Gift I’m glad I didn’t get in 2009

A Kindle. For one thing, they still cost way too much, even as a gift from my overly generous parents, and certainly not from Bob or the kids. Besides, even though it would be really awesome to carry around all my favorite books in digitized form, I can’t help wondering if I really need the whole book, or just my favorite passages. I guess it comes down to a question I’ve been asking myself this fall as we try to shed some of our dead-tree tonnage: Why do people keep books they've already read?

When it comes to self-help books -- two that I really connected with this year were Barbara Fredrickson's “Positivity” and James A. Levine's “Move a Little, Lose a Lot” -- I find myself going back for another dose of inspiration, the way many people draw fresh inspiration by re-reading the Bible.

With my favorite novels, I sometimes think that my interest in going back is not so much to re-experience the story as to savor some passage or image that I really connected with -- in many cases, something that could have made a really great poem, but has more resonance because you’re connected to the character in a much deeper way. An example: I often think of that passage in John Irving's "A Widow for One Year" about the kind of intimate gaze that surveys your beauty not just inside a particular moment in time, but all of you, in all the time you've experienced together. Or something like that. I'll have to go back and check one of these days.

I can envision a New Yorker cartoon in which some guy purports to be constructing a do-it-yourself Kindle by scanning passages from his favorite books into his laptop. Less clutter that way. Cheaper, too.

Is that something I'd try myself, if I had the time? I've had nuttier ideas, certainly. But the main reason it won't happen is that even as we prepare to enter the second decade of this century, I remain at heart a 20th century creature who prefers real books over Memorex. We'll see if that's still the case at this time next year.

Gift I wish I’d asked for

A printer, even though ours still works. The problem is the cartridges for our Canon are so darn expensive, about $45 to buy both the black and color ink. It wouldn’t be too hard to find a printer on sale for that price -- and that would probably include the first batch of ink, along with a built-in scanner, which is no longer working on our model. The key would be finding a printer that uses refillable ink cartridges. (Ours does not, so making this switch alone would easily cut our printing costs by more than half.)

Hmm. Now that I see these words on my computer screen instead of bouncing around in my head, getting mixed in with all the other things I think I ought to be doing, I think I’ll take matters into my own hands and just go buy one.

Speaking of the Salvation Army...

That’s were our daughter Cassie found her gift for Dad, a cozy flannel shirt. Because it didn’t have tags, I threw it in the washer before she wrapped it so it would be all ready to wear. Usually I have to nag Bob to try on new clothes; sometimes a couple of weeks go by before he gets around to trying on a new shirt, and then he likes it washed before he’ll wear it. But he wore Cassie’s flannel shirt to Grandma’s house on Christmas Day, and then he washed it and wore it again to work yesterday.

A Christmas audit

For the next few days I’m going to be studying our Christmas game plan to see what could be improved on for next year. I have this urge every year and rarely indulge it, but I think that’s a big mistake. It’s an investment in my mental health, and my family’s happiness, for 2010. As I conduct my review, I’ll post ideas as well as horror stories (if they aren’t too embarrassing) about what we’ve learned.
For example, the gift idea that came too late: A gift card to the Salvation Army. This works only with a gift recipient of a certain mindset, but it would‘ve been perfect for our 16-year-old daughter, Rowan. She loves vintage clothing, especially T-shirts, and she could‘ve bought a bunch of them with a $20 gift card. (It would also be a bargain for our Christmas budget, because I dip into our charity fund for 50 percent of the purchase price of items bought at the Salvation Army*.)

*The way I see it, shopping at a thrift shop run by a charity is like making a donation where you get something in return -- like a mug from public radio. For tax purposes, you’re supposed to claim only the amount of the donation above the value of any goods or services you receive, right? So I pay the actual value of the item from my own pocketbook, and cover the rest of the purchase price from the charity fund. I don’t feel bad about doing this, because clothes at both Goodwill and the Salvation Army tend to be priced about double what I think they’re worth, according to my garage-sale barometer.

Need a gift for a grandparent?

