Kathleen's Korner at TheStidhams.com

I am so excited about this…

Artist Trading Cards are something I remember hearing about years ago. Today a fellow babbler mentioned them. We are going to set up a trading session among babblers! I am going to coordinate it, and am trying to think of cards I can make.

I am filing this post under “Peace Making” as well as my usual Gardens and Life because it seems to me that this sort of thing brings people together — people of such diverse backgrounds, interests and lifestyles. Like the “penpals” of old, these small, cooperative sharing experiences allow us to learn and appreciate each other.

What a fun thing it would be, to see children and adults participating in more things of this nature. What if…

What if more people had the experience of being appreciated by near-strangers, allowed to express themselves, in fact encouraged to make something beautiful, with no reward other than receiving something beautiful in return. Or, if not beautiful, at least interesting!

If you are interested in participating, and I hope you are, please go ahead and contact me at my usual nickname, stidmama, at yahoo.com (my public email) with ATC or Artist Trading Cards in the subject line.

So a couple of college kids who made fools of themselves by behaving like insensitive twits on camera (in a documentary-style feature film, no less) now complain that they were set up and would never have behaved like that if they had known they would be seen in the United States.

Well, here’s a piece of advice from my great-grandmother:  if you always mind your manners, you need never be embarassed.

Nor, I might add, need your parents be embarrassed…

Coming  on the heels of this year’s election debacles, I can’t help but feel that these young people are merely demonstrating the lessons they have learned from their elders — how can youth learn how to treat others with respect and kindness when all around their role models are perfect examples of how not to behave?

*sigh*  I find that simple lessons on what used to be called social graces work for helping my children understand the difference between comedy and put-downs…  but you have to start young, and you must model the behavior and language you want them to acquire.  Though I have found my children’s friends can modify their normal words and actions when in my presence, when I observe them in other places they have reverted, and taken my own children with them.

Our children do not live in a vacuum…  and they do learn from others.  I hope that the lessons from home will eventually turn out to be stronger than the influence of ill-mannered, vulgar, self-centered hooligans.

My earlier post on the whole state of the world and “why bother” has kept me thinking.  Today I received an email from the National Wildlife Federation encouraging me to join an organization that offsets carbon use and emissions.  I have done a cursory checking out, and it looks very good.  http://carbonfund.org/ is an organization that purchases the emissions permissions (love rhymes like that) and keeps them, preventing some of the pollution problems.  They also help fund alternative energy sources.  There is an emissions calculator that lets people see how much they contribute to the whole global-warming thing.