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 Legalize it? |
 Trees and Flowers Dumper duty |
Trees and flowers
Like most junior high and high school students in Humboldt County, the teenagers I work with as a tutor are scrambling to finish their homework during this, their final week of school -- there are essays on American authors due, presentations about U.S. History to be made, tests to be taken.
Unlike most junior high and high school students in Humboldt County, however, the teenagers I work with live together in what used to be a convent, the former home of the Sisters of St. Joseph, and are getting ready to move back home to South Korea for the summer. The hallways smell of cleaning products, and piles of clothes, electric guitars and stereo equipment wait to be packed for the flight back.
Most of the students, who study at St. Bernard's Catholic School through an arrangement with the Korean education company Iroonet, are looking forward to seeing their families, although many of them will spend the summer in a hagwan, a private school geared toward preparing them for SAT and AP tests (with public and private spending combined, South Korea spends more money on education than any country in the world).
Despite the high expectations of their parents (one described parental standards as "harsh"), the students make plenty of time for basketball and video games.
"Their parents always request [that I] make them to study harder," said Jaeho Cho, who runs the program for Iroonet, "But, you know, they are just kids, right? So it's kind of difficult."
During these final days of school, there's a lot of hanging around, waiting to leave, as the minutes drag by. The end of a school year is nothing if not a time for reflecting on the past, so I asked some of the students about their time here so far.
The concerns in the convent are not atypical: finding out who likes who at school, needing a new pair of headphones for the latest mp3 player, having too much homework. The added challenge of experiencing secondary education in an unfamiliar language and culture is the source of hundreds of tiny misunderstandings.
"We are not fluent in English, like to make jokes and stuff," said Patrick Kim, a junior. "Since you're not fluent in English, you can be shy."
"It's kind of dumb," said freshman Catherine Yoo, "but one morning my friend said, 'It smells like updog in here,' and I was like, 'what's updog?' and they started laughing."
Some of the students had trouble coming up with anything to say about life in Eureka, although one word kept cropping up: boring.
"When you said you were writing an article, I thought we'd have a lot of things to tell you," said 8th grader Won Choi. "But now I can't think of anything."
"In the big cities you have more things to do," said Yoo. "But it's peaceful around here in Eureka." And she likes the beach, she added.
"You can just walk around," said Lynn Kim, a graduating senior. "I like to walk. But they need more shopping."
"We came from kind of big cities in Korea, where there's a lot of entertainment and stuff," said Patrick Kim. "But here, there's nothing but trees and flowers."
Cho, the Iroonet program manager, agreed. When he moved to Eureka one and a half years ago, his first impression of the town was not unlike that of others who experience it for the first time: "I thought it was very silent. And there are no, you know, high buildings. And the weather, it's not like California."
But Cho -- like his students, whose schedules include studying, tutoring, sports and practice SAT tests -- is so busy that he rarely has time to go out. "I don't have any time off: 24 hours, seven days. I am their father and mother."
He paused, then added, "Actually, I love the students, so it doesn't feel like work."
-- Joel Hartse
Dumper duty
Right: Earl Bootier's sign. Photo by Heidi Walters.
The Kneeland Post Office rests on a tiny scraped-out patch of territory high up the Freshwater-Kneeland Road. It's tucked next to a solidly fenced compound from behind which the skid and squeal of kids playing issued one recent holiday Monday afternoon. The post office itself is a speck of languid past: wood door propped open to the minuscule interior where less than a hundred post office boxes lurk in the dark, and a wood porch with a built-in wood bench against the building's frontside.
At around 2,000 feet elevation, that eave-shaded bench is a handy spot to collapse after riding one's bicycle from the coast. Especially on that particular day -- the summer heat had arrived. Because of the holiday, the post office was closed; next to it a potted tree wilted, waiting on Tuesday. No traffic. Plenty of time to read the literature on the bulletin board.
And, ho, what was this? A handmade poster covered in repugnant photos of a sprawling white heap of wadded-up baby diapers and household trash. A black felt-penned note said to "Call Earl [his number] if you know who dumped about 800 'Pampers' and garbage on Kneeland Rd. ..." A map showed the precise spot.
A closer eyeball of one of the photos revealed that somebody -- Earl, turns out, last name Bootier -- had grabbed a big piece of white cardboard, written "Dirt BAG Diapers" on it, and propped it in the middle of the mess.
Bootier does this sort of thing quite a lot, actually, said Tracy Thomas, PMR ("Postmaster's Relief"), a few days later over the phone as she tended to the tiny P.O. "He lives up here in Kneeland, and he has posted photos of other dumps over the years. And he will post little notes on the piles. Like, I remember one was, 'Piggy piggy pig pig pig.'"
Bootier, by phone, fessed up to his civic inclinations. He's been in Kneeland 22 years, and about seven years ago the proliferation of illegal dumps finally drove him to action. He cleaned many up, with strangers sometimes stopping to help. Then he stoked a fire under the county supervisors, and the county applied for grant money to pay Pacific Lumber Company, whose land most of the Kneeland piles end up on, to do clean up. PL spent nearly $14,000 scouring the area just this past January, according to the county's solid waste program manager Carolyn Hawkins.
But slobs abound, and the illegal dumping resumed.
Bootier had driven past the diaper dump for about two weeks. "I was disgusted, and so was everyone else." It was an eyesore, and a health hazard, with Freshwater Creek not far away. He took photos, then paid a visit to some county offices. An environmental health officer went up the hill to check out the heap, and came back down with enough evidence to gather up a Sheriff's deputy and go knock on a door in Eureka.
Hawkins said a woman in the house "said she knew who did it, and that she would have that person clean it up."
About a week later, a young guy went up the hill and, all day long, shoveled the muck into a truck. Bootier didn't see it, but a neighbor did. "Apparently the kid had plenty of attitude. He looked really pissed off. It had to have been embarrassing."
The case awaits judgment at the county code enforcement office. Bootier figures the kid learned his lesson. But to make it really stick, he hopes the county prosecutes him and, instead of slapping down a fine, makes him "clean up and down Kneeland Road."
"And I'd help him," Bootier said. "I'd join him for half a day or a whole day." Long enough, he said, to ply the fellow with some fatherly advice on common decency, poopy behavior and personal responsibility.
-- Heidi Walters
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