Sull'Autore
Robin Nagle has been anthropologist-in-residence at New York City's Department of Sanitation since 2006. She is a clinical associate professor of anthropology and urban studies at New York University, where she also directs the John W. Draper Interdisciplinary Master's Program in Humanities and mostra altro Social Thought. mostra meno
Opere di Robin Nagle
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Data di nascita
- 20thc
- Sesso
- female
- Luogo di residenza
- Harlem, New York, USA
- Attività lavorative
- anthropologist
professor - Breve biografia
- Robin Nagle has been the anthropologist-in-residence at New York City’s Department of Sanitation since 2006; she is the first person to hold the title. She teaches anthropology and urban studies at New York University, where she also directs the Draper Interdisciplinary Master’s Program in Humanities and Social Thought. She lives in Harlem. (From Macmillan site)
Utenti
Recensioni
Really interesting book about the people who pick up all of the trash generated by New Yorkers. What it's like to be a Sanitation Dept employee, the history of how NYC has dealt with garbage, and the author's own experiences as she takes a job doing street sweeping. The writing was very good, she has a wonderful, wry sense of humor.
Arguably the most important service a city provides is garbage removal. All city functions become virtually impossible when trash is not removed in a regular manner. Not only that, but they are key players in fueling consumption and capitalism. Without regular disposal of consumed goods, there is no room for new goods to replace them.: "used-up stuff must be thrown out for new stuff to have a place."
The euphemistic sanitation workers are the real "invisible" men. Workers are truly ignored. They can stare, whistle, remark, clatter,whatever, with impunity because as far as the general public is concerned they are part of the background noise. They are mere obstacles to be avoided. But an absolutely essential job, dwarfing most others in importance. And messy. Garbage from the trucks is taken daily to transfer stations, where “the smell hits first, grabbing the throat and punching the lungs. The cloying, sickly-sweet tang of household trash that wrinkles the nose when it wafts from the back of a collection truck is the merest suggestion of a whiff compared to the gale-force stink exuded by countless tons of garbage heaped across a transfer station floor. The body’s olfactory and peristaltic mechanisms spasm in protest. Breathing through the mouth is no help, and neither gulp nor gasp brings the salvation of fresh air; there’s none to be had.” What we have forgotten is that all of that used to be all over the streets. “ Householders no longer [have] to keep their windows clamped shut all day, even in the worst heat of the summer, against the nauseating dust that billowed from the streets. (In the rain that dust became an unctuous mud with a repulsive smell. God help the man or woman who found it adhered to shoe soles or skirt hems; the stench permeated forever anything it touched.)”
It's not an easy job and a very dangerous one, vastly outranking police and fire in fatalities. (A check on the Internet listed them as fourth highest fatality rate behind loggers, fishermen, and aircraft pilots and flight engineers of all things --another source listed them as fifth, adding steel workers ahead of them.) One horrific example involved a worker who had been on the job twenty-three years. “It was the usual pile that awaited him at this stop, one of the last on the route. He tossed a load in the hopper and was just turning away from the truck when the blade bit through a bag and broke open a jug of liquid concealed within it. The resulting geyser that hit Hanly full on was a 70 percent solution of hydrofluoric acid. His funeral, which drew nearly two thousand Sanitation people from across the city and around the region, made the television news.” Then there are objects that don’t make it into the truck. The compactor blade can do strange things when it hits solid objects.
“ Bolts, nails and screws, plastic bottles, cans, shoes, food debris, mattress springs, wood fragments, glass shards, become lethal projectiles. Workers tell routine stories of getting hit in the chest, head, back, arms, and legs. One man I worked with on Staten Island reminisced about the time someone had thrown away a bowling ball. When he tossed it in the truck and pulled the handles, it came back at him as if shot from a cannon, caught him in the belly, and knocked him out. The driver, who thought his partner was on the back step, didn’t notice that the fellow was missing until he’d turned the corner. When the driver went back to look for him, it took a while to find his unconscious body because he’d fallen into the tall grass by the side of the road.”
The section on mechanical sweepers -- the drivers are called broomies -- had fascinating detail. The dials and readouts in the broomie’s cab rival that of a small airplane and learning just how much water to add, the angle of the brooms, and maintenance require vast experience. The annual celebration in Times Square that apparently involves enormous quantities of cut-up paper and other colorful detritus takes hours to clean up in the wee hours of the morning and incurs wrath when it’s not done on time. But sometimes, nature makes it difficult. Rain and snow for example. “The mechanical brooms were churning the wet litter into a thick soup dyed pink by the metallic red cards that had long since disintegrated into the mash. It looked like oatmeal made with Pepto-Bismol. Mechanical brooms don’t do oatmeal. Workers with hand tools moved it into the gutters, but then the brooms trundled past and sprayed it back onto the sidewalks. The hand sweepers and blowers pushed it into the gutters once more; the brooms splattered it back. All over Times Square, mechanical brooms and sanitation workers were having the same exchanges of pink spray. Our boots and pant legs and jacket hems started to look like Jackson Pollock had been experimenting with them as canvases. The equipment wasn’t up to the conditions, but short of a large sump pump I’m not sure what would have worked.”
And all that is not even to mention snow removal, that bane of all mayors, which has caused more political defeats than sex scandals. It can be an almost impossible job when snow is falling at the rate of two-three inches per hour and the wind is blowing, maneuvering around stuck cars and with unrealistic citizen expectations. The drivers often have to work forty or more hours straight and conditions can conspire to make their jobs miserable.
