wonderful stain glass window

note the custom window above the bar

Here’s a few few photos from a former client of mine, Karen. Her friend, Colleen, whose life passion is interior design, arranged for my building of this kitchen and bath. I was not the only one to liken the light inside as to a church. Beautiful.

I was surprised to learn that nearly 40-to-60% of our landfill is old buildings. To “Build Green” means to avoid the landfill and recycle. So off to the recycling center I go. For several trips, the dump truck is loaded up with the debris from one jobsite, mostly material from the master bath and bedroom and guest bedroom:

Lath, plaster, sheet rock, old yellowed 2x4s full of nails, plywood subfloor, fiberglass shower stall, sink, cabinets, carpet, foam pad, electric wires, outlets, junction boxes, knob and tube, conduits, plastic pipes, cast iron, copper, plastic fire sensors, and all kinds of other stuff–rubble, dust, sawdust, insulation–much of it cut up and in plastic bags.

At the recycling center, Craig, the superintendent, wants me to empty out all of the black plastic bags–so that their contents can be verified.

Really? A whole truckload!?

I’m surprised and a bit miffed, as you can guess. I ask him why, explaining that I’d had to carry all that material down three turns of a staircase of a home that was currently being occupied, put it in the back of a pickup, and then throw it all into another truck at a different site. The bags were crucial to a clean, efficient process. (Actually, another crew member forewarned me that he’d had to empty the bags once at the recycling center because they had recently found human body parts in some other bags, from of a local homicide, and now the recycling center did its own preemptive forensics. But I doubted this whole explination.)

A pile of wood from old dwellings…

Craig, the superintendent, told me it was okay–this time. I didn’t have to empty each bag. He said, normally, he wanted the bags emptied because some guys say that there’s construction debris in the plastic bags, when really it’s regular garbage, and the center can’t recycle it.

Fair enough.

I’m pleased that what we bring to the recycling center is truly and verifiably recycled.

Craig, the superintendent, also says he’ll give me a tour of his center. He’s visibly proud of his operation and says so. The best time to show up is 9 in the morning. (It’s near quitting time when we talk.)

Great, I tell him I’ll be back soon.

Construction Debris’ Initial Sorting Out
*note: above the backhoe operator’s shoulder, the stairs leading to the conveyer belt where all of this gets sorted out by hand.

So I back the truck up, raise the bed, and empty the payload of old house. Everything I deliver will later be sorted BY HAND into its individual elements on a raised conveyer belt. Cool, I can’t wait for my tour–and for a greater picture of where old buildings go to get recycled.

As far as the eye can see….

I love to get the window seat in an airplane, where I’m endlessly fascinated. I especially like it as we’re landing or taking off, because we’re flying low, and usually over a cityscape. Block after city block as far as the eye can see…

What politician, or group of politicians – what religious belief – or group of conspirators…? Who is responsible for building these cities? From up high in an airplane, the endless metropolis seems like some strange grid built by insects, moved by forces beyond any single person or group of person’s control. Political beliefs, religious systems, cities seem to swell up regardless of these. While up here, I think of carpenters, and all those employed in the construction industry, as worker insects in the vast fabric of humanity. Food and shelter, food and shelter, our most primary needs, they’re also responsible for creating the largest shares of our landfill. Like I mentioned earlier, some 40-to-60% percent of our landfill is construction debris, our ex-buildings.

I have a lot of questions that I’m going to research in the next few weeks. For example, how big is a city’s landfill? How large during a certain amount of time? And how does this impact the environment? Also, I’m going to find our where our buildings go when they’re recycled. I also want to know where EXACTLY our daily recycling goes… Where in this vast sea of humanity..?

After the old lath and plaster and sheet rock and vats of old insulation covering up the sawdust-like, blow-in insulation is gone.

Like most remodel jobs, the first step is demo: Getting rid of unwanted walls and ceilings, wiring, plumbing, and so on and on. This leaves a big pile of stuff:

What’s left of a master bathroom (shower and vanity included) and a big walk-in closet.

Apparently 40-t0-60% of our landfill is such debris – the refuse of our old buildings. That’s a lot of landfill, and a lot of old building. One of the tenets of Green Building (at least with the company that’s just hired me) is that all of this stuff – ALL OF THIS STUFF – gets recycled. Or as much of it as humanly possible.

