My favorite thing! Yesterday I sorted the box of paper odds-and-ends that I'd set aside before I left the thrift store 4+ months ago.
Sorting ephemera is one of many things Book's Girl (BG) hasn't gotten around to doing . . . and maybe never will.
She is a lovely person and I like her very much. Her pleasant demeanor is good for the store. But she's not a great worker in the category of Getting Things Done. (Which, technically, is 90 percent of thrift work.)
She sort of floats around.
I've noticed this floatiness in other young people too. (BG is nineteen.)
Marz says some of her young coworkers act as if they expect a GPS to tell them where to go, what to do. They're smart, they're nice--they just can't read the map and follow it on their own.
Is floatiness a hallmark of this generation (or a segment of it)?
An effect of the Internet?
"This machine will tell me exactly what."
Or that they were teenagers when Covid shut their lives down four-and-a-half years ago?
"No point trying because there's nothing."
Or, I don't know... Maybe it's an accident of the people I happen to meet.
But generations do have personalities, don't they?
Personalities follow the fashions and force-fields of the times-- maybe coping mechanisms, maybe flowering patterns.
"Oh, the sunlight shines over there, I'm going to grow all leggy and get in that."
Like the similarities --survival tactics?-- I saw in the three people all born within a year of one another (1925), even though born into very different social strata:
my Auntie Vi, President Jimmy Carter, and Queen Elizabeth II:
a "mustn't grumble" attitude, and a high value placed on self-starting hard work....
"Nobody built a bridge over that creek so I'll drag over a log to place across it so I can walk 5 miles to school and avoid getting beat at home (no point telling anyone that)."
I'm not applauding this over that. My auntie's generation's strengths were strengths, but they could be rigid in harmful ways too.
"Don't talk about your war nightmares."
But some of those strengths are excellent for AGING.
How is my generation aging? Those of us now around retirement age... (The tail end of the Baby Boomers.)
That's harder for me to see.
Hmmmmm.... Let's see. Here're a couple I'm a little bit of myself:
Don't stop thinking about tomorrow! There's an Age-Is-Just-a-Number attitude I see in my class.
This is a lie in the face of reality and can be obnoxious--"Let's go bungee jumping in New Zealand"-- but also encouraging in its own zippidyDooda way.
Where have all the flowers gone, and where are our-flying-cars? We're in a state of shock at the state of the Future. We have the Internet in our back pockets, but we still drive on the ground. Also, we shouldn't drive, because carbon.
"This is not the future we were promised."
Well, but it's one of the futures... "Jimmy Carter was right."
There are more! Ideas?
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Etymology of ephemera; late 16th century: plural of ephemeron, from Greek, ‘lasting only a day’.
lovely ephemera! sometimes i think things don't get done because the doer may not know what to do with the stuff or it's of little interest to them so it just becomes a pile.
ReplyDeletefloatiness is a great way to describe it. i think less of this has to do with covid and more with how they were raised. parents deciding/making choices for them along with depending upon a machine to tell them what to do.or their parents didn't teach them how to do things in life.
i'm in a quilting forum and members will post questions: how do i photograph a quilt? hmm, a 5 second post on a search engine will give you more answers than you need. someone did tell me that is how younger people "share." that's not sharing if you are asking me how to do something.
my former upstairs neighbor had to be convinced that driving on a flat tire was not a good thing. a liquor store owner told me that young people buy wine based off of what their friends are drinking. if their friends are drinking boone's farm that's what they drink. ha, we drank it as that was the only thing we could afford. that or leibfraumilch.
kirsten
ps the 1960s face hangers in the first photo are so cool!!!
Yes, parents are an influence too---parents who fear for their children---(ever since Columbine and 9/11 there's more fear of public places, right?).
DeleteI hear at school that parents push for schools to be locked and phones always accessible---because of school shootings.
But surely Covid took a big toll on young people, don't you think? You're supposed to be socializing as a teenager and now you're alone in a zoom room... Seems a recipe for floatiness.
But I don't know--and maybe it's too soon to say?
So--maybe asking questions online IS a form of outreach? Rather than looking it up?
Driving on a flat tire? OMG.
All of that EVERYTHING in the paper bins- How could you not take all of of it home with you? I would be a terrible employee- I would squirrel away all of it plus all of the cool toys and broken bits! Terrible, I would be.
ReplyDeleteEvery generation has its challenges and "influencers" . My brother had WW2 myths, and the mafia , I had Roy Rodgers and Dale Evans. Guess who lived longer and better- hint- my brother is dead...Erik, in Portland, tattoos and piercings, which would not have happened if there were not peers all full of ink and holes. admires odd artists and animators- his taste there is completely his own. Time is moving so quickly, tech is too fast for humans to keep ahead of- Good thing there are libraries with reference books , you know...in case the satellites fall from the sky . Would this recent generation be lost when the information highway ceases to exist? Would they know how to use a library? Read an actual book? The learning curve would be very steep. I will say, in favor of youtube videos, best invention ever- showing us HOW to build a tiny house? no problem- build a bomb? Ok, got that covered. You tube makes me smarter- and lazier. Influencers drive me crazy and I feel inadequate if I watch more than one nano second of their BS. Wicked internet, good internet. we can see where this is all headed- AI- and humans will just be in the way. Maybe it is good that this generation is dumb and dependent - they will not notice the takeover.
Yes, it's good stuff!
DeleteI used to bring everything home when I first started volunteering at thrift stores (2013)---but living in a tiny place, and sometimes with Marz... the clutter made me claustrophobic.
And still, now I have a one-bedroom, I start to feel panicky if there's too much stuff (which, this summer, there is).
Exactly: "Every generation has its challenges and "influencers".
I didn't mean to put-down youTube instructionals-- they are the BEST, yes! But just to say it's a treat to take a class with people-in-the-flesh.
Annoying as we are, I've missed the rub of us.
I wonder if sorting ephemera requires a level of self confidence and cultural awareness that is challenging? I don't ever see it in our local thrift stores.
ReplyDeleteGlad you are enjoying your print making class - I now keep noticing prints and wonder where my cutting supplies are? Attic maybe?
Ceci
Yes, even knowing what is worth saving does take some judgment.
DeleteAlso from my experience at other Thrift Stores, I'd say it's just a pain to set aside flimsy paper until you have enough to sort it.
Anything iffy or flimsy just gets thrown away--not worth the time and space. Saving ephemera to put out was entirely my doing, because I love it.
Delete