It's pretty difficult to imagine what it must of been like living in turn of the century Austria. Not this century. No, it's pretty easy to imagine the Austria of 2000, a discoteque and lederhosen stores every block. People drinking coffee. Mountains. I'm referring to early 20th century, specifically Vienna. Austrians would influence the world immensely over the next few generations. Sigmund Freud was finding out how truly flawed we are, yet not finding out that most male's don't hate our Dad's because Oedipus; Our Dads are just dicks sometimes and so are we. Adolf Hitler was probably getting the shit kicked out of him because the other 12 year olds at school were wise enough to know what complete abomination he was. Mozart was dead but still cool, and a dude named Erwin Perzy was trying to make light bulbs brighter by surrounding them with water.*
*Because I'm a bad writer, this won't matter till much later.
The world we live in bums me out daily. Sometimes hourly. I know it's been much worse, but I feel like our "leaders" are too stupid and corrupt to adequetely represent the interests of their electorate and as a result we are suffering. I feel like the Golden Rule is something parents haven't been teaching their kids for about 25 years or longer. I think we don't respect each other or our surroundings. Tonight however, I think I'm getting a handle on one of these carmudgen cliches that bothers me so.
Today I brought some Christmas stuff home for my adorable holiday-loving wife from a wonderful antique bookstore which had closed and was giving away it's remaining inventory.
This place had officially been going out of business for about a month. I had never really been a regular customer because their stuff is really nice, old and fucking expensive. But a month ago, I noticed a sign in the window, "Store Retiring, Everything 50% Off." This wonderful antique bookstore now received this cheap bastard's undivided attention. I went in, saw several antique books and notepads I adored. I bought them and had lunch with a friend. I went back after finishing my bran muffin and saw some jewelry I knew the previously mentioned adorable wifey would enjoy. We had an anniversary coming up, so I bought them. At the checkout counter earlier I had noticed a beautiful miniature Complete Works of Shakespeare published in 1873.
A little backstory: I have wanted a complete works since I was 15. I even asked for a set for Christmas that year. I didn't get one come Christmas morning, but guess who did? My sister. (She helps manage a Marriott now. Way to know your kids, Mom.) How much irony goes into making the first Complete Works I own to be too fragile open and too small to read? That has to be at least 9 Irony.
But I digress....
So having dropped over $800 in there a month prior, today I felt perfectly fine vulturing through what this little formerly wonderful antique bookshop had left inside it. All the antique books were gone, but they had some other neat stuff. I'm a scavenger, so my day was made as soon as I walked in, but I walked out even happier. I got some brass Duck head bookends, a great pillow, a hodge-podge of postcards, a cool tiny christmas tree, a Father Christmas doll and 5 tiny snow globes. 5 snow globes. Not incredibly ornate, almost 2 inches in diameter with a plastic base but with detailed and beautiful depictions of different Christmas themes inside and a trademark on the bottom.The glass enclosure is hand blown. The difference between them and the standard, made in china snow globe you see in Big Lots is tiny and infinite at the same time.
Remember that whole Austria at the turn of the century bit? It's now much later.
Remember our pal Edwin Perzy? Our buddy the Perz was trying to make light bulbs brighter by putting reflective particles in water surrounding a light bulb. Didn't work. However he did notice that those reflective particles made a cool effect when settling to the bottom of the glass. An effect which reminded one of falling snow.
So flash forward to today- about 110 years later, when I acquired 5 small snow globes bearing the Perzy family trademark. HE FUCKING INVENTED THE SNOW GLOBE. How many of you scoundrels bought cars from the same company that invented them?
NONE OF YOU SCOUNDRELS.
In the strange and fantastical life of Me, this was an astonishing and wonderful event. And what these previous 5 paragraphs are about, and my lamentation, is this:
Those 5 snowglobes are almost completely worthless.
It's a shocking conclusion to me. But I asked myself, How much could I sell them for at a garage sale? At the antique bookstore they have the ideal demographic to buy unique crafts. They had sold these things for about $36 each. The world wide web has them for sale at a similar price. What would the angry Eastern European guys who argue while walking down my street everyday pay for them? How about my meth head neighbor? Or even a trained garage sale enthusiast? $5? $3? Yet how many people will pay the same 3-5 dollars for a cheap, chinese piece of shit at Wal Mart this year? Thousands, Tens of Thousands.
And that's why we are completely and totally royally fucked up.
Technology has made us lazy and stupid. Somewhere after the industrial revolution, in between the developement of the microwave oven and the iPhone, we stopped giving a rat's ass about the shit we throw in our houses and more specifically who made it. We lost the proper way of valuing our possesions. Before assembly lines, what mattered most about goods was a) who made it. b) did they know what they were doing, c) how did they make it and d) what quality materials was it made of?.
All of these things were apparent in the value of the item and we were better off for it. Creativity and Craftsmanship meant many years in business, perhaps beyond your mortal life itself. People respected all of the effort, talent and dedication it meant to create what we put in our houses. The value of item was not just based on the result but also on the process of which it was made. Think about today. We admire certain creators. Look at Steve Jobs. But we don't respect who makes our shit. They're faceless and unimportant. A snow globe is a snow globe. But it's not.
My snowglobes tell a story. They remind me that human life has flourished because of creation and craftsmanship. They will be just as wonderful in 100 years because they're made well, by people who value and care about their work. The cheap ones from Big Lots probably won't. It's completely plastic and probably filled with a more buoyant than water space chemical which will break down the oil based polymers it's made of and destroy a sea turtle hatchery.
They won't tell stories, they'll get thrown out and will end up in a landfill or incinerator or a turtle beach and we will have wasted more of the limited resources this planet has given us. Because they're shitty products and why should we care about shitty products?
It feels like we as a society are a hungry monster devouring the fruits of of the labor of faceless slaves who we don't care about because we will never see them. Who do we value? Currently it seems we value bankers. People who make money by...making nothing except money. No stories in making nothing. No progress.
Perhaps I'm wrong. I'm Southern Californian born and raised. I hope it's better out there. I hope folks in older, simpler parts of the country still value the little amazing and wonderful crafts we've created as people, not as hands on an assembely line. Heck, maybe some kind soul out there would pay $36 bucks a pop for my snow globes.
That'd be about $180, which would be sweet. I could use another Xbox.
