have to use a local landfill? Why assume that New Yorkers have a moral obligation to dispose of their garbage near home? Most of the stuff was shipped to the city from factories and farms elsewhere. What's wrong with shipping it back out to be buried in places with open land?
"I don't understand why anyone thinks New York City has a garbage crisis because it can't handle all its own waste," says James DeLong, an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington. "With that kind of logic, you'd have to conclude that New York City has a food crisis because it can't grow all the vegetables its people need within the city limits, so it should turn Central Park into a farm and ration New Yorkers' consumption of vegetables to what they can grow there." Some politicians in other states have threatened to stop the importing of New York's garbage -- it's an easy way to appeal to some voters' chauvinism -- but in the unlikely event that they succeeded, they would only be depriving their own constituents of jobs and tax revenue.
We're cursing future generations with our waste.
Dittersdorf's slide showing New Yorkers' annual garbage output -- 15 square blocks, 20 stories high -- looked frightening because the trash was sitting, uncompressed, in the middle of the city. But consider a different perspective -- a national, long-term perspective. A. Clark Wiseman, an economist at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., has calculated that if Americans keep generating garbage at current rates for 1,000 years, and if all their garbage is put in a landfill 100 yards deep, by the year 3000 this national garbage heap will fill a square piece of land 35 miles on each side.
This doesn't seem a huge imposition in a country the size of America. The garbage would occupy only 5 percent of the area needed for the national array of solar panels proposed by environmentalists. The millennial landfill would fit on one-tenth of 1 percent of the range land now available for grazing in the continental United States. And if it still pains you to think of depriving posterity of that 35-mile square, remember that the loss will be only temporary. Eventually, like previous landfills, the mounds of trash will be covered with grass and become a minuscule addition to the nation's 150,000 square miles of parkland.
We're squandering irreplaceable natural resources.
Yes, a lot of trees have been cut down to make today's newspaper. But even more trees will probably be planted in their place. America's supply of timber has been increasing for decades, and the nation's forests have three times more wood today than in 1920. "We're not running out of wood, so why do we worry so much about recycling paper?" asks Jerry Taylor, the director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute. "Paper is an agricultural product, made from trees grown specifically for paper production. Acting to conserve trees by recycling paper is like acting to conserve cornstalks by cutting back on corn consumption."
Some resources, of course, don't grow back, and it may seem prudent to worry about depleting the earth's finite stores of metals and fossil fuels. It certainly seemed so during the oil shortages of the 1970's, when the modern recycling philosophy developed. But the oil scare was temporary, just like all previous scares about resource shortages. The costs of natural resources, both renewable and nonrenewable, have been declining for thousands of years. They've become less scarce over time because humans have continually found new supplies or devised new technologies. Fifty years ago, for instance, tin and copper were said to be in danger of depletion, and conservationists urged mandatory recycling and rationing of these vital metals so that future generations wouldn't be deprived of food containers and telephone wires. But today tin and copper are cheaper than ever. Most food containers don't use any tin. Phone calls travel through fiber-optic cables of glass, which is made from sand -- and should the world ever run out of sand, we could dispense with wires altogether by using cellular phones.
The only resource that has been getting consistently more expensive is human time: the cost of labor has been rising for centuries. An hour of labor today buys a larger quantity of energy or raw materials than ever before. To economists, it's wasteful to expend human labor to save raw materials that are cheap today and will probably be cheaper tomorrow. Even the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental group that strongly favors recycling and has often issued warnings about the earth's dwindling resources, has been persuaded that there are no foreseeable shortages of most minerals. "In retrospect," a Worldwatch report notes, "the question of scarcity may never have been the most important one."
It is better to recycle than to throw away.
This is the most enduring myth, the one that remains popular even among those who don't believe in the garbage crisis anymore. By now, many experts and public officials acknowledge that America could simply bury its garbage, but they object to this option because it diverts trash from recycling programs. Recycling, which was originally justified as the only solution to a desperate national problem, has become a goal in itself -- a goal so important that we must preserve the original problem. It's as if the protagonist of "Pilgrim's Progress," upon being informed that he could drop his sinful burden right there on the road, insisted on clinging to it just so he could continue the pilgrimage to get rid of it. Why is it better to recycle? The usual justifications are that it saves money and protects the environment. These sound reasonable until you actually start handling garbage.
The Muckrakers' Discoveries
The 1992 Plan projected that the City would realize net savings from recycling. The Department's experience to date in implementing the recycling program diverges from the assumptions of the Plan.
-- 1996 Comprehensive Solid Waste Management Plan of the New York City Department of Sanitation.
EVERY TIME A SANITATION DEPARTMENT CREW PICKS UP A load of bottles and cans from the curb, New York City loses money. The recycling program consumes resources. It requires extra administrators and a continual public relations campaign explaining what to do with dozens of different products -- recycle milk jugs but not milk cartons, index cards but not construction paper. (Most New Yorkers still don't know the rules.) It requires enforcement agents to inspect garbage and issue tickets. Most of all, it requires extra collection crews and trucks. Collecting a ton of recyclable items is three times more expensive than collecting a ton of garbage because the crews pick up less material at each stop. For every ton of glass, plastic and metal that the truck delivers to a private recycler, the city currently spends $200 more than it would spend to bury the material in a landfill.
Officials hoped to recover this extra cost by selling the material, but the market price of a ton has never been anywhere near $200. In fact, it has rarely risen as high as zero. Private recyclers usually demand a fee because their processing costs exceed the eventual sales price of the recycled materials. So the city, having already lost $200 collecting the ton of material, typically has to pay another $40 to get rid of it.
The recycling program has been costing $50 million to $100 million annually, and that's just the money coming directly out of the municipal budget. There's also the labor involved: the garbage-sorting that millions of New Yorkers do at home every week. How much would the city have to spend if it couldn't rely on forced labor? True, some people would probably be glad to do the work for free because they regard garbage-sorting as a morally uplifting activity for the whole family. But many others have refused to follow the law. They seem to have a more traditional view of garbage-sorting: an activity done only for money, and then only by the most destitute members of society.
I tried to estimate the value of New Yorkers' garbage-sorting by financing an experiment by a neutral observer (a Columbia University student with no strong feelings about recycling). He kept a record of the work he did during one week complying with New York's recycling laws. It took him eight minutes during the week to sort, rinse and deliver four pounds of cans and bottles to the basement of his building. If the city paid for that work at a typical janitorial wage ($12 per hour), it would pay $792 in home labor costs for each ton of cans and bottles collected. And what about the extra space occupied by that recycling receptacle in the kitchen? It must take up at least a square foot, which in New York costs at least $4 a week to rent. If the city had to pay for this space, the cost per ton of recyclables would be about $2,000. That figure plus the home labor costs, added to what the city already spends on its collection program, totals more than $3,000 for a ton of scrap metal, glass and plastic. For that price, you could find a one-ton collection of those materials at a used-car lot -- a Toyota Tercel, for instance -- and drive home in it.
