January 10, 2014
Dear Everyone:
Many, many decades ago, when I was working as the Lead in what was
called the “Lard and Loan Files” (because the biggest group of files in
the collection concerned xxx and xxx “loans”), I would ask the woman who
had worked there the longest why we did certain things.
Her reply was, “I don’t know, Hon.
That’s the way we’ve always done it.”
(She called everyone “Hon” because she had trouble remembering people’s
names, something I can relate to more now than then.)
We always do things for a reason.
It’s just that, over time, the reason sort of falls by the
wayside and we keep on doing whatever it is because “that’s the way
we’ve always done it.” When
I first moved to the townhouse in
San Ramon about sixteen years ago, I
found that I was required to
recycle a lot of things.
And they had to be separated:
Paper products in one place, plastic, aluminum and such in
another.
So I got two covered receptacles, one for paper and one for plastic.
I chose them because they fit under a shelf in the dining area.
Shortly after I started all this, I had occasion to watch the
waste management truck collecting the recycles.
I noticed that everything, paper and plastic, went into the same
hopper. So much for
separating.
I sold the townhouse over four years ago.
While we were “fixing the place up” for sale, “Richard” and
“Marshall” gleefully ripped that useless shelf away.
Sixteen years later, I’m still separating recycles, because
plastic takes up a lot of room while paper and torn-up cardboard lies
relatively flat and you can fit more into a smaller space.
But I was still using the same receptacles, chosen for their
specific size at the time, because “that’s the way we’ve always done
it.”
We do things “out of habit” because it’s easiest.
It takes time and effort to actually think about it.
But it also pays off from time to time.
For instance, just because you’ve always put sugar on the top
shelf doesn’t mean you have
to put sugar on the top shelf.
It’s actually easier to put it on a lower shelf, if there’s room,
which there is if you clear out some things that expired during the last
Republican Administration.
Having replaced a couple of receptacles, I got all excited and began
clearing things off the floor in the second bedroom (also known as The
Really BIG Closet.)
When I “got tossed” from my job over two-and-a-half years ago, I brought
some (a lot of!) things home from the office and dumped them on the
floor of the second bedroom “for the moment”.
Time to move on.
Found paperwork from selling the townhouse five years ago.
You don’t need to keep this stuff!!!
(But do shred it before the recycle bin, just to be safe.)
Long-forgotten, incomplete crochet projects.
Not enough yarn to finish, having scavenged it for something
else. Toss!!!
Everything else: Organize
and get it up on a shelf.
Floors are for feet!
Before you knew it, I had cleaned up enough things to the point that you
could actually walk into the room.
What a relief! Now, when I
need something from the bookcase I don’t have to inch my way through a
complex obstacle course.
Just traipse over and pick it up!
We are, of course, by no means finished.
There are still two large
CRT TVs that need to go to the
electronic recycle center.
It’s not so much a Completed Project as it is Life as a Work In
Progress.
But it’s a great start.
In the meantime, “Jeannie” and I did go to a movie a couple of weeks
ago, thanks to “Marshall’s” Christmas Present.
We decided to see
Saving Mr.
Banks, the story of a tough Australian woman (portrayed by
Emma
Thompson) who, in her mid-twenties, moved to England and “re-imagined”
herself into a proper English author under the pen name of
P.L. Travers.
She published a lot of poetry, but is best known for her series
of children’s books about a very proper English
nanny named
Mary
Poppins.
Enter “kindly” Walt Disney, played by
Tom Hanks, who promised his two
daughters that he would one day make a movie about their favorite books.
What ensues is a remarkably genteel battle of wills between
“easy-going” Walt and the rather prissy Ms. Travers, who went out of
her way to object to just about everything in an effort to get “kindly”
Walt to give up. It didn’t
work.
She even insisted on having meetings about the movie before she would
sign away the film rights for a great deal of money, which she
desperately needed. This is
where she ran smack up against the
Sherman Brothers, staff songwriters
for Disney who wrote many award-winning songs.
They had a way of composing catchy little tunes and, when they
couldn’t think of a word to rhyme with anything, cheerfully made them
up, a fact that didn’t go over well with the starchy Briton-wanna-be.
Half the film is in flashback, showing the hardscrabble upbringing of
the little Aussie girl; enter
Colin Farrell as the unsuccessful father
who may, or may not, have been the “inspiration” for the father figure
in the Mary Poppins books.
Excellent performances all around, especially Hanks who must have
studied Disney for hours to get the cadence of his voice just right.
Those of us who grew up watching the weekly
Disney TV shows can
attest to that. There’s
little coincidence that the movie was released in December, just in time
for Christmas and the
Academy Awards Nominations.
Thoroughly enjoyable.
Even if you’re not fond of Disney.
Love, as always,
Pete
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