August 9, 2021
Good morning! It’s the magical and delicious season of garden produces; yum! If you don’t have a vegetable garden — which we don’t — I hope you have friends and neighbors — we do — who keep you supplied. Ratatouille ’til the cows come home; yum! Still waiting for those South Dakotah melons to show up, the very best.
Things to Think About on Monday Morning
- Did you watch the Olympic games?
- It was on my calendar as a top priority for more than two years and for whatever reason just never happened.
- I did find myself transfixed for about 30 minutes of skateboarding; is this the new glamour sport?
- Just three years to wait and perhaps I’ll always have Paris.
- What are you reading?
- Recommend: New Women in the Old West (Gallagher, 2021)
- Some of the important rest of the story to Horace’s, “Go west young man, go west..!”
- Here’s a new one.
- I’m using a crosswalk in the proper and legal way last Friday when a woman in a speeding vehicle gives me a long, angry, horn blast while totally running the STOP sign.
- Right outside of the police station.
- Homes in our neighborhood are selling like hotcakes (does anyone make or eat hotcakes nowadays?).
- Anecdotally the time on the market appears to be less than a day.
- Dozens and dozens of homes are selling immediately.
- Our hope is for a new generation of energetic, civic-minded people who will make our neighborhood better, stronger, healthier, and happier.
- Love to see it happening. Perhaps at some point in the future we will be referred to as, “those old people on the corner”.
- From Alyssa’s garden: Compost Happens
- Have you been observing the amazing research happening on Mars?
- Without warning I was caught late last week in a vortex of revenge shoppers — or at least I think that’s what it was.
- Heard about ’em but hadn’t experienced them up until then.
- Did you know it is fifty-nine times (59x) more likely you’ll be killed by a hippopotamus than by a shark?
- Along the same train of thought, it is fifty thousand times (50,000x) more likely you’ll be killed by a human than by a shark.
- (I have no idea if these data are true, but I found them on the internet so they must be.)
Is Email Dead?
- This is counterintuitive, but helpful and reassuring at the same time.
- Seems we’re repeatedly told e-mail is old-fashioned, out of style, no longer used by most people, stodgy, and ineffective.
- Then, along comes this information telling us e-mail surveys are the most commonly used method of determining customer satisfaction — and the most reliable, too.
- Here’s more if you want it: Researching Customer Satisfaction (Huhn)
- There is a tradition in our town (St. Cloud, MN — U.S.) involving furniture and household goods.
- When you tire of certain objects you put them on the curb.
- I don’t know where or when the tradition started, but there are new treasures almost daily — especially if you hike different routes.
- It got me to thinking…
- Why is there such snoot nosery when it comes to these couches, chairs, dressers, appliances, sinks, tables, and other items?
- Just yesterday after all, these items were filled with life and with purpose and with meaning as they were at the center of a home.
- Just because they’re now on the curb should not in any way be disgraceful, nor should it be an occasion for snoot nosery.
- Enough! Let’s bring life and dignity back to these items that, through no fault of their own, find themselves on the curb.
Chairs on the Curb
Who decides when a chair’s life is over?
Why is one chair kicked to the curb
while another seemingly identical chair continues
its usefulness for another century?
A chair whose life has ended might get rescued from the curb
or be crushed in the massive jaws of the truck.
Is the executioner to blame or the one who placed
the chair there in the free pile?
Does the free pile absolve the decider?
A dead chair might get handed down,
given to the Good Will,
fetch a fortune in an antique store,
or provide an hour’s worth of warmth during a Siberian winter.
What standard is used to decide?
A chair combined with a table is sacramental;
it welcomes you to supper, invites you to rest,
encourages conversation with others seated there.
Too many chairs suffer premature deaths;
they’re preventable.
We have rescue dog programs, why not something for chairs?
©2017 Michael A. Mullin
