Oops

I just looked at my little box of toothpicks.  It says "made in China".  I guess that's the way of the world and a long, long way from Minnesota and Maine, but maybe we're saving a few trees.

This Humble Little Toothpick

We are surrounded by things, things that make life easier, more decorative, sometimes even things without which our lives would be pretty unbearable.  Autos make life easier; beautiful materials on drapes and bedspreads add color and warmth; living day to day without indoor toilets is pretty much unimaginable to those of us who are younger than ninety.

I sometimes think about all these things in my life-who invented them, designed them, built them, all these things we take for granted?

As I was engaging in my daily dental floss and toothpicking routine, I gazed at my little white round toothpick.  I could see variations in the color of the wood and I got to thinking about how this little toothpick, one of two hundred fifty in a little box that can be bought for $1.00 (give or take a few cents),  came to be.  What kind of tree gave up its body, its leaves and its

view of the sky so that I could clean my teeth with its remains?

Turning to the trusty internet, I found excerpts from a 2007 book "The Toothpick", by Henry Petroski, a professor of civil engineering and history at Duke University, who chronicles the history of this little item and in this process, shows the reader how the history of the toothpick is a paradigm of American manufacturing from idea to invention, mass production, marketing, and ultimately, success and failure in a global economy.

Archaeologists analyzing the skulls of Neanderthal man found grooves in their teeth and concluded that once man started eating meat, he needed something to get those annoying shreds out from between his teeth and chewed sticks, bone, ivory, shells, bird claws or walrus whiskers to remove them.  Graves in Italy and Switzerland were found with bronze tooth cleaning devices.  By the 17th Century, toothpicks were a luxury item, made from precious metals and set with gems.  While the wealthy used these exotic toothpicks, the common man generally whittled a stick to care for his dental needs.

But one Charles Forster, a New England chap who worked in his uncle's import-export business in Brazil, noticed that the natives had beautiful teeth and attributed them to their use of handcarved toothpicks.  Mr. Forster decided he could mass produce toothpicks and make a fortune.  He went back to New England, bought the rights to an invention that was capable of mass producing them and by 1870, he was churning out millions of toothpicks in one day.  (One log can produce one million toothpicks.)

But nobody was buying his toothpicks, as sticks were still readily available to be whittled.  So Mr. Forster went to Boston, hired Harvard students to dine at elite restaurants and had them demand wooden toothpicks at the end of their meals.  If none were available, the diners threatened not to return.  Restaurateurs had to comply with customer demands and started buying Mr. Forster's toothpicks when he visited the restaurants to sell them the next day. The rest, as they say, is history.

The uses for toothpicks have evolved.  The humble wooden toothpick still cleans our teeth.  But we have fancy plastic toothpicks with which to stab hors d'oeuvres,  wooden toothpicks with little papers hats on top to keep sandwiches together and hold olives in martinis and toothpicks are used to test baked goods for perfection before removing them from the oven.  

Alas, there is only one toothpick factory, Diamond, left in the United States.  American toothpicks are made of cleaned white birch but today, the cost of manufacturing them in the U.S. almost exceeds the sales price so the other brands we see are made in China and Southeast Asia of trees not as sturdy or white as the birch tree.

They say you can see the whole world in a grain of sand or maybe, in this case, in the humble toothpick. 

Driving Along in the Country

Somewhere along Colorado Highway 50 between Buena Vista and Gunnison, I came across the following sign:

"For Sale

400 Acres

Girten Land and Cattle Company"

So I wrote the following:

Dear Mr. Girten:

Can I buy the gold in the Aspen trees?

Can I buy the green in the new spring grass?

Can I buy the silver shadows of the branches

on new-fallen snow or

The diamond drops of dew on the morning's

First sunflower?

What are they worth?

Dear Ms. Starr, he replied:

A Glimpse and a Sigh

As  your car goes hurtling by.

Public and Private Places in Your Home

I once read that things in your home are superfluous if they don't have particular meaning to you. I have tried to take that advice to heart:  in my livingroom, the items on display on my large coffee table and on the end tables are special gifts, items that I have purchased at a particularly memorable time and place, family photo albums and books published by my daughter-in-law and son. Of course, you have to make allowances for the things that add a decorative touch or bring some kind of union (in color or shape or kind) into the chaos.    

On my bedroom dresser, there is an oval mirror (a wedding gift from 1964) that displays special little decorative things, each with a special meaning or message.

These are my "public spaces."  If people inquire as to the item or its origin, I'm happy to explain.

Now, let's go to the "private" places.  In the movies, there are frequent scenes depicting a house guest who is in the bathroom, opening up the medicine cabinet to quell his/her curiosity about their hosts or to look for an aspirin, antacid or band-aid.   In my book, these are violations of privacy; something we may suspect happens, but don't necessarily take that seriously.

If you have a nightstand with a drawer in it, open it.  You  may be quite surprised.  I decided to do just that today and was surprised by what the contents reveal about me:  "Snore Relief",  a leg cramps supplement, Tylenol PM, nail files, yellow markers, a collection of paper clips, a plastic dog my kids had many years ago, a collection of buttons that go with clothing long discarded, an old hand brace for dealing with tennis elbow, a note from a friend written in 1984 and ahem, some things even too private to mention.   

While I felt surprised, I shouldn't have.  As both a senior move manager and a geriatric case manager,  I have come across this same thing time and again-nightstand drawers with the most personal of things, some ancient and faded, others still necessary to get you through the night. 

It's up to you:  are you interested in discarding some of this stuff or at some level, is your nightstand drawer still one of your most private places.  Mine is.