It Started With A Hat.
Well, really, it started because I want a new hat. My standard Beatles/Sandinista/Eastern-Bloc-Cutie hat is still great. And you can see it suits many of my moods. But it is black. And since we’re moving into spring, and away from the dark colours, I thought I would do a little research on hats.
I thought I could make one, so I went looking, in the wide Internets, for hat patterns.
There are a lot of hat weirdos in the wide Internets. There’s a fat guy with glasses and five o-clock shadow who makes puffy berets for other fat guys with glasses and five o-clock shadow. There are sites with hats ‘for maximum modesty’ done by women who still believe that showing their hair will cause Teh Mens to Lose Control. I even found a site that offered hat patterns alongside shroud patterns for babies and children and even adults. Hats n’ shrouds. Yikes!
Not so many years ago, if I wanted to make a hat, I would have to go to the library and look in books about millinery skills. But the world has changed, and now any old person can just go online and find out 137 different hats to make (or shrouds, should they need the info).
My students goggle at me when I tell them I am older than the Internet, at least in this incarnation. I tell them about modemming at 2400 bps, using actual dial-up lines to talk to people. Before Windows. Before mice. Before embedding images, before we even HAD images, other than smilies and ASCII. Then they ask what ASCII is and I subside into the corner, Geritol in hand.
No, really. When they understand that I grew up without Wikipedia (“Encyclopedias. They were like Wikipedia in book form, kids!”) they are amazed by the fact that I know anything! When they realize that I predate LOLcats, they wonder how I ever got a sense of humour.
I feel as though I am a part of a bridge generation. No, we are several generations, but we are somehow very different than those younger than us. We won’t adapt to new technologies as quickly as they will. They’re starting younger, after all. But if, for some reason, the technology fails us, we have the backup plan: We remember how to look it up in a book.
That said, and hat weirdos aside, there are some great hat patterns in the wide Internets.
Some Stuff | Liz March 12, 2010
By Beth, March 14, 2010 @ 9:40 am
I wrote this many years ago, when I was still connecting through a dial up connection, before Wikepedia and Google.
Bridging the Gap
Christmas at Grandma’s.
Running outside to the outhouse,
Wind whistling, frost on the seat
Make the trip only when absolutely necessary.
Knowing from experience the misery
Of “the back door trots”.
Grandma’s wood stove,
White enamel and black iron polished with stove black
Fire box on the right
Oven in the middle,
Copper boiler on the left.
Heavy round lids lifted
Glowing coals inside
Sending up showers of sparks
When the new log goes in.
Hand pump at the kitchen sink
Bringing soft rain water up
From the basement cistern.
Water collected on the roof
And funnelled down gutters.
Soft water for shiny hair
And the whitest of white clothes.
Outside is another pump
Well water for drinking,
A bucket a day brought in
Sitting on the counter with its lid
And dipper.
Early in the morning
Grandma stokes the stove,
I stay snuggled in bed
Watching the air until it is warm enough
That I can’t see my breath.
But the water in the boiler is still cold,
And I wash my face with stinging cold water
In the chill air.
I remember Dan the plough horse,
Who could trot between the rows of corn,
Never stepping on the plants,
I remember Grandpa’s cutter,
Sleek sleigh complete with the buffalo robes.
Now I record my memories
On computer and send them into cyberspace.
One foot in each world
I am a living bridge.
By Liz, March 14, 2010 @ 11:08 am
Exactly, Beth. Thank you.