Yesterday morning, while doing what most of us do without much thought, I found myself wondering about something I had never really considered before—where did toilet paper come from?
Not the store. Not the brand.
I mean…where did the idea come from?
That question led me down one of those internet rabbit holes that start simple and end somewhere between history, human behavior, and things you probably didn’t really want to know.
Some say it was Joseph Gayetty, who first sold packaged sheets in the 1800s. Others point to Seth Wheeler, an Albany, New York inventor who patented the perforated roll—the version we all recognize today.
Seth Wheeler
So which one invented toilet paper?
Turns out…both did.
One introduced the product. The other made it practical.
And just like that, something as ordinary as a roll of toilet paper becomes a small story about innovation, convenience, and how ideas evolve over time.
But here’s what struck me more than anything.
Most of us never think about it.
We just expect it to be there.
Clean. Convenient. Ready to use.
Yet behind that simple roll is an entire system—trees, water, manufacturing, transportation, packaging, and waste. A quiet, invisible chain of decisions and resources that we rarely notice.
Until, of course…we do.
And maybe that’s the real point of this little thought.
Not toilet paper.
But how many parts of our daily lives are built on systems we don’t see, don’t question, and don’t fully understand?
The Stewardship Way, at least for me, often begins like this.
Not with big issues.
But with small moments of noticing.
Even the crappy ones.
And now when the weather is a bit better, I have to go visit Seth Wheeler’s grave site in the Albany Rural Cemetery.
This morning, while going through my daily Google News alerts, one headline stopped me.
It was about a worldwide study—38,000 people across 75 countries—looking at the connection between nature and human well-being.
That alone didn’t surprise me.
What caught my attention was this:
It’s not just about spending time outside.
It’s about feeling connected to nature.
According to the study, people who feel that connection tend to have a greater sense of purpose, more optimism, and a higher level of overall well-being.
I sat there for a moment and thought…
That sounds familiar.
Not because I read it in a study—but because I’ve been experiencing it and writing about it for years.
For me, nature has never just been something “out there.” It has always been something I’m part of.
And maybe that’s the real issue.
Not that people don’t go outside enough…
But that somewhere along the way, many of us stopped seeing ourselves as connected to the natural world around us.
Several days ago, during one of those unseasonably nice days here in Albany County, New York, my wife Theresa and I went for a walk down the road where we live.
During our walk, Theresa noticed something lying on the ground, nearly out of sight over an embankment, and said, “I wonder what that is?”
We walked over to take a closer look and discovered a dead coyote that had apparently been hit by a car.
I took note of it.
But it also got me to thinking.
Not just about what we saw…
but about what it might mean.
If you’d like to know what that dead coyote got me thinking about, you can read more on The Nature of Things.
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Today I’ll be making another “shipping run” to the post office.
That’s become a regular part of what I do through The Conservation Company—selling items on eBay, not so much as a business aimed at maximizing income, but as a way to keep useful items out of landfills and give them a second or third life.
At least, that’s the idea.
But over the past few years, something has been changing.
The shipping part of this process has become more expensive, more time-consuming, and increasingly unreliable.
Shipping costs now often rival—or exceed—the value of the item itself. And since those costs must be passed along to the buyer, something interesting happens:
Items that are perfectly useful… Items that someone might genuinely want… …suddenly become “too expensive” to justify purchasing.
Not because of the item itself—but because of the system required to move it.
And then there’s the reliability issue.
We live on a rural route, and it has become increasingly clear that delivery is inconsistent. Some days, it feels like our route is simply skipped. Other days, we receive mail that belongs to our neighbors, while our neighbors receive ours.
I spoke with the manager of our small local post office, and the explanation was straightforward: they can’t find enough people to fill open positions. So they bring in workers from other areas—people who don’t know the routes, the names, or the patterns of the community.
In other words, the system is still operating… …but it’s no longer functioning the way it once did.
And then this morning, I read something that put all of this into a much bigger context.
According to a Reuters report, the new Postmaster General is considering major changes—ending six-day delivery, closing post offices, and raising stamp prices to $1 or more. At the same time, mail volume—the Postal Service’s most profitable segment—continues to decline.
The warning was blunt:
“The failure to do this could lead to the end of the Postal Service as we know it now.”
That’s a powerful statement.
And it made me stop and think.
Because what I’m experiencing locally isn’t just a local issue—it’s a reflection of a system under stress.
A system that many of us still depend on.
A system that, in many ways, has quietly supported everyday life—especially in rural communities like ours.
What Does This Mean?
From a Stewardship Way perspective, this raises an important question:
What happens when the systems we rely on to do the right thing…no longer support the right thing?
Right now, it is often easier—and sometimes cheaper—to throw something away than it is to give it a second life.
Think about that.
