Pinning up my life of quiet desperation

Reading my last post, I realize I must sound very materialistic. Well, I am unabashedly materialistic, but I don’t think I’m half as bad as most people.  How do I know?  Because I am not an avid Pinterest user.

I keep getting invitations to join the damn site.  My first thoughts were:

1. Pinterest?  What’s next, Ibsenest?*

2. Put up scads of photos of things I covet but can’t have?  How uplifting.

3. How does this thing make money? Oh my, they admit they don’t have a clue. How very…21st century.

Of course eventually I succumbed to the Pinterest hive mind.  You know, I used to read Thoreau and Emerson in my youth, and their essential message is “Make, not buy.”  So I feel a bit unclean.

But then again, when I checked Walden out of the library many years ago, the granola-eating, Birkenstock-wearing university librarian said: “Thoreau, ugh.”

*Seriously, how do you pronounce this name? Is it Pin-ter-est, or is it Pin-tress?