Well now, Mrs. Smith, I think these are reasonable questions.
When the prairie archaeologist was here last summer, surveying the place, he mentioned one time that "more than 99%"--please notice the "more than"--of the stuff the sod house pioneers used 100 years ago, don't exist any more.
A lot of stuff has been preserved in museums and among family heirlooms, yes, but that's barely nothing compared with all that once existed.
I think that was mighty ecological of our forebears, to not pollute the earth, to not leave things around that take centuries, millenia, eons, to decay back to nature.
And here we have Grandma, with this microwave oven, this plastic, that's going to take 287,689,092 years to return to nature.
It takes one summer--a mere three months--for those used coffee filters that I toss out into the garden and meadows, to break down and return to nature.
Since I don't have or use a microwave oven, made with substantial plastic, I suspect I'm a better friend of the earth than Grandma is.
Maybe it has something to do with acknowledgement of God, which neither Grandma or the nocturnally foul one do--we're only in this time and place for a very short time, an infinistesimal time; what comes after is eternally more important.
But people like Grandma, and like the nocturnally foul one putting rubber things on his stairs to the basement, maybe they think they'll live in this time and place forever--or for at least 287,689,092 more years. Maybe it's their subconscious way of hoping that they'll live this life at least as long as the things they have and use here, because they're scared of extinguishment.