Strategies

Chapter 1: Dreariness

When it rains in Portland it's hard not to feel trapped. Those misty little drops that I hear pattering on the ivy outside my window remind me of the coldness, grayness that seem like a wall between me and enjoying my life. I think of how soggy my coat will get, and my pants. 

Chapter 2: Clutter

This morning I was reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. It is the second book related to decluttering that has come into my life recently. The first was The Organized Mind, by Daniel Levitin. Sugata and I have gotten rid of more than a carload of stuff and have completely organized the kitchen, but as I look across my room, there is still much more to go and it has been lying there most of the week. I'm a little disheartened, and it's still raining outside my window.

Chapter 3: Joy

The principle for which Marie Kondo bases her decluttering strategies is to get rid of everything that doesn't spark joy in you.

Chapter 4: The Museum

A few minutes of searching on the internet for something to do turned up the C. C. Stern Type Foundry Museum, open every third Saturday of the month. At first I could only imagine a room full of machines I couldn't understand. I've learned not to trust my initial feelings about an activity, especially when they have been dampened by rain.

This museum was a working museum. Half a dozen or more people tinkered with molten metal and monotype and linotype machines.  We began by watching a demonstration of hand-casting. With this technique, those who were good at it could get up to six letters per minute. 

At the letter-press station I learned what it really meant to "quoin a phrase," and to "mind your p's and q's."

Impressed by the information and thinking of various writing and printing technologies that have been developed over a huge span of time, I thought of how much fun it would be to research and write about this history.