Is there a Genie in the brass lamp?

Autumn  2013

A few summers ago, a few class mates sat around the table.  We talked about all the stuff we had that belonged to parents, grandparents, and probably even farther back.  The problem is if you have one set of parents, two sets of grandparents, and heaven help us all, if we have grandparents and aunts and uncles we don't even know about--or at least don't know they have STUFF!

If you are clueless about that I am talking about, then, you don't have three sets of glasses and four sets of silver plate the next generation doesn't seem to want.  They don't want to hand wash fine china that you MAY NOT put in the microwave.  They don't want to wash silver plate which is not dish machine safe. 

They don't want to know the story about Uncle Harry taking a bite out of the stemmed glass ware or Uncle Otto doing the same with a salad plate.  They don't care if Father promised Mother before the family gathered for dinner that IF a piece did get broken, it would be replaced.  The beauty of it all is all of it was open stock; it was an era when one could buy by the piece or eaches.

None of the items I am talking about are that old, sixty plus, I suppose.

Yet, interestingly enough a piece from the pass did get passed along recently.  It was a thirteen pound brass lamp from the mid sixties.  We had taken it from Mother's house in 2002 when she died but thought it much to tall for our needs.  It needed a corner table with seating on both sides.  I should be a duel use lamp.  (After all that is what it had always been--duel lighting between two sofas, or davenports as mother called them).

Now you can say what ever you want about Facebook or other social media as well as phones with cameras or IPADS with cameras but somehow it communicates more or less that one would like or in some cases not want.  Yet when a family member posted a picture taken with her phone of her new sofas, I needed to take a picture with my IPAD to send to her EMAIL account so she could look at the lamp and decide if she wanted it.  But I had to snail mail a picture of her at 45 weeks with her Dad sitting on the sofa with the lamp in the back ground so she could see the original shade.

And so the 100 dollars set aside for birthday became:

$53.02 for wrap, ship, and insurance
 47.00  for lamp shade

That works out!  She is forty-seven this birthday!
Two cents is NOT over budget. 

The question remains, is there a Genie in the lamp?