As part of our ongoing quest to minimize our impact, John and I decided recently to do away with paper napkins and use cloth napkins instead. Even though you still use energy to clean the cloth napkins, we reasoned, at least you're not throwing them away after one use. After I spent a lot of time scouring the vast interwebs for suitable, serviceable napkins, I called my parents. I knew that they had a lot of cloth napkins that they didn't use, and I figured that if they were willing to part with some of them, that was better than bringing brand new napkins into the system. They readily agreed to send us some of their spares, but then came the question I didn't anticipate: "And you'll also need napkin rings, right?" I always thought that napkin rings were a bit too frou-frou for me, and we're not really frou-frou people, so I turned them down. "Oh, no," I said, feeling very down-to-earth, "I don't get into that." They should have laughed me off the phone, but they didn't. Napkin rings, my parents carefully explained, aren't just for show. The idea behind cloth napkins, they said, is that they can be used again and again over the course of a few days. Because they don't get very dirty, they don't need to be washed after every meal. The purpose of napkin rings, then, is so that you know which one is yours. I was astonished. Who knew?!? This is the kind of knowledge that's dying these days. This is the kind of knowledge that isn't getting used, much less passed on from generation to generation. And it kills me because this is the very kind of knowledge that would enable us to step a little lighter on the planet. Napkin rings. Who knew?