How to Create a Job
"This American Life" has never disappointed me. They do an amazing job of covering a multitude of angles and in asking the obvious questions, the ones that no one wants to seem stupid by asking but that are the most critical questions to ask. I was listening to 'How to Create a Job' while picking my daughter up from preschool.
"my teacher does that" she mumbled from the back seat.
"Hmmmm what's that honey? your teacher does what?" I said looking for her face in the rear view mirror.
"My teacher makes jobs"
"how does she do that?"
"You know, she had a bake sale and we all got to work"
Of course.
But her teacher does make jobs. Educating our children and giving them the knowledge and tools to be innovative is creating jobs. Have we educated older generations well enough to benefit from them now?
Likely not. Or if we have we have overburdened them this student loans.
My daughter is picking up on my desperation to get a job. She plays games using her little cash register all I have to do is follow her and give her my credit card and she will give me a job....easy enough.
Why can't it be that easy? Is that hope for simplicity what makes it so easy to believe politicians are capable of fulfilling promises of more jobs? If not, why don't we invest in politicians who are employing long term strategies for the future of the United State and not for the outcomes of the next election.
"Dust in the Wind"
One of the things that I love most about Anthropology and
Archeology is probably the thing that makes me horrible in the field. I am not good at remembering dates and times.
When I manage to remember the geographical and morphological details of an Archeological
find for a test or something I quickly forget it. It is not that I don’t care about the
artifacts and the details…I do. But I also want to get caught up in them like most other
Anthropologists. My mind gets completely
lost in my own musings about mortality and imaginings about who these people
where and how they felt.
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| Photo by Tara Downing |
I realized this even more profoundly while hiking around the Fremont Indian State Park in Utah. We hiked
along a river and then up a sandy hill to a place called the cave of a hundred
hands. It was a small alcove covered by
a row of bars to prevent looters and hoodlums from painting on and scratching
up the wall. The wall on the inside of
the cave had hand prints…not hundreds by my count but several. The hand prints where small and deliberate. They were not smeared.
I pictured a group of women with their
children sitting in the shade of the cave.
As the women painted hides and baskets the children were bored and in
the way. The children were climbing over
their mothers and sisters who were trying to make detailed designs. I probably
was imprinting my own experience with this area onto people of the past. Because my daughter, tiered and bored of walking,
could not concentrate and stay on the path. One of the mothers came up with a
project an idea to keep the small children occupied. She took the extra paint from her artwork and
gave it to the children instructing them to leave their mark. The children with the help of a woman or an
older child very carefully and thoughtfully put their hand marks on the wall.
Who were these women? What did they care about? Did they take the time
to think about their place in the world in the universe? Were they happy? Did happiness matter to them? What does it say about me that I do care about all these things?
Living out here must have been difficult. They must have had times when no food was
available. They must have seen their
babies die. Worried about their husbands every hunt but they must have known
how to celebrate every victory. What luxury
I have that I can worry about my place in the world. How simply and sweetly these people left
their marks and gained immortality without any intention of doing so.
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| Photo by Adam Olsen |
How do I measure up? I feel like I can touch this person. Our hands are the same size. Some day this
world will belong to someone else and I will be long gone. Suddenly what I do
for a living seems trivial. Especially
when, these people austerely, sitting on the hill painting on the wall became so
timeless and invaluable.
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