Museletter the 121st

I still have every computer I've ever owned — all the way back to my 1984 Apple Macintosh 128k… every computer except one. And it's kind of a funny story, but before I explain, you have to understand several things about the early 1990s:

First, back then it was considered fringe to be a die-hard Mac fan like me, as pundits were constantly announcing that Apple was about to fail. Second, there was no internet, so we Mac weirdos would regularly pour over print magazines, such as MacUser, MacWeek, and Macworld (which later listed me as a contributing editor). And third, when someone asked industry expert Andy Ihnatko what we should do with our outdated, squat, little all-in-one Macs that so many of us had grown emotionally attached to, he jokingly responded that people should just turn them into aquariums.

But his flippant response turned into a bit of a meme, and people actually started doing it. In fact, companies were spun up to help people convert their Macs into "Macquariums." They would place brightly-colored ads in those glossy magazines, and one day, I thought, "well, what else am I going to do with my precious Mac SE?" So I packaged it up and shipped it off…

And it disappeared forever. The company was either fraudulent or incompetent or just went out of business without telling their customers, and I never heard from them again.

So now all my old Macs (and I have a lot of them) are strategically and cleverly used as shelf-weights. I know it's not rational to hold on like this, but losing that one Mac SE really stung; I don't want to lose any more.

Fun with Words

I don't know why, but I'm fascinated by homonyms — words that sound the same (and may even be spelled the same) but mean something very different. Even better, combining homonyms in a sentence brings me a bizarre sense of delight. For example, the ridiculous line: "It's good for the soul to press a sole sole to the sole." (In other words: it's nourishing to press a single fish to the bottom of your foot.)

Here's another: The fact that we're legally allowed to hold regular meetings in which we learn spelling and grammar is a "write right rite right." (Or a right to write-right rite.) Right?

There are so many possibilities for silliness! Does eating dough make does doze? He'll heal his heel. When you sat, sick, in front of a fireplace last winter, your flu flew up the flue.

Can you make fun homonymnal sentences with these words:

• cord (rope), cord (wood), chord (music), cored (like an apple)
• bear (pain), bear (animal), bare (naked), bare (necessities)
• they're, their, there
• wholly, holy, holey
• mete, meat, meet
• pare, pair, pear

And you could go wild with words like "run," "go," "set," or "stand" (each of those words has hundreds of definitions in the dictionary)!

Rethinking Labor

Back in the '80s, I visited a retreat center in the far North of Scotland, called the Findhorn Foundation. Most people think of Findhorn as a spiritual community, or hippy commune, but what I remember best about my short time there was their dedication to and appreciation for work.

They had a saying there: "work is love in action." It's probably important to add that this doesn't necessarily mean you love the specific job you're doing; just that love is what's behind the work. Perhaps it's love of family or fun, or love of some grand purpose that the work supports.

So on Monday (Labor Day in the United States), take a moment to remember that the work we do, no matter how hard, is not just work… there's a "why" behind it, a purpose. That work, the labor, is love in action.

Thank You

I enjoy sharing my musings… and I enjoy hearing yours! Please share this newsletter with a friend, follow me on LinkedIn, and send me feedback. You can always reach me at david@creativepro.com