Garbologist: noun: The Holden Village word for the person in charge of garbo.
"I am on garbo": The phrase used by Holden Village staff members when their garbo duty is imminent.
Once a month each staff member at Holden is "on garbo." Garbo is done every day except Sunday in the summer and three or four times a week in the winter. What exactly is garbo duty? Well it starts out in the basement of the hotel with breaking down cardboard boxes that have accumulated since the day before so the garbologist can put them in a huge machine that bundles them for recycling. Then the garbo team grabs yucky work gloves and goes out to the "garbo dock" at the edge of the village and sorts garbage: aluminum cans, tranlucent plastic, opaque plastic, tin cans, and clear, brown, or green glass all go into their respective recycling cans. Burnable trash goes into another, landfill goes into another. When all that is done.....we head up the hill to the compost bins. All food is composted at Holden. At the compost bins all leftover food is dumped into a large metal box and chopped up by the garbo team. When it is sufficiently chopped, it is dumped into one of the many compost bins, covered with sawdust and "cooked" compost and left to compost. This is a dirty stinky job in the summer and a freezing cold job most of the winter. I must add though that it is also quite satisfying and very educational.
The compost bins are often inhabited by little critters looking for a meal. There are usually chipmunks around and often martins are there too. Bears often find some tasty morsel in the compost bins and the electric fence put up to keep them out doesn't keep them out! The food is left to compost for a year or so and when is is done "cooking" it is used in the flower beds around the village and in the garden.
Since so many critters enjoy eating human food whenever they get the chance, we are careful not to put any leftover food anywhere but in the compost cans in the dining hall or the dishpit. (The dishpit is another story). We do have a lot of outside eating though. In the summer we have a lot of meals outside. The chipmunks around the village are very fat eating the crumbs that fall off of people's plates. They even jump up on our laps at times to get something to eat. They jump right down again though when we scream and jump up ourselves.
Tonight some of us were invited to play dominoes at the little Forest Ranger cabin that is just down the road from the village. The ranger, Barbara Budd, is a regular around here and she was really excited about having us come visit. Thus the bear adventure begins. It was after the Eucharist service and Liz and Debi had started walking down the road. I was several minutes behind them as I was cleaning up the communion ware in the dishpit (another story). Anyway I went back to my room to get my flashlight as it was already pitch dark down the road. As I got to the garbo dock I was surprised to see several people with flashlights there looking around...and even more surprised to see that Debi and Liz had not gotten any further that that. Then they told me about the bears. It seems they were walking down the road and heard a noise on the garbo dock. When Debi swung her flashlight around to see what was making the noise, she saw a bear cub clinging to a tree. Then she saw another. They ran to the the nearest building, the Hike Haus, and got on the radio and called to tell Marc, Nancy, and Aaron about the bears. They were all there looking for the bears when I arrived. It seems somehow the garbo dock had some leftover food on it and the bears found it. After helping to clean it up and since the bears were still nearby, we decided to call it a night. To make a long story short, poor Barbara never got company and is probably still wondering why we didn't show up to play dominoes. We will have to explain tomorrow!!
"I am on garbo": The phrase used by Holden Village staff members when their garbo duty is imminent.
Once a month each staff member at Holden is "on garbo." Garbo is done every day except Sunday in the summer and three or four times a week in the winter. What exactly is garbo duty? Well it starts out in the basement of the hotel with breaking down cardboard boxes that have accumulated since the day before so the garbologist can put them in a huge machine that bundles them for recycling. Then the garbo team grabs yucky work gloves and goes out to the "garbo dock" at the edge of the village and sorts garbage: aluminum cans, tranlucent plastic, opaque plastic, tin cans, and clear, brown, or green glass all go into their respective recycling cans. Burnable trash goes into another, landfill goes into another. When all that is done.....we head up the hill to the compost bins. All food is composted at Holden. At the compost bins all leftover food is dumped into a large metal box and chopped up by the garbo team. When it is sufficiently chopped, it is dumped into one of the many compost bins, covered with sawdust and "cooked" compost and left to compost. This is a dirty stinky job in the summer and a freezing cold job most of the winter. I must add though that it is also quite satisfying and very educational.
The compost bins are often inhabited by little critters looking for a meal. There are usually chipmunks around and often martins are there too. Bears often find some tasty morsel in the compost bins and the electric fence put up to keep them out doesn't keep them out! The food is left to compost for a year or so and when is is done "cooking" it is used in the flower beds around the village and in the garden.
Since so many critters enjoy eating human food whenever they get the chance, we are careful not to put any leftover food anywhere but in the compost cans in the dining hall or the dishpit. (The dishpit is another story). We do have a lot of outside eating though. In the summer we have a lot of meals outside. The chipmunks around the village are very fat eating the crumbs that fall off of people's plates. They even jump up on our laps at times to get something to eat. They jump right down again though when we scream and jump up ourselves.
Tonight some of us were invited to play dominoes at the little Forest Ranger cabin that is just down the road from the village. The ranger, Barbara Budd, is a regular around here and she was really excited about having us come visit. Thus the bear adventure begins. It was after the Eucharist service and Liz and Debi had started walking down the road. I was several minutes behind them as I was cleaning up the communion ware in the dishpit (another story). Anyway I went back to my room to get my flashlight as it was already pitch dark down the road. As I got to the garbo dock I was surprised to see several people with flashlights there looking around...and even more surprised to see that Debi and Liz had not gotten any further that that. Then they told me about the bears. It seems they were walking down the road and heard a noise on the garbo dock. When Debi swung her flashlight around to see what was making the noise, she saw a bear cub clinging to a tree. Then she saw another. They ran to the the nearest building, the Hike Haus, and got on the radio and called to tell Marc, Nancy, and Aaron about the bears. They were all there looking for the bears when I arrived. It seems somehow the garbo dock had some leftover food on it and the bears found it. After helping to clean it up and since the bears were still nearby, we decided to call it a night. To make a long story short, poor Barbara never got company and is probably still wondering why we didn't show up to play dominoes. We will have to explain tomorrow!!
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