Once upon a time a pianoforte lived in the corner of a living room. "Piano" -- to its friends.
For nine years it provided entertainment to various house guests. Friends. Acquaintances. Bible study groups. Political plotters.
But it had long been the companion of a boy who took his first lessons on a giant, black upright piano in his family's dining room. And when the boy showed some promise with the instrument, his parents bought a spiffy cherry wood Yamaha spinet with the innards of a baby grand. That was in the 1960s.
And grand it was. Unfortunately, the promise the boy showed was "some." And never more. Years of lessons and a few recitals convinced everyone that the Alto saxophone would be a better investment.
The piano came to Salem in 2004. But it could not move to Mexico.
Just as the boy -- now drawing Social Security -- was ready to list the piano for sale, an Air Force nurse friend called. She wanted to know if he would be interested in selling the piano to her daughter.
He was. And for a bargain price. His piano tuner had told hm that pianos are difficult sell these days. Few people play keyboards any more. The days when most people in the family could play the piano are long gone.
And those who play often buy digital instruments. And modern homes are the poorer for it.
So, this afternoon, the piano boarded a truck for Portland. Where it will find a loving home with a young family who appreciates a instrument that can add joy to a home. Leaving nothing more than a corner filled with a decade of dust and bits of broken crockery.
For the piano, it was not a parting. It was a new beginning.
Big news on the clear cut front.
My two major piles -- to Goodwill and the dump -- are finally out of the house. That is the Goodwill pile at the top of this post.
I finally decided the easiest (and quickest) solution was to hire a small U-Haul truck. I estimated two trips. And that is what it took. Too full loads.
What you see in the photograph is only about half of the Goodwill load. It was a big mix. Almost everything could have been flogged in a garage sale -- or with lots of eBay activity.
I had neither the time nor the inclination. In fact, if I had all the time in the world, I would not have had the inclination.
That pile was teamed up with hundreds of pounds of vinyl records (a collection I began when I was in grade school), an expensive turntable, several lamps, two brass storage cubes (I had the good sense never to op them with a bridge of glass and pretend it was a coffee table), and about nine filing cabinets from my old law practice.
There were lots of memories in the pile. But after four years of not using any of the items, it felt rather good to watch it all go.
The second trip was to the dump. For all of the items that were still useful to someone, there were plenty of things that should have been thrown away years ago. If I lived in Mexico, most of it would have been used for another purpose. But it was the type of stuff that even Goodwill would not take.
This cleanup has turned out to be rather serendipitous. I had a couple of items in the basement that were not suited for either Goodwill or the dump. The guy who mows my lawn stopped by as we were getting ready to head to the dump. I asked him if he knew anyone who could help on my unaccomplished tasks.
He volunteered. By the time we returned from the dump, everything was out of the basement.
So, here is what happens next. The piano will be shipped to Portland on Monday. On Tuesday, the cleaning team arrives for two and a half days of spruce up. On Thursday, the house will be listed.
And Saturday will find me back in Melaque. Waiting for the vagaries of the housing market to seal a deal.
A lot of work. And, I certainly hope, worth the effort.
I have noticed a distinct drop off in the number of comments posted on this blog.
And I am not surprised. After all, even though the blog is about my life, it is primarily a blog about my life in Mexico. And there has not been a lot of Mexico since November.
But it may be something more. This past week I received several email from readers who comment frequently. They all had the same refrain. They have not been able to post comments.
In November I upgraded to the new version of the Disqus comment engine. Apparently, that cut off a number of commenters because their Internet Explorer was not the most recent version. So, I switched back to the older version of Disqus.
Somewhere in that shift, it appears that some of you are suffering from the "garbled in transmission" syndrome. But I am not certain how many. And, if you cannot comment, it is difficult to let me know you are having troubles.
It sounds like a good time for a poll. We have not had one of those recently. Here are your options.
- I comment. I have no problems.
- I comment. I currently cannot leave comments.
- I do not comment. And I have no idea what you are talking about.
Before you make a choice, could you do me a favor? Try to add a comment to this post. And then make your choice.
After all, your comments are often the most interesting aspect of this blog.
The poll is on the right.
Note: I have no idea why the poll decided to give its instructions in Spanish.
OK, it's not Canada. But it is certainly not Mexico, either. Or Salem.
My brother was in town yesterday to deliver his daughter (my niece) to university. While he was in Salem, we decided to get rid of some of the piles in my living room.
So, off we went. A full load of computer parts ended up at the same business that shredded my legal files. Including some pieces that were fully operational. It turns out that Garten hires people with disabilities to break down the components for usable parts. One man's trash, another man's treasure.
Feeling better for Doing Good, we then packed up Darrel's Subaru for a delivery of my household goods to Goodwill. It turns out that Goodwill (like the Salvation Army) no longer picks up donations. That means I will be making several trips to Goodwill with more items on Friday and over the weekend.
