Hi, I’m Katie, a writer and podcaster and I believe that literature, art, beauty, theology, and wonder are worth our time and attention. This essay is free for you to read, but took time and research to write - consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support the work I do.
When I was a kid, I didn’t know how to tie my shoes or do up the zipper on my jacket for what seemed like an embarrassingly long time. I had a very helpful best friend at school1 who would surreptitiously help me out with these mundane, but highly necessary tasks. She was also the one who taught me how to ride my two-wheeler and tread water and dive for coins in the deep end.
You see, in the hubbub of my house, two business execs for parents, a flurry of au pairs, an eccentric and charming grandmother, a constant influx of animals, these ‘small’ skills often took a backseat. Maybe I couldn’t tie my shoes, but by the age of six or so I could make a powerpoint (an ability I used constantly - whether to make ‘presentations’ for a new puppy or for us to move to a farm2).
I have no doubt that my family was pursuing, in their own way, a ‘cultured’ life, whatever that may have meant in the 1990s and early aughts. Looking back (to me) it seems like it was a lot of stuff (we met up at the mall every Friday night) and a lot of really cool gadgets (remember those robo dog things?) and making various presentations on the desktop computer.
I think there was quite a long time (and I know my family wasn’t unique in this thought) where everybody thought, and hoped, that there wasn’t going to be much need for those ‘old school’ skills. Those things like sewing, cooking, using tools in the garage, changing a tire, planting a vegetable garden, building furniture. This was going to be the age of the machine and that meant freedom! No more menial tasks for us! We’d be flying high Jetsons style with a chip in our head lounging at the proverbial cosmopolitan table debating ideas. We were all going to go to college and we were all leaving those set of hard skills behind. We had evolved. We were white collar and proud of it.
Of course this prediction has proven not only wrong, but disastrous, in every possible way. My generation (us middling to older millennials) grasp at skillsets like oxygen. We walk around in plaid and the men grow beards and the women start baking bread and we’re all signing up for the local woodworking class. We’re desperate for skills.
I have learned to cook, but I learned through trial and error and Youtube. I learned to take care of the house, to clean it, to change air vents, to mop, to scrub, and again thank you Youtube. I can budget (sort of) and meal plan (sort of). There’s much I’m still learning, still want to learn. But nobody taught me.
Trade schools and vocational schools are booming. If you want a job, get a skill. And I don’t mean the tech kind. You’ll be out of date six months after graduation. It’s why I always find the argument for tech in schools laughable. All the ‘tech’ I used in school is beyond outdated now. The same will be true, on a larger scale, for our kids. What can’t be replaced and what is actually needed in the economy is real, hard skills. Those old school things that have served humanity for millenia and (it shouldn’t be surprising) are still quite valuable and useful today.
The one exception when it came to learning ‘hard skills’ in my house was horses. Horses, like all animals, don’t let you fake it. You better be down there at sunrise mixing grain, hauling hay, brushing coats, picking out feed, soaking abscesses, oiling tack, polishing boots. So my hard skills, at this point in my life, are mostly in this odd subset, my Mom’s passion that became my own. So I know odd anachronistic things, like how to tie a stock tie or how to refer to foxhounds (hounds, never dogs!), how to change diagonals at the trot, how to count strides between fences, well, really, just generally how to ride a horse (quite an anachronism these days!)
And when I feel lost in the digital cloud (my powerpoint skills no longer serving me, alas!), I head down to the barn to muck stalls and clean tack and sweep the aisle. Thank God for this physical world, I think, and thank God for my own ability to do something. To have a skill worth having. To not turn to Google, but to my own memories - how did my mother do this again? Ah, now there’s the rub.
I’m thankful for the piano, for the books, for the constant love of ideas. This has served me well. I do wish I had learned more of the hard skills, the less romantic kind, but the eminently useful kind. Someone teach me to sew, please! (or send me the Youtube video)
I’ve written before about how over-techifying (new term, I’m claiming it) life not only makes life more tedious and flat, but also a lot less fun. You know there’s a whole category of work songs? What work song do we sing alone in front of a screen? Real work necessitates community. It also necessitates the use of our bodies. We’re much less apt to believe strange gnosticesque notions re body/self separation when we actually live in our bodies and not in an avatar.