LAST YEAR, A SURGE in the market price for recycled materials prompted a spate of recycling-has-finally-arrived articles. At one point, New York was selling its old newspapers for $150 per ton, which was almost enough to offset the extra costs of the paper recycling program. But newsprint prices have since plummeted back to familiar levels; New York is once again paying recyclers to take its newspapers, and city officials are resigned to losing money on recycling. As a result of a lawsuit by City Council members and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the city has been under court order to collect increasing amounts of recyclable material to meet goals set in law. City officials have promised to comply by expanding the recycling program and promoting a separate program in the public schools, but they've been stalling because they don't want to increase the budget deficit.
Officials in some cities claim that curbside recycling programs are cheaper than burying the garbage in a landfill, which can be true in places where the landfill fees are high and the collection costs aren't as exorbitant as in New York. But officials who claim that recycling programs save money often don't fully account for the costs. "A lot of programs, especially in the early years, have used funny-money economics to justify recycling," says Chaz Miller, a contributing editor for Recycling Times, a trade newspaper. "There's been a messianic zeal that's hurt the cause. The American public loves recycling, but we have to do it efficiently. It should be a business, not a religion."
Recycling programs didn't fare well in a Federally financed study conducted by the the Solid Waste Association of North America, a trade association for municipal waste-management officials. The study painstakingly analyzed costs in six communities (Minneapolis; Palm Beach, Fla.; Seattle; Scottsdale, Ariz; Sevierville, Tenn., and Springfield, Mass.). It found that all but one of the curbside recycling programs, and all the composting operations and waste-to-energy incinerators, increased the cost of waste disposal. (The exception was Seattle's curbside program, which was slightly cheaper -- by one-tenth of 1 percent -- than putting the garbage in a landfill.) Studies in European cities have reached similar conclusions. Recycling has been notoriously unprofitable in Germany, whose national program is even less efficient than New York's.
"We have to recognize that recycling costs money," says William Franklin, an engineer who has conducted a national study of recycling costs for the not-for-profit group Keep America Beautiful. He estimates that, at today's prices, a curbside recycling program typically adds 15 percent to the costs of waste disposal -- and more if communities get too ambitious.
Franklin and other researchers have concluded that recycling does at least save energy -- the extra fuel burned while picking up recyclables is more than offset by the energy savings from manufacturing less virgin paper, glass and metal. "The net result of recycling is lower energy consumption and lower releases of air and water pollutants," says Richard Denison, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, which has calculated the ecological benefits of recycling. But there are much more direct -- and cheaper -- ways to reduce pollution. Recycling is a messy way to try to help the environment. Consider a few questions whose answers would seem obvious to the environmentally aware:
Does a 5-cent deposit on a soft-drink can help the environment? Mandatory deposits encourage recycling and reduce litter, but these programs typically spend $500 for every ton of cans and bottles collected, which makes curbside recycling look like a bargain. States without mandatory deposits -- like Texas and Washington -- have proven that the most efficient way to reduce litter is to hire clean-up crews, which pick up a lot more than just bottles and cans. Recycling takes money that could be used for other clean-up efforts: when New York's Sanitation Department started its recycling program, it cut back on street cleaning.
Are reusable cups and plates better than disposables? A ceramic mug may seem a more virtuous choice than a cup made of polystyrene, the foam banned by ecologically conscious local governments. But it takes much more energy to manufacture the mug, and then each washing consumes more energy (not to mention water). According to calculations by Martin Hocking, a chemist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, you would have to use the mug 1,000 times before its energy-consumption-per-use is equal to the cup. (If the mug breaks after your 900th coffee, you would have been better off using 900 polystyrene cups.) A more immediate environmental impact has been demonstrated by studies in restaurants: the average number of bacterial organisms on reusable cups, plates and flatware is 200 times greater than on disposable ones.
Should you recycle today's newspaper? Saving a tree is a mixed blessing. When there's less demand for virgin wood pulp, timber companies are likely to sell some of their tree farms -- maybe to condominium developers. Less virgin pulp means less pollution at paper mills in timber country, but recycling operations create pollution in areas where more people are affected: fumes and noise from collection trucks, solid waste and sludge from the mills that remove ink and turn the paper into pulp. Recycling newsprint actually creates more water pollution than making new paper: for each ton of recycled newsprint that's produced, an extra 5,000 gallons of waste water are discharged.
Cost-benefit analyses for individual products become so confusing that even ardent environmentalists give up. After years of studies and debates about the environmental merits of cloth versus disposable diapers, some environmental organizations finally decided they couldn't decide; parents were advised to choose whichever they wanted. This sensible advice ought to be extended to other products. It would not only make life simpler for everyone, but would probably benefit the environment. When consumers follow their preferences, they are guided by the simplest, and often the best, measure of a product's environmental impact: its price.
Polystyrene cups are cheap because they require so little energy and material to manufacture -- without reading a chemist's analysis, you could deduce from the cup's low price that it's an efficient use of natural resources. Similarly, the prices paid for scrap materials are a measure of their environmental value as recyclables. Scrap aluminum fetches a high price because recycling it consumes so much less energy than manufacturing new aluminum. The low price paid for scrap tinted glass tells you that you won't be conserving valuable resources by recycling it. While price is hardly a perfect measure of environmental impact, especially in countries where manufacturers are free to pollute, an American product's price usually reflects the cost of complying with strict environmental regulations. It's generally a more reliable guide than intuitive moral judgments or abstract theories about what's good for the planet.
A theorist could logically argue that you have an obligation to recycle not just the paper in this magazine but also the staples. As a nonrenewable resource, isn't the steel theoretically even more precious than the paper? Shouldn't you take each staple to a scrap-metal dealer or, better yet, reuse it in your own stapler? But if you look at the low price of new staples -- and the fact that scrap dealers aren't scurrying to buy used staples -- you can see that it's a waste of time to worry about posterity running out of staples. Recycling devotees have too often ignored such signals, preferring programs based on rules instead of prices, and they've hurt their own cause. They've missed the obvious solution to America's garbage problems -- a solution they should have recognized from one of their seminal ecological texts.
The Tragedy Of the Dump
THE PHILOSOPHICAL underpinning of the modern environmental movement can be found in "The Tragedy of the Commons," a 1968 essay by the ecologist Garrett Hardin. It is a parable about a village's public pasture, the commons, that is open free of charge to everyone's cattle. Because no villager has a personal incentive to restrict the size of his herd, the herds keep growing, and eventually their overgrazing destroys the commons. The parable is a useful model for the many environmental problems in which the common good is damaged by individuals acting out of rational self-interest (like overfishing of the oceans or pollution of the atmosphere). It applies nicely to the garbage situation in the many communities where a free town dump has historically been treated as a commons.
There are two ways to avert the Tragedy of the Commons, as Hardin's essay explains. The first is to convert the commons to private property, dividing up the land so that every herdsman owns a piece of pasture and has a personal incentive not to destroy it. The second is to make rules limiting the number of cattle on the commons. This approach, government regulation, is the most obvious solution to some complex environmental problems, especially ones involving global commons like the oceans or the atmosphere. But garbage is not one of these complex problems.
