Olden Practice Summer Digest

A personal note, medical leave and slow living. Plus five gifts of a life without social media, how to write a letter, handmade appreciation and tending the small.

A Flower Bath for Healing

Dear Friends—this Olden Practice letter contains a brief personal update and then a digest of writings—some new and some remembered—from the Olden Practice blog including:

I Quit Social Media and I Wish You Would, Too: Five Gifts of a Life Without

This Work Was Made By Human Hands: AI Resistance and the Art of Connection

Ancestral Values Series #1: Embracing Slow Living, Quilts and the Value of Time

5 Ways to Write a Letter and Reclaim Friendship, Connection and Craft

A Personal Note: Currently on Medical Leave

I am on indefinite medical leave due to health issues both new and old. In February I had an MRI that showed demylentating lesions in my brain. I spent most of the spring being evaluated for Multiple Sclerosis, a process which was both invasive and inconclusive.

I’m leaning in, practicing acceptance, trying to stay present and enjoy the small beauties of this life. And I hope to continue sharing these with you when I can.

And now, some Olden Practice explorations…

Women Canning In the Woods, 1933, Wikimedia Commons

I quit social media. And I wish you would, too.

In November 2021 I deleted Instagram—my last remaining social media account--permanently. This has been a life affirming, joyful decision I have not regretted once.

I wish everyone would quit social media, and I know we—people, families, friendships, global communities—would be better for its absence. Most of us feel this in our bones, even if we can’t yet articulate it. From the inside, when I was on the apps, there was always a nagging sense that something was deeply wrong with this model of tech-mitigated human engagement. And I know I was not alone in my disquiet.

After leaving, however, years later I can say that social media was not my life. It doesn’t even come close to resembling this lived, real world connection, let alone a web of interconnected supports…

Read more here for five ways my life has improved without social media…

The Old Quilt by Walter Langley, Wikimedia Commons

This Work Was Made By Human Hands: AI Resistance and the Art of Connection

…It is surprising, how long it takes to make an invitation with paper and tape. The process of collage is not difficult, but it is time consuming. At first the text doesn’t fit, details are omitted, the printer decides to take a pause. I am not anti-tech, I am clearly using technology now, but I am a fan of what Willa Cather names as “the irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand.”

Once we were surrounded by such things. Every aspect of our lives touched, crafted, by another. There was little anonymity in the creation of everyday objects. We would know the source—whether local or traded from afar—and we would know how to make many, if not most, of our own tools, too.

In my study of ancestral traditions one of my favorite books is Irish Folk Ways by E. Estyn Evans. Evans was a Welsh geographer and archaeologist, who moved to Ireland in the 1920’s. He began to record and preserve a fading way of life. “…it seemed to him a short inevitable step to attempt recovery of its rapidly disappearing peasant culture and folklore.”[1] Published in 1956, Irish Folk Ways is a synthesis of the sacred everyday, the made things that once rounded a life, and the daily, seasonal tasks that gave meaning and purpose to homes and communities. Evans documents with his own detailed illustrations toothed sickles, roof thatch, querns, cooking pots, chairs and seats, light holders, churns, gateposts, bog shelters, spades, ploughs, shovels, lazy beds, creels, turf baskets, ropes and mats, flails, salmon spears, fishing nets, Briget’s crosses, cursing stones—and these are just a rattle in the (handmade) crate of goods he details. Along with the illustrations is text that values and admires these traditions of craft. He writes in the introduction, “However interesting we may find “bygones” for their own sake—and most of us take a natural interest in the way our forefathers lived—there is a need to know not only how these relics were made and used but also what beliefs were held about them…There is a clear relationship between the ways in which men’s basic needs are satisfied and the social organization. Nothing less than the whole of the past is needed to explain the present (ix).”[2]

Read more here about small crafts and acts of reconnection…

Album or Friendship Quilt, 1848, Wikimedia Commons

Ancestral Values Series #1: Embracing Slow Living, Quilts and Time

In this occasional Olden Practice series I would like to discuss ancestral values worth recognizing and reclaiming. Today foremost in my mind is the value of time.

In the children's book Quilt of Dreams by Mindy Dwyer--which I read to my youngest daughter for years and highly recommend as a story about craft and generations--a child is told that, "Quilts are made of time."

This past week I spent hours mending an old quilt of my mother's. It isn't fancy or handmade--she bought it when I was still in high school and gifted it to me when my family lost all of our belongings in 2017. The seams are coming apart, and while it would be infinitely easier to purchase a new quilt I feel a sense of honor--to the gift, my mother and time--as I repair it.

Read more about slow living and remembering time as our ancestors experienced it…

Interior with Women Writing and Sewing, 19th Century, Wikimedia Commons

5 Ways to Write a Letter and Reclaim Friendship, Connection & Craft

Last year I made my way to the post office each month to retrieve a packet of eleven letters from participants in the Dark Goddess Project, a correspondence course/process for integrating difficult life transitions.

Some letters were typed, some written by hand. They contained at various times ribbons, yarn, photos, colored ink, seeds and scraps of cloth. With each page they carried a record of the participant's journey, scribed in character and line. Some held answers to questions posed by the curriculum--also sent through mail, quarterly. Some were poetry. Some a record of the day to day musings that comprise a life. All moved me to laughter, tears and hope: this is how we heal, through the tactile sharing of our hearts in this real, living world.

At the end of the year the participant letters were returned. In their hands, now, the story of a year spent in intention and community. It was such a powerful process to witness, and I am still honored and moved by the growth those letters contained.

The alchemy of letter writing is two fold. First, it is the tangible, the process itself--so different from writing an email which may or may not survive a decade, depending on the whims of technology, and will likely never be seen again. Placing pen to page, or typing for print purposes changes the nature of the communication from the start.

The second transformation of letter writing is the audience. We are writing to someone specific, and choose our words accordingly. That person holds, temporarily, a part of us--cellular, substantial--in a way that is impossible through online communique.

Read more for letter writing inspirations and resources to begin…

Wishing you slow living, the embrace of acceptance and simple joys in the season ahead.

With love—Lara Irene