We talk a lot about recycling, reuse, and sustainability. But the underlying systems—shipping, logistics, labor—are not necessarily designed to support those goals.
They are designed for efficiency, scale, and volume.
And when those systems begin to strain, the first things to suffer are often the smaller, quieter activities—like one person trying to sell a used item to another person who could use it.
A Thought Moving Forward
I’m not sure what the solution is.
But I am beginning to wonder if part of the answer lies closer to home.
Maybe the future of reuse and conservation isn’t just about national platforms and long-distance shipping.
Maybe it’s about more local connections. More community-based exchanges. More “second lives” happening closer to where things already are.
That’s something I’ll be thinking about today…as I make another trip to the post office.
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The work with Audubon wasn’t just about conservation programs.
The Conservation Company isn’t just a business.
Each one was an attempt to connect dots and create a way of doing things that made sense—at least to me.
The interesting part is…
I’ve never really followed anyone else’s structure.
I’ve always ended up creating my own.
Not because I set out to do that…
…but because I couldn’t find a “recipe” that fit what I was trying to do.
The Tension
Lately, I’ve been telling myself:
“Just be a writer.”
Keep it simple. Observe. Reflect. Share.
But even as I’ve been doing that, I’ve felt this pull…
to organize things.
To connect them.
To give them a framework.
At times, I’ve wondered if that’s something I should resist.
Maybe it complicates things.
Maybe it turns writing into something heavier than it needs to be.
What I Realized
But going through those old files made something clear.
This isn’t something I need to fix.
It’s something I need to understand—and use.
Creating structure is not a distraction from my writing.
It is part of how I think.
It’s how I’ve always made sense of the world.
What I’m Going to Do About It
So instead of fighting that instinct…
I’m going to give it a place to live.
I’m calling it:
The Stewardship Way
Not as a program.
Not as something to launch.
But as a way to describe what I’ve been doing all along.
A way of connecting:
how we think,
what we value,
and how we act,
in the places where we live and work.
Moving Forward
Going forward, I’m going to let things happen a bit more naturally.
Field Notes will stay what they are—observations, reflections, things that catch my attention.
Some of those ideas will grow into something more structured.
And when they do, I’ll explore them more deeply through what I’m calling The Stewardship Way.
I’m not trying to build another program.
I’m trying to better understand—and share—the method behind what I’ve already been doing.
Final Thought
It’s interesting how sometimes you have to look backward…
to understand what you’ve been doing all along.
I guess that’s part of the process.
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Yesterday, I sold a signed, (by me) first edition copy of a book I wrote years ago.
That, in itself, isn’t all that remarkable. I sell things all the time now as part of what I’m doing through The Conservation Company. Old items, forgotten items, things that still have value if someone is willing to see it.
But this one made me pause. Because it wasn’t just something I found in a box.
It was something I created.
The book was Sustainable Golf Courses: A Guide to Environmental Stewardship.
At the time, it represented a very specific effort—to help people see golf courses differently. Not just as places to play, but as landscapes that could support wildlife, conserve water, and demonstrate what stewardship could look like in a very practical way.
I spent a lot of time working on those ideas.
Explaining them.
Defending them.
Trying to get people to see something beyond what was right in front of them.
Like most things we do, once it was done, it moved on.
Programs evolved. Organizations changed. People came and went. And the book—like a lot of things—ended up on a shelf.
Or in a box.
The book was published in 2005.
Which, to me, still feels like “just the other day.”
But it wasn’t.
It was over two decades ago.
Long enough for things to be forgotten.
Or…rediscovered.
And then this morning…there it was again.
In my hands.
Only this time, I wasn’t writing it.
I wasn’t promoting it.
I wasn’t even really thinking about it.
I was shipping it.
Sending it off to someone I don’t know…who, for whatever reason, decided that this book still had value.
That got me thinking.
We tend to believe that the things we create have a defined life cycle.
We work on them.
We finish them.
We move on.
But that’s not really how it works.
Some things—ideas, books, projects—don’t end.
They just…circulate.
They sit for a while.
They wait.
And then, sometimes years later, they find their way back into motion again.
There’s also something else going on here.
In a small way, this is exactly what I’ve been talking about when I use the phrase:
Doing Well, While Doing Good.
I used items. To keep things out of landfills.
Today I sent something of value to someone else that is over 2 decades old, but still new and unread, just sitting on a bookshelf.
But in this case, it goes a step further.
Because what’s being passed along isn’t just a physical object.
It’s an idea.
A way of thinking.
A perspective on stewardship that, apparently, still matters enough for someone to buy it.
It also made me realize something a little more personal.
Over the past several weeks, I’ve been going through old files, photos, and folders—what I’ve been calling my “Bankers Box” phase.
Rediscovering pieces of my past.
Projects I worked on.
People I worked with.
Ideas I cared deeply about.
