When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
-- Steven Wright --
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-- Steven Wright --
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I have a lot of silver. Not like big valuable silver tea services or trays or tableware, just bits scattered around, stuff I bought at antiques auctions, like silver trimmed candy dishes, pitchers, silver knobs on walking sticks, stuff like that. The big thingy (urn?) I bought in Morocco is covered with thin straps of silver, and I have ancient brass or copper mid-eastern urns that have traces of the original silver on them. I have a lot of silver jewelry, antique stuff plus things I bought in Morocco, Thai sliver, torques from southeast Asia, handmade stuff from craft fairs. The older stuff isn't sterling, of course.
It all lived quite happily in the house upriver. Even the old stuff. Tarnish grew gradually, requiring a touch-up polishing maybe every three or four years.
I've noticed that as I've brought things down here, they've been tarnishing badly, rapidly. My Miao/Hmong neckrings are almost black. Within three months in this house, most of the silver jewelry becomes unwearable.
Is it something wrong with the house?
I researched. It's sulfur dioxide in the air that tarnishes silver. SO2 is one of the more dangerous components of air pollution. It comes from the burning of sulfur-containing fossil fuels, like by power plants and automobiles, and from home heating fuel oils, and can cause severe lung disease and other pulmonary problems like asthma.
I've heard that NJ is the asthma (and autism) capitol of the US.
Hmmmm.
Also apparently the silver rotting capitol.
.
3 comments:
Ah, another joy of living in the Great Garden State. When you go across the bridge, haven't you noticed the power plants and factories that sit on the banks of the Raritan River?
Really, there are good things about living here. It's just that it takes so long to figure out what they are.
Also, I live in the area of Jersey known as "Cancer Alley". Isn't that fun?
If you're on the Jersey Turnpike at night just north of the bridge to Staten Island, there are hundreds of thousands of huge bright lights spreading everywhere for several square miles, especially by the power companies and the shipyards and container areas. Lights like at a stadium. Not a speck of darkness anywhere. Why? Seems like a waste of resources and power, generation of which is a source of pollution.
A few of the good things: twice a week free garbage collection, free leaf and yard waste collection, free recycle collection, good street cleaning, free auto inspection, free mulch. Of course it's not really free. My real estate taxes are 60% higher for significantly less house and land, so you might say I'm paying $3,000 more per yr for services that cost me $300/yr in NY.
All the lights are on because, I'm guessing, they have people working there around the clock, doing dangerous stuff.
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