For all our degrees and all our ability to ‘look it up’ whenever we need the answer (anyone else think this will be a generation plagued by memory diseases in old age?), I think by and large, we’re a lot less intelligent than our ancestors, at least when it comes to the things that matter.
To be truly cultured I want to take as my model the Icelandics, who carved out a highly literate and sophisticated society in a land of murky lava beds, rock faces, and sweeps of ice and snow.
Out of this raw terrain, they created a society that valued song, poetry, law, story, and the ability of a man (or woman - Viking women were incredibly powerful and self sufficient!) to make a life for themselves by actively and deliberating pursuing learning, physical strength, artistic vocations, and a wide expanse of cultural knowledge.3
So here’s my new morning affirmation (courtesy of 12th century Iceland):
“I am eager to play chess,
I have mastered nine skills,
I hardly forget the runes,
I am interested in books and carpentry,
I know how to ski,
My shooting and sailing skills are competent,
I can both play the harp and construe verse.”4
I think sometimes we don’t know the sort of world we’re meant to be preparing ourselves for. We think, what will our kids need to know? We’re living in a unique precipice moment here. Where we can’t see fifty years from now, maybe not even ten. We are maybe the first generation who truly can’t envision the world our children will inhabit, much less our grandchildren. Who can say what will stay and what will go?
My prediction is that the tech will fade. The internet has already become appallingly overcrowded, made nearly unsearchable and unusable with AI fakes and false bylines crowding the web. Social media has destroyed our communities and sense of self. And all of this in just the past two decades. It will annihilate itself. All things must come to their proper ends. The arc of the universe bends toward Justice. Martin Luther King Jr. was right. Silicon Valley will have its day to rue, I am sure.
But in the meantime, I have to choose what life to plan for, what to hope for. And I here rest on the wisdom of generations, of the time honored, to guide myself and my children. That helpful ‘democracy of the dead’ as Chesterton so aptly called them. I take the cultured Icelandics and the ten commandments and the Indian proverb of preparing for seven generations hence.
So if you see me skiing down a mountainside practicing my archery, you’ll know I’ve really made it. Ah, there goes a cultured woman!5
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And while I have you here…
Come to Ireland with me and Christy Isinger in October 2024! Our Lady of Knock, sheepherding demonstrations, traditional music, High Tea at a castle, St. Patrick’s Holy Mountain, the Rock of Cashel, ancient monasteries, a literary pub crawl… and most importantly, kindred spirits ready to pray, wonder, laugh, and learn together. Let’s buck the trend and do some real-world non-online life adventuring together.
PS - If you’d be interested in a Zoom Live chat to answer some questions or just chat more about the pilgrimage, can you send me an email and let me know?
still best friend. Hi Mary!
that last one worked - we did move to a farm! Still waiting on the puppy…
Lest you think they were above it all, hard drinking and composing poems about foul smelling burps was also a part of life. Again, balance.
Song of the Vikings, Nancy Marie Brown
**sans beard
I love this!!! I personally owe a lot of my hard skills to Girl Scout Camp. I learned how to make a fire, lash together an outdoor kitchen and cook outside, how to paddle a canoe, tie useful knots, clean a latrine (and check said latrine for wolf spiders before using it in the night!). I learned how to properly set a table and good table manners (Mabel, Mabel strong and able, get your elbows off the table!). I learned first aid and the buddy system and how to console a homesick friend in the dark. I learned to push myself physically and how to amuse myself without TV or radio. And I have watched with deep sadness council after council sell off their camp properties with a "modernized" program for girls who no longer want to be outdoors and away from their screens. To be honest I didn't love everything about learning them, but I do love that I still have this arsenal of hard skills from my experiences during those long ago summers at camp.
Wholeheartedly agree. Someday when the grid goes down, no one’s going to be able to do anything.