Garbage

The city workers in Vancouver are on strike right now and that includes the garbage collectors. Fortunately we're not having a particularly hot summer and that helps a lot as the garbage piles up. We went through this when they negotiated their last contract and so we're familiar with what happens with the garbage piling up and what to do to limit the adverse effects. At the moment we have no idea how long this might last.

We're about two weeks in and the immediately effect of this strike on me is that I'm having to carefully separate out the dry from the wet garbage. Last summer we eliminated the compost bin so I can't use that to keep the garbage level down. We weren't using the compost bin correctly and the fruit refuse in particular was attracting rats. I found out about this when they got into the house and into the walls, and kept me company in the evenings by scratching and gnawing. I'm happy to say that they weren't on my side of the walls but that's the end of the up-side. Now the compost bin is gone, the rats are gone also - thank God!

I confess that I don't really know very much about what this strike is all about. I don't read the newspapers because I find that they depress me with a view of the world that I don't find helpful. However, without the papers and watching the news on TV, or listening to it on the radio, none of which I do, you do hear snippets of conversation around you.

One I heard was that the union is complaining that the contract being offered is for 39 months, just getting the city past the Olympics without having to worry about another strike with a city full of visitors. This demonstrates a lack of good will and trust. It may be justifiable but who can say ahead of time and both sides are being wary. Another I heard was that the cost-of-living increase being offered is more than fair and don't we all wish we had such a deal. And the loudest one I heard was that garbage collectors shouldn't be allowed to strike as uncollected garbage is a risk to public health and should be classified an essential service.

I have a perception, untested it's true, that it isn't easy to find out what's really going on. It feels like everyone has an axe to grind and that each side has a vested interest in making the other's side look impossibly unreasonable. I confess that I don't trust the media. It's sort of entrenched in my thinking now. I find it hard work, and often impossible, to figure out what's the truth and so I give up on the whole thing. It isn't just the facts, or fallacies, that bother me. It's the way the information is presented. They sensationalize. They focus on the negative. They pedal fear. In any case, it seems to me that they do.

Judging by how often sales people from the two major newspapers in the city call me at dinner time to try to convince me that I need to buy a subscription, I imagine that I'm not the only person who has given up on newspapers. The glimpses I get of TV news and the bits of radio news I catch when I'm out, have not convinced me that anything has changed in the years since I gave up on them. However, I admit that I am so prejudiced now that I haven't given them another chance. They may have gone through a radical change and I wouldn't know.

I do read the little local paper which happens to have a couple of columnists who express views about our community that are closer to mine than anything else I've come across. The paper has it's negative and sensational moments but it's not too bad. When it comes to the bigger news of the day, I watch a few in-depth documentary programs on TV, although I'm even a little suspicious of them. I get a few e-newsletters and I listen to a few friends whom I consider to be more savvy about the news than I am, but that's it.

I feel a bit guilty that I don't do much more than vote with my feet, or my wallet. Deep down I beleive that if I want my community to change, then I should do something more positive than refusing to eat what they put on the table. I feel a bit surly and childish. But quite frankly, I don't want to spend my time pushing for the news/information vehicles to reform. I hope and pray that someone else out there does. I will support them when they do.

I suppose I have a belief, convenient to-be-sure, that each of us has a list of battles we are prepared to wage and those that we are not. News is not one of mine. Eating organic produce is. With the small income I have right now, I am still eating organic food - not totally but as much as I can. I'm willing to make that sacrifice for what I believe in. I'm not sure what makes that a higher priority for me than the news but it is. I own up to it.

At this point in my life, I confess I have an allergy to adversarial systems and the city versus the city workers union feels like an adversarial situation. And that's not to mention the tactics that such systems use to try and garner support for their side of the argument. If you subscribe to an adversarial system, then it figures that you would communicate about it in an adversarial fashion. It seems self-perpetuating. I'd like to get off this merry-go-round! It's making me feel sick.

I said at the beginning of this year that I think 2007 is the tipping point. I'd like to leave my blog today on a positive note, so I am choosing to have faith that someone is going to do some small thing that will be the last straw needed to cause a radical change. Maybe someone is doing it as I write this thought. It could happen. Wouldn't that be a fine thing?