And now, in the middle of all that, one of those ideas quite literally passed back through my hands…on its way to someone else.
Maybe that’s the lesson.
We don’t just create things and leave them behind.
We release them.
And if they’re grounded in something real—something that connects—they have a way of continuing on, with or without us.
This morning, I didn’t just sell a book.
I watched an idea I once carried…keep going.
It also got me thinking about something else I’ve been discovering as I go through old files and past work. More on that tomorrow.
—Ron
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While digging through an old bankers box the other day, I came across something that stopped me for a moment.
An article I wrote in 1995.
The title was:
“Ego-System Management.”
I had to smile a bit when I saw it.
Not because I remembered every word I wrote—but because I immediately remembered the idea.
And as I sit here today, nearly thirty years later, I realize something…
That idea may be more relevant now than it was then.
Back in 1995, I was trying to describe something I was seeing in organizations and in people.
A pattern.
A way of thinking.
A way of making decisions.
At the time, I called it ego-system management—a play on the word ecosystem.
The difference was simple.
An ecosystem is built on relationships, balance, and long-term sustainability.
An ego-system is built on self-interest.
The more I look around today, the more I see how often we operate from that ego-system mindset.
We respond to what’s in front of us.
We focus on immediate problems.
We make decisions based on what benefits us—or our organization—right now.
And to be fair, that’s human nature.
But when that way of thinking becomes the norm, something begins to happen.
We stop seeing the system.
Instead of asking:
How does this all fit together?
What are the long-term consequences?
We start asking:
What solves this today?
What works for me right now?
And over time, those small decisions add up.
I’ve seen this play out in organizations.
I’ve seen it in communities.
I’ve seen it in business decisions that made sense in the short term—but created bigger problems down the road.
And if I’m being honest, I’ve seen it in myself as well.
What struck me as I reread that old article wasn’t just the idea.
It was the realization that I’ve spent much of my life—often without fully realizing it—trying to move from ego-system thinking to ecosystem thinking.
What I now call my Stewardship Lens is really just another way of saying the same thing.
Ecosystem thinking requires us to slow down.
To step back.
To connect the dots.
To consider not just what works—but what lasts.
That’s not how most of the world operates.
We live in a time where quick answers are rewarded.
Short-term results are celebrated.
And long-term thinking often takes a back seat.
But maybe that’s exactly why this idea still matters.
Maybe even more so today.
So finding that article from 1995 wasn’t just a trip down memory lane.
It was a reminder.
That some ideas don’t go away.
They just wait for the right time to be seen again…with a little more clarity.
Field Note to Self
When making decisions…
Ask yourself:
Am I managing an ego-system…
Or contributing to an ecosystem?
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There are moments in life that don’t feel important at the time.
They seem ordinary…routine…just part of growing up.
It is only later—sometimes decades later—that you begin to understand that those moments were not ordinary at all. They were the beginning of everything.
I recently came across an old photograph of my Grandpa Ben Dodson and me standing outside his house. I don’t know exactly what year it was taken, but I do know what it represents.
That small house, the front porch, and even the old wooden washboard table sitting nearby…that was my launching pad.
At the time, I had no idea.
My grandparents were both born in 1882. Even when I visited them in the 1950s and early 1960s, it felt like stepping back into the late 1800s.
There was no indoor plumbing.
The kitchen sink had a hand pump, drawing water from a well.
The house was heated by a potbelly coal stove.
The bathroom was an outhouse.
As a kid, I remember thinking…this is a lot of work.
And it was.
But what I didn’t understand then was that I wasn’t just visiting a place.
I was being introduced to a way of living…a way of thinking…a way of seeing the world.
Some of my clearest memories are not of big events, but of simple conversations.
Sitting on the front porch.
Or sitting beside Grandpa on that old washboard table.
That’s where I began asking questions.
Questions about the land…about how things used to be…about where we came from.
It was also where I first held an old stone axe head that Grandpa had found on the farm. He gave it to me, and without either of us knowing it, that simple act sparked a lifelong interest in rocks, fossils, and relics.
And it was where I first began asking about our family history.
Grandpa didn’t say much.
At the time, I didn’t think much about that either.
It was only years later that I came to understand why.
Today, that farm is gone.
Former Site of Grandpa and Grandma Dodson’s House
People drive by the site every day and have no idea what used to be there.
A four-lane highway now cuts across what was once a pasture where my dad and I hunted rabbits. Later, that same field became a place where he would hit golf balls and I would catch them with my baseball mitt—his way of practicing his golf game, and mine of practicing baseball.
The old lane that once came off Troy Road—where I first learned to drive a car with my dad sitting beside me—is now a paved entrance leading back to a commercial complex.
What was once open farmland is now a mix of gravel, dirt, and industrial activity.
The house is gone.
The barn is gone.
The pasture is gone.
