Re: [ARSCLIST] (sort of ^ ) What is a Milk Box ? (was Moving Sound Recording Collections)

["Steven C. Barr(x)" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marie O'Connell" <azile50@xxxxxxxxx>
> Back in NZ, just 4.6 years ago, I was still able to get milk in glass
> bottles.  You left your clean empty ones at the gate, with plastic tokens
> (purchased from the Milkman) and he would arrive in the mooing truck and
> leave you whatever kind off milk you wished.  This was eatablisned by the
> colour of the token.  He/she would then put the milk in a shaded area.
> Ofcourse, the empty bottles were cleaned and sterilized before being
> refilled.
> You could also get juices.  This practise remain today.  We kiwis call it
> 'recycling', something that the Governor in LA has asked the assistance of
> from NZ.
> It is cheaper to recycle than either destroy or try to throw away and fill
> up landfills with things that take many years to decompose.
> 
Well, here in "the Frozen Northland," virtually all houses built between
the early twenties and the mid-fifties had a two-doored compartment next
to the rear entrance, where the "milkman" could leave your milk order...
and you could then reach in, retrieve that and place it in the "icebox"
(in earlier days, this appliance needed ice...in later days it just
plugged into a wall socket...). About nine months out of the year, one
didn't have to worry about the milk spoiling (though in a few cases one
had to retreive it before it froze solid!). However, the "milkman" (were
there ever any "Milkladies?") has long since become history!

Now, anent your comments on "ecology"...sadly, more and more of our
actions and policies here in the XXI Jahrhundert seem to be headed in
the exact OPPOSITE direction!

For example, almost all of to-day's household devices (even TV sets!)
are designed in order to make repairing them effectively impossible!
They are labelled "Contains No User-Serviceable Parts!" and, sadly,
that is entirely true! In the XXI Jahrhundert, the cheapest way to
manufacture a device is to make it of a minimal number of permanently-
installed parts (microchips, IC's, usw...) and not worry about whether
that design makes it simple...or even POSSIBLE...to fix the dommed
thing should it quit working! It reduces the cost of manufacturing
them (x hours of Chinese prison labour = $N...)...BUT, when the device
suddenly ceases to perform its assigned function, and none of the
six or eight easily-accessible components are to blame...BANG it goes
into the local landfill, where its various poisonous-metal components
can leak into our ecology for the next few kilo-years!

I'm a convinced practicitioner of that FIRST "R"...re-use! I call things
I find in others' trash "Boulevard Surplus" (i.e. it was surplus to
somebody, so they put it out on the boulevard (Canadian term for the
grassy area between sidewalk & street). All my front-porch chairs,
my winter coats and quite a number of my T-shirts came therefrom...
and I'm not averse to redirecting other folks' discards to a thrift
store should they be appropriate.

Hey, when I was much younger, if your TV set acted up, you pulled
out all the tubes, took them down to a place that had a "tube tester,"
and checked them all until you found the offender! To-day, if your
TV set acts up, you drag it out to the curb for the garbage man and
go buy a newer, larger one...

Steven C. Barr