garbage | garbage
Aug.23.2012
SAN FRANCISCO--When I was young, I used to eat food taken from a supermarket's garbage bin. We first came to America from Vietnam in the mid 70s as refugees, and my eldest brother got a job working in a supermarket across from our crowded, ramshackle apartment. Among his many chores he...
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Oct.04.2011
If that one butterfly, whafting its immediate South American air around the globe, can alter the ice flows in Norway, what have I done?
It is my fault, no two ways about it. While taking out the refuse I tossed the recyclable bottles and cans into the garbage dumpster. And was left...
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Jan.04.2011
Rising, slowly, from the snow . . . Garbage.
The blizzard struck nine days ago, hitting hard and fast. We overcame that pretty quickly. The garbage has risen gradually.
The last seven days in pictures:
The first piles were apparently planted before the storm. By Wednesday night, December 29,...
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Oct.08.2010
I see the world in layers: layers of people, experience, emotion, and inspiration. That's appropriate, since I'm an archaeologist in my "day job" at the University of Illinois: http://www.itarp.uiuc.edu/atam/aboutatam/wisseman.html
My other job is mystery writing. Gradually I'm...
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Sep.17.2010
An examination of sustainable energy technologies from solar panels to methane-composting, sewage-treatment plants and the parts they can play in saving our society.
The above is a panel discussion I’ve suggested for the Ad Astra Science Fiction Convention. The title says it all and offers hope...
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Aug.07.2010
The heat kills. enough heat and humidity in just a short walk to be totally wiped out. The idyllic house by the ocean had its problems: hundreds of beachgoers appeared in July, and they loomed up close to the huge glass windows which serve as walls. Garbage overflowed the one big bin near the...
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Jun.29.2010
While I was driving to the mall, last week, one of my neighbors called my cell phone and asked if my son could possibly take her trash can to the curb for her, since she and her husband were out of town. My son, who was sitting in the car and heard the conversation, promptly agreed to help.
We...
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Jun.23.2010
The way it was raining yesterday reminded me of another yesterday. I was in the gutter then. Yes, right there. I have been in several emotional and metaphoric gutters, but not a real one. That time heavy rains had flooded the streets. People were walking knee-deep in brown water, car tyres were not...
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Oct.15.2009
I just read that the Arctic will have ice-free summers within 2 decades, and among other things it will mean the end of the polar bears, and probably the penguins as well. They are great swimmers – penguins better than bears – but they all need ice and islands in order to venture out to...
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Sep.19.2009
San Francisco, California (Just to the Left of the United States) — It was garbage night. I was bringing out the various types of garbage—the trash, the compost, the recycling, the nuclear waste—and the process was taking me longer than usual. Just when I thought I was done I discovered a forgotten...
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