TRIBUTE - Matchbin

thoughts from marita When does an apron
become cool?
By
MARITA
WALTON
IPUT AWAY some Christmas
things this morning and discovered
in the back of a drawer several
gingham aprons made by
my Aunt Mabel. These are old
fashioned June Cleaver pleated aprons
that tie at the waist with hand stitching in
little patterns on each. Those pink checks
peeked out from the drawer and reminded
me of a time not so long ago, when
women wore aprons in the kitchen and
cooked at home. In recent decades for
many, that has been merely a quaint
image....an anachronism in the modern
day of past-paced living and technologydriven
lifestyles. But I feel a bit of connection
to my forebears when I don a
good apron and get in the kitchen to
cook.
Just last night I listened on the way
home from work as the public radio program's
guests - hip young northeasterners
- touted the new value of 'reclaiming
domestic competencies.' They used this
phrase and others like it frequently,
describing what it meant to a (I suspect)
domestically illiterate audience. Growing
your own food - even in pots or window
boxes in the city, knowing how to cook
healthy meals at home, discovering how
to care well for one's self and others, living
responsibly to manage natural
resources and leave little waste in our
wake are discussed in 2011 as though
this is new discovery. They sounded a
clarion call to a generation to 'wake up'
and live well.
SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE
and responsible lifestyle choices figure
largely into the scheme of a new generation's
mantra they called domestic skills.
Seems like everything old is new again.
Pepper a conversation with organic,
reclaimed, and sustainable, and you're
golden.
Serving farm fresh local produce is
hailed on menus in swanky eateries.
Eating live grains (dating from Biblical
times) is celebrated for health's sake,
while buying highly-preserved, transfatimpregnated,
artificially flavored food
was last decade's triumph of convenience.
(Note: Try Ezekiel cereal mixed
with two parts Vanilla Almond Bare
Naked granola - 1/4 cup total - for Doc's
power breakfast for health, convenience
and protein staying power.)
Swelling lists of courses and blogs are
devoted to teaching a new generation
how to farm organically, sew clothing
for the family, eat fresh and local food,
and live in harmony with nature and one
another. Many are working to address
the fact Americans really do not make
anything anymore; we merely consume
at an astounding rate. And we know how
to do very little independently.
SO, TELL ME...why did they do
away with home economics?
I remember it well. Back in the day,
junior high and high school girls took
home economics and the boys took shop
Try 2011
(or agriculture preparedness and maintenance
courses) as electives. We made an
apron, sewed our kettle cloth shift, studied
cooking fundamentals and learned
budgeting. The guys built a bookcase
and picnic table and tackled welding
among the life skills. My friend, Betty,
said today that she took shop for a
semester, and one benefit was that it
demystified the unknown: "When you
know how to use a hammer or saw, you
are not intimidated by one."
Designed to equip them/us to face a
future as a farmer or homemaker, this
model remained entrenched until the
social and political discord of the ’60s
and ’70s caused tremors cracking fault
lines in curricula across even the rural
South. I was caught in the crack, so to
speak, with one foot in two worlds.
Graduating from high school in '73 as
the Betty Crocker Homemaker of
Tomorrow (yes, there was such a thing),
I spanned a changing landscape in that
decade to begin practicing law in 1979.
Most all of the women law students I
spent the next few years with eschewed
anything having to do with homemaking
or confining women to traditional roles.
We were trail blazers - fighters all - for
the greater good of womankind! Power
to the people, doncha know. I knew how
to fall right in step, keeping my association
with Betty Crocker well hidden.
Last month, by sharp contrast, I read
the law school newspaper where a talented
orator and award-winning competitor
and law student wrote her Baking for
Page 15A
Barristers column about chocolate chip
pumpkin muffins. I stopped in my
tracks, slack-jawed and mouth agape, as
my father in law says. That would never
have happened in the seventies. We were
too defensive for our own good in the
collective quest for more options for
women. But this is now, when over half
the nation's law and medical students are
women. So maybe they are not as hypersensitive
as their less numerous counterparts
were decades ago; they exercise
their options.
TIME AND LIFE have a way of
either mellowing us or hardening us. Our
response makes the difference. I want to
mellow gracefully.
Learn a new skill. Identify a domestic
deficiency and do something about it.
The internet is replete with advice for
domestic divas who are discovering this
concept for the first time, because they
never had it in school and alarmingly
few have had it modeled at home.
There is immense value - for both men
and women - in having the skills to manage
and maintain one's home and personal
finances, to create a place of
warmth and hospitality for family, and to
provide healthy eating patterns and relationships.
They are calling this new,
essential body of knowledge domestic
competencies, and they are saying we
had better learn some soon, or no one
will remember how it is done.
Where is Betty Crocker when we need
her?