Youtube is my Grandma

Did you have a grandmother?  I know my spouse did and he said it was the best.  For many of us in the materially rich-but-relationally-depleted part of the world (and that’s most of us looking at this blog), family traditions were something sweet but a bit contrived.  Maybe a treasure hunt.  Maybe the same red candle on the table or some confusingly unimpressive recipe.  Maybe it was fun but it didn’t go very deep.  The lines connecting  us to useful knowledge derived from generations of experience,  or symbolic stories they are often embedded in, tend to be broken in our day and place. They might not even reach further back than one’s own parents.  We all feel we’re on our own, like a whole country of orphans. That’s how indigenous people often see us. Eating soup with fork because no one told us about spoons. In my case, I had no grandmother to speak of — my father’s mother I met once and I did not speak the same language.  My mother’s mother died in her late twenties.  No grandmother figure either.  But grandmothers can be powerful conveyors of not just grandmotherliness but of real useful knowledge.  Cooking, self-care, gardening, clothing repair, etc.  I mean, they CAN be. Sometimes you get (very old reference coming…) Joan Crawford for a grandmother.  What’s a newer reference?  Jeanine Pirro? Yikes.

I have found that in some ways youtube is a substitute for a knowledgeable grandmother if you never had a grandma. There’s no relationship there, of course, but there is so much useful information conveyed.  I’ve learned to change the headlight on my car, to grow potatoes in an absurdly easy way, to cook a decadent egg dish and to can fresh tomatoes .  I also learned that medieval British people ate daily something called “potage.’  As Terry Jones described the recipe — in his Medieval Lives series: “Take anything and boil it for two hours.”  I’ve learned how to understand atonal music (it’s still revolting to hear but I understand the fun experiment behind it).  I learned how to cut my own hair (with, you know, limited success).

I’ve also learned to tile over already existing tile. Our bathroom tile is unbearable but when I saw the exact same tile in our local gas station, I really felt something has to be done. This is intolerable!  It’s not on the priority list however,  and perhaps will never be, so I watch videos on how to remove the tiles in preparation for the future non-event.

How to fix a toilet.  How to make a scalp tonic out of rice water.  How to remove glue from places it shouldn’t be.  How to identify lamb’s quarters (another wild edible).  It’s fabulous!

There was a marvelous woman named Annie McCleary who died suddenly and unexpectedly last summer, who was kind of like the queen of Vermont grandmothers.  Her knowledge of the local plants was second to none and she took groups of people on walks and taught whole courses (for which you could get credit at the local college).  We went on a walk with her just about 6 weeks before she died having no indication she was ill.  She was magical and we feel so happy we got to meet her at least once.  Here are some of the walks that she led:

• Early Spring Plants
• Spring Wild Edibles
• Summer Wild Edibles
• Late Summer Wild Edibles
• Toxic, Poisonous and Rash-Causing Plants
• Boreal Forest Plants
• Rich Woods Plants
• Plants of Open Fields and Edges
• Plants of Wet Places, Edges of Streams, Lakes and Ponds
• Asteraceae Family Plants
• How to key out (identify) plants using Newcomb’s Guide to the Wildflowers by Lawrence Newcomb

Of course now I wish I had gone on more of them.  “Don’t know what you got till it’s gone.”  One thing she said that stuck with me was “don’t kill the grandmothers.”  She was referring to the oldest trees in the forest, the oldest lobsters in the sea, the oldest “old ladies” of any species.  They are — or they can be — the reservoirs of knowing, conscience and protection that can’t arrive in any other form.

John Lewis had strong grandmother energy and I am so sorry he is gone.  As Mark Shields (from the Newshour) said on Friday, whenever he saw him, Lewis would grab his hands and say, “How are you my brother?”  (I’m a little more overwrought about his passing than I can account for except that this is the kind of warmth, blended with grace, gentleness, strength and integrity, you simply cannot find. Godspeed John Lewis. I miss you like you were mine. )

“Grandma Youtube” also offered me a documentary that beautifully portrays the Kogi indigenous people in Columbia, first aired in the early 90s on the BBC. You and I will never be able to be inside the indigenous point of view, but this might give us the best hint.  It’s strikingly relevant and prescient for the time we are living in now.  It’s very weird and beautiful.  I don’t want to over-romanticize the Kogi — I’m not fond of the regimentation and patriarchy — but let me just affirm that the Kogi have something of value to say and for the first time in their history, a desire to say it to us — we are the “little brother” as they see it and they are the elder and have watched us with interest for a long time.   It’s a film worth watching.  I hope you honor Grandma’s offering and have a look.