A Spork in the Road

What do you do with a dead computer? Certainly not throw it out. It’s hazardous waste, people! But I’ve discovered recently that this is not common knowledge — or at least, not as common as it should be.

So a quick tip: when it comes time to get rid of an old computer, either donate or sell it (if it’s still working) or dispose of it properly (if it’s good and truly dead).

Check out Ten Tips for Donating a Computer, and investigate trade-in and recycling programs such as Costco’s GreenSight.

If you have to dispose of a non-working computer, contact your municipal waste and recycling facility to find out where you can drop off the computer. Also, some computer stores (such as Dell or Apple) have pick-up recycling programs of one sort or the other, and some office supply stores will let you drop off recyclable computer equipment for a nominal fee.

And if you happen to live in Pinellas County (or even if you don’t!), check out the excellent Pinellas County “Get Rid of It” page for extensive resources on how to effectively reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Still no time to write my own posts, so here’s another interview excerpt, this time an interview with Burmese monk Sayadaw U Tejaniya in the Winter 2007 Tricycle:

…when wisdom grows, it leads you by the nose. You can’t stop. That’s why I like the atheists. There’s hope for them. There is no need to believe anything. People become atheists because they think—they cannot believe, but they still want to know.

In the beginning, just start with wanting to know. Everyone has some curiosity, some basic need to know. Just encourage that. A good education is motivating a person to want to know for himself. All the cramming and rote learning is never a good education. You won’t get the best out of people that way. Their potential is stifled. Only people with an inner urge to learn will keep developing.

—Sayadaw U Tejaniya

I’m trying on new blog themes for size over the next couple of days. Prepare for some ongoing visual changes until I either give up or find a new theme I like better.

9.24.07: Well, I’ve gone back to my original theme. Someday(tm) I will design and implement my own WordPress theme — or at the very least, customize an existing theme — but for now this seems the best balance between aesthetics and features.

9.29.07: Ha! Changed it after all. This particular theme has stuck in my mind, so I’m giving it a whirl.

I started to reply to a post on Tom Johnson’s blog this evening, and the reply spun out so long that I couldn’t resist stealing it back for myself! (I suggest reading Tom’s original blog post first…)

I can’t say I’m a big fan of aversion therapy; I go for mindfulness training, which seems more like what Sam did [see original post]. That is, he enlisted his conscious mind to help reshape his subconscious, and trained himself to confront his fear wisely and rationally instead of indulging his irrational fear.

Not one of my biggest fears, but one of my icky fears is spiders — I like snakes and reptiles, and most bugs don’t, well, bug me all that much, but spiders make my skin crawl.

Read the rest of this entry »

The inimitable Philip Brewer has now been cited in the New York Times Technology section for his blog post about money laundering on wisebread.com.

I highly recommend Philip’s column, NYT or no. For one thing, he offers ideas for and commentary about a simpler kind of living, sustainable and community-conscious; and for another thing, it’s funny and interesting!

The August 13, 2007 issue of The New Yorker has an article by Steven Shapin that describes a tirade delivered by the 19th century philosopher Herbert Spencer to a banquet hosted by his American fans at Delmonico’s:

Instead of graciously bathing in the torrents of tribute, Spencer told his admirers that they had got him seriously wrong. He did not approve of the culture of American capitalism, and, while he admired its material achievements, he was concerned that, for Americans, work had become a pathological obsession. Americans were endangering their mental and physical health through overwork, and many were turning gray before their time — ten years earlier than the British, Spencer believed. America needed “a revised ideal of life,” he said, and it was time to “preach the gospel of relaxation.”

This was 1882 — 125 years ago — and apparently no one paid close enough attention to Spencer’s warning.

I’m a huge believer in Spencer’s statement that “Life is not for learning, nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life.” Yet, as my post yesterday about acute back and neck pain (on their way to becoming chronic if I don’t shape up) shows, my conscious beliefs don’t seem to be manifesting in my working life.

There are so many reasons for overwork: to make more money, to distract ourselves from discontent in other areas of life, to garnish praise, to prove that we have a “good work ethic” and that we’re not “lazy.” Those of us who are fortunate enough to do something they love for a living have the additional enticement of the sheer joy of the work itself.

Still, we have to find a balance. Pain is a signal that something is wrong, and this week I’m thankful for the pain that has shocked me out of my “pathological obsession” with work.

(Photo Courtesy of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum)

We are preparing to leave St. Michael’s, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore, which is home to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum and the Hooper Strait Lighthouse (in the photo at left). This lighthouse was moved from its place out in the middle of Hooper Strait to the museum grounds after lighthouse work became more automated and this lighthouse fell into disrepair.

I love the squat Chesapeake-style lighthouses, not only for their distinct design but also for simple reasons of nostalgia. Climbing the narrow curved staircase of this lighthouse yesterday, I felt like I was seven years old again. I don’t even have a lot of conscious memories of coming to this museum as a kid (although I know we did), but the smells and sensations as I climbed felt deeply, intensely familiar. I stood alone at the top for a few minutes (Lil’s knees were not enthusiastic about the cramped, steep stairs) and watched a guy shimmying up and down a skipjack mast, treating it against mold, and smelled the Chesapeake.

I’m out of town through the rest of August, and although this will be a bit of a busman’s holiday, I will mostly be Not Working during this time.

What I will be doing is resting, resetting my tension levels, and jump-starting my writing. To that end, I’ll be blogging as frequently as possible. I aim to blog daily, but we’ll see if that actually happens.

For today, I’d just like to comment on the contrast between Florida and the mid-Atlantic that is most striking to me today: the skies. Floridian skies are dominated by intense sunlight and dramatic clouds. I admire Floridian skies; I can get a crick in my neck from gawking at the layers of clouds and the dozens of kinds of birds.

We’re on Maryland’s Eastern Shore today, on the Chesapeake, and it’s a calmer, paler sky above us. The sun is warm but doesn’t sear as it does in Tampa. The few clouds that sneak across the sky are demure. They don’t have the fashion sense of Floridian clouds. It’s less exciting but also less draining; I feel quieter here.

I finished the final Harry Potter book this evening, weeping copiously.

It’s a real delight to participate in a cultural phenomenon that’s based on an authentically great work.

I’d write more, but really, what is there to say?

This moth lived for a couple of days on the hall ceiling. It had thick, fuzzy legs that flared out so that it seemed it was wearing miniature bellbottoms.

Today I found it on the bathroom floor, unmoving, just inside the doorway from the hall. It lay in a position that suggested it had simply let go, at the end, and fluttered down to the floor. I picked it up gently and scanned it on my flatbed scanner, reverent of its simple brown beauty, its large eyes and soft powdery wings and fine antennae.

What would it be like to be a moth? An absurd question, perhaps, in the most formal sense of the word: but one that is tugging at me today nonetheless.

Surely the human propensity for imagining gods and aliens is driven, in part, by the presence of gods and aliens around us every day.