A fascinating look into an essential job that few appreciate and most are reluctant to pay for having long forgotten the alternative.… (altro)
The euphemistic sanitation workers are the real "invisible" men. Workers are truly ignored. They can stare, whistle, remark, clatter,whatever, with impunity because as far as the general public is concerned they are part of the background noise. They are mere obstacles to be avoided. But an absolutely essential job, dwarfing most others in importance. And messy. Garbage from the trucks is taken daily to transfer stations, where “the smell hits first, grabbing the throat and punching the lungs. The cloying, sickly-sweet tang of household trash that wrinkles the nose when it wafts from the back of a collection truck is the merest suggestion of a whiff compared to the gale-force stink exuded by countless tons of garbage heaped across a transfer station floor. The body’s olfactory and peristaltic mechanisms spasm in protest. Breathing through the mouth is no help, and neither gulp nor gasp brings the salvation of fresh air; there’s none to be had.” What we have forgotten is that all of that used to be all over the streets. “ Householders no longer [have] to keep their windows clamped shut all day, even in the worst heat of the summer, against the nauseating dust that billowed from the streets. (In the rain that dust became an unctuous mud with a repulsive smell. God help the man or woman who found it adhered to shoe soles or skirt hems; the stench permeated forever anything it touched.)”
It's not an easy job and a very dangerous one, vastly outranking police and fire in fatalities. (A check on the Internet listed them as fourth highest fatality rate behind loggers, fishermen, and aircraft pilots and flight engineers of all things --another source listed them as fifth, adding steel workers ahead of them.) One horrific example involved a worker who had been on the job twenty-three years. “It was the usual pile that awaited him at this stop, one of the last on the route. He tossed a load in the hopper and was just turning away from the truck when the blade bit through a bag and broke open a jug of liquid concealed within it. The resulting geyser that hit Hanly full on was a 70 percent solution of hydrofluoric acid. His funeral, which drew nearly two thousand Sanitation people from across the city and around the region, made the television news.” Then there are objects that don’t make it into the truck. The compactor blade can do strange things when it hits solid objects.
“ Bolts, nails and screws, plastic bottles, cans, shoes, food debris, mattress springs, wood fragments, glass shards, become lethal projectiles. Workers tell routine stories of getting hit in the chest, head, back, arms, and legs. One man I worked with on Staten Island reminisced about the time someone had thrown away a bowling ball. When he tossed it in the truck and pulled the handles, it came back at him as if shot from a cannon, caught him in the belly, and knocked him out. The driver, who thought his partner was on the back step, didn’t notice that the fellow was missing until he’d turned the corner. When the driver went back to look for him, it took a while to find his unconscious body because he’d fallen into the tall grass by the side of the road.”
The section on mechanical sweepers -- the drivers are called broomies -- had fascinating detail. The dials and readouts in the broomie’s cab rival that of a small airplane and learning just how much water to add, the angle of the brooms, and maintenance require vast experience. The annual celebration in Times Square that apparently involves enormous quantities of cut-up paper and other colorful detritus takes hours to clean up in the wee hours of the morning and incurs wrath when it’s not done on time. But sometimes, nature makes it difficult. Rain and snow for example. “The mechanical brooms were churning the wet litter into a thick soup dyed pink by the metallic red cards that had long since disintegrated into the mash. It looked like oatmeal made with Pepto-Bismol. Mechanical brooms don’t do oatmeal. Workers with hand tools moved it into the gutters, but then the brooms trundled past and sprayed it back onto the sidewalks. The hand sweepers and blowers pushed it into the gutters once more; the brooms splattered it back. All over Times Square, mechanical brooms and sanitation workers were having the same exchanges of pink spray. Our boots and pant legs and jacket hems started to look like Jackson Pollock had been experimenting with them as canvases. The equipment wasn’t up to the conditions, but short of a large sump pump I’m not sure what would have worked.”
And all that is not even to mention snow removal, that bane of all mayors, which has caused more political defeats than sex scandals. It can be an almost impossible job when snow is falling at the rate of two-three inches per hour and the wind is blowing, maneuvering around stuck cars and with unrealistic citizen expectations. The drivers often have to work forty or more hours straight and conditions can conspire to make their jobs miserable.
A fascinating look into an essential job that few appreciate and most are reluctant to pay for having long forgotten the alternative.… (altro)
1 
ecw0647 | 4 altre recensioni | Nov 1, 2015 |
ecw0647 | 4 altre recensioni | Nov 1, 2015 | Sympathetic, pro-labor portrait of the job of people who are generally disrespected when they aren’t invisible. Nagle portrays the physical demands of the job along with the status toll it takes, and argues that the least we can do for the people who keep the city from becoming quite literally uninhabitable is to respect their work.
Statistiche
- Opere
- 3
- Utenti
- 112
- Popolarità
- #174,306
- Voto
- 4.0
- Recensioni
- 5
- ISBN
- 11
- Lingue
- 2
Too much unnecessary verbiage. Too many topics unexplored or entirely unmentioned. Admittedly, it did explore the life of a "san man" as promised and I could forgive omitted topics but so much of her phrasing was irritating.
I'll give just one example from one page in chapter 13: "Riding in a broom feels like being in a Volkswagon Beetle, the old model, ..." What percent of her audience knows that feeling? The paragraph continues "... governor limits maximum velocity to thirty-five miles per hour, but even at that breakneck speed..." Such attempts at sarcasm fall flat and only distract rather than enhance explanations.
The following paragraphs use port, starboard, flotsam, and cambered with no explanations as if these are words everyone understands. A diagram would have been far better than text that many people won't understand. I give her credit for having a glossary and an index. However, none of these words appear in them.
Nonetheless, I did learn a lot and I do have a lot more appreciation for san men (even though I still don't know if they would prefer that I bag my trash or don't care) so I give it 4 stars.… (altro)