The book "The Material World" is a tour of different places in the world. The authors asked a family here and there to allow their belongings to be spread out on a lawn and photographed. I remember that some people in the nation of Mali, a Saharan land-locked nation of Africa, had very few possessions. A family from the US had many possessions.
Sometimes, our cooking and eating, maybe including some visiting guests, depletes our supply of forks or table knives. I don't remember a single time that we have needed more silverware (it's not really silver) and had to rush to re-wash some. Of course, we have never tested the limits of our capacities, either. We may have invited as many as 20 or 30 guests for a single event but not for a sit-down dinner. Our experiments with groups have led us more and more to a couple, maybe two couples. That size enables us to concentrate on the visitors and not spend all our time roaming around, refilling drinks.
I often make Lynn and me green tea with ginger and tumeric about 10 o'clock in the morning. I use tea bags from The Republic of Tea and a salad fork to fish the bag from the hot water. It also is a good implement for stirring ice into the tea, which I like so I can drink it all down right way. I realize that I can make do with a twig from the woods or a wooden stirring stick from a coffee bar.
I have had a chance to visit the Molly Brown house in Denver, Mount Vernon in Virginia and the Hearst Mansion in California. I walked through the royal yacht used by Queen Elizabeth and the Scottish dining room where Queen Victoria visited. Of course, if a famous person comes to visit, we want to lay out a good cloth on a good table, have good chairs and a good wine, good lighting, good service and good food. But the visits to famous abodes show me that fine art on the walls and gold-rimmed plates don't really add much to the event. Good hearts, good smiles, and good words are much more important.
