Tuesday, December 30, 2008

The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future in

Recycling
Hi there--here, let me slide the wastebasket over... What? Oh, you're here for career ideas? I just figured you were looking for juice boxes in the garbage again. Recycling? I guess I could jot a few ideas down for... Oh, right--you go ahead and record it. No point putting ink on sacred flattened pulp if we don't have to.

So the first thing to remember is that there's no money in the recycling business--not if you are sincere about actually recycling, anyway. There are opportunities to, uhm, exploit the issue but I somehow figure that's not what you're about.

You'll keep volunteering every weekend down at the recycling depot until you graduate, then you'll find a college with an associate's degree in resource management or something similar which gives you a semblance of credibility when you expound your theories, but won't force you to waste a whole four years in school when you could be out making a real difference.

You'll keep volunteering at recycling operations at whatever city your college is in, and eventually you'll come back here--it's cheaper to mooch off your parents and like I said, you ain't getting rich off this gig. The folks here at the depot will welcome you back, and you'll try to be enthusiastic rather than jealous when you meet the new fresh-faced high schoolers who have replaced you as the eager disciples of the movement.

You'll commit 100% of your energy to making the depot an effective, efficient operation. You'll notice which organizations and businesses seem to generate the most waste and inundate them with emails and phone calls offering to provide free workshops to show them alternative choices to reduce the use of paper and other materials.

The few who relent and let you share your message only half-heartedly promote your visits, and you're saddened by how few show up to hear your lunch hour message of hope. You have, by this time, convinced the recycling depot to put you on a small salary, but your workshops are done entirely on your own time.

After almost a year of helping sort and carry bags and boxes of all manner of recyclables, you begin to get a little bored, and start to wonder about the next phase of the process. You see, you only deal with the "drop off" stage of things, so you decide one day to jump on your mo-ped and follow one of the large trucks which picks up the paper and cardboard from the depot. You've seen these large green trucks many times, and always been impressed by their bright clean paint, proclaiming the message: "Recycling--Local Action for Global Survival". As you follow the truck you're surprised by how little exhaust it produces--the hybrid engines run on a combination of electricity and biodiesel.

It's a longer journey than you expected, but eventually you arrive at a large property surrounded by trees--and a barbed-wire fence. The truck proceeds through the front gate, but a security guard stops you from following and asks you your business at the plant. You explain that you work at the recycling depot and just wanted to see where things went. The guard makes a quick phone call, summarizes your reason for the visit, then hangs up. He tells you to wait; the owner of the recycling plant is on site and has decided to come give you a tour.

You park your mo-ped and wait a few minutes; you're surprised when the owner actually arrives--he looks only a few years older than you. He explains as he walks you into the plant that he was at college working on his masters degree in environmental studies when his father, a rich industrialist, was killed in an accident and left his entire empire to his son. The son, Richard, sold off most of the corporate assets, and concentrated his efforts on this plant.

You are quickly impressed--it doesn't help that he's not bad looking--until the moment when you spot the large incinerators and see the trucks backing up to unload your "recycling".

You turn on him with the anger and vitriol of one who has seen the tenets of her faith defiled, and he merely nods and listens while you unload your venom. When you finally pause to catch your breath, he quietly responds.

"Most of what is sent to recycling depots is simply burned and/or dumped in landfills" he explains. "It's too dirty, it's contaminated or simply mis-sorted and can't be used. Even if it's perfectly clean and in order, it's ridiculously expensive to de-ink paper and repulp the various grades into something that turns out well enough for commercial use. The best we can do is contribute 10% of recycled filler to paper made of new fiber." You are shocked, but you'd heard similar cynical rumblings during your two years at college. You'd always dismissed such talk, but now Richard tells you it's true, but then he goes on to justify his actions.

It seems he's as passionate about alternative cleaner energy as you are about recycling. He explains that he created the plant when he heard of plans to build a coal-fired electricity production facility in the area. His plant incinerates waste, using technology he financed to produce electricity while creating very low emissions. He believes strongly that the future of the world is dependent on the reduction and eventual elimination of fossil fuels, and his newest research project involves partnering with the local sewage treatment plant to create methane for use as auto fuel.

You counter by pointing out that his trucks' use of biodiesel may be redirecting the use of valuable farmland away from food production in order to produce politically-correct but environmentally-unsound auto fuel. He sighs and admits he has the same concerns, then looks into your eyes and asks you to join him for dinner at a new vegetarian restaurant that he has recently invested in.

