Our shire has one annual collection day of so-called "hard waste", and for weeks leading up to that day, people pile old and not-so-old but now unwanted things outside their houses: refrigerators, ovens, kitchen appliances, televisions, furniture, bicycles, tools, lawn mowers, and all sorts of other things.
We have become such a throw-away society! We now throw away things which in my own lifetime not all that long ago we would have cherished and, where necessary, repaired and kept using for many more years. Seeing them thrown out reminded me of what a rich society we are.
It also reminded me of the French documentary "The Gleaners and I", both a diary and a kind of extended essay on poverty, which dwells on thrift and the curious place of scavenging in French history and culture.
Every statesman, every environmentalist, and every conscientious individual ought to watch this wonderful documentary that dwells on the philosophy of gleaning and brings to attention sustainability issues.
"The Gleaners and I" takes its title and its inspiration from an 1867 painting by Jean-Francois Millet that shows three women in a wheat field, stooping to pick up sheaves and kernels left behind after the harvest. The image is well known; it is in the Larousse Dictionary of the French Language alongside the definition of the verb "gleaner", to glean.
The painting, which hangs in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, sent film-maker Ms. Varda, an intrepid woman in her early 70s, on a tour of her own. From September 1999 until May 2000, she crisscrossed the French countryside with a hand-held digital video camera in search of people who scavenge in potato fields, apple orchards and vineyards, as well as in urban markets and curbside trash depositories.
Some are motivated by desperate need, others by disgust at the wastefulness all around them, and others by a desire to make works of art out of things – cast-off dolls, old refrigerators, windshield wipers – that have been thrown away without a second thought.
"The Gleaners and I" is a tribute to all the people who think outside the box, while observing with a humane eye those who understand that "hard waste" is only a relative term and value is where you find it.
