Hee

In a comment on the previous post, Ken was talking about (I think) Pioneer House or Frontier House or one of those.

There was a series of [Something] House programs that ran from time to time on PBS. I liked them, even if I didn't like the inevitable sniping and the "video confessionals" (usually featuring tearful teenagers who DIDN'T KNOW THIS WAS GOING TO BE SO HARD!!!)

But his comment about "not enough wood. You died." sounds almost like a real-life version of Oregon Trail, the old computer game.

(And heh. Why don't they do a reality show of that? If for no other reason than it would make thousands of Gen-Xers cackle with recognition when the smarmy host (there has to be a smarmy host) hands a card to one team of players telling them that they have died of dysentery.)

I will say I enjoyed 1940s House, which was set in wartime Britain, because I've always been interested in the whole stiff-upper-lip response of Britons to the various fears and deprivations of that time. Even reading some first-person accounts written during that time, people seemed remarkably stoic - almost heroic by today's standards - in response to what was going on.

Also on 'craftivism' - some of you know that I knit and make quilts. I do it because I find it therapeutic and because I like the finished products I can make. It's not cheaper to knit a sweater than it is to buy one (though maybe, level of quality for level of quality, the price would be comparable). And I realize it's perhaps slightly absurd in our modern times to spend a couple months working on something I could buy. But as I said, I enjoy it and take a certain pride in the finished product. And I think being able to make something - whether it's baking your own bread, playing music, doing woodwork, writing stories, making soap, doing embroidery, whatever - is good for many people's souls. (Especially those of us who work in careers where the "finished product" is so intangible). But feeling oneself "better" somehow because you can make stuff....that's just kind of irritating.

(Unless you're doing it in a silly, "here's how I could survive the Zombie Apocalypse" way. And yeah, I've done that...pointed out to people that not only can I make bread, but I can make YEAST (well, given the right conditions, some boiled potato, and willing microbes in the air). But that's just being silly and funny.)

I don't know what it is about some people that drives them to need to point out how they are superior. Some kind of a sense of inferiority, I suppose.