My grandfather had a 2-1/2 foot cement statue of St. Francis in his garden, as did my father, my Uncle Sam and Uncle Robert, so it’s something of a family tradition. But living in California I haven’t had a garden except for a few years in the early 1980’s when I rented a house in Menlo Park that had a backyard. The only thing I was able to grow reliably was bamboo (a prior tenant had planted it) which I attacked periodically with a shovel (and later Roundup) to little avail. But I didn’t buy a statue of St. Francis because I was renting and a long way from owning a house.

Once I started working I began to accumulate knicknacks for my desk. In my first few jobs it was mainly functional items: a paper calendar (this was before the PC revolution put a calendar on the desktop on your desktop), pen holders, a ruler. Over time, and different jobs, vendors would deliver coffee cups and I had quite a collection: “the battle for the desktop” I would quip to them when they would give me a new one.

In the early 90’s I had an office with a door. I would keep the lights off and set my screen colors to green letters on a black screen, it was very peaceful. My boss looked in one day and saw two glowing green eyes staring out of the dark office at him and asked “what is it you do in your Bat Cave exactly?” I still use Emacs with green letters on a black screen to do most of my writing.

I was out shopping with my wife at the Ave Maria Community Book Store and I saw a 1 foot tall plaster statue of St. Francis. It suddenly seemed like a good idea for my office. In part because it made me feel closer to my family, and in part because I erroneously ascribed the Serenity Prayer to St. Francis:

God, grant me
the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
the wisdom to know the difference.

When it was actually written by Reinhold Niebuhr. This was the early 90’s at Cisco (when the Internet Gold Rush was just starting), and every time I looked at that statue it reminded me to have patience with the things I couldn’t change and to focus on the things that I could.

I was in Weird Stuff Warehouse looking for some refurbished computer cables and I came across a red keyboard button marked PANIC. I had to have one, and actually bought a half dozen. One for my keyboard, one or two to keep, and a few to “install” on the keyboards of folks who would come to me with a complaint about the computer systems, “Here, let me upgrade your system with this PANIC button option, press it anytime you get into trouble. I use mine all the time.” Weird Stuff no longer seems to carry it but these folks do.

A few years later after I was shopping with my wife in a craft store–the things we do for love–and stumbled upon a tipped over pail of milk..for a doll’s house. Again, a reminder of another good aphorism “No use crying over spilled milk.” Something I was wont to do (and am still so inclined). I keep that one perched on my desk as well.

So…what “icons” do you have on your desktop?