From Gene’s Notebook

Haiti in print.
Haiti on TV.
Fighting for water and Meals Ready to Eat from hovering helicopters.

No light in the east.
Only fog.
I’m in McDonald’s.
I unwrap the newspaper I brought from home, fold the plastic and put it in my pocket: soon to recycling.

I take the plastic cap off my coffee container, the container feels like cardboard and plastic.
I take the plastic cap off my yogurt, and then break the granola’s plastic seal before sprinkling it on the yogurt.
I eat the yogurt with a tiny plastic spoon.
I use the paper napkin.
My plastic tray has a rectangular piece of paper.

Several nearby seats fill: truck drivers; custodians; gardeners ….
I read.
I sip.
I dip.

Still no light.
The McDonald’s yellow is merged with vehicles’ yellow lights.
Yellow.
Yellow with some red outdoors.

I am finished.
Yes, I could take everything but the tray home with the plastic newspaper wrapper.
I stand.
I load the tray.
I take the tray to the garbage-out-of-sight receptacle, and slide the contents in, and then put the tray above the receptacle.

I look outside.
I small woman McDonald’s employee is carrying two huge plastic bags to the dumpster.
The bags weigh her, make her even smaller.

Why note McDonald’s?
I’ve seen the same in no-recycling Starbuck’s.

Haiti.
I thought of Haiti the night before,
and then when reading the paper.

Haiti.
The woman with the trash, a good part of it food, the rest 99 percent recyclable.

Two Brownsville Independent School District (BISD) students told me how students regularly
throw their federal-government-provided meals into the garbage.
Haiti.

Elections come and go.
Winners and losers.

And the earth.
And the hungry.

Still no light.
Yellow.
Yellow.
Fog.
Fog.

I must have gotten to McDonald’s early,
Early to save,
Just a fraction,
A low-percentage save ….
A lame effort ….

Haiti.

– Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky
January 2010