When is old better?
If you’ve been a student at the Old School for a while, you’ll know the Damsel thinks old is frequently better.
Why is this? Why wouldn’t all this amazing technology make the new stuff better? Sometimes it is, but not as often as you might think.
In the olden days, some people (okay not all, but at least some) took time to do their best work. This is one reason the Damsel loves to haunt antique shops and estate sales. There’s something about old, handcrafted furniture that’s hard to duplicate in modern furniture. You can find good stuff, but you’ve really got to look.
The Damsel adores seeing things that took painstaking care to make. At estate sales, she runs to the piles of old linens, astonished by the sheer number of hours it must have taken to create the lacy edgings, the embroidered pillow slips, the acres of crocheted table covers. She feels compelled to take them all home and love them–to save them from the rubbish heap. Hours! Hours upon hours.
Can we, in this day and age, create things that will last? Things worth keeping?
What will our legacy be? Bits and bytes?
The Damsel isn’t hating on computers here. She happens to love her computer. She’s been known to call it “boyfriend.” But it’s going to take a conscious effort to use these amazing tools to fill our days with things of substance.
