Hazardous Waste
The heat of summer is losing it’s grip, and the leaves are starting to drop from the trees in our yard. After nearly drowning us, Mother Nature gave us a lovely week of moderate late-summer weather. It was a perfect send-off to the Thursday Night Golf League, both for our final round and for the Friday night barbecue we enjoyed together.
The weather for yesterday’s Farmer’s Market was also pristine - sunny, cool, blue sky…idyllic. I picked up some sweet corn from a vendor, and a packet of blue corn tortillas. The sweet corn was perfection, the tomatoes too…Lori and I ended up making chicken tacos with fresh salsa that were the platonic ideal of summer farmer’s market chicken tacos. Our ability to cook mind-blowing food at home always inspires massive gratitude.
After visiting the Farmer’s Market yesterday, I loaded up my car with a bunch of oil-based paint, stain, used motor oil, and some diesel fuel for a bulldozer we owned in a past life…all of the noxious fluids that accumulate in modern households. Licking County had a Hazardous Waste Collection Day yesterday - a free service that allowed us to get this monkey off of our back. It was quick and easy to queue up, a large staff of people descended on my car taking away all of the containers so quickly. Thirty years of poisonous build-up, wiped away in a matter of minutes. What a relief I felt when all of the containers were removed. A centralized solution to a widely-held community problem, responsibly disposing of hazardous waste…did I just fall for communism?
The experience prompted me to reflect on the many other things in life that accumulate and should be purged from time-to-time. In general, “stuff” is always accumulating. The comedian George Carlin famously said that our houses are just “a pile of stuff with a cover on it.” Having purged my parents’ house of their stuff, Lori and I are committed to minimizing our belongings as much as possible, so the boys don’t have as much to deal with.
In the 1990s, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposed the concept that we can only support a certain number of relationships with other people. He created a graphical model of nested circles, indicating different levels of intimacy and the number of relationships that can be sustained at each level. He suggested the following:
1 to 5 people as being the closest, most intimate friends (best friends)
15: Sympathy group and good friends to whom you can turn for support
50: Casual friends and dinner party guests
150: Meaningful relationships and people you actually know.
500 - 1,500: Acquaintances and faces you can recognize or name
I suspect that some of us can accommodate more (and some less) than these figures - but the notion that there is a finite number of relationships we can support means that once we are maxed out, it becomes necessary to occasionally perform “relationship hygiene.” At this stage of life, I have experienced this as both the pruner and the prunee, and have come to accept it as a natural occurrence without taking it too personally.
At the microscopic level, even our cells have to take out the trash sometimes. Through a process called autophagy, our cells break down and reuse damaged cell parts.
Purging what doesn’t serve you is a natural part of life. The occasional review and intentional de-cluttering is perfectly appropriate.
Sunday Supper
Chicken Tacos w/ Corn-Tomato Salsa
Gochujang Tofu, Squash and Brussels Sprouts Bowls
Chicken Shawarma Sheet Pan Dinner
Garlic Herb Roasted Cherry Tomato Carbonara
Sunday Music
Rick Beato on Dolly Parton’s Life & Music
Wynton Marsalis and John Batiste Discussing and Performing Jazz at the Aspen Ideas Festival
Austin City Limits Remembers Dolly Parton
Enjoy!
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Have a great week ahead! You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.
Peace & Love,