Scavenging for survival

Re “Trash, civilization’s manna,” Opinion, Dec. 3, and “Hunting and gathering -- and starving in rural Zimbabwe,” Column One, Dec. 3

In his Op-Ed article, Craig Childs states, “There’s something primal and deeply satisfying about searching for the manna of civilization.”

In the Column One article on Zimbabwe, The Times reports that “people search for scraps in garbage dumps, working shoulder to shoulder with baboons.”

The juxtaposition of these two articles in the same edition of The Times is deeply disturbing, and one would hope that Childs might reconsider his blithe and light-hearted comments.

Scavenging for trash while watching one’s children die of starvation is inhumane, and to equate such a situation with the suggestion that it’s time “we lift scavenging out of the darkness and sing the praises of those who cull the world” is offensive and arrogant.

Let Childs do his scavenging in Zimbabwe and see how far he gets.

E.H. Roelfzema

Amsterdam, Netherlands

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I’m an artist and educator who found Childs’ Op-Ed amusing, entertaining and resonant.

Artists have long been attracted to the possibilities of trash and refuse, going back to early Picasso and the work of others in collage and assemblage.

I recently assigned my basic studio arts class an assemblage project with instructions to dumpster dive, rummage about and bring to class a box full of discarded items with which they would create an artwork.

Collective skepticism soon turned into enthusiasm as they manipulated, glued, nailed and wired their stuff into all sorts of interesting visions. They seemed to have tapped into the primal satisfaction principle and “carnival of possibilities” so aptly described in this article.

Is it too much to hope that maybe they learned an economics lesson as well as an environmental lesson?

Michael Falzone

Walnut