The Tragedy of the Dump is a simple problem better resolved with the first approach: private responsibility. Your trash is already your private property. You should be responsible for getting rid of it. You should have to pay to get rid of it -- and you should pay whatever price it takes to insure that your garbage doesn't cause environmental problems for anyone else. Paying for residential garbage collection sounds like a radical idea in New York and other cities where these costs are hidden in property taxes, but it's already being done in thousands of communities, including cities like Minneapolis, San Francisco and Seattle. It's also standard practice for commercial establishments in New York and elsewhere. Some cities charge according to volume -- the number of bags or cans that you fill -- and some have begun experimenting with charging by the pound.
Once people switch to this pay-as-you-throw system, they throw away less -- typically at least 10 to 15 percent less. Some shop differently; some take their names off junk-mail lists; some recycle. Instead of following (or ignoring) arcane rules and targets set by politicians, they're personally motivated to figure out what's worth paying to discard and what's worth diverting to a recycling bin. Those who want to recycle for spiritual reasons can do so; others can recycle whatever makes economic sense to them. If the pay-as-you-throw system became common everywhere, there would be no need for recycling laws and goals and moral exhortations.
"In a purely market-driven situation, people would still recycle according to what makes sense in their area," says Lynn Scarlett, the vice president of research at the Reason Foundation, which has studied pay-as-you-throw systems. "In most places it would pay to recycle aluminum cans, corrugated cardboard and office paper. A lot of newspapers and some clear glass would be recycled. But people wouldn't meet the high targets set by laws. They wouldn't bother with some of the things being mandated today, like mixed paper and certain plastics."
Environmentalists don't necessarily oppose free-market reforms for garbage -- they've supported some pay-as-you-throw systems -- but they spend much of their energy crusading for government recycling programs and regulations. They have instinctively chosen Hardin's second solution. This is partly because of their ideology -- many environmentalists trust government regulations more than market forces -- but there's also another reason. The leaders of the recycling movement derive psychic and financial rewards from recycling. Environmental groups raise money and attract new members through their campaigns to outlaw "waste" and prevent landfills from opening. They get financing from public and private sources (including the recycling industry) to research and promote recycling. By turning garbage into a political issue, environmentalists have created jobs for themselves as lawyers, lobbyists, researchers, educators and moral guardians. Environmentalists may genuinely believe they're helping the earth, but they have been hurting the common good while profiting personally, just like the village's herdsmen. This is the real Tragedy of the Dump: the waste of public funds on recycling programs, the needless public alarm about landfills. Fortunately, though, not every community has been afflicted. For those seeking the truth about garbage, there's a mountain 300 miles south of New York that's worth a pilgrimage.
The Celestial City Glimpsed at Long Last
THE MOST SENSIBLE comment I've heard on the subject of garbage was uttered by Linny Miles as we were looking at a mountain of it near his farm. Miles grows wheat and raises Thoroughbreds in Charles City County, Va., which has 6,000 residents and one stoplight. Next to his farm, 20 miles southeast of Richmond, is a landfill that accepts 4,000 tons of trash a day, much of it from the New York area. Private carters deliver trash from Manhattan restaurants; sealed rail cars bring municipal waste from suburban New Jersey.
The trash is surprisingly hard to spot. I got lost on the way to the landfill and drove around the perimeter of the wooded property without realizing there was garbage hidden back there. I finally got a view of it from Miles's house, which sits on a rise 200 yards from the edge of the landfill's property. He pointed to a brown ridge rising above the pine trees. The ridge was maybe 75 yards high, and the lower slopes were already covered with grass. Miles said he was occasionally bothered by odors and noise from the unloading operations, but overall he thought the landfill was good for the county. When I asked if he objected to New Yorkers using Charles City as a dumping ground, Miles shook his head and explained his reasoning in one sentence: "They brought something to the party."
Ten years ago, Charles City County had much in common with New York today. It had no money to fix its decrepit schools. Its economy was stagnant, its tax rate was among the state's highest and it was being ordered to shut down its old dump. Now, thanks to its new landfill, the county has lower taxes, better-paid teachers and splendid schools. The landfill's private operator, the Chambers Development Company, pays Charles City County fees totaling $3 million a year -- as much as the county takes in from all its property taxes. The landfill has created jobs, as have the new businesses that were attracted by the lower taxes and new schools. The 80-acre public-school campus has three buildings with central air conditioning and fiber-optic cabling. The library has 10,000 books, laser disks and CD-ROM's; every classroom in the elementary school has a telephone and a computer. The new auditorium has been used by visiting orchestras and dance companies, which previously had no place to perform in the county.
If you are are heavy with garbage and guilt, Charles City is the place to lay down your burden. There you can see garbage the way Linny Miles regards it: not as a moral issue but as an economic commodity. New Yorkers get rid of their garbage cheaply; Charles City's children get new schools. Why should New Yorkers spend extra money to recycle so they can avoid this mutually beneficial transaction? Why make harried parents feel guilty about takeout food? Why train children to be garbage-sorters? Why force the Bridges school to spend money on a recycling program when it still doesn't have a computer in the science classroom?
Several weeks after Dittersdorf's lecture there, I told her about Charles City's schools and asked if recycling needed to be so important to New Yorkers' education.
"I wish we spent more money on other things in the schools here," Dittersdorf said, "and I don't think recycling has a higher priority than things like computers or art classes. But I'd put it equal. Sure, kids should have time for other things, for reading and writing and dreaming. But recycling can be a wonderful project for kids and parents to do together. It inspires creative work and teaches valuable lessons."
Maybe she's right. Maybe parents and children correctly see the intangible value of recycling lessons. But as children pursue their moral education, as they learn to ponder the fate of the earth, it wouldn't hurt for them to also study, once again, that recycling scene in "Pilgrim's Progress." If Bunyan were an administrator in today's schools, he might call it a lesson in prioritizing. The thrifty muckraker, intent on his compost pile, doesn't notice a figure hovering overhead, offering to trade him a golden celestial crown for his rake. This scene is observed by the pilgrim, who consults a helpful guide named the Interpreter.
"This is a figure of a man of this world, is it not, good sir?" the pilgrim asks.
"Thou hast said the right," the Interpreter replies, "and his muck-rake doth show his carnal mind."
The Interpreter points out the waste on the ground and sadly explains that, for the muckraker, "Things here are counted the only things substantial." The muckraker has forgotten that there is more to life than hoarding natural resources. His recycling has become the most primitive form of materialism: the worship of materials.
"Earthly things, when they are with power upon men's minds, quite carry their hearts away from God," the Interpreter says. The pilgrim cries out in horror.
"O! deliver me from this muck-rake."
I have taken the liberty to re-post it to allow for an easier read, free of clutter and advertisements. This being said, be sure to patronize sponsors of the New York Times online! ;)
The gist of the piece is that almost all recycling except aluminum is a waste of money, time, and energy. It's difficult to not be downright alarmed that this is pretty much the lone mainstream media expose of its kind. Why the silence?
