journal entry 7.25.2024



Today I volunteered with Depave as part of a neighborhood clean up in preperation of their annual block party on SE 7th and Sandy. Not exactly the most fun but certainly provided an oppurtunity to enage with the city’s ecosystem, by looking for trash I saw these spaces differently and began to ask new questions.

notes:
I picked up enough litter along the north side of Stark from Sandy to 11th to fill the 5 gallon bucket 

I threw away a small fruit, something akin to a cherry (will go back to check). I’ve been conditioned to see this as something to be thrown away. At first, I thought it was a bouncy ball—small, round, shiny—it seemed out of place. When I think about it, it makes some sense. How often do I see fruit bearing trees within the city, especially in a non residential zone? My city brain determined it was more likely to be a manufactured rubber ball that someone lost instead of a piece of fruit. Of course in someways this is litter (out of place) it was lying there on the pavement without soil to decompose into or an animal there to eat it (hopefully a crow got to it eventually, interesting that this is the best hope in a way) 



Similarly, I almost threw away a fallen flower. It was white with red/purplish lines and its petals were withering away. My brain initially read it as a piece of packaging, like a wrapper. It concerns me that flowers on the ground aren’t something I readily recognize, though again, it is fairly out of place sitting on pavement. At least my brain was reacting well to spotting litter (cigarette butts seemed to be the real tough one to spot, blending in better than the colorful advertising that adorns our inorganic waste).















More in the vain of golf, the first place that I found a large grouping of litter was in a basement window well. This theme appears in the course construction with the paralels of where/how the golf ball rolls/lands and the flow of water. This continued to be the case as the gutters of the street were a very reliable location for litter. 

Overall picking up litter provided a similar oppurtunity as my fieldwork putting through my neighborhood, in which extra attention was being payed to the ground, although less fun.