Writes Jazmine Hughes, in "The Joy of Picking Up Other People’s Trash/When my neighborhood changed around me, I decided to change it" (NYT).
November 1, 2023
"I don’t trash-pick as often as I’d like to — usually when I’m faced with doing something far more unappealing..."
"... or whenever I need to work off some bad karma. It’s a terrific hobby for me, an anxious putterer with a holier-than-thou bent who writes better when my hands are occupied with something else. (I’m not alone — the humorist David Sedaris is a much more accomplished writer and trash picker than me.) When I do it, though, Bluetooth headphones in my ears and a weed gummy dissolving in my stomach, solicitousness and gratification ripple through me."
Writes Jazmine Hughes, in "The Joy of Picking Up Other People’s Trash/When my neighborhood changed around me, I decided to change it" (NYT).
The neighborhood is not named, but we're told it's in Brooklyn, and the change is gentrification — "turbocharged gentrification." Hughes looks around and sees herself as "the only Black person standing on the corner" while "gaggles of 20-somethings... roam the streets, presumably in search of eyebrows, which none of them seemed to have."
Writes Jazmine Hughes, in "The Joy of Picking Up Other People’s Trash/When my neighborhood changed around me, I decided to change it" (NYT).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
28 comments:
Wow. What a Saint.
Today is all Saints day.
In case anyone was wondering.
"Whenever I need to work off some bad karma."
When people use words like "karma," they expose themselves as NewAge, and delusional, and I know we could never be friends. It also does not surprise me that a NewAger has done something they feel they have to atone for. The embrace of absurdities leads to atrocities. So, naturally, this person has done something wrong. No surprise there.
the humorist David Sedaris is a much more accomplished writer and trash picker than I
Writers should know something about grammar.
Great phrase. "presumably in search of eyebrows"
If she's saying that stepping away from the writing for a stint, relaxing and letting the brain work in the background, is the purpose of trash-picking, then I agree. I'm not a writer who sits at the desk until a certain word count hits. I prefer to mix my time writing with other chores. When I sit down again, it's fresh and flowing.
It sounds like the writer is saying that the THC high helps one justify and condone their narcissism making it feel like that personality disorder is what makes them such a great human being.
This goof has me laughing out loud here. Go pick up trash in a neighborhood with a more diverse ethnicity then lady, and then you will see what can also happen. She won't learn anything from that either but it'll be instructive or at least amusing for the rest of us.
What is going on with the eyebrows?
lol Crack
So, the gentrification inspired her to pick up trash? Is this a scarcity/value economics behavioral thing?
Run! Run! The white people are coming!
Would anyone dare print that piece if the colors were reversed?
"Is No Brow the new highbrow?"
"So, the gentrification inspired her to pick up trash? Is this a scarcity/value economics behavioral thing?"
Is it a way to say "white trash" without saying it outright?
So, Black is unproductive and old... aging. How very diversitist of her.
For a while I lived on Balboa Island. (Where the average home price is about $3 million.) I lived in a tiny room in the back of a garage and paid $600 a month in rent. Sometimes I would wander up and down the alleys on the day before trash day and found a lot of really great stuff that the rich people were just throwing away. They weren't throwing it away because it was bad. They were just throwing it away because they didn't want it. I scored laptops, computers, tablets, monitors, ect, ect. They had so much money that they felt that it wasn't worth their time to donate this, perfectly good, stuff to charity.
Gentrification occurs in families, neighborhoods, communities through individual and collective responsibility. Meanwhile, diversity breeds adversity.
That said, diversity of individuals, minority of one.
@ Crack - I get what you're saying about the use of the word "karma"; it is a little too new-age-y in a foreign, far-east sort of way. (why is it these folks adopt these sorts of mystic movements when there’s plenty of early Christian mysticism to delve into and explore.)
But, because our entire culture has seen fit to jettison its Christian underpinnings, karma gets used as a type of shorthand, generally, in the place of 'charity', or even 'duty'. There's nothing wrong with atonement; it could perhaps be better expressed as an examination of one’s conscience, noting the lack of charity or sacrifice, and doing something about it. The idea of purposely doing something unpleasant or time consuming or inconvenient and offering it up.
Love that gentrification is taking place in the same town that Nazis paraded in for the past week. Nothing like gentrified Nazis. "Well...at least they're vegans."
