Miles of Introspection: Blue in Green

This blog has certain months when posts get longer and spike in number. My wife, who is from France, takes our (bilingual) kids to the home country for more than a month every summer, which is more time than I can take off.  This year I couldn't afford to join them at all, too much going on with the new state e-waste contracts.  I have guests at the house from 3 other countries, but more time to myself.  I should spend the time editing, perhaps.  I miss the family, miles away, and I focus on work.  Writing about Green jobs, feeling blue.


So many of these posts are long-bombs, aspiring to something more important than "junk and recycling" as a green career.   A relative (who like me owns a business, in GIS mapping) told hem he tried to be a casual reader... he said it was more than a normal person would want to read about the subject, so he stopped.  Too much inside baseball, perhaps.  Or a scary introspective rant too many.  Or perhaps using a blog as a journal is a mark that one takes oneself too seriously, and doth protest too much.  Well, not to put too fine a point on it, he practically called it gibberish.  That's good constructive comment, it fired me up to write more, in a way, because the blog has become an art form for me.

Tools I used in Ridgedale, Missouri, at Clarence Fisher's

Like a funny shaped tool of your grandfather's that you don't know the name of and don't really know how to use, it has been at times useful in leveraging circumstances.   My secret wish is that foreign students at USA universities will understand and take over.  Their fixers, tinkerers, refurbishers, and good-enough market geeks at home are something NOT to be ashamed of.  The "loss of face" from Guiyu photo imagery is their imprisoned Galileo moment.

Like Copernicus, the geeks of color may not be recognized in their own time.  They may pass away with an inner discovery of sustainable reuse and refurbishment, under a feeling that the Church of Self-Righteous watchdogs will squelch the flame.   I may not live to see the history of refurbishing physical goods for emerging markets achieve the glory that Apple or Google bask in.   There may be a taint, a tarnishment, a shame cast on the trade for decades.  With the blog, it's more of an artistic stubbornness than a certainty in a mathematical proof that angers the church... I probably have the same stubborn artistic streak of Miles or Van Gogh, liking what I'm doing, critics shmitics.

History does sometimes get it right.  And in the meantime, using this tool, whatever it is, to deflect false accusations, to blunt the female circumcision of display device shredding, to make people feel ok in a close call whether to trade with someone of a different language and color... I wish I was better at using it, but I'm glad grandpa left it to me, and hope he's proud I didn't recycle it as scrap metal, in case I have the time to learn to use it right one day.

Until then, I imagine Galileo, with a window outside from his Vatican prison cell, listening to Blue in Green.