Discuss: A Bunny Runs Around a Tree

Thank you Sandra Steingraber for writing this.

I’ve lived in a rural area of southern Ohio all my life. LIke many of my neighbors we grow or gather most of our food. We get excited when the blackberries are fat and plentiful or when tomatoes ripen well into September.  As I read your piece, I was reminded of this phrase from Wendell Berry’s “the Unsettling of America”

“And so we have before us one of the characteristic political necessities of our time: to take seriously what we cannot respect.”

As usual, Sandra Steingraber is eloquent and insightful.  I have had these same questions for a long time, but couldnt have articulated them thus, and I’m grateful that she’s asking us to think more about what we want our children to learn.

So why can’t learning knots, canning, and how to grow a garden be perfectly acceptable college-application skills? Your kids sound like they’re little—what if by the time they got to the point where they have to write those essays, they can articulate what self-sufficiency means to them. At the very least, it would be a more interesting story to read than yet another list of “accomplishments” that were purchased as if at the store. (And canning tomatoes isn’t hard, buy a pressure canner and follow the directions in the little booklet. That’s what I did this past summer and it’s so nice to eat my own tomato sauce in the dead of winter.)

I get that the overall point of the article was much larger than shoelaces! But I thought I’d point out that, as an adult, I own only one pair of shoes with laces - and those are running shoes that rarely get used.  Since we have a no-shoe policy in the house and at school (necessary here in the cold, muddy Maine winters), slip-ons just make a lot of sense.  For now, it means that my son has three shoes - boots, slippers, sandals.

The larger issues are certainly worth reflection.

I also had to think of Wendell Berry while reading this article.  Not only of “Unsettling America”, but also “The Memory of Old Jack” which catalogs the difficulty of passing on not only physical skills, but also the agrarian land ethic.

I currently teach English in Austria at one of several “Agricultural” High Schools.  There, along with the liberal arts, the students are taught practical farming and home economic skills.  These range from cheese-making to the pro’s and con’s of various types of flooring to the uses and worth of the various local trees.  I can’t help but think something of the sort could be helpful in working against the erosion of sufficiency described by Mrs. Steingraber.

The dearth of capability in life skills (as well as necessary equipment) is made apparent every time the power goes out.
I agree with the comments that offer the view that life skills might become more respected and viable as college preparedness with the coming rearrangements that will be made to accomodate renewable energy sources as petroleum becomes less and less available. Elsewise, many of us, and our children, will simply be helpless if our systems of supplies break down. Helpless people used to starve or freeze to death; now, better-prepared people take care of them. Perhaps as we cycle through the development of human civilization, we are reaching the part where we’re supposed to learn to take care of each other. So share those recipes for tomato-sauce canning, and patterns for knitted garments, and definitely, plant your lawn in edible fruits and vegetables and teach your kids how to save and trade heirloom seedstock. And go ahead and teach them to tie shoelaces; it can’t hurt to know that skill. In fact, I think there’s a huge task facing us in simply teaching our kids how to do anything that is involved in housekeeping, homemaking, and family care. Our kids watch us go off “to work”, but they seldom see exactly what we do, or see any connection between our jobs and the actual business of nurturing life. Those are the changes that need to be made, and adjusted to accomodate urban living, such as community gardens on municipal lands, and CSA memberships at small farms near the metropolitan centers. Decentralization of our food supply is key to improving our moral and ethical treatment of animals, the personal attention to our children’s educations, the management of wastes of every kind, and revitalizing the cycles of living systems that form the foundation of our supply of natural resources. Each of us should be responsible for knowing how to live and get along on the earth, at least to the extent our geographic location affords us.And remember that not everyone did everything extremely well. Just trying to do a few things can make a difference. You can start by going outside and looking for something alive in your environment, and observe it and research it until you understand its position in the universe, and be grateful for what it offers to the quality of your own life. There is nothing in natural existence that doesn’t fulfill a purpose, even if we don’t yet know what that purpose is, so each living entity has value, is valuable, and must be respected as such. Learning about these things is common sense. A species that is ignorant of its own environment can’t possibly persist very long in universal time.

People think it’s so amazing that I can my garden produce, gather healing herbs and turn them into tinctures and salves, and am still eating my own garlic in the dead of winter. (I should be still eating my own potatoes but last summer was so wet they got blight for the first time ever). Last year I started baking all our bread using sourdough starter and I now also make all our own yogurt (and Greek yogurt), from milk purchased at a nearby farm. I used to sew my own clothes and still could if necessary, but I don’t. And there is so much I don’t do or don’t know how to do and the reliance on electricity for virtually everything in the house is daunting as a commenter already pointed out. We have a long way to go when so much of what we need to survive is purchased and often comes from very far away.

I just discovered Orion magazine today while at the bookstore and, while checking it out online before subscribing, I discovered this article.  I’m a Montessori directress working with three to six year olds and our curriculum includes bow tying, dish washing, and plant care.  I’m conflicted on a daily basis when children come to school with velcro shoes and the like!  I was a Girl Scout and learned many practical skills that are not valued in our society; however, I am a mother and I do understand how difficult it is in our hyperspeed world these days.  It is sad to see all of these skills going to the wayside.