You agree, and after you've both cleaned up you find yourselves arguing by candlelight while enjoying a delicious meal. You both agree you feel passionately about saving the environment--you just have different approaches. You also discover you share some viewpoints--you almost choke with laughter as he does his impression of a sincere but misguided proponent of compact fluorescent light bulbs--you both smugly agree that such bulbs produce far more environmental damage in both their manufacture and ultimate disposal than they are worth in energy savings--particularly when any sensible person knows that LED lights are the green choice of the near future.

You end the night making out in front of your porch, then reluctantly agreeing to keep his secret about the recycling--he would lose his supply of fuel as well as the subsidy he gets for "recycling" the city's wastes. Plus his arguments about the foolishness of burning gas to ferry waste paper all over the continent to the few repulpers that can process such material made sense.

Still, your work at the depot now feels rather pointless. People ask you questions about sorting and you just sigh and shrug your shoulders.

Escape comes when your newfound boyfriend recommends you for a job at the local television station. Seems they've decided to create a new job in the newsroom--environmental reporter--and he convinces them that you're perfect for the job.

You're thrilled--you get to preach to the station's large prime-time evening news audience, and soon you're showing up all over town to salute those helping the environment, or to demonize those who disregard mother nature. You receive several awards for your work, and the better salary helps you save enough money to finally move out of your parents' home.

You and Richard are by this time officially a couple, and his wealth allows the two of you the chance to enjoy an exciting and environmentally-responsible lifestyle. Still, the luxury makes you feel guilty, and you become more and more inflexible in your work at the station, and in your personal life. Your feature is put on hiatus for a couple of weeks after one particularly controversial episode--the folks eating dinner while watching your story about the ancient alternative to toilet paper weren't very happy, it seems.

While on hiatus you continue researching new stories, and also notice more and more things which offend your sensibilities in the station itself. You nag everyone to eliminate the use of paper in all office communications, and start a movement to ban Christmas cards. Eventually, management decides to fire you, but a last-minute threat by your boyfriend to pull his company's advertising from the station gets you a reprieve.

The end of this career comes rather quickly. Seems Richard can't keep the secret of his recycling fraud forever; a network reporter gets wind of what's going on, and when you admit knowing the truth but keeping quiet to protect your lover, it's the end of your job in television.

You get a severance package and move back into your parents' basement. You send off a few half-hearted resumés, but you can't find many people willing to give you a decent reference--simply because most bosses and fellow employees find you and your fanaticism irritating. Meanwhile, a new company takes over the city's recycling contract and promises they won't be burning material which meets standard recycling criteria. You, however, know how unreasonable these criteria are and become more and more hysterical about it. Soon you're using a pass-key you kept after being fired from the station to sneak in at night and wash all the disposable coffee cup and pop cans in the recycling bins. You begin stealing all the staples from the staplers and posting notes reminding people of ways to fold pages to make them stick together instead of using staples for paper clips.

Your manic behaviour takes its toll; you collapse on the street and are rushed to the hospital where you are admitted for observation. You end up in the psyche ward, but manage to convince your watchers that you're fine--nobody catches you sneaking out to the biohazard disposal bins in the middle of the night where you retrieve all manner of used syringes, tongue depressors and even wound dressings, bringing them in and washing them down in the basement laundry room--abandoned when the hospital decided it was cheaper to farm out such duties.

You aren't careful enough, and after half a dozen needle sticks you're eventually diagosed with a variety of medical conditions which render you compostable within a year.

this beats the heck out of bungee jumping


wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.



Click on it to see it larger (I think). There's a recent new post on the "other" blog and I've got a new cynical career post about ready to go on this one, so check back again soon.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Gaaah! (inarticulate scream as snow drops from trees on head)

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Canada+whitest+Christmas+Victoria/1109796/story.html

This morning the radio said we had one centimetre of snow than the north pole at the moment...

At least I'm not stranded on the runway at Vancouver Airport.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow... Enough Already

Where have I been, oh faithful reader? (should I pluralize that?). Well, maybe there's a few of you. Sorry. I've been shoveling snow. And them shoveling more snow.

You may not know this, but we don't get much snow in this part of the world. Apparently we had a white Christmas in 1971--I was just a kid--but I can't actually remember a white Christmas. We never get them.

Except probably this year, barring some miraculous disappearance of the two feet of snow outside.

It started about 10 days ago--a Saturday night. It snowed. Then more, and more. We didn't get any days off school, although my kids did--their district cancelled.

