Several months ago, I was helping our church Children’s Minister clean up and straighten out our Resource Room. Over weeks and months, the place can move from highly-well organized to disastrously disorganized. One problem is that folks, well-meaning folks, clean out their storage spaces and think to themselves, “I don’t want this junk any more. Maybe people could use it in Bible School (or some other event that might be ‘crafty’.”) Very often, we could not use those donations. But, I must admit, once a family that was cleaning out before moving out of state, brought a box of rolls of wide, colored and patterned packing tape. It was great! I sorry when the last roll got used up. Some of the stuff is usable. Some is not. But most of it gets left in the Resource Room and/or put on the storage shelves in there. And it sits there, waiting to be used, sometimes for years.
And some stuff gets stored on the topmost shelves, where it gets forgotten about, and never used. For example, there was, on a topmost shelf, a large plastic box (the kind that is usually used for underbed storage) filled with film canisters. Mostly black plastic ones, with snap-on lids. And, truly, a few metal ones, with the screw-top lids. Years ago, there were activities and suggestions in the Sunday School and Vacation Bible School curriculum books for using film canisters. Musical shakers, dippers for water play, making paint prints, even putting substances with strong scents (like peanut butter and lemon juice and vanilla) for preschoolers to identify. As use of film as waned, those sorts of activity suggestions has greatly demenished. We kept a couple dozen of them, just in case. And we put the rest of them in the recycle bin.
I did keep one of the metal canisters, remembering when my dad got his first 35mm SLR camera, and those metal film canisters. And, I remember when he upgraded and handed down his other camera to me. By then, I was purchasing film in those black plastic containers. A bit of nostalgia. A few years later, I got a digital camera. Then, I got a phone.
I love being able to take photos with my phone. It’s easy. It’s almost always with me. It is, usually, charged up enough to take photos. And videos! And occasionally, I send photos to Walgreen’s to make prints. But I’m most grateful that I can take forty photos of an event, look through them all, choose the two or three I want to keep, and delete the rest. And maybe make one or two into prints. It just seems so much more efficient.
I can take photos of all sorts of things–silly, interesting, useless, remarkable, and meaningful (maybe, depends on who’s doing the viewing).
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- The instructions say “Press Here and Pull Back.” Press with what!?! A large Phillip’s head screwdriver? I hacked at these boxes of barley with a knife! Finally I used the knife to pry open the lids.
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- Usually coupons for two products have some sort of common use. Like “buy a loaf of bread and get free peanut butter.” Or, “purchase hot dogs and get free hot dog buns.” That sort of thing. I just don’t get the sense of buying Velveeta cheese product and getting free Cool Whip. If I’m going to make cheese toast, will I be wanting to top it with Cool Whip?
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- This one stopped my in my next-to-the-freezer-section tracks. I’d never heard the term “Dough Puck.” It’s pie dough, for rolling out to make a pie crust.
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- I think it’s interesting the way that non-English speakers translate instructions into English. Thankfully, I don’t know enough of any other language to ever be asked to create a sensible translation. Well, maybe Pig-Latin, but I don’t suppose there’s a particularly great need for that.
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- The Walgreens photo lab is inundated by photos, photocards, and enlargements at Christmastime.
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- I have stared at this picture of my car and my cart and my purse and, evidently, my purchases. I don’t know why I took it.
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- I took this shot in the block next to mine. I love the morning shadow of the bare tree on the brick wall.
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- I took this last week. The temperature IN MY FREEZER was just one degree colder . . .
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- than it was in New York, when Jeremy and Sarah were going to work.
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- As I was walking out the door to grocery shop, I snapped this to remind me that I’m almost out of salad dressing. . .
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- and this one of the grocery store ad.
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- This is one of the grocery store’s gas pumps. I was having my sons pump gas for me long before they were 16. This must be a new law.
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- I took this recently, really irritated and thinking, “Aren’t we better than this these days?”
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- And here’s the manufacturer’s address, so I can write.
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- The “Wonder” Motto for two preschool boys and a preschool girl, on a Sunday morning: *Give me blocks and tell me I have good ideas and can think and plan and work together with other kids. Remind me that I can try out things and figure out what works, and what doesn’t work, and how to fix it.* (They used every single block from the shelves, and, when it was time to put things away, they put each and every block back on the shelves.)
Every time I think of you, I thank my God. And whenever I mention you in my prayers, it makes me happy.
Philippians 1:3,4 (Contemporary English Version)
And it’s quite special, if I have a photo, too.