This blog entry is part of #HandwrittenPost challenge started by Lexical Jen over at Wordpress: Write a blogpost by hand, possibly including doodles, and post it to your blog.

 Lexical Jen explains in her post the idea was inspired by a recent New York Times article called "What's Lost as Handwriting Fades."

 The article cites a 2012 study wherein 5-year-old children were asked to reproduce letters in three ways: free-form, by tracing along dotted lines, and by typing. Scientists then scanned the brains of participants while showing them images of the letters written in each mode. Researchers found the children's brains exhibited the most activity when looking at the freehand writing they'd done.

 While the point of the study was that teaching penmanship in early childhood will "facilitate reading acquisition" better than teaching only typing, I find the results just as applicable to writing in adulthood. As a longtime pen-and-notebook journal writer, I can personally attest I've often had better topic ideas come to me during the course of hand-writing than when I've started out with a keyboard and a blank screen. 

 All of that said, here's my quick contribution to Lexical Jen's challenge:

OK, maybe not every handwritten post is inspired. But it sure can be a fun learning experience.

 Want to join the challenge? Write a blog post and tag it #HandwrittenPost.

 Happy writing!
Feeling stuck in life? Read a chapter from “Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times,” by Lucy Lethbridge, then re-examine your career opportunities. I guarantee the exercise will make you grateful. Maybe even more so than watching an episode of “Downton Abbey.”

This book offers a fascinating, frustrating history that makes painfully evident the level of social immobility the serving class experienced in Britain -- especially the female serving class.

As Lethbridge chronicles, in Victorian England, even philanthropy ultimately existed to keep class divisions in place between domestics and their employers. One example she names is Victorian philanthropist Dr. Thomas Barnardo. In the 1880s, he established a network of children’s homes for street urchins and funneled the children into service as they became of age – particularly the female children, as the demand for male servants was dropping and demand for female domestics was rising.

Lethbridge writes: “Many social reformers of the turn of the 20th century, Dr. Barnardo among them, abhorred the demoralizing and alienating effects of industrialization and found a solution in the ideal of healing hierarchies. … “

Unfortunately, as author George Sturt wrote in his 1912 book, “Change in the Village,” quoted by Lethbridge, the service-funneling model of philanthropy did not create a happy, productive servant class or working class. Instead, charity endeavors “made of them charwomen and laundresses, so that other women may shirk these duties and be cultured.”

According to Lethbridge, Barnardo’s homes and other servant-focused charities such as MABYS offered “benevolent protection” – and plenty of ideas about “how to distract the working girl from temptation” to socialize with the outside world in pubs, but those ideas were resented by domestic workers in a changing world.

Mrs. Miles, a British author who retained servants, once “encountered her housemaid blacking a grate without enthusiasm” and asked her what was the matter. Lethbridge writes, “The maid responded that not only did she hate her work, but she would actually prefer to write books, like Mrs. Miles, adding furthermore that she was always writing and could not wait to get back to her pen and paper. ‘So I tried to show her that it would make her life much happier and easier if she would really excel in the work she had to do … instead of thinking of a life she was not educated for and in which she would probably fail,’” Mrs. Miles said.

It seems to me Mrs. Miles’ lecture stemmed not only from the conviction she held about rightful class divisions, but from a primal fear of loss of power and status if her servants became equal to her. What would be stopping them from leaving if they were allowed the full freedoms of the middle class?

That fear was founded in reality to some degree, as service was becoming a much-maligned occupation by the middle class and by the factory class.

The industrial revolution and World War I lured many female domestics into factory work or nursing jobs. At the same time, the advent of the automobile replaced the positions of four coachmen and several stable boys with that of just one chauffeur. Chauffeurs, Lethbridge notes, were much more likely to come from engineering or mechanical backgrounds than from career service – yet another threat to the established order.

Despite my interest in the subject matter, the sheer amount of information – and the organizational style of this book – have left me feeling inundated. I keep longing for chronological, rather than topical, order. Lethbridge routinely juxtaposes servant and employer anecdotes from disparate decades to support the topic at hand, but so many societal, technological and historical shifts were occurring in the time covered that it can be jarring to read a source from the 1880s, then suddenly one from the 1930s.

Perhaps readers less attached to historical chronology will forgive Lethbridge her strategy.

The journalist in me pays the author homage for this difficult undertaking. She has assembled a vast array of previously unpublished testimonials from servants and their descendants, adding to the rich cultural narrative of Britain’s below-stairs history.

“Downton Abbey” fans won’t find characters like Thomas or O’Brien in this book, probably because everyone was too busy working 5 a.m. to midnight to stand around gossiping. But, readers also will find precious few facts that contradict the popular PBS TV show's historical underpinnings. If anything, I think having read this book will enhance my enjoyment of season 5 when it airs.

Thanks, Lucy Lethbridge. You’ve done a good work.
This maple tree belongs to my neighbor. (Photo credit: Rachel E. Watson)

The maple tree in our next-door neighbor’s yard looks autumnal almost year-round, from the early days of spring to the late stages of fall.

Even though I suspect it’s a bloodgood maple – a shrub-like maple bred for its small stature, red-bronze-purple leaves and ornamental appearance – its fall quality acts as a reminder that, in the words of George R.R. Martin’s Stark family, “Winter is coming.”

This could mean winter of the soul, winter of old age, winter of the Earth or the changing of the seasons. Winter is coming.

I only found one ant in my backyard. Were the rest working? 
The tree, as it looks ahead to winter, reminds me of Proverbs 6, wherein King Solomon urges his readers to “go to the ant” for lessons in hard work, delayed gratification, diligence and wisdom. As he puts it, “having no commander, overseer or ruler … it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest” (Proverbs 6:6-8). The ant knows winter is coming; its whole life is devoted to preparation. Solomon calls that wisdom.

As I’m relearning in my church’s summer sermon series on Proverbs, Word to the Wise, Solomon’s audience was an agrarian society in which families were only one or two down harvests from starvation.

Today, in Western nations, this reality is much less pervasive. Only about 2 percent of the U.S. population currently lives or works on farms. While we still depend on agriculture for our sustenance, most U.S. citizens are far removed from feeling the immediate effects of a poor harvest. Farmers work hard to grow and distribute food. But those of us who toil in other industries might forget the importance of planting, tending and harvesting.

Farming is good; gardening is good. But those of us who don't grow food still can apply the ant's example to the works we do pursue. 

I aim to apply myself to honing my writing and editing skills.  This is a lifelong commitment – one I have recently reaffirmed. My expertise won’t grow in a vacuum. I need to write and edit – daily.

What about you? What are your aptitudes? What craft can you hone as you consider the ant?

About Me

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I think, read and write. I might review books, mull on music, spin original poems, share insights or tell stories, but you can be sure whatever you read here comes from a thoughtful and considered place within.

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