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Apr 18, 2022Liked by Amy Umbel

Thank you for exploring and elucidating your emotions and thoughts on this poignant topic. It is a "problem" I return to time and again, with no satisfactory solution or path forward as of yet. But I continue trying, making, thinking and feeling. Ideally this conversation would be had while sitting around a fire, a meal, or a flowing stream (or surrounded by limitless other sacred places), but at least we can taste a small morsel of communion through this platform. Thank you. again.

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Apr 19, 2022Liked by Amy Umbel

Here we are at the center of the modern Western problem, I think. It makes me think of "Stolen" by Dougie MacLean (https://youtu.be/0Ouho3c1x5o)--a Scottish perspective on losing connection to the past.

One word that comes to mind whenever I read about these topics is "necessity." It seems like many cultural practices, crafts, holidays, and communities grew out of necessity in the past. A barn raising is a very cool communal celebration that brings people together through shared labor, and it used to be the only way to build a barn. Carving spoons is fun and calming way to produce a beautiful and useful object, and it used to be just a cheap way to get a spoon.

Modern life has given us an abundance of choice. We have so many ways to get work done on our own. Not to mention the mobility we take for granted. So the problem becomes: how do we avoid alienation when connection has become unnecessary? And of course, I don't mean it's actually not necessary. I just mean it's perceived that way. I was weeding in front of my house on Saturday when a FedEx driver dropped off a package. He told me it looked tedious and explained, in a very friendly way, all of the ways I could use herbicides or a weedwhacker to save myself some work. How could I express to him, in an idiom we would both understand, that I don't mind picking box elder seedlings out of the rocks, because it keeps me in touch with what time of year they sprout and avoids poisoning homes for ants?

I don't really know a way around this. Maybe you're heading that direction in your essays. And I don't actually mean to sound hopeless! I think there are a lot of people exploring solutions to this problem. (The Maintainers is one: https://themaintainers.org/about/. It just feels like rolling a boulder up a hill sometimes.

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