Passing the Torch

 

The other day I had a new weaver contact me about teaching weaving.  I thought about how I knew about 3 pages more in the book than the folk I was trying to teach when I started, and gave permission to them to use my class outline.

I mean, I choose not to teach in person now, so why not?  Hopefully others will pick up the reins.

The arrival of Covid generally meant the end of my teaching in person.  The brain injury put an exclamation mark on it.  When I can't 'control' what comes out of my mouth, I can't teach.

(Funny story - yesterday I was leaving a message for my family doctor and their receptionist asked which telephone number was best to use - cell or home - my mouth asked her to use 'hell'.  I'm sure she was taken aback and I hastened to correct that to 'home'...)

If I tell people I have trouble speaking, they assure me I sound 'fine'.  But I don't sound 'fine' - to me.  I know how hard my mental roll-a-deck is scrambling to find the word I want to use.  And the more tired I get the harder I have to work to find the words.  The more tired I get, and the harder I have to work, the more stressed I get.  And if I get tired/stressed enough, I cannot find *any* words.  Not a great look for a teacher.  

Much more comfortable for me to write, when I have plenty of time to re-read and edit.  Even writing is harder than it used to be, but I feel I can produce a better presentation.  

Who knows, this might reduce as the healing process continues, but there is no guarantee, and frankly I will be two years older and who knows what other health issues are going to rear their heads in the future. 

I'm still immune compromised, and yesterday I ran into an anti-everything person.  I don't know if their sour demeanor was standard, or triggered by the sight of me wearing a mask.  But sometimes I just don't have the spoons to deal with the eye-rolling and (occasional) snarky comment.  Told Doug yesterday that when people do that to me, I'm tempted to start coughing.  In their direction.  Because we don't have just Covid (and flu and etc.,) but we have Bird Flu poised to start running through the human population.  And some governments willing to let 'er rip.

If others are not willing to protect me and my ability to present knowledge, I am not willing to teach in person.

I do have other venues that can be accessed without the mask (and the bleed in of politics) - namely my books.  For USians, my books are printed in the US so there will be no tariff (if that goes ahead).  They are available here.

My classes online are available at School of Sweet Georgia and Long Thread Media.

I also hang out on Handweaving Academy.

Plus the video clips on You Tube, and of course here.  Click on the topic to see the blog posts I've labelled with the topic in the list to the right.

If nothing else people can email me with questions.  laura at laurafry dot com

In the age of making lack of knowledge popular, I stand fast to spread as much knowledge as I can for those willing to receive it.  Neither will I use AI(LLM).  One advantage of my books not selling very many copies is that no LLM has 'discovered' them, and therefore have not scraped them for content, to be mangled and regurgitated in inaccurate ways.  (shrug emoji)