Things I’m Learning During the Pandemic

On Rediscovering the Forgotten and Under-Appreciated

Even if we always worked from home before social distancing and shelter-in-place took effect, many of us are finding we have more open time on our hands. And what happens in that open time?

For me, it has led to rediscovering old pastimes and falling into the patterns of how I chose to spend my time when I had more of it in my youth.

The tapestry of my childhood wouldn’t be complete without the worn, reused, musty threads of many thrift stores, flea markets, and consignment shops woven into its background.

As much as I was raised by my parents in the rural environment of southwest Missouri, I was just as much molded by the used books and unusual found items I spent time with at every one of my mother’s favorite “haunts” (“haunts” is her preferred word for these stores offering things of every kind with a mysterious history).

Bargain shopping was – and is still – my mother’s favorite pastime and she does it as often as she can. For me and my siblings, it often became an exercise in endurance and discovery.

What that meant for me during my childhood, was an almost daily opportunity to explore in a (mostly) hands-on way. I say “mostly” because of the “you break, you buy” signs that always seemed to be posted on every store’s wall. I was hyper-aware of anything breakable. It prepared me well for when my daughter was a toddler. 

My plan of attack after arriving at a store was to find the books. I would find the books, locate something I wanted to read, and then procure my spot to sit down and try to read through as much as I could – as fast as I could – so that I could leave when my mom was ready to go without having to buy the book. 

This could become an arduous task because I could easily fall in love.

Sometimes my heart pulsated with desire when I discovered some of the more majestic older books. I’d swoon over their sheer beauty. The craftsmanship could and would take my breath away. The antiquated yet artistic typography, exotic vellum inserts, delicate thin paper, heartfelt prose from the editor in the opening pages, gilded title lettering on the book’s spine –– a book like that could seem like it held the secret answer to many valuable but long-forgotten problems. That so much attention and effort had been given to the creation of letters and ideas, books like that seemed to offer visual evidence that whatever knowledge was held inside those pages, it must be valuable. 

I had a particular fondness for old medical books, which were gravely serious, somewhat macabre, and endlessly fascinating to me. I pored over them in my bedroom when I was in grade school. No one at the thrift shops could understand why I would want these old books, but my mother could often pick them up for anywhere between a nickel and a quarter. (If I wanted a book for more than 25 cents, I would often have to promise to wash the dishes or rub my mom’s feet when we got home, so I had to pick my battles and my books carefully.)

I think my mother was proud of me for seeing the value in the books. She never seemed to have a problem with the way I spent my time. Maybe it was because I stayed out of her hair as she shopped. But I like to think that it was a bond we shared and continue to share. She has her own collection of old books, too.

Z is for Zebra

My mother’s collection of children’s encyclopedias was a source of many hours of distraction for me when I was a kid with nothing better to do. 

I loved how organized and neat the set looked on the bookshelves my father had built. He had applied a medium brown stain to the wooden bookshelves so that the imprinted “distressed” design of a variety of tools, marks made from the sides of hammer’s heads and screws and all sorts of shapes, would stand out on the bookshelves’ edges.

I would sit on the couch and stare at the books and pick a random letter and then go pull that letter’s book out from the matching red encyclopedias on the bookcase and read all about whatever caught my eye on the pages inside. I’d pull “Z” and by dinner, I would tell everyone ad nauseam about zebras. These are the things you do growing up in the 80s in rural Missouri. And apparently, this is also what you do when you shelter-in-place during a pandemic in 2020.

Today, my eyes scanned my office’s bookshelves and landed on a publication that demanded my attention. It happened the same way as when my eyes did their dance over the bookshelves in my youth.

The original micro-learning

The publication that caught my eye was an issue of an old magazine from 1915 called The Mentor. It was published by a company called The Mentor Association, which, I just researched to discover, was the editor’s attempt at a kind of think tank. 

When I pulled it off of the shelf and looked inside, my heart felt so full I thought it might fall out of my chest.

Beautiful images! Short, exciting write-ups about authors with one page devoted to each! Short lessons inscribed on various pages! The entire experience – both intellectual and physical – captured my imagination and attention in so many ways.

Prominent educators of the time provided their courses to be included in the magazine. It offers a daily lesson meant to be consumed and appreciated one bit at a time. We call this micro-learning today!

As I looked through the magazine, I remembered sitting with my mom in the front living room of our house, looking through some early hardback editions of Harper’s Monthly and talking about how beautiful they were.

The fact that I have not just this one issue of The Mentor, but also many, many other periodicals – some from the 1800s – that I love, publications created with the purpose being to provide an education in the home, tells me I have always – ALWAYS – been a target market for virtual education and a sucker for a beautifully designed book.

I decided to enjoy reading through this issue, but to also start thinking about how this works when applied to modern learning. Not everything translates, but certainly, there are some new, old ideas that are worth considering. I’m feeling inspired.

What else is waiting to be rediscovered and appreciated in new ways?

Here are some recent realizations:

• Cooking…I’m cooking so much more now. I take the time to peel and cut vegetables so that I can make homemade comfort foods for my family. I actually pay more attention to my family when we sit down for dinner. My 2020 goal of sitting down to have dinner with my family at the dinner table “at least once a week” seems like a slam dunk for success since we now eat together around the dinner table SEVEN days a week.
• I must really like tea. I recognize now that I have an extraordinary collection of tea in my cabinet. SO MUCH TEA. Mostly tisanes, but lots of all kinds. I have no idea why I ever needed to have so many varieties, but I have them and now I am taking time to drink more tea during my day. I am so very hydrated!
• I really do love my old books and I want to read them. I’m not feeling drawn to my super practical non-fiction business books. There is nothing in my being that wants to read those right now. No, this morning I realized I’m looking for something “new and different” that is actually “old and the same” – but I’m seeing with fresh eyes and I’m ready to learn.

So now, dear reader, please share with all of us in the comments. What have you been learning during the pandemic?

There is so much I am learning from this horrible pandemic, but not all of it is terrible. In fact, it’s helping me to appreciate some pieces of my past that were waiting to be rediscovered. What are you rediscovering?

[Read more about the fascinating history about The Mentor Magazine here: http://www.inherited-values.com/2011/01/the-mentor-magazine/]

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KiKi L’Italien is a communications and branding consultant, a community leader for Association Chat, and currently “sheltering in place” with her husband, daughter, and pet poodle in Alexandria, Virginia. You can find her reading old books and writing in her home office. Or, scratch that. You won’t find her. Because she likely won’t answer the door when you knock.