Sunday, February 23, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Maria Franziska von Trapp, last of "The Sound of Music" siblings, dies
ByAndra Varin CBS News February 22, 2014

+Maria Franziska von Trapp, the last surviving sibling of the original singing von Trapp family whose story inspired "The Sound of Music," has died in Vermont. She was 99 years old.

A spokeswoman at the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vt., confirmed she died Tuesday.
"Maria had a wonderful life and we will miss her. The memories of her will live on," her half-brother Johannes von Trapp said in a statement.

Maria Franziska von Trapp wrote fondly of her father on the family's website.
Courtesy von Trapp family

 Born in 1914 in Zell Am See in the Austria Alps, Maria Franziska was the third of seven children of the aristocratic Georg von Trapp and his first wife, Agathe Whitehead, who died in 1922.

As a child, Maria Franziska had scarlet fever, the same disease that killed her mother. While she was recuperating, a young woman from the local convent was brought in to tutor her at home. This was Maria Augusta Kutschera, the Maria character Julie Andrews immortalized in the 1965 movie version of "The Sound of Music."

Kutschera began teaching the other children too. She went on to marry the widowed sea captain and became stepmother to his seven young children. They went on to have three more children, two daughters and son Johannes.

The family began singing together in the mid-1930s. In 1938, they fled Nazi-occupied Austria and eventually settled in the United States, where they opened an inn in 1942. Maria von Trapp wrote a book, "The Story of the Trapp Family Singers," published in 1949, which became the basis for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "The Sound of Music."

Maria Franziska von Trapp served as a lay missionary in Papua New Guinea, according to the Trapp Family Lodge website, before returning to Vermont to live. She is represented by Louisa, played by Heather Menzies-Urich, in the 1965 movie.

At the age of 97, she wrote fondly of her childhood memories and cleared up one myth from the movie. Capt. von Trapp did have a special whistle to call each of his children – but they didn't see it as a strict measure for keeping discipline.
"As a U-boat commander, he needed a Bosun's Whistle to give commands, especially in the howling winds and roaring sea where a voice could be drowned out. In Salzburg, we had a large house and large gardens, so he used that whistle to call us instead of his voice, which we might not have heard. Each one of us had a special call," she wrote on the lodge website.

"When we heard this, we stormed to him, but we never had to march or stand at attention." 

Maria Franziska was the last surviving member of the original seven von Trapp children. Oldest daughter Agathe von Trapp, the inspiration for Liesl in "The Sound of Music," died in 2012 at the age of 97.




A biography of Maria, the young postulant who married Captain von Trapp and was portrayed by Julie Andrews in The Sound Of Music, is presented on my second blog called Thoughts and Researches. The source is the amazing Wikipedia. I find it amazing because I have looked up probably five hundred subjects in Wikipedia since I found the site and found useful and extensive articles on most of them. It isn't Encyclopedia Britannica, but it generally serves my purposes.

The Sound Of Music was one of the best all round movie productions I have ever seen, and the story was heartwarming with an exciting ending as the family escaped at the last minute from the Nazis who had come to take over Austria. Vietnam was a terrible war, but World War II was the most important to history, because the free world was nearly overcome by the Nazi party. In fact, there are still Neo Nazis in this country and in Europe, who have no guilt over their inhumane viewpoints and occasional crimes. It is an ongoing war for liberal minded or simply ethical people today. The von Trapp family were not Jewish, but they disagreed with the Nazis and would have been imprisoned or worse had they stayed in Austria.




Whereabouts and legitimacy of Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych unclear – CBS
AP February 23, 2014

KIEV, Ukraine - A top Ukrainian opposition figure assumed presidential powers Sunday, plunging Ukraine into new uncertainty after a deadly political standoff - and boosting long-jailed Yulia Tymoshenko's chances at a return to power.