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Recycling Is Garbage
AS THEY PUT ON PLASTIC GLOVES FOR THEIR first litter hunt, the third graders knew what to expect. They knew their garbage. It was part of their science curriculum at Bridges Elementary, a public school on West 17th Street in Manhattan. They had learned the Three R's -- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle -- and discussed how to stop their parents from using paper plates. For Earth Day they had read a Scholastic science publication, "Inside the World of Trash." For homework, they had kept garbage diaries and drawn color-coded charts of their families' trash. So they were primed for the field experiment on this May afternoon.
"We have to help the earth," Natasha Newman explained as she and her classmates dashed around the school collecting specimens. Their science teacher, Linnette Aponte, mediated disputes -- "I saw that gum wrapper first!" -- and supervised the subsequent analysis of data back in the classroom. The students gathered around to watch her dump out their bags on the floor.
"We have to help the earth," Natasha Newman explained as she and her classmates dashed around the school collecting specimens. Their science teacher, Linnette Aponte, mediated disputes -- "I saw that gum wrapper first!" -- and supervised the subsequent analysis of data back in the classroom. The students gathered around to watch her dump out their bags on the floor.
Do you see any pattern as I'm emptying it?" Miss Aponte asked.
"Yeah, it stinks."
"Everybody's chewing Winterfresh."
"A lot of paper napkins."
"It's disgusting."
"They're throwing away a folder. That's a perfectly good folder!"
"It's only half a folder."
"Well, they could find the other half and attach them together."
Miss Aponte finished emptying the last bag. "We've been learning about the need to reduce, reuse and recycle," she said, and pointed at the pile. "How does all this make you feel?"
"Baaaad," the students moaned.
Miss Aponte separated out two bottles, the only items in the pile that could be recycled. She asked what lesson the students had learned. The class sentiment was summarized by Lily Finn, the student who had been so determined to save the half folder: "People shouldn't throw away paper or anything. They should recycle it. And they shouldn't eat candy in school."
Lily's judgment about candy sounded reasonable, but the conclusion about recycling seemed to be contradicted by the data on the floor. The pile of garbage included the equipment used by the children in the litter hunt: a dozen plastic bags and two dozen pairs of plastic gloves. The cost of this recycling equipment obviously exceeded the value of the recyclable items recovered. The equipment also seemed to be a greater burden on the environment, because the bags and gloves would occupy more space in a landfill than the two bottles.
Without realizing it, the third graders had beautifully reproduced the results of a grand national experiment begun in 1987 -- the year they were born, back when the Three R's had nothing to do with garbage. That year a barge named the Mobro 4000 wandered thousands of miles trying to unload its cargo of Long Islanders' trash, and its journey had a strange effect on America. The citizens of the richest society in the history of the planet suddenly became obsessed with personally handling their own waste.
Believing that there was no more room in landfills, Americans concluded that recycling was their only option. Their intentions were good and their conclusions seemed plausible. Recycling does sometimes makes sense -- for some materials in some places at some times. But the simplest and cheapest option is usually to bury garbage in an environmentally safe landfill. And since there's no shortage of landfill space (the crisis of 1987 was a false alarm), there's no reason to make recycling a legal or moral imperative. Mandatory recycling programs aren't good for posterity. They offer mainly short-term benefits to a few groups -- politicians, public relations consultants, environmental organizations, waste-handling corporations -- while diverting money from genuine social and environmental problems. Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America: a waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources.
The obvious temptation is to blame journalists, who did a remarkable job of creating the garbage crisis, often at considerable expense to their own employers. Newspaper and magazine publishers, whose products are a major component of municipal landfills, nobly led the crusade against trash, and they're paying for it now through regulations that force them to buy recycled paper -- a costly handicap in their struggle against electronic rivals. It's the first time that an industry has conducted a mass-media campaign informing customers that its own product is a menace to society.
But the press isn't solely responsible for recycling fervor; the public's obsession wouldn't have lasted this long unless recycling met some emotional need. Just as the third graders believed that their litter run was helping the planet, Americans have embraced recycling as a transcendental experience, an act of moral redemption. We're not just reusing our garbage; we're performing a rite of atonement for the sin of excess. Recycling teaches the themes that previous generations of schoolchildren learned from that Puritan classic, "The Pilgrim's Progress."
John Bunyan's 17th-century allegory features a character not unlike the garbage barge that left Long Island: a man dressed in rags who flees the City of Destruction, desperate to find a place he can unload the "great burden upon his back." Guided by the Evangelist, the pilgrim wanders the world trying to reach the Celestial City. His worst trial occurs in Vanity Fair, a village market founded by Beelzebub and inhabited by noblemen named Lord Luxurious and Sir Having Greedy. The market offers tempting wares, but the pilgrim bravely practices the first R -- reduce -- by shunning the products of the "merchandizers" and continuing on to the Celestial City.
Today's schoolchildren, though, might be confused by one character encountered on Bunyan's road to salvation: a man, the source of our word "muckraker," who is busy raking together a compost pile. This recycler of household waste isn't presented as a role model for the pilgrim. He's a symbol of moral blindness because, instead of looking up to see the heavenly rewards awaiting him, he "could look no way but downwards, with a muck-rake in his hand." In Bunyan's time, it would have been hard to imagine that pilgrims would one day be taught to search for salvation right down there in the muck.
The Day of Reckoning Foretold
"All I've been thinking about all week is garbage. I mean, I just can't stop thinking about it. . . . I've just gotten real concerned over what's gonna happen. . . . I started feeling this way . . . when that barge was stranded."
-- Opening lines of the 1989 film "Sex, Lies and Videotape," spoken to a psychiatrist by a woman whose real problems -- sexual and marital unhappiness -- have nothing to do with municipal solid waste.
AT THE TIME AMERICANS BECAME RACKED WITH GARBAGE GUILT, businesses were already recycling millions of tons of trash a year. They were voluntarily -- and profitably -- recycling newsprint, office paper, cardboard, aluminum and steel. But the barge's plight convinced everyone that voluntary enterprise was not enough. As Newsweek noted, the Mobro's saga was "to the trash crisis what the sinking of the Lusitania was to World War I." The magazine's cover story, titled "Buried Alive," warned: "With rare exceptions during wartime, Americans have not been adept at making individual sacrifices for the common good. That mentality will have to change. Otherwise, the dumps will cover the country coast to coast and the trucks will stop in everybody's backyard."
Suddenly, just as central planning was going out of fashion in eastern Europe, America devised a national five-year plan for trash. The Environmental Protection Agency promulgated a "Waste Hierarchy" that ranked trash-disposal options: recycling at the top, composting and waste-to-energy incinerators in the middle, landfills at the bottom.
The E.P.A.'s five-year goal, to recycle 25 percent of municipal trash, was announced in a speech in early 1988 by J. Winston Porter, an assistant administrator of the agency. Even as Porter was setting the goal, he realized that it was presumptuous for a bureaucrat in Washington to tell everyone in America what to do with their trash. "After all the publicity about the barge," Porter recalls, "I sat down with some engineers in my office to estimate how much municipal waste could be recycled. At that time, about 10 percent was being recycled. We looked at the components of waste, made a few quick calculations and figured that it was reasonable to reach a level of 25 percent within five years. It wasn't a highly quantified thing. Some of the staff didn't even want me to mention a figure. But I thought it would be good to set a target, as long as it was strictly voluntary and didn't involve a lot of regulations."
