I recently read The Gift by Lewis Hyde. It is about how the giving and receiving of gifts builds and maintains personal connections and groups and even societies, and the difference between gift systems and transactional or capitalist systems.

We in capitalist-land are conditioned to think of transactions and equivalence and ‘value’ as the only or the most relevant way to interact with our world. We are supposed to internalize that staying on the plus side of our ledger is the thing that we should be doing every minute of every day and night. If we’re not hustling, maybe we should be investing. Or maybe we should be making passive income. For sure, we ought to be doing something productive.

Which, sure, take care of business. Get what you need. Advance yourself. Get paid. Make money off your ideas. Go ahead and do that! It can be fun and rewarding and necessary. Get that cheddar! Get yourself some new cool shoes!

But also, you can receive the gift of the day. Or the sun, or the moon. Or your cat. Or the fact that air exists. You did not buy these things. You did not pay for the day. It just came.

I have found that rearranging my attention around the idea and acknowledgement of gifts makes the world a bigger and more interesting place. Waking up in the morning is a gift. Heck, being born was a gift. Being located on a planet that supports life is a gift. Walking across the floor happens because wood exists, which is another gift.

Gifts bind people together, through reciprocation and also sometimes through obligation. A gift stops being a gift when it stops moving. Once it stops, it congeals into a possession or it fades into the discarded. We receive the gift of life from those who came before. We pass the gift of existence on, to those critters and creeks and trees and whatever that will come after us. And on and on the gifts flow and move.

When we make things or teach people or share ideas or art, we do our part to move the gifts and keep them alive. We are mentors, ancestors, teachers, a community, a team, a type of art or music, a tradition, a joke or a story or so many things.

We receive the gift of the trouble that people centuries ago went to, to write things down and make things and put them somewhere, maybe on a wall or in a jar in a cave. Those people had no idea how their gift might play out. We don’t know how a lot of our gifts will play out, either. That is part of the beauty.

When I make art with kids, I am attempting to pass on gifts that were given to me. These were the gifts of formative experiences I had as a kid, like receiving stacks of paper (from my dad) and art supplies (from my mom) or being given the time and space to draw for hours, and maybe having someone notice something I made and react to it, or seeing people around me rehearsing madrigals or picking music to play at a party or taking photographs or setting up the telescope in their backyard and inviting us over to look at Jupiter and Saturn.

Neptune Road

The story of people salvaging a life on Neptune.

Things Of The Week

Somebody put together a whole archive of Studs Terkel’s interviews.

I will readily admit that sometimes, when I play this timed trivia game, I glitch out and can’t come up with a single solitary answer. Sigh. Cute underwater things, though!

It is so satisfying to watch Blackwing pencils get made.

Featured Thing

Okay! That's enough nonsense for now.

May you receive a gift, may you give a gift, won't you be my neighbor? - Betsy

“And remember, if you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own!” - Scoop Nisker