Being an Article

I experienced a little notoriety today as I was the subject in an article on ewaste in the local paper. Anyone that's been to my basement knows I'm a bit of a packrat. But, I'll let you read the article and be assured that I will only dispose of my ewaste via a recycler--not the county dump--though this by no means assures good things will happen as this cautionary tale relays.

But I did want to talk to you a bit about being the subject of a news article. I volunteered for this, so there was no big surprise in the article. The newspaper solicited people willing to talk about their collection of obsolete electronics and I was happy to take part. Shortly after volunteering on line, I was contacted by Hallie Woods via email and she arranged to call and interview me. I assumed she'd be talking to a number of people and take a variety of pics for the article--bad assumption. She sent Rich Abrahamson over to shoot my electronics last Saturday. He showed up and re-interviewed me, filling in some background about ewaste, why I had so much equipment, etc and then we descended to our basement (which I jokingly call "The Pit of Despair".) I didn't stage anything--there are "spare parts", obsolete computers, keyboards, CD drives, etc scattered throughout my basement, but Rich settled on the "monitor table" as being the best photo-op. This is a table full of old CRTs that either aren't working or are so archaic that they have no value--and in fact are pretty expensive to operate. He then had the idea of working me into the picture....

This morning, I check the newspaper, and voila..... I'm an article. It's kind of a surreal feeling--and I'm quite happy that I didn't get into the newspaper some other way.