A Second Chance for Books

When Sarah got back from Dresden week before last, she said she really wanted some ethnic food.  Tom had planned to make egg rolls for her the evening she got home, but with the delays in her flight out of Philadelphia, she didn't make it home til late; so Tom got some frozen ones and once they were cooked in the deep fat fryer they were apparently passable.  Then I think it was the next evening we went to The Cottage for dinner.  The Cottage is an Ethiopian restaurant in a former Burger King at East Rock Springs and Piedmont, and is one of Sarah's favorite restaurants.  I am not sure what Sarah ate in Germany, but apparently not Chinese or Ethiopian food.

While we were at the Cottage, I noticed it - in the corner of the parking lot, behind the taxis, was a green bin from Better World Books.  I'd seen one or two of these bins in other locations around Atlanta but had never figured out exactly what Better World Books was and how my book donation would support literacy and make a Better World.  But that weekend I'd spent a little time on Rhyne family history - my maternal grandmother is a Rhyne - and come across a reference to book about early German settlers in Pennsylvania that apparently included information about my Rhine/Rein/Reinau ancestors.  I found a copy on line, and one of the places that had it for sale was Better World Books.  So I ordered it, and in the process learned about Better World Books and those green bins that are around Atlanta.


It's a business that keeps books out of landfills and sells them to people who want them, and partners with groups supporting literacy efforts worldwide.  As someone whose heart ached when I saw books in the dumpster in front of our house (for the record, the only ones *I* put there were guidebooks that were so out of date as to be useless but not so out of date as to be interesting), I am so glad to be able to feel good about purging the shelves of old college Required Reading and some of the quasi-academic books I've accumulated over the years but I know I will never read again (if I ever read them in the first place).  We've taken many boxes of books to Goodwill but I have no idea if Goodwill actually has a model that can help these books make their way to someone who wants them.

But Better World Books does, and earlier this week I dropped off a few books in the green bin behind the Cottage.  I'm cleaning out my office, anticipating a move to a new, smaller office, and we still have stuff piled up all over the place at home.  At least now I know something I can do with books and feel good about it.

Adventures in Recycling

Too much work, too much travel, too much to do when I am home - so I haven't written much. Our new president has not been able to immediately solve our nation's problems and the economy is still in the toilet. But the concert on the Mall just before the inauguration was pretty cool. I kept wondering how, with the big crowd, no one fell into the reflecting pool. Maybe someone did and they just didn't show it on HBO.

I've talked to a couple of friends who were at the inauguration, in the big big crowd on the Mall. One, who spent 12 hours in the cold, said she wouldn't have missed it and she would never do it again. No arrests, but lots of hypothermia, I understand. Now the AP wants a cut of the iconic "Hope" poster by Shepard Fairey, saying it was based on their photo. Fairey has a solo exhibit at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art and got arrested Friday night on the way to his opening party; two arrest warrants had been issued in January for creating art without a license, or at least without permission.

But back to Atlanta. With the recent budget problems, the city has cut curbside recycling to every other week. The first two weeks after this change, they didn't pick up our recycling at all. Tom called Anne Fauver's office to find out what was going on. He was told that the schedule had been changed and we now had every-other-week pick up. He said he knew that, but with every-other-week pick up, they should still have picked it up on one of the two weeks. The person he was talking to paused and said that was right. It did get picked up the next day.

Since then, it seems to have gotten sorted out, but every-other-week pick up is not frequent enough if you are really trying to recycle. I guess we got serious about this in the spring and summer, and now even in a week have way more recyclable stuff than fits into our city-issued black recycling bin. We have used plastic crates, but they usually end up disappearing, so more recently have just been putting bottles, cans, and other containers into plastic trash bags.

So I just was checking the city's recycling information on line and see that containers for recycling have to be labelled as such and that on request the city provides stickers for this purpose. They also have a 95 gallon rolling recycling cart that can be purchased for $70. The cart looks just like the Herbie Curbies that we all have (although ours is pretty decrepit, having come with the house when I bought it in 1989, and having lost its lid in recent years, to the delight of neighborhood raccoons - but I digress) but is blue. So we will probably get one. I wonder if it is made of recycled plastic? Here's the ordering instructions, for both that and the stickers.

Of course with the economy in the toilet, demand for recyclables is way down. The Times had a story on this in December, and more recently it has been in the AJC. It would be better of course if we just produced less trash. I do use those cloth bags in the trunk of my car pretty consistently at the grocery store, and sometimes remember to take them to other stores. I remember when I was in Munich last year, being impressed at how much less packaging there was for some of the items in the stores. Walking around one evening, I saw someone emerge from a store with the trash can at the end of the day - it was about the size of the trash can we have in our downstairs bathroom.

If we really want recycling, maybe the city should give us the big container for recycling and the small container for our trash. But in the long run, wouldn't it be best if they could both be small?

The Horse

Our friend Carol gave it to Caroline when she was very small. It had a smooth blue plastic body, rugged orange wheels, and blue plastic handles, and over it fitted a cloth cover, held in place with Velcro, that turned it into a horse. It was just the right size for a small child to scoot around on, even one that had not quite mastered walking.

It was a favorite of Caroline's, and when she outgrew it, it was immediately passed on to Sarah. Sarah loved it too. I actually don't remember Iain using it but he's a third child and I don't remember much about him as a toddler. (Someone once told me that when the placenta comes out part of your brain comes with it - I think it's true.)

So yesterday we were cleaning out a storage space and found the horse. I washed the cloth cover and had Sarah clean off the plastic with Windex and paper towels, and looked ready for a new rider. So I took it across the street and gave it to our neighbor Melinda, since we thought Adele was Just the Right Size to enjoy it. Adele was napping then, but her mom thought she would love it, and admired its retro styling. (It's hard for me to characterize things from the early 1990s as "retro" but I guess that is a sign of age.)

Later we saw Melinda and Aaron out for a walk with Adele in the stroller. As predicted, the horse was a hit. I told Melinda that Caroline had said, on learning the horse had been given away, that there was a condition attached to ownership of the horse - it could not be thrown away. When Adele is through with it, it has to be passed along to someone else. Melinda assured us it would be, and we are confident that the horse is in a good home for the next couple of years.