I have been a bit surprised at how easy it is to turn loose of what once reflected my life. All of the stereo equipment, books, travel mementos, and clothing we delivered yesterday once meant something to me. And they were the very things I could not turn loose of when I headed to Mexico four years ago.
What I learned while being away from them is that I can live a good life -- maybe even a better life -- without being anchored to a Lot of Stuff. And that is what the pile now appears to be to me. Just Stuff. Not even My Stuff.
After we finished our Goodwill run, we loaded up boxes of books to deliver to our mother. I have lots of hardbound biographies -- the type of reading she enjoys. Rather than donate them to strangers, I decided to pass them along to her.
And, because the books were headed to Bend, I decided to join my brother on the drive over. After all, I had not spent time with Darrel and Mom on this trip north.
So, the three of us had hamburgers and ice cream cones for dinner, and talked about what we should do for Mom's 85th birthday next month. It looks as if a visit to Mexico is in the offing -- as soon as she recovers from this Friday's surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome.
It was a brief visit. I will be heading back to Salem on the shuttle bus around 11 this morning. That is, as soon as we finish another Cotton tradition in Bend. Eggs Benedict for breakfast.
It is almost time to say good-bye to the snow.
Every project has a tipping point. And I hope I just met mine.
The shredding truck showed up today to eat the thirty-six boxes of files from my ten years of private practice. Oddly, I felt no sense of loss. If I felt anything it was relief.
Relief at not being forced to slip each page through a finicky personal shredder. Instead, a mechanism similar to a garbage truck fed bins of files into the shredder's maw. I now know te sound of masticating giants.
The cost? A mere $261 (US). And it was worth every George Washington.
The arrival of the shredder freed up boxes to reshelve my hardback books for staging -- and to ship off my paperbacks to some charitable organization. Along with the books will go a full truckload of personal items that would have made good garge sale fodder. But there is no time.
I contracted with a cleaning firm to give the place a thorough scubbing next week. If all goes well, the house will be listed on 1 February -- and I will be n my way back to Mexico on 2 February.
Oaxaca and Chiapas await.
I am not a hoarder.
I don't even consider myself to be a collector.
But I am beginning to doubt both of those denials after looking at the oddities I am now discarding from my life.
Take this can, for example. I found it in the fruit cooler cupboard. (Remember. The house was built in 1925.)
I had no idea why it was there. Aluminum fruit juice cans with Spanish labels are not very exotic. Not after four years in Mexico.
But this is not a Mexican can. It is a Cuban can. That I picked up on my trip to Cuba in the spring of 2001.
I have mentioned that trip on my blog and in comments on other blogs. It was fascinating. Enough to convince me that socialism has not been kind to the Cuban people.
But also enough to make me interested in returning. To do work with the Salvation Army. My plan to accompany a Salvation Army corps from Canada in February has not panned out. But there may be other opportunities.
I also ran across a photograph of our 2001 tour group. The trip was sponsored by my law school law school alumnae association. And here we all are.
If I had a better memory, I would ask you to play a little game by identifying the Cuban who was willing to talk to us about the failure of the socialist system -- and the Cuban who was assigned to us to report Cubans who talked about the failure of the Cuban system.
Neither of them is holding an orange juice can.
And neither am I.
I have assigned it to the dustbin of history. Where I trust a certain regime will be before too many more years.
I do not always choose wisely.
The pile of obsolete computers, dating back to the 1980s, that currently clutter my living room prove the point.
But -- now and then -- I get it just right. My Kindle purchases qualify as best buys.
When I moved to Mexico four years ago, I considered buying a Kindle. Books in Spanish in Mexico are not common. Books in English are as rare as silver in street vendors' necklaces.
Kindles were still quite expensive in 2009. And there were issues in uploading electronic books on the internet.
In 2010 Amazon made one of those masterful marketing decisions that will be taught in business schools for years. The company decided to sell its electronic book reader for just above cost -- following the model of RCA Victor decades earlier.
After all, Amazon was primarily interested in selling books. That was its profit source. And Amazon made downloading books a snap with the new Kindle.
I bought one. And, as you know from my earlier posts, I fell in love with the convenience of having my library with me at all times and being able to buy new books no matter where I was.
When the letters on my first Kindle keyboard began to wear off, I bought a Touch Kindle. It was even better than the original, and lasted until I lost it in Dubai and had to buy a replacement.
As of this week, I am on Kindle number four. Nothing went wrong the version I ha. I was simply seduced by the upgrades in the new version.
My new device -- the Paperwhite -- arrived last week. And I am pleased to report it is even better than its three predecessors.
There are a lot of improvements on this model, but my favorite is the internal light. No longer do I have to rely on a clip-on or cover light (with their uneven light throws) to read at night.
Some of you remember that I did not buy a Fire or an iPad because the screen is backlit. In the Mexican sun, backlit screens are extremely hard to read.
But this screen is different. It lights from the side while retaining the technology that creates an image that is as easy to read as a book.
In two weeks, I will be on my way back to Mexico with one of the purchases in my life that has made sense.
As for the pile of computers, they are history.