The whereabouts and legitimacy of President Viktor Yanukovych are unclear after he left the capital for his support base in eastern Ukraine. He maintains that parliament's decisions in recent days are illegal, and a top presidential aide told The Associated Press on Sunday that he will continue to fulfill his presidential duties.

Ukraine's parliament sacks president, sets early elections
Ukraine's parliament voted to remove President Viktor Yanukovich from office less than a day after he fled Kiev. Early elections have been set for May.

The newly emboldened parliament, now dominated by the opposition, struggled Sunday to work out who is in charge of the country. Fears percolated that some regions might try to break away, after three months of political crisis that has left scores of people dead in a country of strategic importance to the United States, European nations and Russia.

Ukraine is deeply divided between eastern regions that are largely pro-Russian and western areas that widely detest Yanukovych and long for closer ties with the European Union. Yanukovych's shelving of an agreement with the EU in November set off the wave of protests, but they quickly expanded their grievances to corruption, human rights abuses and calls for Yanukovych's resignation.

The Kiev protest camp at the center of the anti-Yanukovych movement filled with more and more dedicated demonstrators Sunday, setting up new tents after two days that saw a stunning reversal of fortune in Ukraine's political crisis.

Tymoshenko, the blond-braided heroine of Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution, increasingly appears to have the upper hand in the political battle, winning the backing Sunday of a leading Russian lawmaker and congratulations from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. senators on her release.

Russia's position will be important for the future of this country, since Moscow has been providing financing to keep Ukraine's economy afloat, and the two countries have deep but complicated ties.

Russia's finance minister on Sunday urged Ukraine to seek a loan from the International Monetary Fund to avoid an imminent default. Russia in December offered Ukraine a $15 billion bailout, but so far has provided only $3 billion, freezing further disbursements pending the outcome of the ongoing political crisis.

Russian legislator Leonid Slutsky said Sunday that naming Tymoshenko prime minister "would be useful for stabilizing" the tensions in Ukraine, according to Russian news agencies.

Tensions mounted in Crimea, where pro-Russian politicians are organizing rallies and forming protest units and have been demanding autonomy from Kiev. Russia maintains a big naval base in Crimea that has tangled relations between the countries for two decades.

The political crisis in this nation of 46 million has changed with blinding speed repeatedly in the past week. First there were signs that tensions were easing, followed by horrifying violence and then a deal signed under pressure from European diplomats that aimed to resolve the conflict but left the unity of the country in question.

"We need to catch and punish those with blood on their hands," Artyom Zhilyansky, a 45-year-old engineer on Independence Square on Sunday, referring to those killed in clashes with police last week.

He and other protesters called for law enforcement chiefs to be held accountable and Yanukovych put on trial.

The parliament, in a special session Sunday, voted overwhelmingly to temporarily hand the president's powers to speaker Oleksandr Turchinov, a top ally of Tymoshenko.
The legislators also voted to remove a string of government ministers and may name a prime minister later Sunday.  Tymoshenko's name circulated as a strong possibility.
The legitimacy of the parliament's flurry of decisions in recent days is under question. The votes are based on a decision Friday to return to a 10-year-old constitution that grants parliament greater powers. Yanukovych has not signed that decision into law, and he said Saturday that the parliament is now acting illegally.
However, legal experts said that de facto the parliament is now in charge.

Ihor Koliushko, head of the Center for Political and Legal reform, said that given the president's absence from Kiev and the exceptional situation, "I think it would be right to say that we don't have a head of the state, but the president's duties are being carried out ... by the head of the Verkhovna Rada," or parliament.

Yanukovych, who spoke on television Saturday in Kharkiv, accused his opponents of trying to overthrow the government.

Presidential aide Hanna Herman told The Associated Press on Sunday that Yanukovych was in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv as of Saturday night and plans to stay in power. Still, Herman sought to distance herself from him somewhat Sunday, as did his party.

In Kiev's protest camp, self-defense units that have taken control of the capital peacefully changed shifts Sunday. Helmeted and wearing makeshift shields, they have replaced police guarding the president's administration and parliament, and have sought to stop radical forces from inflicting damage or unleashing violence.

