Tribute to Dumpster Muffin

[Tegwedd ShadowDancer]

I don't know if you've heard of her or not. She has made a name for herself in the San Francisco Bay Area for being stubborn, and risking life, limb, and health for a very good cause, although doomed. For the past year and a half, she and 3 or 4 others were tree sitters in an effort to stop UC Berkeley from chopping down the Memorial Oak Grove and constructing a sports center. I'll be upfront with you. I have a personal agenda. Given a choice between the continued existence of trees and something to further athletics, I'll pick trees every time. If it were to be a Humanities or theatre complex, I might have some moral quibbles, but this is a no-brainer for me, and there are other sites. It's just that as often happens, the University has fixed its sights on this site and won't consider other sites, in spite of the fact that it sits squarely on the Hayward Fault, and will be destroyed with great loss of life when there is a quake. Notice I said "when" not "If". It is a certainty that there will be a quake sometime. It's just a question of when. UC is being extremely short sighted in its insistence on this site. And the tree sitters have been human shields to keep the bulldozers out.

I suspect that Amanda Tierney's nickname came from her penchant for dumpster diving, another practice of which I deeply approve. I am glad that there are people who challenge the mores of this throwaway society we have here. People throw away the darnedest things. We have practically furnished our apartment from the furniture left by the dumpsters in this apartment complex. People either get new furniture or move back to India or Pakistan and don't bother to get the old furniture to Goodwill where people could buy it, so we go by and raid the dumpster areas from time to time. We got a couch, a bookcase, a coat tree, a coffee table, and footstool from this area. The desk on which this computer sits came from Darren's lodge. They got a new desk, so they asked him if we could use it. He said we could, and we got it. I have a chat buddy who has turned "Use it up, wear it out" and "Re-use and recycle" into an art form. She uses old computer monitors and tires as container gardens. She is building a greenhouse out of recycled parts. The door is from an RV. The frame is from scrap lumber she has found around the place. All she will have to buy is the plastic she will use to cover it. When she sends me a care package, she reuses a box that used to contain something else. Remember one person's junk is another person's treasure. In China, people are risking their health and lives supporting their families by disassembling electronic junk from the US to recycle the metals and plastics in the stuff.

Back to Amanda Tierney. We're Pagans, so we don't do saints, but if we did, I'd put forward her name for canonization as a saint. She deserves sainthood, defending a tree with her body for as long as she has, with her body. I hope she is well now. After she came down, she was taken to the hospital for tests and rehydration. I have great respect and admiration for her. I hope that the Sierra Club and the other environmental groups that are against the sports complex will provide her with a defense fund. They may have to have the trial down in Orange County because the people around here will probably vote to acquit her. So here's to Amanda Tierney, aka Dumpster Muffin, our Lady of the Oaks. Lift your coffee mug or your glass to her.