If there’s a zoo in your community, see if they have an adopt-an-animal program. The Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo is offering a $45 Christmas special that provides food for Bill the Lion along with a photo, stuffed animal and certificate for the recipient. We did this for Grandma Jane, who loves animals but is stuck in a nursing home. We figure the kids will check on Bill at the zoo and give updates to Grandma.

Financially, the nice thing about a gift like this is we can subsidize its cost with money from our charity fund. (See "The Generosity Generator," posted Nov. 25.) If you live in the Fort Wayne area, the zoo gift shop is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. today and tomorrow and 10 a.m.-3 p.m. on Christmas Eve.
For more details: http://www.kidszoo.org/support/adoption.htm

Prospering in hard times

Here’s one business that’s doing well in this economy: A grocery thrift shop in my hometown of Bluffton, Ind.

I discovered it earlier this fall by accident, walking with the kids down a side street between two of our regular destinations, the library and the trading card shop. It was crowded and cramped and its prices were just low enough that I pulled the trigger on a few boxes of cereal, as I recall.

I stopped there again once or twice, but it never became part of my routine. Then a couple of weeks ago I made a special point of stopping there, only to discover the space was up for rent.

When I got to the corner, though, I saw the familiar hand-lettered signs on neon poster board in a much bigger space with an actual store front. In the display window a life-sized Santa danced when you walked by, and inside it had the feel of a homely but spirited general store. I took the owner up on his banana-box special, and had a great time seeing how much I could stuff into a banana box for $20. I got about $25 worth of his groceries in the box, including eight boxes of slightly damaged cereal.

I went in again last Friday, and this time customers came and went as I carefully packed and rearranged the items in my banana box. Outside, kids made their parents stop to watch the dancing Santa. It was easily the liveliest spot on the street, reminiscent of the old downtown, with a peculiar, post-prosperity twist.

Another example of finding beauty in thrift?

For my art gallery of thrift -- where form intersects with function at little or no cost -- I nominate a bottle of liquid soap that, in the few minutes before company arrived one evening, underwent an amazing ugly duckling transformation.

I should note that I’m not one to indulge in fancy soap dispensers. A three-year-old plastic Soft Soap container performs that function in our main downstairs bathroom. Until recently, I’d been refilling it from a giant Sam’s Club container of soap the color of orange medicine. It wasn’t pretty, but it did the job.

And then one day, just before company arrived, we discovered the giant refill bottle had run dry. Under deadline pressure, I cleaned the soap scum off the geriatric dispenser and ran to the kitchen for some dish soap. It was bright green -- which turned out to be just the right color to bring the freshly scrubbed dispenser’s floral pattern into sharp focus. It looked vibrant and new and even -- dare I say it? -- pretty. Ready to take on all the world’s germs.

Is it silly to admit finding beauty in a soap dispenser? I should note that I wouldn’t put the dispenser itself on display in this imaginary museum, any more than I would display the actual leaf that held the paint (see "Is There Beauty in Thrift," posted Dec. 4), unless it was in a purely documentary sense. The beauty present in these objects existed for only one moment in time. It wasn’t their physical features that made them beautiful so much as the interplay of interior and exterior forces acting upon them.

Part of what made the leaf beautiful, at least to me, was the relief it provided -- a north star revealing an escape route from misery. It did, I suppose, have intrinsic natural beauty, but no more so than any other oak leaf, especially since it fell from the tree while still green. An anonymous leaf, in the right place at the right time to shoulder a lowly yet crucial task.

And the soap dispenser? No disrespect to the artist who designed its floral pattern, but the most a soap dispenser can hope for is “cute,” and every soap dispenser is cute in pretty much the same way.

But in those crucial moments before company arrived, the soap dispenser achieved something more. Cuteness lost, then found, is more potent than the original cuteness, don’t you think? There’s an element of wonder and surprise and gratitude that was missing the first time around -- tinged with the knowledge that before long, in even the thriftiest household, the recycling bin beckons.

That wouldn‘t be enough to make it past the museum‘s review committee, though, if it hadn’t fulfilled all three criteria: form, function, free. Because it achieved this triple play with such grace under pressure, the plastic soap dispenser makes the cut.