Ukrainians' loyalties remain divided. Emotions mounted around statues of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, after angry protesters took them down in several towns and cities. On Sunday, some pro-Russian protesters took up positions to defend Lenin statues in Donetsk and Kharkiv. Statues of Lenin still stand across the former U.S.S.R., and they are seen as a symbol of Moscow's rule.

Parliament set new presidential elections for May 25, and Tymoshenko says she will run.

Tymoshenko, whose diadem of blond peasant braids and stirring rhetoric attracted world attention in the 2004 Orange Revolution, spoke late Saturday night to a crowd of about 50,000 on Kiev's Independence Square, where a sprawling protest tent camp was set up in December. Sitting in a wheelchair because of a back problem aggravated during imprisonment, her voice cracked and her face was careworn.

But her words were vivid, praising the protesters who were killed this week in clashes with police that included sniper fire and entreating the living to keep the camp going.

"You are heroes, you are the best thing in Ukraine!" she said of the victims.
The Health Ministry said the death toll in clashes between protesters and police that included sniper attacks had reached 82 over the last week. The protesters put that figure at over 100.

European officials urged calm. Ukraine's defense and military officials also called for Ukrainians to stay peaceful but did not clearly come on the side of the president or opposition.

The past week has seen the worst violence in Ukraine since the breakup of the Soviet Union a quarter-century ago. Orthodox priests held services Sunday to honor the dead.




Every day there is new excitement in the story of the Ukraine. Russia is not stepping in with troops and tanks as they have at times in the past, but is speaking with a certain amount of respect for the increasingly successful uprising in Kiev. It does look as though there may be a real split between Kiev and Kharkov, though, with Russia remaining one of the players.

The old Cold War of the 1950's and 1960's is still going on in some ways. Russia is not quite so hard line as it was in that time period, but is still essentially the same. Their goal is to exercise power over other nations, and hold on to their economic and political sphere with a firm grasp. The US is still doing the same thing, of course.

I really would like to see a peaceful world in my lifetime. I was born into the end of World War II and have seen the US involved in countless other places since then, either by invasion or by intrigue. That makes some people proud of their country, but not me. I want us to be the Great Society. I think that is a higher goal.





Seeking help for hoarding – CBS
CBS News February 23, 2014

"At some point I got a lot of stuff," said Joanne Garland. "I kept too much paper. I kept too many books.  I kept too many clothes."

Too much of everything! Garland's Greenfield, Mass., home is packed with belongings she just can't part with. "Decades of stuff, yes!" she said. "It has been picked up at times in the past. And the volume of clothing has overwhelmed me. More has to leave the house."

It's not that she hasn't tried. After years of forcing herself to throw things out, she can actually eat in her kitchen again. But Garland continues to hoard -- items like the wire handles from Chinese takeout containers.

Why? "It's easy to bend, and you never know when I might need it."
"How often do you end up needing it?" asked Braver.

"Not very often," she replied. "But you know, I hate to waste anything, and that has been part of my problem over the years."

Garland is just one of millions of people who hoard. It's estimated that up to five percent of the U.S. population has the problem, with an equal number of men and women.
And a new CBS News poll finds that a third of all Americans say they have too much clutter in their homes.

The subject of hoarding is so sensational it's become fodder for reality TV shows.
But beyond the spectacle, there's new recognition that hoarding is caused by a mental condition. Last Spring, for the very first time, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-5 -- the handbook for mental health experts -- recognized hoarding as a specific disorder. 

Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders Fact Sheet, DSM-5 (pdf)
The diagnosis of hoarding as a mental disorder is no surprise to Smith College psychology professor Randy Frost, co-author of "Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things." He says the formal definition of a hoarder is someone who has difficulty letting go of possessions.

Braver said, "You accumulate way more stuff than you need and you have a really hard time saying goodbye to it?"
 
