I was born on a Sunday evening, and so I have seen 67-times-52-plus-change Sundays in my life. Do the math later if you’d like.
I have piles and piles of debris to show for it. Well, “debris” is the wrong word for what’s piled in my little home office. These are shelves of books and boxes of records and magazines and various detritus of human endeavor.
Here’s a 1941 Philco radio that was crafted and assembled by good hard-working folks who, I hope, were proud of their work. And each book, each record, represents a lifetime — several lifetimes, in fact, because while one name or one face may appear on the cover, it is also the work of an editor, the printer, the layout and cover artists, the sound engineer, the accompanying musicians — all those hundreds and thousands of people created what is contained in this debris.
Think of the thousands of names scrolling along at the end of a film — all of those lives invested in creating a single bit of popular art.
And so I’m loathe to consign any of it to a garbage bin. As Paul Simon wrote in a tune many years ago now, “Preserve your memories; they’re all that’s left you.”