Knowing how
to make things was part of our human birthright. Who stole it?
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| Little Giant, by Carol L. Douglas. Courtesy Camden Falls Gallery. |
I have a to-do list a mile long. One item on it is a muslin
mockup of a dress for my granddaughter Grace, who will be the flower girl in
her aunt’s wedding in May. I’ll see Grace in Buffalo as I finish my Alabama
trip, and I need this mockup to check her measurements. Grace is two years old
and growing like a weed. I’ll make the bodice and skirt separately and stitch
them together at the last minute, between my workshop in Rye and the wedding.
On Sunday I complained that I’d have to give up my Sunday
nap to finish it. “Is there anything you can’t do?” a friend laughed. In truth,
I’m only good at things that require spatial skills. That includes math, art
and sewing. I can’t cook, although I don’t mind cleaning up afterward.
I learned to sew in 4H. That’s a venerable old organization
dedicated to developing citizenship, leadership, and responsibility by teaching
life skills. It’s also where I learned basic carpentry, animal husbandry, and
how to make a pie crust. The first speech I ever gave was at the County Fair.
It was on leavening agents and was called Lovely
or Lumpy.
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| Catskill Farm, pastel, by Carol L. Douglas |
Other things I learned at home: how to paint (from my
father), how to garden, how to can vegetables, and how to put up hay. My
parents were not farmers: my father was a psychologist and my mother a nurse.
They were practitioners of the back-to-the-land movement, but everyone of their
generation knew how to make and mend things. Today, if we do those things at
all, we do them as hobbies or artisanal work.
When my twins were infants, I made them sleepers. It cost me
more than they cost ready-made at Kmart. After that, I only sewed for special
occasions.
That’s true across most of our economy. It’s cheaper
to buy a new toaster than fix the one you have. It’s cheaper to buy baked beans
than make them yourself. It’s certainly cheaper to buy a chair than build one. The
consequence of this is that our kids have grown up in a world of
consumption rather than creation. They have no idea that for humans, creativity
is a natural part of life.
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| Still life, by Carol L. Douglas |
Last week, someone sent me this irritating
little piece in Smithsonian, which suggests we “leave the cairn-building to
the experts.” Ours is certainly a scolding culture, and the goal of all that hectoring is to keep us as passive recipients of others' experiences.
Why the passion for stacking up rocks on the beach anyway? The human animal is designed for creativity. Our throwaway culture has
stolen that from us.
In Maine, there’s still much more of a make-or-mend culture
than in other parts of the country. People really do patch up their
cars and boots for another go-round. It’s also a more entrepreneurial society
than our cosmopolitan centers. I don’t mean that in the Bill Gates sense. Kids who
grow up with skilled laborers as parents understand that they don’t need a college
degree to be useful, productive, self-supporting members of the community. Kids
who grow up with self-employed parents understand there are more ways than a 9-to-5 job to earn a living.
It would be nice if we could add that to our measure of performance
when we tote up how well a community does at preparing its kids for
the future.
