Even these sweet clapboard and detached houses in Georgetown, where most houses are brick and attached. The above observation about trash came from this article that I stumbled across this weekend. I'm fascinated by dirt and garbage, and so is this professor. I missed my calling. I now know that I really wanted to be a garbalogist.
Nagle says "we are surrounded by ephemera, but we can’t acknowledge that, because it’s kind of scary, because I think ultimately it points to our own temporariness, to thoughts that we’re all going to die."
She trying to get NYC to create a Museum of Sanitation.
5 comments:
Ha ha ha! How timely that I checked your blog just as the hoarder-fest was wrapping up on A&E tonight. I've decided that I like the OTHER channel's show about hoarding better (it's either TLC or D-HC--I forget which). The A&E show just has too much drama and confrontation for my sensitive soul, and I find myself becoming stressed out. Who needs that?
I'll check back and read the article you referenced in this entry a little later. I hope I don't get depressed about all the potential garbage. Oh, dear.
But, back to the hoarders. It seems that often people begin hoarding when they've experienced the death of a loved one. That seems to support Nagle's view, which you quoted.
You may find this tangentially interesting: Mongo: Adventures in Trash. I read it a few years ago and enjoyed it.
I don't think Nagle's article will be depressing Anne...in fact I found it oddly uplifting. Our trash will at least keep some anthropologists busy in the future, not rich but busy.
Thanks Kitt for the book lead. I now have three more dirt-trash books to add to my collection (ha! my collection of trash I guess): your Mongo book, one called Rubbish! The Archaeology of Trash, and another called Dirt: A Social History.
And now it's time for me to start another day of adding hundreds of pounds of garbage to the international collection!
And here I thought I was nuts for seeing everything as trash. I knew I had hit an interesting milestomne when I looked at my own precious paintings, and thought "the world doesn't need more of these. They are destined for a landfill."
I agree, Michelle, that it's a milestone to look at something like your paintings and recognize where they might be in 100 yrs. But the big question is what did you do? Did you toss them out? Burn them? Hide them deep in a closet? And most important, does it keep you from painting? Sad to think that you would stop creating art because it might be landfill one day. Such a conundrum! Should I stop knitting socks and making quilts like a madwoman? Not gonna happen. This is such a problem for me: I spend too much time trying to think things through in a logical fashion and the end result is always that I feel like a hypocrite, as in, I should sell or give away this house and all its contents and go live in a tent. As if I would ever give up air-conditioning....Hypocrite!
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