JUST THROW THEM AWAY!

Several years ago, as part of a garage cleaning frenzy (Parkinson’s has now  freed me of that particular malady), I had concluded that my practice of using Kodak slide carousels  for the purpose of long term storage of slides was not very smart. So, being a person who thinks of himself as being not ‘not smart’, I  transferred the slides to newly acquired storage boxes in anticipation of someday “doing something with my slides”. The remainder of my slides stayed in the familiar yellow Kodak boxes. I had been wondering what I was going to do with the now surplus carousels and I had concluded it would be a shame to deprive someone of the opportunity to own these ‘like new’ wonders of days past. I had what seemed a good idea – give them to the Goodwill store. I tried to do that without success. They informed me they had learned the hard way the truth of the matter – no one wanted Kodak carousels with the exception of the trashman. This is the point in my narrative where I confess to having vague fears of retribution action that would befall me if I did actually throw them away. The fears that I harbored turned out to be unjustified because nothing bad happened to me (that I know of – one never knows for sure) when I did throw them into the trash bin and they became somebody else’s problem.

Recently, I started the work associated with ‘doing something with my slides’. This ‘something’ entails transfering all my slides into archival storage boxes where they will await my scanning of each slide into a digital file where they will reside, in digital format,  for a long while. This enterprise frees up a lot of ‘useful’ yellow boxes that I will eventually have to deal with. Here is my problem: I am feeling the same vague fear of retribution that I experienced when I contemplated throwing away the carousels. Is this fear somehow related to the bad vibes I  feel when I use my digital camera? I hope this is not some kind of  universal, Kodak related, psychic backlash leftover from the loss of the film camera market because of  the advent of digital technology. But the bad vibes are easily dealt with by recounting to myself the many ways new, image related, tasks are accomplished with digital files. I have still yet to determine the fate of the yellow boxes. Its true, they are useful, so maybe I will find a good home for them.