 "That's exactly right," Frost said. "But there's a third component that's equally important, and that is the inability to keep it organized."

Frost has been studying and writing about hoarding since 1990. The public has long been fascinated by dramatic stories on the subject. Back in 1947, for example, the bizarre tale of the Collyer brothers, descendants of a well-to-do New York family, made headlines after their bodies were discovered in their jam-packed townhouse. 
E.L. Doctorow on "Homer & Langley" ("Sunday Morning," 2009)

But almost no scientific research had been done on hoarding until about 20 years ago.
"We put an ad in the newspaper thinking we'd try to find somebody who had this behavior," said Frost. "And we got 100 telephone calls.

"And what we discovered was there were houses that were really full, but yet no one had ever talked to them about it.  They'd never told anyone about it."
Frost's 20 years of study have revealed some key findings:
Hoarding affects people across the whole economic spectrum;
There is evidence that hoarding behavior is inherited, at least in part;
A significant number of hoarders also suffer from depression; and
The region of the brain that determines the importance of objects (the Anterior Cingulate Cortex) shows abnormal activity when hoarders are faced with making decisions about dealing with their belongings.

"The cut-off for where this becomes a disorder really has to do with the place at which this behavior influences their functioning, to the point that it-its harmful or impairing their ability to live," said Frost.

There are companies that help hoarders clean up and get rid of their stuff, but that may not really address the root of the problem. So Frost and several colleagues have developed a program they call "Buried in Treasures" that helps hoarders understand -- and change -- their behavior.

At support group meetings, "packrats" (as some prefer to call themselves) establish very specific weekly goals. 

And Joanne Garland had something to brag about: "My goal was to tidy up the two bedside tables, because I tend to read in bed, and I did it," she said. "I did it!"
But Lillian Evers didn't have the same success: "Well, I still have my pile of mail that I eat on top of. And I sit there and look at it, and I say, 'What's stopping you? What's the anxiety? What's the fear?' But I don't have an answer."

In fact, a big part of the support group approach is getting participants like Mika Geffen to understand why they compulsively acquire things.

"It's an addiction," Geffen said. "I get a kick out of it, absolutely. And that is something the group has definitely helped with -- that the two most important things are being able to discard and, you know, slowing down on acquiring."
 
 But for Carol Star, even recalling the moment when she admitted she had a problem is painful.

"I was at home," she said, "and I was surrounded by all these piles. And I felt like I was suffocating. And I think that's when I really knew that I needed help more than any other time in my life. 'Cause I didn't want to be drowned by my stuff. I wanted to find a way to make my house a house again, because it isn't right now."

The members of this group do have a success story in their midst: leader Lee Shuer, who said, "You can't just prove it in words, you know. You have to prove it in actions."

To see his neat kitchen now, you'd never know that eight years ago his home was such a disaster zone that his wife gave him an ultimatum.

"'It's me or the stuff. You have to make a decision,'" Shuer recalled. "And I made the choice to accept help right there."

Through the Buried in Treasures program, he has developed strategies for separating his belongings into "keep" and "give away" piles.

"Do you still keep yourself from adding more things, picking up some bargain somewhere?" asked Braver.

"I know that I haven't changed as a person; nobody else has either," Lee Shuer said. "You still have the impulse. But your reaction to it changes over time."
And, he added, "some of the thrill is gone for me."

But for Lee Shuer and anyone else with the urge to hoard, it is likely to be a lifelong struggle. "It is work, yeah," he said. "Because you're replacing something that might have been the one thing that made life worth living. That's pretty significant."




I used to be a chronic hoarder, but in my later years when I moved four or five times in a ten year period I finally caught on to the fact that if I moved I had to pack and unpack and load and carry all that stuff. I began to go for a simpler life.