Politicians across the country had bigger ideas. State and city officials enacted laws mandating recycling and setting arbitrary goals even higher than the E.P.A.'s. Most states set rigid quotas, typically requiring that at least 40 percent of trash be recycled, often even more -- 50 percent in New York and California, 60 percent in New Jersey, 70 percent in Rhode Island. Industries were pressured to set their own goals. Municipalities followed the Waste Hierarchy by building waste-to-energy incinerators and starting thousands of curbside recycling programs -- all in the belief that it would be cheaper than landfilling. But the incinerators turned out to be disastrously expensive, and the recycling programs produced a glut of paper, glass and plastic that no one wanted to buy.
So recycling devotees hit on a new solution: if people aren't willing to buy our precious garbage, we'll force them. The Federal Government and dozens of states passed laws that required public agencies, newspapers and other companies to purchase recycled materials. These regulations, along with a wide variety of tax breaks and subsidies, have pushed the national rate of recycling up to Porter's goal of 25 percent -- an expensive achievement, since the programs lose money. But that's still not enough. Environmental groups are pressuring local governments to expand their recycling programs to meet the goals set in law -- goals that, according to the official who helped start the whole movement, are impossible to reach.
"People in New York and other places are tilting at recycling windmills," says Porter, who left the E.P.A. in 1989 and is now president of a consulting firm, the Waste Policy Center in Leesburg, Va. "There aren't many more materials in garbage that are worth recycling." Porter has been advising cities and states to abandon their unrealistic goals, but politicians are terrified of coming out against recycling. How could they explain it to the voters? How could they explain it to their children?
The Evangelist's Alarms
AFTER THE LITTER HUNT IN MISS APONTE'S SCIENCE classroom, it was time for a guest lecturer on garbage. A fifth-grade class was brought in to hear Joanne Dittersdorf, the director of environmental education for the Environmental Action Coalition, a nonprofit group based in New York. Her slide show began with a 19th-century photograph of a street in New York strewn with garbage.
"Why can't we keep throwing out garbage that way?" Dittersdorf asked.
"It'll keep piling up and we won't have any place to put it."
"The earth would be called the Trash Can."
"The garbage will soon, like, take over the whole world and, like, kill everybody."
Dittersdorf asked the children to examine their lives. "Does anyone here ever have takeout food?" A few students confessed, and Dittersdorf gently scolded them. "A lot of garbage there."
She showed a slide illustrating New Yorkers' total annual production of garbage: a pile big enough to fill 15 city blocks to a height of 20 stories. "There are a lot of landfills in New York City," Dittersdorf said, "but we've run out of space." Showing a slide of Flushing Meadows, a former landfill that's now a park, she asked, "Would you want to live on top of one of these landfills?" The place didn't look too bad, actually, but Dittersdorf explained that toxic threats could be hidden in a landfill. "Have you ever heard of a place called Love Canal? It was an old landfill that belonged to a chemical company, and they sold it to build a school on, and everyone who went to that school got very sick. There was poison in the dirt underneath."
A supermarket package of red apples appeared on the screen. "Look at the plastic, the Styrofoam or cardboard underneath," Dittersdorf said. "Do you need this much wrapping when you buy things?"
"Noooo."
"Every week," Dittersdorf said, "75,000 trees are cut to make the Sunday New York Times."
The children were appalled. A few glanced reproachfully at me sitting in the back of the room. I didn't try to justify my -- or your -- role in this weekly tree-slaying, garbage-generating, earth-defiling ritual. The children were in no mood for heresy. Dittersdorf had masterfully reinforced the mythical tenets of the garbage crisis: We're a wicked throwaway society. Plastic packaging and fast-food containers may seem wasteful, but they actually save resources and reduce trash. The typical household in Mexico City buys fewer packaged goods than an American household, but it produces one-third more garbage, chiefly because Mexicans buy fresh foods in bulk and throw away large portions that are unused, spoiled or stale. Those apples in Dittersdorf's slide, protected by plastic wrap and foam, are less likely to spoil. The lightweight plastic packaging requires much less energy to manufacture and transport than traditional alternatives like cardboard or paper. Food companies have switched to plastic packaging because they make money by using resources efficiently. A typical McDonald's discards less than two ounces of garbage for each customer served -- less than what's generated by a typical meal at home.
Plastic packaging is routinely criticized because it doesn't decay in landfills, but neither does most other packaging, as William Rathje, an archaeologist at the University of Arizona, has discovered from his excavations of landfills. Rathje found that paper, cardboard and other organic materials -- while technically biodegradable -- tend to remain intact in the airless confines of a landfill. These mummified materials actually use much more landfill space than plastic packaging, which has steadily been getting smaller as manufacturers develop stronger, thinner materials. Juice cartons take up half the landfill space occupied by the glass bottles they replaced; 12 plastic grocery bags fit in the space occupied by one paper bag.
Our garbage will bury us. The Mobro's saga was presented as a grim harbinger of future landfill scarcity, but it actually represented a short-lived scare caused by new environmental regulations. As old municipal dumps were forced to close in the 1980's, towns had to send their garbage elsewhere and pay higher prices for scarce landfill space. But the higher prices, predictably, encouraged companies to open huge new landfills, in some regions creating a glut that set off price-cutting wars. Over the past few years, landfills in the South and Middle West have been vying for garbage from the New York area, and it has become cheaper to ship garbage there than to bury it locally.
America today has a good deal more landfill space available than it did 10 years ago. Landfills are scarce in just a few places, notably the Northeast, partly because of local economic realities (open land is expensive near cities) but mainly because of local politics. Environmentalists have prevented new landfills from opening by propounding another myth. . . .
Our garbage will poison us. By mentioning Love Canal, Dittersdorf made landfills sound like the Slough of Despond, Bunyan's dread swamp. But it's not fair to compare modern municipal-trash landfills with Love Canal, an old industrial dump filled with large concentrations of toxic chemicals that seeped into the ground when a school was, stupidly, built on the site. (Even so, it's not clear that any of the schoolchildren were poisoned. Exhaustive scientific studies around Love Canal haven't detected any increase in cancer rates.)
Today's landfills for municipal trash are filled mostly with innocuous materials like paper, yard waste and construction debris. They contain small amounts of hazardous wastes, like lead and mercury, but studies have found that these poisons stay trapped inside the mass of garbage even in the old, unlined dumps that were built before today's stringent regulations. So there's little reason to worry about modern landfills, which by Federal law must be lined with clay and plastic, equipped with drainage and gas-collection systems, covered daily with soil and monitored regularly for underground leaks.
The small-time operators who ran the old municipal dumps can't afford to provide these safeguards, which is why corporations have moved in, opening huge facilities that might serve half a state, typically in a rural area with few neighbors. It's a prudent environmental strategy and it provides jobs for rural communities, which is why some of them have been competing to attract new landfills. But the availability of landfill space in the countryside has created an awkward situation for cities committed to more expensive alternatives like recycling programs and incinerators. Environmentalists have responded with a mythical imperative. . . .
