Twist ties, e-sigs and curb enthusiasm

Dear Rachel,

As I talked to the bread man at City Market, he told me he delivers 7,000 loafs of bread a week to City Market and Albertsons in Durango. Wow. So, what are we to do with the twistys and clips? We recycle TVs, cans, glass … so your thoughts on a recycle day for twistys and clips, metal and plastic, a recycle plan for Durango. Lots of fun.

– Twistin’ the Night Away

Dear Twisted Sister,

I imagine that pieces as small as twist-ties and bread clips aren’t actually recyclable. They probably just gum up the works. But we can still lean into repurposing them! I don’t know how, exactly. I’ve moved a drawer full of twist ties through seven apartments now. But this is Durango! If anyone can make a piece of public art out of found bread-bag closures, art that will be subsequently vandalized in both good faith and bad, it is this town.

– Sealed tight, Rachel 

Dear Rachel,

How the heck is an e-signature a valid legally binding process? For some things you have to go pay someone $3 to watch you sign a document with a photo ID. Others, you could have literally anyone pick up your phone, type in your name and voila, you’ve just… bought a house? Signed a will? We talk about how bad e-cigs are, but e-sigs are the real sketchy deal. Unless you can explain it?

– John Hancocked

Dear X on the Line,

You tell me how it is any more sensical for an ape to take a little stick filled with a dark liquid, scribble some abstract symbols rendered even more abstractly on a flat piece of processed dead trees and then be societally bound to whatever the other apes agree that the other abstract symbols on the dead tree represent. It’s all bananas. Make any of it make sense for me, please! Because I put my name after a lot of nonsense that I sure hope is not binding in any way.

– Name (printed), X

Dear Rachel,

I’m truly amazed: if you put something at the curb, it will find a home. I really don’t understand where all this stuff goes. I know, landfills, but still, doesn’t it seem like everyone’s house ought to be bursting at the seams for all the stuff that gets picked up and disappeared from curbs across America?

– Into Thin Air

Dear Poof,

I have no idea where it all goes. It probably just erodes. One piece at a time, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, microplastics to our bloodstreams. It has to go somewhere, at least until jettisoning our trash into space becomes more feasible. We need a revolution, and we’re starting one. Just sign here – e-sigs are fine – and we’ll turn all your excess junk into twist-ties and bread bag clips. We promise.

– To the curb, Rachel