Giving away little treasures

(Image: www.freeimages.co.uk)

Many of us are collectors. We put our treasures in lots of places, including beautiful boxes, and our blogs and hard drives. Today's post, under the "Spirit-Psych-Personal" label, features a number of small info-bits I found worth collecting for the past few months. The items include a "plug" for one of my old posts, brain research information, a funny YouTube video, a poem, and a beautiful image. I would be curious to learn whether any of my readers are collectors of the same widely varying kinds of "stuff." The links:

1. Compliments - "Confessions of a Collector" - Freeze.com plug link of 1/10/07. The Freeze link is broken because I moved this post to my other blog (correctly linked at the beginning of this item). We collectors are like that. We have a hard time throwing anything away, even if it is broken. So we usually put it in a box marked "Repair" until that rainy day comes to fix stuff. Today is that rainy day.
2. Things that make me laugh - YouTube's Joleen comedy video: Endearing "Joleene Sugarbaker" lives in a trailer park. This video rates five big stars for "her" recipe demo of Circus Peanut Jello. By the way, I also collect recipes. Joleen's will not be added to my collection, as "she" isn't the best cook in the park.
3. Scientific oddities that fascinate - As a retired psychotherapist who specialized in dream work, brain and sleep science is still one of my areas of interest. I kept this article from MyWayNews about a sleep study on odor & memory. Scientists were able to improve people's memory by adding the scent of a rose to the subjects' experimental experience. To quote from the story, "What happened? Anyone who's ever gotten a whiff of a particular odor and flashed back to an emotional memory - grandma's apple pie, say - knows that scent and memory can be intertwined."
4. Poetry of all kinds - The Reaction -- by Michael J.W. Stickings blog post by "Heraclitus," titled, "Friday afternoon poem." For us pet lovers it is an absolutely heart wrenching piece. I was moved by it enough to add it to my collection of poignant stuff.
5. Beautiful images -I have albums full of photos, my best photography framed for my walls, and dozens and dozens of beautiful photos from Webshots computer screen-savers. These images include a number from the world of astronomy. Cosmology is the study of the universe. People who spend a lot of time looking through telescopes often remark on the beauty of what they see. Astronauts have the same experiences. I am a space "junkie," a fan of NASA, a science fiction reader and a photographer. Thus NASA's website feature titled, "Image of the day," is right up my alley.

To quote this very romantic NASA writer's description,

"The Seven Sisters, also known as the Pleiades, seem to float on a bed of feathers in a new infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Clouds of dust sweep around the stars, swaddling them in a cushiony veil.
The view is quite different from the usual observation of these stars in the western sky. Right now, the famous family of stars is "stepping out" in the evening skies with a very bright and dazzling Venus. During the period from around April 10 to 13, the Pleiades shine like a cluster of diamonds just above Venus. On April 19, the crescent moon will join the party, sliding between Venus and the Pleiades for a special viewing.
For more information, read The Seven Sisters Pose for Spitzer - and for You!
Image credit: NASA"

Collectors must inevitably discard stuff. I have a hard time throwing something into the trash, because I am a "child of the Depression" who grew up in the country where we didn't waste stuff. I would much rather repurpose it, regift it, or give it away to someone who can use it. So, today I have cleaned out my "Holding Box" draft in the Blogger dashboard. I feel so good now. Enjoy, everybody!
Technorati tags, collected from their "Top 100" list: random thoughts art and photography blog hobbies my life personal thoughts
My “creativity and dreaming” post today at Good Second Mondays is about examining one's assumptions.