Picking Up Trash in the Pandemic

First the pool closed, and then the gym, and so, a couple of weeks into the Bay Area’s shelter-in-place directive, I became a walker. I’d walked before, of course, but always with a goal: the movie theater, the post office, the BART station. Now I walked in circles: around the block, around the lake. I counted steps. I checked my pulse. I hated it.

I needed a new goal, and then I discovered it, right at my feet: trash. Piles and streams and sticky mounds of trash.

The area of Oakland in which I live has its charms, but cleanliness is not among…