Culture vulture

Free market system
A few weeks back someone contacted Culture Vulture with a message that based on my title alone I should be familiar with the Freecycle organization. So I did a little checking, and according to its Web site: “The worldwide (!) Freecycle Network is made up of many individual groups across the globe. It’s a grassroots movement of people who are giving (getting) stuff for free in their own towns. Each local group is run by a local volunteer moderator (them’s good people). Membership is free. For more information visit Freecycle.org.” So I signed up for the daily digest of messages and have been watching as all sorts of things, from firewood to manual typewriters to baby clothes, have been offered to and taken by my fellow list members.

The list works wonderfully in its simplicity. Say you are a member and you’ve recently had all the old windows in your 1940s house replaced by those space-age, double-pane wonders that block out street noise and increase the efficiency of your heating and air-conditioning by a fairly significant percentage. If the guys who took out your old windows did a good job you now have 20 or more big, wooden-framed panes of glass that some enterprising gardener with carpentry skills could transform into a sweet little greenhouse or cold frame. Such was our case, and within two days of posting the offer a couple of our fellow Freecyclers had come by with a pickup truck and hauled away the whole stack of windows to put them to a far, far better use than leaning against the garage wall providing habitat for a few spiders and wayward snails.

In short, Culture Vulture suggests that if you have a tendency to collect stuff you end up wondering what to do with and occasionally just want to get rid of something without the hassle of a yard sale or trip to the landfill, then joining Freecycle is well worth considering. There are few better feelings than passing something along to someone who will be happy to put it to use, and the Freecycle system is designed to facilitate exactly that sort of transaction.

C. Owsley Bob says check it out at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ChicoFreecycle.

Recycled tunes

1. “God Save the Queen,” Motorhead

2. “Born Under a Bad Sign,” Cream

3. “Summertime Blues,” The Who

4. “Are You Experienced,” Devo

5. “It’s a Man’s World,” the Residents