Luke Judge

Staff Reporter
07/14/2010

Seattle City Councilmember Mike O’Brien met with phone–book company representatives yesterday to try to get them to stop sending out unwanted phone books. For the past two weeks, O’Brien has been asking Seattle residents to send in their unwanted phonebooks to make a point. The pile in his office continues to grow. KUOW’s Bryan Buckalew has more.

Everyday dozens of phone books show up at City Hall. And it’s up to Mike O’Brien’s interns, Reid Duecy–Gibbs and Hodan Hassan, to deal with them.

Duecy–Gibbs: “They were brought in in giant trash cans with wheels, and then we got a bunch of carts and stacked them up.”

Buckalew: “Were they heavy?”

Hassan: “Very heavy. It was just stacks and stacks of them. And you have to push them up into the elevator and go up and bring them in here.”

Buckalew: “Were you cussing the phone company?”

Hassan: “In polite language.”

So far, there are about 500 phone books piled outside of O’Brien’s office. His aide, Ester Handy, says she and O’Brien got the idea two weeks ago after they found bags of unwanted phone books on their front porches.

Handy: “And the two of us brought them into the office and, kinda, threw them on the floor and said, what! Phone books! And we thought, there’s more folks out there who equally don’t want their phone books. Let’s see what would happen if we asked them to bring them in.”

One of the companies that prints and distributes those phonebooks is Dex One. Maggie Stonecipher is Assistant Vice President [of Dex Print and Delivery Services.] She was waiting to meet with O’Brien to talk about the unwanted books.

Stonecipher: “I have offered to pick them up anytime he’d like for me to pick them up. The last I heard, there’s approximately 500.

Buckalew: “Did you bring a big truck?”

Stonecipher: “I can get a big truck.”

O’Brien says there must be a better way to distribute phone books. He’d like to see an opt–in system.

O’Brien: “It’s a very obvious waste. I mean, we’re talking about waste. It’s like, someone paid some money to build this. They cut down some trees. They’re delivering it to my front porch. I have to take my time to throw it in recycling. It costs money for us to recycle it. Let’s just think of a better way to deliver these things.”

Stonecipher: “Fundamentally, we agree with the issue, and that’s the reduction of unwanted paper waste. And that’s why the industry and all the major publishers have consumer choice programs in place where consumers can elect not to receive phonebooks.”

O’Brien says he wants to reduce the number of phone books that wind up in the city’s waste stream. Earlier this year, the council passed a resolution asking the state to better regulate junk mail. For KUOW News, I’m Bryan Buckalew.

© Copyright 2010, KUOW

current Affairs & Issues Books city hall, company representatives, interns, seattle residents, stonecipher, trash cans

In the 20th century, many nations got independence from colonial powers and therefore, the effects of colonialism were important issues for writers in Africa.

The work of Mongo Beti of Cameroon titled Mission Terminee (1957; Mission to Kala, 1958) is a tale of a young African man educated in France and how he undergoes trouble to fit in when he returns home. Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) vividly describes the effect of European settlers on African society. Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o in her novels In The River Between (1965) and A Grain of Wheat (1967) talks about Mau Mau Rebellion (1952-1956), during which a group of the Kikuyu people started a military campaign against the British, who could succeed in controlling Kenya at that point of time.

The aftereffects of colonialism remained a common theme for the novelists even after the most of African nations got independence. In numerous books, like A Walk in the Night (1962) and a Threefold Cord (1964), Alex La Guma talks about the effects of apartheid on people’s daily lives. J. M. Coetzee’s The Life and Times of Michael K (1983) poses a terrifying vision of a brutal, brutal South Africa.

Some African novels concerned about examining the various aspects of society. Senegalese author Ousmane Sembène, in Les bout de bois de Dieu (1960; God’s Bits of Wood, 1962), fictionalized a railroad workers’ strike of 1947 and 1948. The novel Guelwaar (1996) throws light on economics, politics, and religion in post-independence Africa.

The works of South Africans like Es’kia Mphahlele’s The Wanderers (1971) and Bessie Head’s A Question of Power (1973) are autobiographical dealing with themes of exile. Kenyan writer Grace Ogot, in The Promised Land (1966) throws light on the issue of marriage. Some novels like The Joys of Motherhood (1979) and Kehinde (1994) written by Nigerian writer Buchi Emecheta, observe the place of women in society.

current Affairs & Issues Books alex la guma, bessie head, grace ogot, j m coetzee, thiong