Busch Cans and Beech Trees

There are those in the world who see everything as black or white. Most are generally dismayed at those who see the world differently or those who perhaps allow for shades of gray to creep in around the edges. While there are certain things that are cut and dry, seeing the world as such makes for a divisive place—what side of the fence are you on?

It often seems that the chasm between two opposing sides can only continue to grow. The path to minimize the gap becomes lost and the builders forget how to construct their bridges. Intractable situations abound and are easy to find for those who look. There are divisions everywhere—the American party system, the Democratic party itself, Palestine, the sectarian split of Iraq are just a few of the more recognizable. Amidst all the divisiveness, common ground seems to be a hard thing to find.

If one were to pick out two dissimilar people, could you get much further apart than your average Busch drinker and say a member of the Sierra Club? (Granted, I'm delving into the crass realm of gross stereotyping but it serves as a positive illustration in this instance). One would not think it, but Busch drinkers are big recyclers. On first glance one would probably doubt the veracity but after my first two weeks at a scrap yard, I can assure you that they are. Bag after bag was brought in with cans of Busch tumbling down into our aluminum baler. For those bringing in recyclable materials, Busch stands out among all others as the beverage of choice. Though recycling seems to be done mainly for financial gain (or I guess as a subsidy) and not out of a moral obligation that a member of the Sierra Club might have, it is still recycling. It is still a building block.

Unfortunately the scrap yards of the world can't fix all of our problems nor can they fix the outlook of those who inhabit this planet. The have however opened my eyes to the coming and going of products and people, from one place to the next and back again. More and more I realize how interconnected we all are here. You can fault me for being trite, you can fault me for being naive, but there is common ground between the most disparate of folks, sometimes it just takes the right incentive to discover it—even if it's just a penny or two a can.