The biggest habit I had to stop was the desire to go shopping when I got blue or bored. I especially liked small, cute things and things made of paper, and I haunted large drug stores, book stores, big box stores, yard sales, and second hand stores. I spent until I felt better, and as a result I didn't save money until I stopped the shopping. I didn't go into debt to buy things, I just spent my ready cash until it was gone.

Now I live in an adequate, but small apartment and I have very little storage space so I have quit compulsively shopping. As a result I am also saving a little money. I really do feel much more at peace and happier, and my environment looks better. My mementos of the past consist of several photograph albums, some old letters, a small doll and toy animal collection, about a hundred books and a few art objects such as two Jugtown vases from Seagrove, NC and some attractive animal clay sculptures. I try to concentrate now on beauty rather than “cuteness,” and pay some attention to my possessions, rather than just watching them collect dust. My possessions are still very important to me, but I have fewer of them, and they aren't making me feel claustrophobic.





Passage: Medals of Honor, and righting past wrongs – CBS
CBS News February 23, 2014

It happened this week: word that a group of true American heroes will finally get their due.

Friday, President Obama announced that 24 veterans from World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War will receive our nation's highest military honor.
For some, recognition comes 70 years after their courageous acts.

All 24 had previously been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest military award.  But recently Congress called for a review of Hispanic, Jewish and African-American war records to insure those deserving a Medal of Honor were not denied their due because of prejudice.

In each case, the review found these men actually deserved the Medal of Honor for heroism above and beyond the call of duty.

Only three of the veterans are still alive; all fought in Vietnam. 
Former Sgt. First Class Jose Rodela was hit with rocket fire while saving his company from being overrun by the enemy. 

Army Specialist Santiago Erevia.single-handedly took out four enemy bunkers that were raking his unit's position with fire.

And former Green Beret Melvin Morris: in Vietnam he was wounded three times recovering the body of a fallen comrade in the face of withering machine gun fire.
They, and the families of those no longer with us, will receive the Medal next month at the White House.  It will be the largest such ceremony since the closing days of World War II.




This situation of soldiers being passed over for honors, due to their race or religion is small, as events go, but it must be very painful to have gone through the horrible experiences of war and not receive the same recognition as white, Christian soldiers got for their service. It's in the category of an insult, rather than deeper harm, but it must make for bitter memories. I am glad that President Obama is taking this step now to redress the wrong, and I hope these same slights won't continue into future combat situations. I hope the military is promoting minorities – including women – within the ranks to give them credit for their hard work and an increase in their pay. The military is an inviting profession for young men and women who may not have a very good chance in the world of business, and they should receive recognition for their efforts. Heaven knows we would be in a hopeless situation without them.





Bill Flanagan of the grammar police on "I and me" – CBS
CBS News February 23, 2014

Time now for a public service announcement from our contributor and first-person-singular-pronoun policeman Bill Flanagan of VH1.

I know it sounds snobby to point this out, but in the last 10 or 15 years, millions of intelligent English-speaking people have become flummoxed by when to use "I," and when to use "me." You hear it all the time:
Are you coming to the movie with Madonna and I?
Won't you join Oprah and I for dinner?
The Trumps are throwing a party for Barack and I.
It's embarrassing!

At least people who mess up the other way -- "Goober and me are going to town" -- sound folksy, colloquial, down-to-Earth. But people who say "I" when they should say "me" sound like they are trying to be sophisticated and they're getting it wrong.

Clearly our grade schools have let us down.  So for those of you who missed it the first time, here's the simple rule: 
If you are writing or speaking a sentence with a list of names, including the first person pronoun, and you are not sure whether to say I or me, take out the other names. That will tell you. 
"Are you going to the movie with Betty, Veronica and ...?" 
"Me." Because you would not say, "Are you going to the movie with I?" 

And if it's "Are you going to the movie with me?" it's also got to be "Are you going to the movie with Betty, Veronica and me." 
"Curly, Larry and who? are going to jail?"
"Curly, Larry and I are going to jail."  Because you would say "I am going to jail," not "Me am going to jail." Unless you are Tarzan. (And very few of us are.) 

