I'm still looking for the owner's manual that I know is around here somewhere. I've seen it, but I can't find the file it might be in. Or the shelf. I've found a lot of other stuff, things that needed sorting or filing or shredding. So while I'm still aiming at boxing the copier today, I have not assembled everything I know can go with it. The more stuff, the better, especially when it includes instructions. The box is history, but I've found one that will work.

I came across a ton of papers that were carefully gathered while I was working on my master's thesis, and I always thought I might do more with them later. But as an independent scholar (occasionally now) I find I'm not interested in keeping up or following through with that material. I specialized in American Indian literature in English, as a way to get a look at environmental attitudes from outside the dominant culture. And I did that. But I find that the infighting in the field of AI lit is so fraught with politics and bad feelings that I have lost interest. I do like the environmental direction, so I am going to go through and sort the items I might use and make a huge stack of those I won't. I suppose I could donate them to the English Dept, but in these day and age many of these things are available in a PDF version. (I helped in the conversion of putting some scarce essays from an early American Indian lit journal online- it was a useful thing to do and I don't regret it.)

I suppose we all hit these points where we realize that something we spent a lot of time on was useful at the time, taught us lessons we use now, but the bulk of the material is no longer useful.

I'm still looking for that copier brochure, but it was in the same closet with a lot of grad school stuff. That's how I ended up on this detour. Another thing I did this afternoon is set up a conspicuous file in my computer documents for collecting information that is on pieces of paper that I'd like to discard. I can either scan the papers or write down the address or phone number in question.

SRS