And so are the people who gave those places meaning.
Site of the old gravel lane.
But the lessons are not.
Looking back, I now see that those visits were not just childhood memories.
They were the beginning of a way of life that I would carry forward without even realizing it.
That farm was where my curiosity began.
It was where I first learned to observe.
It was where I first started asking questions.
It was where I first connected people, place, and history.
In many ways, it was where I first began becoming what I now call a “steward.”
At the time, I thought I was just spending time with my grandparents.
I didn’t realize I was standing on the launching pad for the rest of my life.
As I continue going through old files, photographs, and memories, I find myself seeing things differently.
Moments that once seemed small now feel significant.
Lessons that once went unnoticed now stand out clearly.
And places that no longer exist physically still exist very much in the path they helped create.
Gravel Lane in Blue, House in Red and the old White Barn in White
It makes me wonder…
How many of us have places like that in our lives?
Places that quietly shaped who we became.
Places we didn’t fully understand until much later.
Places that, even though they may be gone, are still very much a part of who we are.
Maybe the real lesson is this:
Pay attention to the ordinary moments.
Because one day, you may look back and realize…
They were never ordinary at all.
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Helen (Fields) Dodson, Ron Dodson and Bruce Dodson
Over the past few days, I’ve been going through an old bankers box filled with folders, papers, and things I hadn’t looked at in years. It’s been a bit like opening a time capsule—one that I didn’t even realize I had.
Today, I came across a few photographs that made me stop for a moment.
One of them is a picture of me when I was about a year old, sitting with my Mom and Dad. It’s one of those pictures that, of course, I have no memory of—but there I am, right in the middle of it all.
What struck me wasn’t really me in the picture.
It was them.
They look so young.
At that moment, they weren’t “Mom and Dad” in the way I came to know them later in life. They were just starting out…building a life, figuring things out, carrying responsibilities that I couldn’t have possibly understood at the time.
There’s something about seeing your parents that way that shifts your perspective a bit.
Another photo I found was of my Dad as a boy—standing on what looks like a front porch, with a tricycle nearby. He has that look that young boys often have…a mix of confidence and curiosity, maybe with a little mischief thrown in.
Bruce Dodson
It’s strange in a way.
I’ve always known my Dad as my Dad. But here he is, long before I was ever part of the picture…living his own life, having his own experiences, becoming the person I would later know.
I suppose that’s one of the things these old photos do.
They remind you that the people who shaped your life had entire lives of their own before you ever arrived.
And in some way, whether we realize it or not, those earlier lives become part of us too.
I didn’t set out today to think about any of this.
I was just going through a box.
But sometimes, all it takes is a couple of old photographs to remind you that your story didn’t start with you.
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For the past few days I have been slowly working my way through a banker’s box full of old files, folders, envelopes, photographs, and newspaper clippings. In truth, it is only one box among several boxes and file drawers that contain pieces of my life from roughly 1970 to the present.
Opening the box felt a little like opening a time capsule.
Inside are decades of letters, articles, notes, photographs, and documents connected to projects, people, and places that shaped different chapters of my life. As I sort through the folders, I keep rediscovering things that I had completely forgotten about. Some of them bring back a flood of good memories. Others remind me of moments that were difficult at the time.
But what has struck me most is how differently many of those experiences look now.
Some things that once felt frustrating, disappointing, or even like failures eventually turned into something positive—sometimes years later. Other things that once seemed incredibly important now feel much smaller when viewed from a distance of decades.
Time has a way of reshaping our understanding.
Going through these files is not really about reminding myself of things I once did or said. Instead, it has become an opportunity to reflect on the past with a little more perspective and a little less emotion. It allows me to ask simple questions:
Was this really as important as I thought it was at the time?
Did it matter in the long run?
What did I learn from it?
In many ways, this process feels similar to walking through a familiar natural area in a different season. The landscape is the same, but your perspective changes depending on when you return.
What I once saw one way, I now see another.
So far, I must say that this little “file exploration” project has been a lot of fun. Each folder is like turning over a stone along a trail—you never quite know what you might find underneath.
Of course, it also raises another question.
What in the world am I going to do with all of this stuff?
For now, I’ll keep exploring.
After all, there are still a lot of folders left in that box.
But as I sit here looking at these old papers and photographs, another thought occurs to me.
Each piece of paper represents a moment when something seemed important enough to save. At the time, I probably had no idea how that moment would fit into the larger story of my life.
Now, decades later, I can begin to see the connections.
Projects that led to other projects.
People who opened doors at just the right moment.
Ideas that took years to grow into something meaningful.
In a strange way, this old banker’s box is not really a box of files at all.
It’s a map.
A map of the winding path that brought me from where I started to where I am today.
And judging by the number of folders still waiting to be explored, there are still plenty of dots left to connect.
