One day I was visiting with a carpenter and he told me that a couple of high school kids he was working with had never before held a hammer in their hands.
I thought back to when I was a little kid - there were the block type toys with a toy hammer...how can anyone ever say they had never held a hammer before.
While continuing to scan the Ahrendsen collection, there are several old magazines so I scanned them. While they don't have anything directly connected to Manning
history, I like to scan things like this owned by Manning folks, that preserve our past and give some insight into what kids and adults years ago were exposed to.
From my uneducated opinion into raising kids - I have no degrees, but my suggestion to parents is to take those smart phones, I-pads, computers, etc. and put them in a locked box - then
give your kid a hammer and tell them to go outside and build something out of wood with a friend - a fort, tree house, anything...Now
this can be dangerous letting a kid cut up wood and use a hammer and nails but they actually might start to learn something about real life.
I hear parents say how their very young kids can operate that digital device and they can't, but what are these kids really learning for life's lessons?
OK, I'm an old fogey, but I think we need to go back to some and maybe many aspects of the "Good ole Days" before it is too late...
Clippings from the Ahrendsen scrapbook
"In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all;
and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them
unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some
alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except
with time. You can not now realize that you will ever
feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy
again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable
now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to
believe it, to feel better at once."
Abraham Lincoln