We must achieve garbage independence.
When Dittersdorf told the children that New York City was running out of landfill space, she was technically right. Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki have promised Staten Island that its municipal landfill will close in five years, and there's no logical place in town to put a new one. But why should the city have to use a local landfill? Why assume that New Yorkers have a moral obligation to dispose of their garbage near home? Most of the stuff was shipped to the city from factories and farms elsewhere. What's wrong with shipping it back out to be buried in places with open land?
"I don't understand why anyone thinks New York City has a garbage crisis because it can't handle all its own waste," says James DeLong, an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington. "With that kind of logic, you'd have to conclude that New York City has a food crisis because it can't grow all the vegetables its people need within the city limits, so it should turn Central Park into a farm and ration New Yorkers' consumption of vegetables to what they can grow there." Some politicians in other states have threatened to stop the importing of New York's garbage -- it's an easy way to appeal to some voters' chauvinism -- but in the unlikely event that they succeeded, they would only be depriving their own constituents of jobs and tax revenue.
We're cursing future generations with our waste.
Dittersdorf's slide showing New Yorkers' annual garbage output -- 15 square blocks, 20 stories high -- looked frightening because the trash was sitting, uncompressed, in the middle of the city. But consider a different perspective -- a national, long-term perspective. A. Clark Wiseman, an economist at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., has calculated that if Americans keep generating garbage at current rates for 1,000 years, and if all their garbage is put in a landfill 100 yards deep, by the year 3000 this national garbage heap will fill a square piece of land 35 miles on each side.
This doesn't seem a huge imposition in a country the size of America. The garbage would occupy only 5 percent of the area needed for the national array of solar panels proposed by environmentalists. The millennial landfill would fit on one-tenth of 1 percent of the range land now available for grazing in the continental United States. And if it still pains you to think of depriving posterity of that 35-mile square, remember that the loss will be only temporary. Eventually, like previous landfills, the mounds of trash will be covered with grass and become a minuscule addition to the nation's 150,000 square miles of parkland.
We're squandering irreplaceable natural resources.
Yes, a lot of trees have been cut down to make today's newspaper. But even more trees will probably be planted in their place. America's supply of timber has been increasing for decades, and the nation's forests have three times more wood today than in 1920. "We're not running out of wood, so why do we worry so much about recycling paper?" asks Jerry Taylor, the director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute. "Paper is an agricultural product, made from trees grown specifically for paper production. Acting to conserve trees by recycling paper is like acting to conserve cornstalks by cutting back on corn consumption."
Some resources, of course, don't grow back, and it may seem prudent to worry about depleting the earth's finite stores of metals and fossil fuels. It certainly seemed so during the oil shortages of the 1970's, when the modern recycling philosophy developed. But the oil scare was temporary, just like all previous scares about resource shortages. The costs of natural resources, both renewable and nonrenewable, have been declining for thousands of years. They've become less scarce over time because humans have continually found new supplies or devised new technologies. Fifty years ago, for instance, tin and copper were said to be in danger of depletion, and conservationists urged mandatory recycling and rationing of these vital metals so that future generations wouldn't be deprived of food containers and telephone wires. But today tin and copper are cheaper than ever. Most food containers don't use any tin. Phone calls travel through fiber-optic cables of glass, which is made from sand -- and should the world ever run out of sand, we could dispense with wires altogether by using cellular phones.
The only resource that has been getting consistently more expensive is human time: the cost of labor has been rising for centuries. An hour of labor today buys a larger quantity of energy or raw materials than ever before. To economists, it's wasteful to expend human labor to save raw materials that are cheap today and will probably be cheaper tomorrow. Even the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental group that strongly favors recycling and has often issued warnings about the earth's dwindling resources, has been persuaded that there are no foreseeable shortages of most minerals. "In retrospect," a Worldwatch report notes, "the question of scarcity may never have been the most important one."
It is better to recycle than to throw away.
This is the most enduring myth, the one that remains popular even among those who don't believe in the garbage crisis anymore. By now, many experts and public officials acknowledge that America could simply bury its garbage, but they object to this option because it diverts trash from recycling programs. Recycling, which was originally justified as the only solution to a desperate national problem, has become a goal in itself -- a goal so important that we must preserve the original problem. It's as if the protagonist of "Pilgrim's Progress," upon being informed that he could drop his sinful burden right there on the road, insisted on clinging to it just so he could continue the pilgrimage to get rid of it. Why is it better to recycle? The usual justifications are that it saves money and protects the environment. These sound reasonable until you actually start handling garbage.
The Muckrakers' Discoveries
The 1992 Plan projected that the City would realize net savings from recycling. The Department's experience to date in implementing the recycling program diverges from the assumptions of the Plan.
-- 1996 Comprehensive Solid Waste Management Plan of the New York City Department of Sanitation.
EVERY TIME A SANITATION DEPARTMENT CREW PICKS UP A load of bottles and cans from the curb, New York City loses money. The recycling program consumes resources. It requires extra administrators and a continual public relations campaign explaining what to do with dozens of different products -- recycle milk jugs but not milk cartons, index cards but not construction paper. (Most New Yorkers still don't know the rules.) It requires enforcement agents to inspect garbage and issue tickets. Most of all, it requires extra collection crews and trucks. Collecting a ton of recyclable items is three times more expensive than collecting a ton of garbage because the crews pick up less material at each stop. For every ton of glass, plastic and metal that the truck delivers to a private recycler, the city currently spends $200 more than it would spend to bury the material in a landfill.
Officials hoped to recover this extra cost by selling the material, but the market price of a ton has never been anywhere near $200. In fact, it has rarely risen as high as zero. Private recyclers usually demand a fee because their processing costs exceed the eventual sales price of the recycled materials. So the city, having already lost $200 collecting the ton of material, typically has to pay another $40 to get rid of it.
The recycling program has been costing $50 million to $100 million annually, and that's just the money coming directly out of the municipal budget. There's also the labor involved: the garbage-sorting that millions of New Yorkers do at home every week. How much would the city have to spend if it couldn't rely on forced labor? True, some people would probably be glad to do the work for free because they regard garbage-sorting as a morally uplifting activity for the whole family. But many others have refused to follow the law. They seem to have a more traditional view of garbage-sorting: an activity done only for money, and then only by the most destitute members of society.
I tried to estimate the value of New Yorkers' garbage-sorting by financing an experiment by a neutral observer (a Columbia University student with no strong feelings about recycling). He kept a record of the work he did during one week complying with New York's recycling laws. It took him eight minutes during the week to sort, rinse and deliver four pounds of cans and bottles to the basement of his building. If the city paid for that work at a typical janitorial wage ($12 per hour), it would pay $792 in home labor costs for each ton of cans and bottles collected. And what about the extra space occupied by that recycling receptacle in the kitchen? It must take up at least a square foot, which in New York costs at least $4 a week to rent. If the city had to pay for this space, the cost per ton of recyclables would be about $2,000. That figure plus the home labor costs, added to what the city already spends on its collection program, totals more than $3,000 for a ton of scrap metal, glass and plastic. For that price, you could find a one-ton collection of those materials at a used-car lot -- a Toyota Tercel, for instance -- and drive home in it.
