Treasure and Triumph

Treasure comes from the Greek word thesauros—which is also the root word for thesaurus.

Christmas is still weeks away (thankfully), but a dear friend has already given me a precious gift.

She’s about to move into a new house and is sorting through her belongings to separate trash from treasure. When we met for brunch this Sunday, she brought me one of those treasures.

What I received was a 9x12 envelope addressed to my friend in my handwriting. She pointed out the date stamp of June 3, 1985. Amazing to realize, that was half my life ago. Inside the nearly quarter-of-a-century envelope were four of my short stories and the opening chapter of a novel that I can’t even remember now if I ever finished.

I quickly flipped through the yellowing manuscripts, skimming the title pages, two of which I didn’t even remember. Brown rust stains surrounded the old paper clips. Corrections and additions were added by hand. There were also several different typefaces, indicating the various typewriters I had used to write the stories. (You know, back in the old days when we didn’t have computers on wireless, pocket-sized phones.)

The package also contained a hand-written letter on yellow legal paper—my favorite stationery at that time. Now anyone who’s ever tried to read a hand-written note from me knows how long it takes to decipher. So I put the package aside to examine later and went out to have a fabulous day of communing with many of my favorite people.

It wasn’t until later that night that I realized how special this time capsule really was.

The letter I wrote to accompany the birthday package of manuscripts was penned just hours before probably the most dramatic, life-changing day of my existence. My words chronicled what I was feeling right before this seismic shift.

The events leading up to the letter began in mid-March of that year. I went to San Francisco to visit my friends and scheduled a few interviews with ad agency creative directors while I was there. The first three interviewers saw my potential, but suggested I get more experience. The fourth one offered me freelance work, but I didn’t have the nerve to move across country without the promise of a steady job.

So I went back to Ohio and found another job that would broaden my work horizons. The day I sent in my acceptance letter (how quaint that sounds now), I got a call from the fourth creative director. He was checking to see if I was still interested in a job in SF and if so, could I possibly fly out to interview with the big boss. Ummm, yes and yes. One tiny sticking point, however, and I went on to explain about my other offer and how I didn’t want to string along this perfectly nice company. We finished our conversation that Friday with his promise to see what could be done to accelerate my hiring.

Early that Sunday evening—apparently just moments before I started writing the letter—my potential boss from the Columbus job called to ask if I would mind if my first week of work consisted of flying to New York City to observe a TV commercial being shot for the company. Ummm, no, I had no problem with that.

So that’s where things stood when I wrote to my friend. I’m guessing that I mailed the package during lunch the next day, which forever preserved the date for me. By that evening, the news the letter contained was already out of date.

When I returned home from the job I was about to leave no matter which suitor I chose, I got a call from San Francisco. My thundering heartbeat made it hard to hear the voice saying that there was no need to fly me out for another interview. Could I just start in two weeks?

There are not enough words in the thesaurus to describe the thrill—and the power—that I felt in that moment. It was an exhilarating rush of “I did it!” joy.

Touching this golden relic of my personal history transports me back to that period of triumph. More importantly, it reminds me of how much I want to create my next “I did it!” moment.

So my deepest thanks to my friend for this incomparable gift. Or should that be unrivaled gift? Unparalleled? Unique? Without equal?

Well, whatever the thesaurus says, it’s treasure to me.

Cork and Thinking Differently

Cork comes from the thick, spongy bark of the cork oak tree. Slabs of bark are hand harvested from the trees 12 times in their 250-year lifetime. In addition to wine stoppers, bulletin boards and fishing rod handles, this renewable resource can be used for flooring and ground into concrete mixtures.

During dinner the other night, some friends and I debated about what to do with the wine cork. The bottle obviously belonged in the recycling bin. But the cork? Compost or trash?

Now this certainly isn’t the first bottle of wine that’s passed through my house. But recently, I’ve become even more vigilant about practicing “reduce, reuse, recycle,” which prompted the cork question.

This heightened awareness probably stems from San Francisco’s new law that requires everyone in the City to recycle and compost. Yes, you read that right. A law.

Now exactly who is going to make sure everyone’s banana peels go into the green (compost) bin instead of the black (trash) bin is another question. Perhaps we can draw from the staff that enforces the law stating that all pets kept outdoors must have access to clean drinking water at all times.

San Francisco has a number of unenforceable mandates that invite ridicule. Yet sometimes there’s a smart idea wrapped inside that legislative language, which leaves me conflicted. I admire the way our city often sticks its neck out and tries a new approach to the same issues bedeviling everyone else. Because it’s easy to jump on the bandwagon once someone else builds it. Or laugh at their construction if it fails. What’s hard is to be the one with the blueprint—and the guts to implement it.

So looking at this latest law, you can see the benefit in its intention to shift 75% of the City’s waste into composting and recycling programs by next year, leading up to the ultimate goal of zero waste by 2020. It’s a cheap and effective way to be eco-friendly. And recycling and composting programs can be set up quickly, making them a solution we can implement now.

Like I said, great idea. But a law?

Could we maybe have considered using education instead of legislation? Tried creating something that makes composting and recycling cool? Like hilarious videos on YouTube that get passed from friend to friend. An online invitation to upload funny or clever things—animation, songs, photos, poetry, artwork, whatever—that teach people how to create zero waste. Visits from celebrities to schools that achieve the best record of recycling and composting throughout the school year. That type of thing.

If we’ll take our willingness to think differently a step further, we might figure out how to use peer pressure instead of police pressure to achieve the same goals. Get people involved and excited in something that benefits us all. Compel them to comply with a motivating message instead of a toothless law.

Maybe that’s a way we can get this City to work better. Just a thought.

Oh, and that wine cork? It goes in the trash. At least for now. We have until 2020 for someone to think differently about how it can be collected and distributed to the flooring and cement manufacturers that can reuse it.