[email protected]

In a message dated 11/27/01 2:04:42 AM Mountain Standard Time, vegan4planet@... writes:


. I really don't
want to stir up things with my half baked thoughts. I want to encourage
and contribute, not attack or criticize. Sorry
about that.


Makana,

It's okay if things get stirred up.  I think poking people where they're comfortable is a productive use of a list.   We don't all have to be encouraging of everything anyone else comes up with.

I was thinking about the chess analogy, and the points worked as an analogy really well, as far as immediate expenditure, but I had some other thoughts.  That kind of money isn't spent on a beginning chess player, only a small percentage of the best.  Gamers have to lay out maybe $25 just to get in the game sometimes.  (Unless they hang out with a group of people who each can contribute a dozen cards to design them a deck, which does happen for sure.)  

And the chess analogy looked back upon ten years later will have less detritus than years of CCG (collectible card game) or miniatures gaming.  On the other other hand, that detritus does sell on e-bay.

My kids used to love getting new Pogs.  It gave them joy, frenzied delight, visions of electric sugarplums.  Now there are ziploc bags of pogs in boxes here and there.  Someday some younger kid not yet born now is going to have a GREAT few hours going through those, claiming the best as a new treasure, putting most back in the bags as weird old stuff, and a few will probably make it a hundred years into the future to be oddities in some future person's collection of antiques.  

How evil is that?  

It is odd, but it's not immoral.

I was indignant when I was in college and a friend from a wealthy family bought her mother a miniature flyswatter (dollhouse size) for $5.  I was from a poor family, and in the early 1970's $5 was, for me, a lot of money.   My friend defended the purchase, saying it was art, and that her mom would really appreciate it.

I later saw her mom's dollhouse, and it was marvelous, funky, glorious, and will someday be in a museum for thousands to see.  I no longer begrudged her the fine-wire piece of flyswatter art.  Unfortunately, it had never been found at Christmas.  It was wrapped up miniaturely and fastened to another package and was lost without her mom ever having seen it.  

So was that a loss of $5 or a good lesson for me?  Here I am 27 years later still thinking about it.

Sandra