Hello and welcome to Episode Twenty-One of Page Turn: the Largo Public Library Podcast. I'm your host, Hannah!
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The Spanish Language Book Review begins at 12:09 and ends 14:32 at
The English Language Transcript can be found below
But as always we start with Reader's Advisory!
The Reader's Advisory for Episode Twenty-One is Grilled Cheese and Goblins by Nichole Kimberling. If you like Grilled Cheese and Goblins you should also check out: Woman World by Aminder Dhaliwal, My Lavender Boyfriend by Marina Ford, and Better Not Pout by Annabeth Albert.
My personal favorite Goodreads list Grilled Cheese and Goblins is on is Fluffy Queer Romance.
Today’s Library Tidbit is about crafting and mindfulness.
You may have noticed we do a lot of crafting programs here at the library. Why do we do them? Well mostly because they’re fun. We like crafting, you like crafting, it’s a win/win. However, why do people like to craft in the first place?
Some people craft out of boredom, some out of family obligation, some to make a living, some to preserve a cultural heritage, and some to relax and de-stress. All reasons for crafting are valid reasons for crafting!
However, what I’m going to focus on today is crafting for relaxation and to de-stress and why crafting can be a way to do these things.
Before getting into that let’s define crafting. Crafting or handicraft are a variety of work done by hand or with simple tools that creates a practical but decorative object. This makes it a subclass of Art, but not all art is handicraft. Some other pseudonyms for crafting are artisanry, handicrafting, handcrafting, domestic arts, folk art, and rural crafts. Crafts often have cultural and/or religious significance to the person who is doing the work. Crafting is also a way to spread a political message.
A craft can be anything from needlework to basket weaving to balloon animals to leather work to glass blowing. There are hundreds of different crafts to try out. Finding out which craft you enjoy doing can take time, but it’s well worth it when you do.
For a long while crafts were dismissed. They were either seen as unimportant because they were "women’s work" despite a lot of craftsmen being, well, men, and women’s work has been seen as lesser for most of civilization. Or crafts were dismissed because they were practical. The idea being that practical things had less spiritual and emotional importance than the non-practical arts.
The Industrial Revolution replaced the need for people to craft. Before the Industrial Revolution, and widespread use of factories to manufacture products, everything was created more or less through crafting.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s movements across the world fought back against the dismissal of handcrafting. Two of the most famous movements are the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain and the Mingei movement in Japan. These movements sought to save crafting as the Industrial Revolution threatened the very existence of crafts. The experts in various crafts were unable to pass on their knowledge as apprentices were being conscripted into factory work instead. These two movements, while differing in some major ways, both sought to bring back handicraft and sought to lift up the artisan's abilities.
In more modern times First Nations people, Native Americans and Indigenous peoples, in countries and people groups that were decimated by colonialism have started to recover their people’s cultural handicrafts often in danger through the direct prosecution and destruction by white people.
Thankfully handicraft across the board has seen a resurgence in culture and is now seen as important to cultural identity or a useful skill to have.
But aside from the practical nature of crafts, why do we craft?
Well, most people craft because they enjoy crafting.