Back in the 1980s, I unwittingly helped kickstart gentrification of a run down Baltimore neighborhood by rejuvenating a neglected planting bed on greenspace across the street from our 1917 era rowhouse. After more weedy planting beds were restored by neighbors along the block, we suddenly had a gentrified street. We got the local park cleaned up and we had a gentrified
neighborhood. One long-time local complained about the flowers growing where only weeds had flourished, stating that the blooms would attract local kids to the area, which could only lead to trouble. Such is the mindset of the perpetually aggrieved. His complaints did motivate me to enlarge the refurbished flowerbed, and to obtain surplus railroad ties to edge it.
It is still there today, with plenty of blooms, tended by current occupants of the houses who now think of its presence as eternal.
I am confused (and not paying NYT to find out the answer) - is "trash picking" where one picks litter up and properly disposes of it or where one goes through people's trash looking for items of some potential value? When I lived in the student slum area of Boston (Allston, for those with knowledge of the area), you could get rid of virtually any large item (dressers, couches, bookshelves and the like) by putting it on the curb the day before trash removal, usually gone in five minutes.
“ They were just throwing it away because they didn't want it. I scored laptops, computers, tablets, monitors, ect, ect. They had so much money that they felt that it wasn't worth their time to donate this, perfectly good, stuff to charity.”
And Madison you aren’t allowed to throw any of these things away by putting them out to the curb. You have to take them over to a special place and pay money to throw them away — like $10 for a computer monitor.
There's a low spot in the street a few houses from us that is often 5 or more inches deep in water after a rain clogs the storm drain with dead leaves.
I've been known to wear my waterproof shoes and take a stick to the clogs. I call it my Free the Rainwater Initiative, and feel both solicitousness and gratification. The gummies help too.
Speaking of too much stuff, my brother has informed me that after many years and many tens of thousands of bucks spent on a storage unit, he's finally ready to get rid of some items-family furniture and the like--that my son, the heir and last of the line, neither wants nor needs.
Some of what's in there belongs to my wife and I, but we don't need it either. I go to enough estate sales to know that with rare exceptions you can hardly even give old furniture and housewares away, and have long proposed just setting ours on the curb for anyone who wants it.
The others may come around to my way of thinking.
Speaking of picking things up, I always like to find a heads-up penny.
I will leave them if they are tails-up.
I learned recently that my son, upon finding a tails-up penny, will flip it heads up and leave it for someone else.
He's normally a very cynical kid so I thought this was sweet...
'And Madison you aren’t allowed to throw any of these things away by putting them out to the curb. You have to take them over to a special place and pay money to throw them away — like $10 for a computer monitor.'
That's not too bad. In CA it can be a LOT more.
So much that it makes you want to hide it in the recycling. It's like the state either doesn't really care about recycling, or they see it as a cash cow...
Litter isn't a problem in gentrified neighborhoods, so I am suspicious of this article's premise. Where was she when the prior residents were littering? It's a dirty secret the NTYT will never admit that minority neighborhoods are trash riddled because minorities litter.
Watch out, Joe Smith, you might be New Age if you believe picking up a heads-up penny will have any effect at all on your karma! Don't walk under any ladders!
Or hell, you could just be whimsical and not painfully literal.
(I'm just busting your chops, Crack. I'm assuming you're not quite as uncompromising with people in person as you are online.)
KellyM said...
"@ Crack - I get what you're saying about the use of the word "karma"; it is a little too new-age-y in a foreign, far-east sort of way."
A while back, a friend of mine got robbed, and she wrote about it on Facebook. Underneath her story popped about 200 people, who all started posting the word "karma" like it's their mantra that causes things to happen. THAT'S what I'm talking about.
Maybe it's because I lived in San Francisco, but the rest of you don't seem to have any experience with cultism, beyond scratching the very surface.
Under the circumstances, you're both lucky, and blindingly ignorant, for that.
Jamie said...
"I'm just busting your chops, Crack. I'm assuming you're not quite as uncompromising with people in person as you are online."
I've told you I have very few friends now, and I barely leave the house for fear of encountering more NewAgers, and you still think that? One of my best friends is a Muslim, and we get along by not antagonizing each other. Based on how you guys act on this blog, y'all wouldn't last very long with he and I. All you guys do is talk racist shit, or say shit without any evidence backing it up, demanding people except your word.
Seriously, we would've beat your asses, by now.
Ann Althouse said...
"So, the gentrification inspired her to pick up trash? Is this a scarcity/value economics behavioral thing?"
Is it a way to say "white trash" without saying it outright?
Yep.You nailed it.
In our neighborhood, if it isn't in one of the wheelie bins, it has to have a sticker on it. If it has glass, the glass has to be taped up.
Unless ther is metal. Anything made of metal we just leave by the curb and sometime in the night a scrapper will come by and pick it up.
Post a Comment