Last Saturday I sat in an oversized but uncomfortable recliner in my 90-year-old grandmother's living room. I like to poke around inside her head to hear unfathomable stories of the Dust Bowl, Great Depression, World War II...whatever valuable bit of history she's willing and able to recollect.
Several afternoons passed like this between us, after which I've made a mad rush home to journal about an age gone by. Gram is a vibrant window to the past. She is a resource of lessons learned for the future. Last Saturday she provided me with a question of her own. "Do you think," she wondered aloud, "this generation could make it today the way we used to?"
That night I peered over my mug of specialty store tea and gazed at the question now scribbled out in my journal. People, it seems, used to be resourceful and have a hunger for self-education. Are we, I pondered, so different? Has romanticism separated today's culture from its foundations to the point the ages seem distant and impossible to recreate?
Their lives were hard. Our lives possess their own challenges. Their fears felt tangible. Our fears feel tangible. They loved. We love. Just as generations before us, we long to make an imprint on the world; we want to glean from its resources responsibly and make a difference to someone.
To answer Gram's question: yes, we could make it. But we would probably make it a little different. The Refinery is a post-modern blog about taking familiar concepts and processes from the past and translating them into significant concepts for today.
Welcome, then, to The Refinery.
This is not my grandmother. But you get the idea.
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