User:CaitieBug23/sandbox

I recently read an article in Seed Magazine titled “In Defense of Difference - Scientists Offer New Insight into What to Protect of the World‘s Rapidly Vanishing Languages, Cultures, and Species” by Maywa Montenegro and Terry Glavin, that I found to be both interesting and controversial. The article was written to inform the public about the changes and loss in language, culture and different species in our world. This piece gives all kinds of information and data, though none of it is cited, so it is hard to tell where the authors got their information from and if it is credible or not. When I first started reading this article, I really wondered if an entire language was being lost every six minutes and thought that a little impossible. I still believe that part is a bit far fetched, but I started thinking about another point the article made. The authors interviewed an anthropologist and linguist Luisa Maffi who suggests that not only are we losing culture and languages, but we are losing knowledge as well. She talks of a time when she was interviewing Tzeltal Mayan people who were waiting in line at a medical clinic in the village of Tenejapa. Along came a man who had walked for hours holding his two year old daughter who was suffering from diarrhea. The man could not remember the name of the herb that was once well known for treating diarrhea. “Because he had nearly forgotten the words for the herb, he had lost almost any trace of the herb’s utility, or even of its existence.” (2.) This made me realize that there are many bits of knowledge that we have lost because life has become convenient for us. Our lives have changed drastically, even in the last one hundred years. From the invention of the assembly line in 1901, the washing machine in 1908, the supermarket in 1916, the credit card in 1950, and so on our lives are getting easier and easier. (1.)	I have to admit that I do not know the first thing about taking care of livestock or growing food. I do not have a green thumb and I kill anything that I touch. I have tried to wash my clothing with out a washer, and failed miserably and I tried using oil lamps to save money in the winter and about lit my house on fire. I greatly enjoy being able to grab food out of the freezer and throw it into the microwave, and ta-da! I have dinner. (I also do not know what I would do without my heater or my hot showers!) These are things that our grandparent or our great grandparents knew, but it was not passed down to us because we have become so used to a convenient life. My grandparents are your typical, simple, down to earth farmers. They used to get up each day to milk the goats and take the fresh eggs from the chickens. My grandfather would tend to the gardens and other animals they had, (they had many different kinds!) and my grandmother would make homemade soap, cheese, yarn and anything else they would need. They both spent their afternoons enjoying one another’s company, my grandfather reading and my grandmother making her own yarn or knitting something with the yarn she had already made. This is the life I long to live, but I no longer have to opportunity to learn to live like this. My grandparents still have a farm, but it is not full of animals, and the garden is only half planted each year. My grandparents have found the farm too much to keep up on in their “old age”. And unfortunately they live over three thousand miles away from me. My parents greatly enjoy the amenities of modern life and definitely do not want to know anything about a simpler life. Because of my parent’s choice to not learn all they could from their parents, my siblings and I are going to lose the ability to learn their knowledge and bits of wisdom when my grandparents pass. Thankfully, there are books that can be read on just about any subject related to a “simple life”, your basic farming and livestock knowledge. But it is a shame that tips and ideas are not being shared anymore. Knowledge is not being passed down from one generation to the next. (Aside from how to use the microwave, and not to put foil in it!) I know it will take longer than six minutes to lose the knowledge of how to make homemade, from scratch food, how to support livestock and grow our own food without killing it, but I am afraid that knowledge will still be lost in the future. I greatly enjoyed reading this article because it opened my eyes to the different possibilities of changes in our world; it made me realize that I am missing out on a chance to learn something new. And this truly breaks my heart. I was aware of a desire to learn these things at some point in my life, but to realize that my grandparent’s wisdom won’t be passed down was earth shattering. For anyone who happens to read this, please learn all that you can. Talk to your parents and grandparents. Even if it may seem silly, listen. That knowledge may come in handy some day, and you will be able to say that you learned it from someone else, not Google. Take pride in your heritage and learn more about yourself, before it possibly becomes too late.

Works Cited: 1.) ForkArtJunkie. “American inventions in the last 100 years”. HubPages. Web. April 18, 2012. forkartjunkie.hub pages.com/hub/American-inventions-in-the-last-100 years 2.) Montenegro, Maywa & Glavin, Terry. “In Defense of Difference - Scientists Offer New Insight Into What To Protect Of The World’s Rapidly Vanishing Languages, Cultures, And Species”. Seed Magazine. April 28, 2012. Web. April 5, 2012.