Tripod: Messages from the Staff

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value="http://tr2.freeshop.com/pg00025.htm">-& Sports <option value="http://tr2.freeshop.com/pg00029.htm">Completely <option value="http://tr2.freeshop.com/pg00029.htm">-FREE Offers </select></td> </tr> </table> </form> </center> </td> <td valign="TOP" width="100%">   <p> <p> <img src="../../../tripod/letters/img/www_subdomain/letter.top.gif" alt="from tripod..with love.." width="401" height="124" border="0"> <br> <p><blockquote> <b>From Ethan Zuckerman, R&D Director:</b><p> When people have experiences that bring them to tears, they often refer to these times as "moving experiences". I suspect that this little quirk of language reveals something basic about human nature: we don't move very well. That is to say, put a person's possessions into boxes, pack them into a truck, and you've got a good chance of turning him into a huddled, convulsing, gibbering, nervous wreck.<p> Pardon me while I gibber for a few moments.<p> Through some twist of fate, I'm moving both my office and my apartment this weekend. It's moving season in Williamstown: this is a college town, and in the space of about two weeks, half the population of the town puts all their belongings in boxes and leaves in U-Hauls, pickup trucks and rickshaws in an academic procession of summer refugees. Even the new graduates from Williams face a tight timetable: toss their caps in the air at noon, get out of their rooms by 5PM, when security comes around and fines students who aren't completely vacated. Now that my student roommates have moved on to seek their fortunes in bustling NYC and only slightly-less-bustling Des Moines, <a href="/">Rachel</a> and I are moving across town into a new apartment which we'll rent until moving season next year.<p> So, instead of setting up a beach chair outside the dorms, tossing back a few brews and watching hungover, weeping seniors struggle to stuff all their belongings into their cars while exchanging final farewells with their classmates and fending off anxious parents, desperate to hit the road, I'm packing a U-Haul of my own. As an added feature of the move, our earliest possible move-in date and time coincides with our latest possible evacuation date. <p> <p> It's also intern season at Tripod. When Bruce vetoed my plan to suspend interns and their workstations from the ceiling by flexible steel cables, I knew that it was time to find some new office space. So <a href="/">Nate</a>, Matt (the first of our interns to arrive), and I have set out onto the uncharted territories of northern Water Street, territory henceforth only occupied by the few, the brave... the business folks. Yes, R+D now has its own fiefdom at 173 Water Street, two doors down from <a href="/">Bo</a>, <a href="/">Kara</a>, <a href="/">Colleen</a>, and <a href="/">Bruce</a>. We've noticed some strange things happening since we've moved in - low murmuring voices late at night that seem to be saying, "Think of the advertisers...think of the advertisers...." Then, the other day, Nate's head began spinning around, as if his neck had become a swivel joint, and he began chanting "IBM, up 3/4 to 118, Macromedia, down 1/4 in heavy trading to 42 5/8..." If this continues, we may need to seek professional help.<p> The consequence of these two moves is that everything I own, professional and private, is in a box. Somewhere. The second upshot is that there are a hell of a lot of boxes. So many boxes that I find myself spending a lot of time thinking about "stuff".<p> I've got a lot of stuff. A 17 foot U-Haul full, to be exact. A few years ago, I would have had a hard time 'fessing up to owning all this stuff. No more - the trauma of moving all I own has brought me to a new state of enlightenment about the nature of stuff. <a href="../../../www_subdomain/tripod/letters/stuff.html">A Grand Unified Theorem of Stuff</a>, if you will. For those who prefer the theorem abstract, lifestages can be marked by accumulation of stuff. The more you have, and choose to take with you, the less often you're likely to leave. I believe I've reached a threshhold, long past vagabond and first year student, yet not quite estate sale. I'm somewhere between renter and mortgage holder, and that there's no sign of halting on the continuum. It gives one pause.<p> So I paused. And yet, after all the trauma, the yearning for space and nesting, the sense of stability that the amassing of stuff can bring, I cannot actually see our new office space for the sea of cardboard boxes. Bruce be damned - I'm heading out to Wal-Mart to price steel cable. I promise photos after we hoist the first intern.<p> <ul>-- <a href="/">Ethan Zuckerman</a>, Director of Research and Development (6/3/96)</ul> <hr width="330"> <p> Read more "Letters from Tripod" in the <a href="../../../www_subdomain/tripod/letters/archive.html">archive</a>. <p> <hr width="330"> </blockquote> <br> </td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table> </body>