Curate: (v) to take charge, organize or select content for presentation or publication

You don’t have to wait for spring cleaning.

Any good sunny afternoon will do.

Drive down a residential street and you will find things that people have pushed, shoved and even carried from their houses, sitting next to the road—as trash, ready to be toted away.

Some of it has earned its relegation to the Kingdom of Trash. But other items are just portions of the household that aren’t used anymore—discarded as junk.

You can pick up some treasures. I have found myself doing that.

I curate.

It doesn’t make me a curator, but in this throw-away generation, I find myself cruising the neighborhoods of Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and the like, finding huge piles of values and ideas that used to be regarded as beautiful, or at least workable, sitting in the Out Box, declared spam.

Civility used to be applauded. But now it seems anemic in the presence of the onslaught of aggressive accusation.

You can go anywhere on Facebook and find a trashed version of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you—and find that it still polishes up quite nicely.

One by one, we have taken institutions and ideas that have lasted for millennia and made sure they were gone from memory—by next Tuesday.

Things like sympathy, empathy, poetry, sentiment, reflection, journaling.

Even record albums and CDs are disappearing.

Books look like dinosaurs marching to the mark-down bins.

Part of this is being done in ignorance, but most of it is the influence of negativity, wishing to wipe out sensitivity by deeming it weak and stupid.

I suppose you can join the crowd and stack your shit for flushing.

Or you might want to take a second to wonder if simply enjoying something for its feeling–which has existed since Eden and now is considered passé on Instagram—would be worth tucking it away like an old sweater that is ready to give warmth on the next very chilly morning.