Day 104 - Stack of Letters (Throw) and Some Quotes on "Stuff"

Nothing too exciting here. I've held onto a box of old letters for years now. I should show them to my kids - they would probably look as foreign to them as the records I pulled out a few weeks back. "Look, kids, this is what people used to do before email, texting and Facebook ... it's called a letter. Paper and pen and a stamp."

I found letters from individuals dear to me and individuals I had completely forgotten (literally ... still can't place them). There were letters from Grandma Gross, Mom, former campers, fellow camp counselors, high school friends, the sister of a college friend, and my first girlfriend - who missed me terribly now that summer was over! I glanced at every letter, but I pulled out very few to read.

The stack in the picture is maybe a fifth of the box. I can't throw them all out at once.

I did find a half dollar coin in a birthday card from Grandma from 1982.

And I set a few letters aside to look at more closely before I toss them ... I'll let you know if I find anything interesting - assuming it's not too personal! Ha!

Recently I also found all of my old class notes from my Asbury Seminary days. I saved them, because there might be some usable stuff there. And I pulled out a reading packet from my favorite class: Anthropology and Christian Missions.

The reading is fascinating - all kinds of stories about eating caterpillars and such. Here's a random quote from Henry David Thoreau that really resonates with me at this stage of my Giving, Throwing and Selling (taken from Walden):

"When the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him ... a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone."

And the other day I ran across a George Carlin video about STUFF (which I would link to here, but the language throughout is so ... Carlinesque!). In this particular stand up routine, he explained:

"A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that crap you're saving. All they want is the shiny stuff. That's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff!"