LAST YEAR, A SURGE in the market price for recycled materials prompted a spate of recycling-has-finally-arrived articles. At one point, New York was selling its old newspapers for $150 per ton, which was almost enough to offset the extra costs of the paper recycling program. But newsprint prices have since plummeted back to familiar levels; New York is once again paying recyclers to take its newspapers, and city officials are resigned to losing money on recycling. As a result of a lawsuit by City Council members and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the city has been under court order to collect increasing amounts of recyclable material to meet goals set in law. City officials have promised to comply by expanding the recycling program and promoting a separate program in the public schools, but they've been stalling because they don't want to increase the budget deficit.
Officials in some cities claim that curbside recycling programs are cheaper than burying the garbage in a landfill, which can be true in places where the landfill fees are high and the collection costs aren't as exorbitant as in New York. But officials who claim that recycling programs save money often don't fully account for the costs. "A lot of programs, especially in the early years, have used funny-money economics to justify recycling," says Chaz Miller, a contributing editor for Recycling Times, a trade newspaper. "There's been a messianic zeal that's hurt the cause. The American public loves recycling, but we have to do it efficiently. It should be a business, not a religion."
Recycling programs didn't fare well in a Federally financed study conducted by the the Solid Waste Association of North America, a trade association for municipal waste-management officials. The study painstakingly analyzed costs in six communities (Minneapolis; Palm Beach, Fla.; Seattle; Scottsdale, Ariz; Sevierville, Tenn., and Springfield, Mass.). It found that all but one of the curbside recycling programs, and all the composting operations and waste-to-energy incinerators, increased the cost of waste disposal. (The exception was Seattle's curbside program, which was slightly cheaper -- by one-tenth of 1 percent -- than putting the garbage in a landfill.) Studies in European cities have reached similar conclusions. Recycling has been notoriously unprofitable in Germany, whose national program is even less efficient than New York's.
"We have to recognize that recycling costs money," says William Franklin, an engineer who has conducted a national study of recycling costs for the not-for-profit group Keep America Beautiful. He estimates that, at today's prices, a curbside recycling program typically adds 15 percent to the costs of waste disposal -- and more if communities get too ambitious.
Franklin and other researchers have concluded that recycling does at least save energy -- the extra fuel burned while picking up recyclables is more than offset by the energy savings from manufacturing less virgin paper, glass and metal. "The net result of recycling is lower energy consumption and lower releases of air and water pollutants," says Richard Denison, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, which has calculated the ecological benefits of recycling. But there are much more direct -- and cheaper -- ways to reduce pollution. Recycling is a messy way to try to help the environment. Consider a few questions whose answers would seem obvious to the environmentally aware:
Does a 5-cent deposit on a soft-drink can help the environment? Mandatory deposits encourage recycling and reduce litter, but these programs typically spend $500 for every ton of cans and bottles collected, which makes curbside recycling look like a bargain. States without mandatory deposits -- like Texas and Washington -- have proven that the most efficient way to reduce litter is to hire clean-up crews, which pick up a lot more than just bottles and cans. Recycling takes money that could be used for other clean-up efforts: when New York's Sanitation Department started its recycling program, it cut back on street cleaning.
Are reusable cups and plates better than disposables? A ceramic mug may seem a more virtuous choice than a cup made of polystyrene, the foam banned by ecologically conscious local governments. But it takes much more energy to manufacture the mug, and then each washing consumes more energy (not to mention water). According to calculations by Martin Hocking, a chemist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, you would have to use the mug 1,000 times before its energy-consumption-per-use is equal to the cup. (If the mug breaks after your 900th coffee, you would have been better off using 900 polystyrene cups.) A more immediate environmental impact has been demonstrated by studies in restaurants: the average number of bacterial organisms on reusable cups, plates and flatware is 200 times greater than on disposable ones.
Should you recycle today's newspaper? Saving a tree is a mixed blessing. When there's less demand for virgin wood pulp, timber companies are likely to sell some of their tree farms -- maybe to condominium developers. Less virgin pulp means less pollution at paper mills in timber country, but recycling operations create pollution in areas where more people are affected: fumes and noise from collection trucks, solid waste and sludge from the mills that remove ink and turn the paper into pulp. Recycling newsprint actually creates more water pollution than making new paper: for each ton of recycled newsprint that's produced, an extra 5,000 gallons of waste water are discharged.
Cost-benefit analyses for individual products become so confusing that even ardent environmentalists give up. After years of studies and debates about the environmental merits of cloth versus disposable diapers, some environmental organizations finally decided they couldn't decide; parents were advised to choose whichever they wanted. This sensible advice ought to be extended to other products. It would not only make life simpler for everyone, but would probably benefit the environment. When consumers follow their preferences, they are guided by the simplest, and often the best, measure of a product's environmental impact: its price.
Polystyrene cups are cheap because they require so little energy and material to manufacture -- without reading a chemist's analysis, you could deduce from the cup's low price that it's an efficient use of natural resources. Similarly, the prices paid for scrap materials are a measure of their environmental value as recyclables. Scrap aluminum fetches a high price because recycling it consumes so much less energy than manufacturing new aluminum. The low price paid for scrap tinted glass tells you that you won't be conserving valuable resources by recycling it. While price is hardly a perfect measure of environmental impact, especially in countries where manufacturers are free to pollute, an American product's price usually reflects the cost of complying with strict environmental regulations. It's generally a more reliable guide than intuitive moral judgments or abstract theories about what's good for the planet.
A theorist could logically argue that you have an obligation to recycle not just the paper in this magazine but also the staples. As a nonrenewable resource, isn't the steel theoretically even more precious than the paper? Shouldn't you take each staple to a scrap-metal dealer or, better yet, reuse it in your own stapler? But if you look at the low price of new staples -- and the fact that scrap dealers aren't scurrying to buy used staples -- you can see that it's a waste of time to worry about posterity running out of staples. Recycling devotees have too often ignored such signals, preferring programs based on rules instead of prices, and they've hurt their own cause. They've missed the obvious solution to America's garbage problems -- a solution they should have recognized from one of their seminal ecological texts.
The Tragedy Of the Dump
THE PHILOSOPHICAL underpinning of the modern environmental movement can be found in "The Tragedy of the Commons," a 1968 essay by the ecologist Garrett Hardin. It is a parable about a village's public pasture, the commons, that is open free of charge to everyone's cattle. Because no villager has a personal incentive to restrict the size of his herd, the herds keep growing, and eventually their overgrazing destroys the commons. The parable is a useful model for the many environmental problems in which the common good is damaged by individuals acting out of rational self-interest (like overfishing of the oceans or pollution of the atmosphere). It applies nicely to the garbage situation in the many communities where a free town dump has historically been treated as a commons.
