Stuff

George Carlin's classic comedy routine, "A Place for My Stuff" (5:09) is satire at its best--outrageously funny while saying something serious about our behavior.

"The Story of Stuff" is also a video satire, by Annie Leonard--"a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns . . . . [that] exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues."

NPR commentator Daniel Schorr offers this short commentary (2:05) on Princess Diana and Mother Teresa ("Saint of the Gutter, Saint of the Media")--both of whom died the same week. What do you see as the connection between this commentary and the points made by Carlin and Thoreau?

The Nova web site portrays five families from the 1995 book, A Material: A Global Family Portrait, a book that posed families from around in the world standing in front of their houses with their possessions.

Here's the Website from John Freyer's 2002 project, All My Life for Sale.

Ellen Kushner’s WGBH program Sound and Spirit offers a wide-ranging, weekly musical tribute to a single theme. Here is the playlist for her show on stuff--click here to listen (59:00).

Musings

• Annie Leonard's video, "The Story of Stuff," is clearly a form of propaganda, although a form that some of us (at least those who sympathize with her larger point) may not especially object to. What do you feel makes her video so effective?
  
  
• Describe what you see as the most important connection between any two of these pieces.
  
  
• Use of these pieces as the basis for a story of STUFF in your own life.