Okay, that's all I wanted to say.  "I" and "me." Let's preserve that one small fragment of our civilization. 
And don't get me started on people who mix up "stomach" and "belly." That's a lost cause.




My pet peeve is the phrase “aren't I?” You have been yelled at for saying “ain't I?” so you try to be correct, but “I” is always singular and the verb “are” is always plural. There is no way around it. You have to say “Am I not?” It is like the British standard of using “one” in place of the supposedly self-centered word “I” or the casual sounding word “you” – it is just too stilted in daily speech for Americans, so many otherwise educated Americans will use “aren't I.”

Actually “ain't” is short for “am not I”, but it is banned because it is a conjunction of three words, which is not allowed. So I say “am I not” when I'm writing if I really think I need to, and avoid asking that essentially useless question at all when I am talking. Sometimes I do give in and say “we” instead of “you.” It sounds better to me and doesn't sound like I am putting on airs.




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Closing America's Largest Landfill, Without Taking Out The Trash – NPR
by Liyna Anwar
February 22, 2014
­
The covering of America's largest landfill, east of downtown Los Angeles, is underway.
The Puente Hills landfill took in trash from all over LA County, becoming the go-to repository for most of Los Angeles' garbage. Over its more than 50 years in operation, the landfill grew higher than 500 feet.

It stopped receiving new trash in October, but the old waste will stay. All those years' worth of garbage will be covered up and remain underneath the ground.
Bill Gross, one of the supervising engineers of the facility, says they're adding the final cap on the landfill. "We're putting 5 feet of cover soil on top of the whole thing to basically seal in the refuse," he says.

Closed landfills are often treated this way: covered up and eventually turned into something else once it's deemed inactive.
The Puente Hills land will one day be a park, but critics argue the move merely masks a larger issue.

Managing Waste
Puente Hills was never meant to be open forever. In fact, in 2002, Los Angeles County issued the landfill its last permit. So the Sanitation District knew then that the end of 2013 meant the end of the landfill. Officials had to figure out where new trash would go and what to ultimately do with Puente Hills.

As a park, the covered landfill's original identity will become a memory. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes, author of Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash, says constantly covering up our trash means we never fully understand how much garbage we generate.

"You notice what we call our trash companies: They're waste 'management.' Think about that," Humes says. "They're managing our waste; they're not reducing our waste, they're not disappearing our waste. And what that means is they're really good at picking it up and getting it out of sight [and] making garbage mountains out of it."
The average American makes 7 pounds of trash per day. That's about 50 percent more than what we made back in the 1960s.

Not all of that garbage stays put on U.S. soil, though. In fact, trash is the country's largest export by volume.

The countries that buy the garbage from the U.S. are the ones that build the most things, mostly China, according to Sam Pedroza, an environmental planner at Puente Hills.

"It makes sense ... they come in with these huge ships to the port filled with goods, and rather than going back empty, they go back filled with recyclables," Pedroza says.
China takes America's trash as raw material to build cardboard and packaging. China gets the better deal here: They pay very little for items that cost the U.S. a lot. And the environmental impact of long-distance shipping isn't great.

Other Garbage Options
The folks at Puente Hills decided that if they couldn't significantly decrease the trash produced, they could at least tap into an important resource: the methane gas emitting from the decomposing trash. Since the 1980s, that gas has gone to the onsite Gas-to-Energy Facility.

How Recycling Bias Affects What You Toss Where
"This is where we're taking the landfill gas and using it as a heat source for the creation of steam," Pedroza says. "The steam is then used to turn a turbine, and then from there we produce 50 megawatts of electricity."

That's enough to power about 70,000 homes in Southern California. The facility became a model for other landfills across the country.

It will continue to operate for a number of years despite the landfill closure — there's still plenty of gas that's being extracted.

