===========Just some thoughts:
"I've come to recognize that one of the functions of a grandparent or family elder is to pass on these stories, in an effort to sustain a sense of family history across time and the many separations that occurs. This is an important function --the forces that blow families apart have reached a gulf force in our time. One can see this in the demise of the family dinner table. In my childhood it was uncommon for the family to eat less than two meals a day around the same kitchen table."
"But dinner (called supper then) was a virtually inviolable ritual. Only natural disasters, severe weather or some catastrophic breakdown in the day's work schedule could daily or abrogate family dinners at the kitchen table. In this I don't believe we were exceptional. Working and middle-class families sat down at the dinner table every night--the shared meal was the touchstone of good manners. Indeed, that dinner table was the one time when were all together, every day: parents, grandparents, children, siblings. Rudeness between siblings, or a failure to observe the etiquette of passing dishes to one another, accompanied by "please" and "thank you," was the training ground of behavior, the place where manners began."
Larry McMurtry--Dairy Queen
In reading such I though of how in my own childhood how this was true and at those times stores were told and family history remembered. This practice would still serve our families well.
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January 24, 2017
Keep on,
Larry Adamson