As I write this, about 1:15 a.m., it's snowing quite heavily. Great. I'm supposed to go pick up my dad, my sister and then my mom and bring them all out here for lunch and our gift exchange, etc.

We have a strange conglomeration of 13 municipalities here, and to get to my various destinations tomorrow, I have to drive through six of them. The majority of those don't have much of a policy regarding snow clearing beyond "We ain't got no snow plows" so it's tricky, to say the least.

The police are kind enough to call the radio station after each new dump of snow to advise people to "stay off the roads if possible". Great--after how many weeks do you think we'll surface for the bare essentials? Oh, and it is Christmas.

I will say, it is very pretty, and all those songs--White Christmas, Winter Wonderland, Let it Snow--they seem somehow more appropriate. It IS beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and as we sit by the fire, the lights on the tree, the snow outside and the seasonal songs playing softly in the background, it's actually very nice.

Here are a few pics:
























































And I got a little more artsy for this last one; I liked the icicle in the tree--I should probably crop the photo, though.

Monday, December 15, 2008

perspective

When my wife and I were first married, she was a home care nurse whose case load often included palliative care. My job was to deal with the challenge of junior high classes and to try to put together a big musical production.

I would come home with my stresses and whine and vent and then pause to ask how her day went. Some days she wouldn't say much more than "one of my aids patients died today". It kind of put things in perspective.

A former student dropped by a few days ago to visit and get a ticket for our shows last week, and we got to talking. I'll admit that while my stress level and general crankiness were kind of elevated, listening to her describe her experiences of the past year kind of helped me realize what little I had to complain about.

She had tried to get out of the army, but enlister's remorse isn't a valid reason, I guess, so she ended up doing a six-month stint in Afghanistan. While on patrol one day, she went around the corner of a building and was shot--a bullet exploded into many pieces in her thigh.

She's now officially out of the service--I guess maybe she'd fulfilled her obligation. She told me that she's completely cynical about the whole situation there, largely because all sides treat woman like crap. She didn't see how the lot of half the population would improve no matter who eventually wins.

Plus she felt that as a female in the service she wasn't respected, especially by those she encountered from our neighbor to the south. Perhaps her orientation also made some uncomfortable, I don't know.

It was shortly after that I went online and read Camila's recent post about the lot of women in much of the world. It's enough to depress one, but I guess it's more about trying to make things better where we are than giving into despair for the magnitude of the problem.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

It's kind of Christmassy now...

There's about 6 inches of snow outside, and it's still falling pretty hard. We got our (real) tree up and decorated yesterday, and we're just having a peaceful Sunday inside with a fire in the fireplace and enjoying watching the weather outside.

I'm finished with the mini-musicals--two sold out shows--and have time to catch my breath, relax a bit and even post to my blog(s) again. After the holidays, of course, it gets nuts, but that's three weeks away.

So for my first offering, I quite enjoyed this (the result of enough free time to play on the internet and wander through blogs):

Monday, December 01, 2008

Got the magic power of the music in me...

Saturday's a good day to go to the care home. If you're there in the morning, they have tea and something to eat down in the first floor dining area.

My dad and I got there a little later than usual, went up to get mom from the 3rd floor (there are five floors; it's a fairly big place) and then came down to see the main area was full. We took her over to a quiet fireplace area in the empty meeting room and one of the staff saw us and offered to help me get them some of the cinnamon buns that smelled so good. I followed her to the kitchen and happened to hear one of the residents telling a staffer she wanted to sing.

They sometimes have a musician or someone lead them in some songs on Saturday mornings while they have their tea. There was nobody that day, so I offered--I know some Christmas stuff, if they liked. In a moment they were making space for my parents at a table and I was at the piano, playing a bunch of Christmas music I'd known since I was a kid.

I didn't see too much but I heard the old voices singing the songs they knew well; my dad told me later most were tapping out rhythm and a couple got up and began to dance--one old dear with her walker supporting her.

Last week's This American Life focused on the topic of music. All of the segments are certainly worth the time it takes to download the podcast--although it may not be available now the new one's up, but if you want it I can email it to you. David Sedaris's story of his dad's failed attempt to inspire his children to become jazz musicians, another regular's tales of her life as a high school band geek, and finally a powerful tale of music and faith in a church where traditional views had to be pushed aside by music to let love win out.

As someone who hears music around me all day long, and is watching my kids become more and more immersed in music in their own lives, it was great to listen to, and I think it's hooked my son on the show as well.