(The following are thought-streams about art, work, needs with an uncurrent about what I see as innate eduational needs of boys prompted by a local Walk with the Arts for elementary school children)
My littlest guy went for a Walk with the Arts. Art – that’s what they called it. But, not so long ago, it was not art.
Today’s product development engineer was yesterdays blacksmith.
Today’s textile scientists and manufacturing engineers were yesterday’s weaver.
Pixar’s animated cartoons grew out of story-telling and puppeteering.
Thermo Scientific Nalgene Labware and Lab Bottles grew out of the potter’s hands.
And, well, music was not bought, it was either made in the home or visited in the community.
Rubbermaid baskets grew out of hand-woven baskets from backyard grape vine.
A walk with the arts – 100 years ago, these boys would be getting ready to leave the classroom to apprentice, spending years training to become a master. Working with their hands – creating transportation, furniture, utensils for work and home, planting and harvesting – basic jobs available for everyman – today’s art. Yesterday’s necessity.
Today, my boys grow frustrated in classrooms where nobody explains how math works in the workplace. How reading and writing work in the workplace. How understanding different cultures and history allows people to neogitate differnces with more skill.
Today, education is like holding a basket at a Easter Egg Hunt – waiting for the whistle to blow, so egg-hunters can run and find the eggs – students waiting for the whistle to blow, wanting to create, to work their hands, to put to work what they learn.
But they cannot.
So they wait in the classrooms.
Waiting to live with their hands
Waiting to make life’s necessities that will later become art.
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,
that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
for as many years as we have seen trouble.
16 May your deeds be shown to your servants,
your splendor to their children.
17 May the favor [b] of the Lord our God rest upon us;
establish the work of our hands for us—
yes, establish the work of our hands” (Psalm 90:14-17).
“Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun— all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might” (Ecc. 9:9-10)
Blue Cotton Memory 