Well, we’ll see. In all of my previous experience in construction, we’d just take all this stuff to the dump.

But in upcoming blog posts, I’m going to investigate where old buildings go when you tear them down…

One ornithologist, Michael Westerfield, theorizes that the majority of the birds in these groups are younger, unmated birds without their own territory. The socialization aspects are vital to these birds in seeking out mates. As Westerfield says, “The communal roost serves primarily a social function where birds challenge each other, find potential mates, and communicate, in one way or another, their individual and joint experiences.”

Here’s two crows caught making out at a pre-roost “staging” area in the late afternoon.

Crows Making Out, photos by C.A. Willis

Further Spooning

I’ve heard that the roosts may be used as information centers, to help gather useful knowledge such as plentiful food sources, or, that roosts may provide safety through numbers from predators. Watching the crows flying, cawing, circling, diving, whirling, lighting and rising up all over again in such huge black clouds of such mind-bobbling numbers, my girlfriend speculated that it must be pure fun, and exhilarating, just to be a part of it.

Other opinions I’ve heard, though, state that almost nothing is known about why crows form these communal roosts or of the dynamics of the populations involved. For well over an hour before dark, the sky is just filled with birds, all coming in from one direction to spend the night. One thinks of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. But it’s way more awesome than that – in the true sense of the word. Awesome and mysterious.

The crow below seems a bit concerned or embarrassed. Maybe we shouldn’t have filmed them making out.

A look of concern?

Or maybe it just wants us to stop anthropomorphizing?

Becca the Barista

It’s Pay Homage to Your Favorite Barista Day. Here’s Becca. She graduates from college in two weeks and one day, when she will get on a plane to celebrate her mom’s 50th birthday in Florida with a surprise visit. Then, they will each get matching tattoos. Each will get a frog tattooed on her calve, while her mom’s frog will have dragonfly wings. (Even though Becca’s visit will be a surprise, they must have talked about the tattoos beforehand.) “The frog is symbolic of change. You know, the whole tadpole-to-frog thing. The frog,” she says, “is big in my family’s heritage.”

What’s more ominous: the sound of the traffic, or the sound of crows?

In my next couple of posts, I’m going to investigate as best as I can why the crows meet like this. But no matter what I find what, one can’t help but be moved by the mystery. How can we ever possibly know why—or all of the why?

Crow Reflection.

If you like Mark’s photography, check out his book The Monster of Perugia, The Framing of Amanda Knox.

• the eponymous Pacific Northwest Native figures Raven and Crow
• the ravens Hugin and Munin, who accompany the Norse god Odin
• the Celtic goddesses the Mórrígan and/or the Badb (sometimes considered separate from Mórrígan)
• and Shani, a Hindu god who travels astride a crow

In Buddhism, the Dharmapala (protector of the Dharma) Mahakala is represented by a crow in one of his physical/earthly forms.

Avalokiteśvara/Chenrezig, who is reincarnated on Earth as the Dalai Lama, is often closely associated with the crow because it is said that when the first Dalai Lama was born, robbers attacked the family home. The parents fled and were unable to get to the infant Lama in time. When they returned the next morning expecting the worst, they found their home untouched, and a pair of crows were caring for the Dalai Lama. It is believed that crows heralded the birth of the First, Seventh, Eighth, Twelfth, and Fourteenth Lamas, the latter being the current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. Crows are mentioned often in Buddhism, especially Tibetan disciplines.

In Greek mythology, it was believed that when the crows gave bad news to the goddess Athena, she flew into a rage, and cursed their feathers to be black.

In Hinduism, it is believed that people who died will take food and offerings through a variety of crows called “Bali kākka.” Every year people whose parents or relatives died will offer food to crows as well as cows on the Shradha day.

***

The poet who sent me this list, a friend from my college days, Ellen Girardeau Kempler, had this to add to the complilation:  The aspect of this info. that stood out for me was that there are as many positive associations here as negative–usually only find the negative. And BTW, in Ireland (where I attended a poetry workshop last summer) the common crow is the Hooded Crow, which they call the Grey Crow, a beautiful black and charcoal version–black head and granite chest. They sound and act the same (universallyl crowlike).