Getting this out of the way at the top: Look, fundamentally, this is just a way to keep me writing. Writers gotta write. Seemed like a good idea. We’ll see.

Now, my name is Kurt Greenbaum. I’ve lived with my wife in a neighborhood in south St. Louis since October 2018 after living in west St. Louis County for the previous 16 years. The attraction to a move into the city included finding a neighborhood that was walkable — something we didn’t have in the suburbs.

With it, however, came the realization that the neighborhood was prone to becoming a trash heap. It’s an urban community, after all, and these things will happen.

My street falls on the west side of a busy neighborhood commercial district, lined with restaurants and boutiques such as tattoo parlors, second-hand clothing stores, knick-knack shops and florists. On the corner, a gas station draws a constant flow of customers to fill their tanks or fill their needs from the convenience store.

So, as I walked to and from my house every day, and noticed some of the trash tumbling down the street, I took to building into my routine a walk every few days or weeks to pick it up. When you walk up and down the street doing something as mindless as picking up trash, your mind inevitably begins to wander. That’s what spawned the idea for this blog.