Just Thinking

I was sitting here at my desk (actually part of the open-plan kitchen counter) thinking about the upcoming Earth Day (now week) that happens sometime next week. Watching my LCD TV from Taiwan hanging on the wall, I look about the room at my other stuff. I have shelves of spices from India, Singapore, and Madagascar. There are Pans from Indiana, hanging and draining. Empty Sake Bottles from Japan, as well as a rice cooker that I hand-carried three years ago. There’s a Kitchen Aid mixer from Michigan beside my Sunbeam T20 automatic toaster built in Chicago (I love that toaster!). Behind me is my Danish dining room suite handed down to me from my grandfather, in it is a china dinner service from England and some imported glassware from Finland. My cupboards are about half-full of foodstuffs sent to us from Japan (the wife’s mother can’t help but think we don’t have food in Canada). As well as the Dining Room, I inherited a coffee table and two end tables made in Kitchener with Marble imported from Italy. I have knives from Germany and Japan, Cutlery from Sweden, and plates from China. I have all these things within 10 feet of where I sit.

When I think of Earth Day, I think of all the stuff the Earth has given us. How do we “give back”? I give back by not throwing things away to get “New stuff”. I’m not interested in the latest Blackberry. I’ll get a new TV when mine goes bust. I’ll recycle my Knives when I can’t sharpen them anymore. I will refinish and hand down to my son the Dining room suite and coffee tables. And when my Sunbeam T20 toaster breaks, I will have it repaired! There’s my “Earth Day”!