In our neck of the woods there are quite a few of those “take a book, leave a book” mini-libraries.
Those I have looked in are typically full of books that make it obvious why they are sitting out there instead of on someone’s bookshelf. Not judgmental, of course not – but not to my taste.
I thought about what I would put into such a library myself.
We have a lot of magazines, long-unneeded children’s books, ancient tomes – some from my childhood, some from our daughter’s childhood. My wife and I have kept almost all the illustrated children books because some are really good stories and still fun to read. Sometimes I miss the daily end of day family reading hour.
A few months ago our microwave decided to give up the ghost and become an inert box (except for the clock which kept running as if nothing had gone wrong). I have disassembled a few microwaves and there really isn’t much to them – a big transformer, the magnetron which generates the microwaves and the console. Oh yeah, the rotating table – though my first Kenmore microwave decades ago stirred the microwaves around and let the contents sit still – seems like the right way to do things, but you have to lay out the cash for a commercial grade appliance (not at all cheap).
Side note here – on microwaves with the touch panel controls, the clock on that panel will work by just hooking it up to power. The rest of the box doesn’t matter – the clock will run and the buttons beep just fine.
Here I was with a perfectly non-working microwave on my hands and an idea in my mind. What would it take to convert this appliance into one of those street-side libraries?
The first thing I decided was that the clock was going be running – whatever that required (which wasn’t all that much) and it was going to look different than all the others.
After a month or so of intermittent work, it was read for its debut.
Notice that the clock is running. Sadly, my second trick did not work – the door light broke somewhere along the way.
It has been amusing to watch people do double -takes at a microwave. Some asked if it was a mailbox – now that would have been interesting but would not meet Postal Service regulations. More than a few times a car coming down our street stopped, backed up so someone could take a second look an/or a picture.
But I was not done! It took awhile for the next thing to come along – lights. I had a couple rolls of LED light strips and a bunch of strange looking retired CPAP hoses. It was supposed to be sort of hair – but once I built the “head” it was clear they were the tendrils of Medusa.
After a bit of refitting, the tendrils were installed and lit up.
But not done yet! The tendrils have been updated with internal structure to allow them to be posed. And a WARNING sign added (picture to add).
So what’s the closer on this one? This microwave told me to give it a second life – a public one for anyone who walks by. We have taken books from Medusa and out them on our bookshelves. Slowly our inventory of long-outgrown stuffed animals are being re-homed.
“Take a book, leave a book” – Community. So needed during these plague years. Not much in and of itself, but just wait until we finally retire our 30+ year old Kenworth clothes dryer!
Shouter to Dead Parrots 