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On children and lost arts
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On children and lost arts
 Since I bemoaned the lack of girl babies in my family last week, several friends have offered up their daughters for my temporary use. Some with warnings that the girls will have to be heavily sedated before I can braid their hair, and may require duct taping before I could teach them to knit or quilt. My sister Carol was remembering recently how our maternal grandmother required her to stitch together one quilt piece and read one Bible verse every night before she went to bed. People used to be able to make their kids do stuff like that. I don't know what happened to those days but I suspect it has to do with hundreds of television channels, video games, the Internet and everyone, including moms and grandmas, having to work for a living. You should have seen the boys' faces when they were little and I'd tell them how, when I was little, there were three TV channels plus PBS, which largely consisted of shows about animals eating other animals. No video games, No computers. We were forced to play outside. I'm surprised our parents weren't all reported to authorities.
I'm not worried. It isn't as if our kids aren't learning things. They're learning things we didn't know existed when we were young.
And when they get ready to learn something old, the Internet will be to tell them how, whether it's tatting or shipbuilding. You can simply find instructions there, but you can also use it to contact a whole community of people who do whatever it is you want to learn, and who are largely kind, patient, helpful, and thrilled at being asked for their expertise.  I learned how to tat on the Internet. Needle tatting, not shuttle tatting. I made a piece of lace edging about an inch deep and three inches long before I decided that life is too short for tatting. I trust that people with better eyesight and more patience will carry on.  But I learned to knit from the Internet as well, and have turned into a knitting fiend and yarn hoarder. I've mentioned before that it's a cruel trick to afflict a woman in semi-tropical South Texas with knitting fever. After giving away piles of sweaters, hats and scarves I decided to try selling some of them to others who have relatives living in cooler parts of the world. Check out the "miscellaneous for sale" category in our classifieds section to see what I've been up to lately. The pictures shown here are the tractor sweater and swing coat I made for my daughter-in-law and grandson William for Christmas (don't worry, he got toys too). One final thought this week: On Jan. 1, the price of cigarettes is going up by $1 a pack. On March 1, I won't be able to smoke at the Flying S anymore. Or many other restaurants, for that matter. So I'll probably do what governments from federal to city seem to want me to do - Quit smoking. Then they'll be sorry. |
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