There are two ways to avert the Tragedy of the Commons, as Hardin's essay explains. The first is to convert the commons to private property, dividing up the land so that every herdsman owns a piece of pasture and has a personal incentive not to destroy it. The second is to make rules limiting the number of cattle on the commons. This approach, government regulation, is the most obvious solution to some complex environmental problems, especially ones involving global commons like the oceans or the atmosphere. But garbage is not one of these complex problems.
The Tragedy of the Dump is a simple problem better resolved with the first approach: private responsibility. Your trash is already your private property. You should be responsible for getting rid of it. You should have to pay to get rid of it -- and you should pay whatever price it takes to insure that your garbage doesn't cause environmental problems for anyone else. Paying for residential garbage collection sounds like a radical idea in New York and other cities where these costs are hidden in property taxes, but it's already being done in thousands of communities, including cities like Minneapolis, San Francisco and Seattle. It's also standard practice for commercial establishments in New York and elsewhere. Some cities charge according to volume -- the number of bags or cans that you fill -- and some have begun experimenting with charging by the pound.
Once people switch to this pay-as-you-throw system, they throw away less -- typically at least 10 to 15 percent less. Some shop differently; some take their names off junk-mail lists; some recycle. Instead of following (or ignoring) arcane rules and targets set by politicians, they're personally motivated to figure out what's worth paying to discard and what's worth diverting to a recycling bin. Those who want to recycle for spiritual reasons can do so; others can recycle whatever makes economic sense to them. If the pay-as-you-throw system became common everywhere, there would be no need for recycling laws and goals and moral exhortations.
"In a purely market-driven situation, people would still recycle according to what makes sense in their area," says Lynn Scarlett, the vice president of research at the Reason Foundation, which has studied pay-as-you-throw systems. "In most places it would pay to recycle aluminum cans, corrugated cardboard and office paper. A lot of newspapers and some clear glass would be recycled. But people wouldn't meet the high targets set by laws. They wouldn't bother with some of the things being mandated today, like mixed paper and certain plastics."
Environmentalists don't necessarily oppose free-market reforms for garbage -- they've supported some pay-as-you-throw systems -- but they spend much of their energy crusading for government recycling programs and regulations. They have instinctively chosen Hardin's second solution. This is partly because of their ideology -- many environmentalists trust government regulations more than market forces -- but there's also another reason. The leaders of the recycling movement derive psychic and financial rewards from recycling. Environmental groups raise money and attract new members through their campaigns to outlaw "waste" and prevent landfills from opening. They get financing from public and private sources (including the recycling industry) to research and promote recycling. By turning garbage into a political issue, environmentalists have created jobs for themselves as lawyers, lobbyists, researchers, educators and moral guardians. Environmentalists may genuinely believe they're helping the earth, but they have been hurting the common good while profiting personally, just like the village's herdsmen. This is the real Tragedy of the Dump: the waste of public funds on recycling programs, the needless public alarm about landfills. Fortunately, though, not every community has been afflicted. For those seeking the truth about garbage, there's a mountain 300 miles south of New York that's worth a pilgrimage.
The Celestial City Glimpsed at Long Last
THE MOST SENSIBLE comment I've heard on the subject of garbage was uttered by Linny Miles as we were looking at a mountain of it near his farm. Miles grows wheat and raises Thoroughbreds in Charles City County, Va., which has 6,000 residents and one stoplight. Next to his farm, 20 miles southeast of Richmond, is a landfill that accepts 4,000 tons of trash a day, much of it from the New York area. Private carters deliver trash from Manhattan restaurants; sealed rail cars bring municipal waste from suburban New Jersey.
The trash is surprisingly hard to spot. I got lost on the way to the landfill and drove around the perimeter of the wooded property without realizing there was garbage hidden back there. I finally got a view of it from Miles's house, which sits on a rise 200 yards from the edge of the landfill's property. He pointed to a brown ridge rising above the pine trees. The ridge was maybe 75 yards high, and the lower slopes were already covered with grass. Miles said he was occasionally bothered by odors and noise from the unloading operations, but overall he thought the landfill was good for the county. When I asked if he objected to New Yorkers using Charles City as a dumping ground, Miles shook his head and explained his reasoning in one sentence: "They brought something to the party."
Ten years ago, Charles City County had much in common with New York today. It had no money to fix its decrepit schools. Its economy was stagnant, its tax rate was among the state's highest and it was being ordered to shut down its old dump. Now, thanks to its new landfill, the county has lower taxes, better-paid teachers and splendid schools. The landfill's private operator, the Chambers Development Company, pays Charles City County fees totaling $3 million a year -- as much as the county takes in from all its property taxes. The landfill has created jobs, as have the new businesses that were attracted by the lower taxes and new schools. The 80-acre public-school campus has three buildings with central air conditioning and fiber-optic cabling. The library has 10,000 books, laser disks and CD-ROM's; every classroom in the elementary school has a telephone and a computer. The new auditorium has been used by visiting orchestras and dance companies, which previously had no place to perform in the county.
If you are are heavy with garbage and guilt, Charles City is the place to lay down your burden. There you can see garbage the way Linny Miles regards it: not as a moral issue but as an economic commodity. New Yorkers get rid of their garbage cheaply; Charles City's children get new schools. Why should New Yorkers spend extra money to recycle so they can avoid this mutually beneficial transaction? Why make harried parents feel guilty about takeout food? Why train children to be garbage-sorters? Why force the Bridges school to spend money on a recycling program when it still doesn't have a computer in the science classroom?
Several weeks after Dittersdorf's lecture there, I told her about Charles City's schools and asked if recycling needed to be so important to New Yorkers' education.
"I wish we spent more money on other things in the schools here," Dittersdorf said, "and I don't think recycling has a higher priority than things like computers or art classes. But I'd put it equal. Sure, kids should have time for other things, for reading and writing and dreaming. But recycling can be a wonderful project for kids and parents to do together. It inspires creative work and teaches valuable lessons."
Maybe she's right. Maybe parents and children correctly see the intangible value of recycling lessons. But as children pursue their moral education, as they learn to ponder the fate of the earth, it wouldn't hurt for them to also study, once again, that recycling scene in "Pilgrim's Progress." If Bunyan were an administrator in today's schools, he might call it a lesson in prioritizing. The thrifty muckraker, intent on his compost pile, doesn't notice a figure hovering overhead, offering to trade him a golden celestial crown for his rake. This scene is observed by the pilgrim, who consults a helpful guide named the Interpreter.
"This is a figure of a man of this world, is it not, good sir?" the pilgrim asks.
"Thou hast said the right," the Interpreter replies, "and his muck-rake doth show his carnal mind."
The Interpreter points out the waste on the ground and sadly explains that, for the muckraker, "Things here are counted the only things substantial." The muckraker has forgotten that there is more to life than hoarding natural resources. His recycling has become the most primitive form of materialism: the worship of materials.
"Earthly things, when they are with power upon men's minds, quite carry their hearts away from God," the Interpreter says. The pilgrim cries out in horror.
"O! deliver me from this muck-rake."
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