Published: January 09, 2009 04:56 pm      

Letters to the Editor

Dec. 3, 2008 — Global Stuffing



By Jerri Schlenker

Olive Hill

The big buzz is Global Warming; however, I think we should be highly concerned with Global Stuffing. I’m not referring to the over stuffing that comes with turkey, but with the “stuff” that is gobbling up our planet.

You can’t have enough stuff seems to be the underlying subliminal mantra evading every communication. Move over “want” in the dictionary as it is becoming obsolete and archaic being choked out by “need.” Super size me no longer applies just to MacDonald’s but with every major retail or wholesale establishment to accommodate our “needs.” The amount of stuff in a department store overwhelms me. Do we need that many clothes?

Black Friday, in my opinion, turned out to be a sad Friday. Was it necessary to sacrifice someone for our greed?

I was fortunate to have attended college in the early seventies…oh, the hippie years. You were proud to own only one pair of jeans that only made it to the washer on the weekends. The upper garments you wore were also few in numbers and could often be counted on one hand. Your individualized limited attire often defined you. If something were left in the laundry room, it was more than likely you knew to whom it belonged.

With our accumulation of stuff there comes the spin off business – storage units, both rental and those free standing units we dot around our houses like the little green houses in a Monopoly game. Attics and basements are no longer adequate. Fortunately, personally, we have not come to this point yet. But then, we also have two barns.

Sometimes I think the tilt of the axis that is slowly taking place is due to one country in particular over crowding itself with stuff. Perhaps it is no accident that, but a desperate political ploy on the part of the United States to have all the manufacturing of the stuff taking place on the other side of the globe to equally balance out the planet.

On the other side of the coin creating stuff could serve a higher purpose, that of children trying to emulate the Creator, himself. After all, isn’t God the master creator of “stuff”? Try to count the blades of grass or leaves on a tree. So, are we just trying to be like the parent?

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