Back in the mid-80's I was in Michigan, trying valiantly to finish my Associates Degree in Photography. I had met and was living with my future ex-wife in her apartment in Lansing. She worked at the Greater Lansing Urban League. I got a part-time job there.

A black man ran the place. His name was Charles Mitchner, but everyone called him Mitch. He was great. I truly admired him. A black woman was my immediate boss. I don't remember her name. She didn't like me all that much, and the feeling was mutual. I was too white male for her and she was too petty for me. In a flipped over kind of way, I was her token white. She had no choice.

I went to work on a recycling program, back when recycling was just getting going. We recycled newspapers. I had a black man named Moses who had retired from the auto plants as my assistant. We had a grant and the official blessings of the town council to get us started.

I was about 27 at the time. To get this thing rolling we first walked every neighborhood with flyers, explaining the program and giving our pick-up days. These days were coordinated with their regular trash days, once a month. We would drive around, as the flyer explained, and pick up their newspapers for free at the curbside. They could help the environment and help the Urban League. They could RECYCLE. No one had developed catch words like "being green" or "carbon footprints" yet.

Lansing is a very culturally diverse city. I don't know the ratios, but at the time I would say it was about 35% black, 50% white, 15% other. Magic Johnson came from Lansing. There are still a lot of Lakers fans there.

Now, I could tell you about walking up to a house with a porch full of black folk and me with my flyer. I could tell you just how white I felt. Me with my flyer and everybody stops talking. Me a white punk going to college and handing out flyers asking them to help me help them out. Me walking up to falling apart houses with black folk that always stopped talking and a Cadillac in the drive.

Moses must have been in his 60s. He was picking cotton down south as a young man when the white landowner pulled a gun on him. He pulled up stakes right then and moved north. He told me the first winter he had wondered just what kind of a God forsaken place he had landed in. I had grown up in Michigan and every winter I still felt the same way. We laughed about that.

I think Moses liked me all right, me being white and and all. I could feel his resentment sometimes, but it was never overbearing and it never lasted long. Mostly I think it was because I was young and white and in charge of driving the truck and all that, while he was old and black and my assistant. I would drop him off sometimes ouside his house. He carried himself with dignity. I liked Moses.

Usually we would listen to a public radio station while we did our route. There was a guy on the local station that read books. I remember listening to "Lincoln", by Gore Vidal, as Moses and I picked up newspapers. It took about a month to hear the whole book. I don't recall that Moses ever gave me his opinion on Lincoln. I wish now I had asked him. I wish now I had asked him lots of things.

It came to light fairly soon that there was someone out there pre-empting us on the recycling. Turned out he was an older black man, and being a bit of an entrepreneur, had begun going around the city, picking up newspapers on his own to sell to the recycling company. He had started all this way before us. He knew the trash routes better than we did.

Being a pretty good entrepreneur, it didn't take him long to get wind of our program, and our pick-up dates. This guy was killing us.

My boss went after him like a shark on chum. She hounded him and pursued him from every legal angle. She obtained a court date. It kind of blew my mind, to be truthful.

Still, he went on. So did she. He pissed me off a bit but I kind of admired him, too. Once in a while Moses and I would see him as we drove our routes. He was always in front of us. He had white hair and drove an old pick-up truck. We had a bright yellow step van like the Pepsi man drives, with sliding doors and compartments and logos on the side. He usually had more papers than we did.

I can still see in my mind's eye the look of triumph she had the day my black female boss told me we were done dealing with this guy. He had suffered a heart attack. I felt like crap. I felt like lilly white overbearing crap trying to help push an unsustainable program on the mostly uncaring populace, and steam rolling an old man in the process.

The Greater Lansing Urban League's recycling program fell apart shortly after I left. Not because of me leaving. It was just too inefficient for the price they were getting for the paper.

Really, their only recycling legacy was to push out an old black man seeing a niche and working hard to make a living. It bothers me to this day.

Everybody wants to feel better about themselves, and their effect on the earth. Well, everybody that isn't struggling to survive that is, which eliminates a huge part of the Earth's population. Which certainly does not eliminate most of the folk hereabouts in Douglas County.

No wonder we drive fancy SUV's and worry about prairie dogs.

It is so easy to get caught up in something that in the end makes no effect at all. Or something that makes no sense at all and hurts others in the process.

We drive our car to the store and feel good that we have canvas bags to carry our groceries. We trade the old Hummer for an H3 so we can feel good about our 45 minute commute. We ponder laws or taxes or programs that would push our ideals on others.

It seems we seldom consider the fact that having to drive our car 10 minutes to the store or drive 30 miles to work as being part of the real problem.

I don't know what happened to Moses. I don't care what happened to that boss of mine. I will never forget how the director of the Greater Lansing Urban League took the time to admire my portfolio of photographs the day I left, and how he wished me well.

Caring about the environment is much more about personal choices than it is about pushing a social program that may or may not succeed . It is about a lot more than expecting others to get out of the way or fall in line with some grand plan.

For me it is ultimately about trying to make a smaller impact by reducing my material wants and desires. It is no secret we are a self-indulgent, narcisstic, consumer obsessed society. Everyday we chase the dollar. We pursue the American Dream, cutting each other off in our hurry to get there.

In my years of being of service to those who have chased down more money than me, I have noticed it brings no guarantee of happiness.

Aw heck, I might as well be spitting in the wind. I'm with Councilwoman Kruger. Let's just add a tax on anybody who doesn't bring their own bag to the store and be done with it.