Karen
03-04-2012, 10:18 PM
This was the quote I used for the latest puzzle.
There are two ways of looking at the past. There's "artifact history" and "ritual history." Most of us are familiar with artifact history. New England brims with house museums filled with bed warmers and boot hooks and forgotten china patterns. They're durable curiosities, encrusted with the special sort of patina that results from the glazed looks of countless half-interested tourists. Ritual history, however, is far more perishable and elusive. It's that continuation of an action performed by one's grandparents and their grandparents. Ritual history tends to erode less noticeably — around the margins at first, like the banks of a river. Eventually the river shifts course, and few remember how it once flowed. The next generation thinks the river has always flowed that way.
by Wayne Curtis
What family or cultural rituals do you follow?
Two spring immediately to mind, just pertaining to Lady's Human and I! When making gingerbread cookies at Christmas time, as well as men, ladies, candy cane and camels, and other shapes, we always have to make at least one big chicken cookie. Why? Because!
And at the first snow, we'd always make tollhouse cookies and play Monopoly. We're too far apart to do that together now, but we think of it!
Another family tradition is decorating the graves of family for Memorial Day.
What ones do you do?
There are two ways of looking at the past. There's "artifact history" and "ritual history." Most of us are familiar with artifact history. New England brims with house museums filled with bed warmers and boot hooks and forgotten china patterns. They're durable curiosities, encrusted with the special sort of patina that results from the glazed looks of countless half-interested tourists. Ritual history, however, is far more perishable and elusive. It's that continuation of an action performed by one's grandparents and their grandparents. Ritual history tends to erode less noticeably — around the margins at first, like the banks of a river. Eventually the river shifts course, and few remember how it once flowed. The next generation thinks the river has always flowed that way.
by Wayne Curtis
What family or cultural rituals do you follow?
Two spring immediately to mind, just pertaining to Lady's Human and I! When making gingerbread cookies at Christmas time, as well as men, ladies, candy cane and camels, and other shapes, we always have to make at least one big chicken cookie. Why? Because!
And at the first snow, we'd always make tollhouse cookies and play Monopoly. We're too far apart to do that together now, but we think of it!
Another family tradition is decorating the graves of family for Memorial Day.
What ones do you do?