Humes has his reservations about the efficiency of the process.
"The problem is that's still a lousy way to make energy, because you are ending up spending 100 times more energy to produce the fuel — the trash — than you're getting back from it," Humes says.

But the quest to convert trash to energy is constant.
National legislation incentivizes another conversion process: making liquid fuel from renewable sources, according to Tim Portz, executive editor of the trade journal BioMass.

"Plasma gasification is using intense heat to essentially explode the molecules that make up a potato chip wrapper ... into its very basic molecular components," Portz says. Those atoms get transformed into synthetic gas, which can then be used for fuel.
But Portz says the technology is expensive and still being developed. And even with new technologies, many experts say it will be tough to ever eliminate landfills.

Back at Puente Hills Landfill, with the mountain of garbage now enclosed, it's hard not to think of the compacted layers of history. The area includes burned-down storefronts from the riots after the Rodney King verdict and building rubble from major earthquakes. It makes Puente Hills engineer Bill Gross reflective.

"It's just ... to me, just a little bit of a letdown," Gross says. "I guess I'm just getting used to it. It just really felt different closing this place."
But perhaps there's no need to be too nostalgic: The Sanitation District already has plans underway for a new and even larger landfill in a remote area of the desert.





“The average American makes 7 pounds of trash per day.” I can safely say that I do not make as much as 7 pounds of garbage a day. I may make 3 pounds. I don't throw away food as long as it's still good. I eat it. The microwave makes a world of difference in the taste of leftovers.

My dry trash is more, but it's still not 7 pounds. Most of my trash is paper and plastic. I probably needlessly write things down on paper. I make lists and schedules and notes in some cases so I will remember certain information. Those I put into my miscellaneous file. My train schedule from this last Christmas is still in that file. I need to throw that away now. In about a year, as soon as I'm sure I won't need the information again, I will throw away the telephone numbers, etc. from the office at my last job. The owner of the company is still holding onto that office in the hope that he can resurrect his company. I don't believe he can, but I'm keeping that stuff until I'm sure.

“Trash is the country's largest export by volume.” This article is just full of surprises. Apparently our trash is full of recyclables, and China uses our trash to make cardboard and other packaging. On a documentary about India it showed that some of the “untouchables” go through the garbage dumps there and pull out things that are still valuable to sell. Whole families make their living that way.

I must say, I am not very good about recycling. If there's no recycling bin near my apartment I don't go around looking until I find one. Luckily, there is a set of bins for plastic bags, newspapers and plastic bottles outside the Publix store where I shop for groceries. That's good, because plastic bags are something that I tend to hoard. I always feel that they are so very useful! I now have five plastic bags crammed full of other plastic bags, and every few weeks I go to Publix and put them in the bin there, if they haven't been used for my dry trash yet.

But my favorite thing from this article is the methane gas emitted by the rotting trash, which is being collected to produce electricity. There is also the process called “plasma gasification,” which involves the “explosion” of the atoms in some plastic wrappers to produce smaller molecular compounds that can be made into “synthetic gas.”

The recycling still doesn't use up all the trash that is there, though, and it will be a part of the landscape into the distant future. Modern day archaeologists are always delighted to find a trash heap on their sites, so I'm sure that in 2114 there will be some archaeologists at this trash dump. That is, if there is still an America by that date.

The author reflects wryly about the history that is covered up underneath that landfill, such as the riots after the Rodney King beating. That beating is one thing that is unforgettable if you saw the news footage of it. Miraculously, King got over his injuries and afterward famously said “Can't we all get along?” King was caught making very randy bodily contortions toward a female police officer who was trying to arrest him -- by half a dozen squad cars full of male policemen -- and suffered a severe punishment for it. I believe a white man doing the same thing would also have been beaten, but probably not with the same zeal. But that's a story for yesterday. It's behind us. We have to continue our fight against police brutality, but it is also wise to avoid doing something that enfuriates the police. If an officer stops you, don't insolently ask "What do you want?"