Black Pepper Friday?

The region of the United States I used to be from is well known for setting trends.  Folks there are the pioneers of all sorts of innovations, good and bad.  A couple of holiday seasons back, prospective customers in Palm Springs were shooting each other over the availability of some price-reduced TVs.  I’m glad to say that sort of dangerous behavior has evolved and improved since.

Letting Go of the Books

It has taken a week, but I moved 50 boxes of books from storage back to the house and put them in piles by subject.  In order to be freer from materialism, you have to free yourself of material (duh).

A Gift for Today

Today is our 16^th Wedding Anniversary.  Some of you have not had the inestimable benefit of a supportive marriage.  Maybe you haven’t even had a long-term relationship outside of your family.  Marriage isn’t for everybody, but when it turns out as well as mine has it makes me wish this amount of happiness for all of you.

My wife has faults.  I have learned to love them.  I find most of them endearing.

Caged

The warehouse of unopened boxes in Citizen Kane (1941).

I’ve been thinking about a kind of imprisonment many of us struggle against – the cage of material possessions.

Everything Becomes Art

The Item Under Discussion

Even though the missus and I do not currently hold job titles that indicate we will be paid for creativity, we remain artists.  We are used to using our intelligence to take everything we go through and everything we own and trying to turn it into some form of creative expression.

Dying to Work

In considering my tendency toward overwork combined with the useful responses I received toward how to view that, or change it, I realized something I had not taken into account.  One’s view of the nature and purpose of work varies depending on the age and time of life of whoever’s examining the question.