{"id":396,"date":"2014-09-28T13:48:10","date_gmt":"2014-09-28T17:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beeberrywoods.com\/FiberEtc\/?p=396"},"modified":"2014-09-28T14:02:07","modified_gmt":"2014-09-28T18:02:07","slug":"crowd-chopswhere-they-gone-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beeberrywoods.com\/FiberEtc\/2014\/09\/crowd-chopswhere-they-gone-to\/","title":{"rendered":"Crowd-Chops–Where they gone to?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Me<\/a>

Me, back to, in the far upper left corner.<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ve lost my crowd-chops. Again. Two days at the Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine taught me that. Truth be told, I haven\u2019t had them for years, since well before I took up the life of a near solitary, living with my husband, two cats, and, for the moment, two pigs. Sometimes even that feels like a crowd.<\/p>\n

Crowd-chops is not about being around lots of people. It is two parts random interactions and one part being unable to escape. It is about needing to think on your feet in situations where a planned script will do you no good. Sure you can draw on experience, and the more the better. But if you\u2019ve got crowd-chops, you revel in the unexpected, take joy in confronting that random interaction that will make you re-mix your knowledge base in new and interesting ways. You\u2019ve got to love serendipity.<\/p>\n

Pigs who have made a break for the bigger field count as a crowd, at least the first couple of times. Then you learn that a bucket rattling suggestively with pig-kibble is enough to lure them into the pen. And after a few escapes (and a husband with power tools) they are well contained and no longer a crowd. Cats, as well, with their random crunchings and munchings as they eat prey head down are, at first, crowd worthy, particularly when you step in still wet intestines that didn\u2019t meet their culinary standard. But gradually this slips into the normal workings of a household and stops being a crowd. By the same token a jam packed bus station can provide solitude with travelers studiously examining their own knees and declining to make eye contact.<\/p>\n

I was at the Common Ground Fair to run a couple of demos, one in spinning and one in energized knitting a la Twisted Sisters. Beyond that, whenever someone approached any of the other spinners and asked about spindling they were sent my way. I have taught people to spindle before, but never for two days straight. Never in weather that never quite turns to rain, never gets above 58\u00b0, and never stops blowing. All was not smooth sailing.<\/p>\n

There is finding the right level of language to use with different people, sometimes teaching vocabulary. Hair and fur become fiber. Round-thingey becomes a whorl. But there are those who want language like \u201ccapacity\u201d and \u201ctorque\u201d and \u201cstored energy\u201d and \u201ctensile strength\u201d while others are satisfied with \u201ctwist\u201d and \u201cwinding.\u201d Older learners tend to over-think what they are doing. Even more, however, they have not learned anything totally new for years , even decades, whereas younger people are used to learning new things. Spinning requires you to coordinate what your tool (spindle or wheel) is doing as well as manipulating the fiber that is being spun. \u201cPark and draft\u201d is a handy strategy since it separates the spinning from the drafting components, but you still need to keep the fiber from untwisting, or getting bound up with already spun yarn, while you are managing the spindle\u2019s part of the process.<\/p>\n

In the midst of one lesson, I suddenly realized that \u201cclockwise\u201d really mean nothing to people under 25. I watched several of them figuring it out, but for many it was like watching one of those mimic games. (You know, like when someone does the motions for \u201cthe bear went over the mountain\u201d and tells you to do it. You\u2019ve watched carefully but missed the part where they crossed their ankles when they said the word \u201cover\u201d or some such nonsense.) They would watch what I was doing and try to discern what \u201cclockwise\u201d meant. I finally twigged on what was amiss and asked one if it would be easier if I said \u201cnorth to east\u201d and they looked immensely relieved.<\/p>\n

What does this have to do with crowd-chops? It is actually a wonderful parallel to what interacting with\u00a0 strangers, and making sure they have a good time, enjoying their experience, and leaving with a sense of having learned something new, of having grown. This is what I tried to do at the CGF. It is what I\u2019ve always tried to do in the classroom \u2013 another venue where crowd-chops are required. It takes energy, perspective, and a commitment that you will not say \u201cjust go away, I\u2019m tired\u201d no matter how exhausted you are, even when you can\u2019t, yourself, escape.<\/p>\n

Having your crowd-chops in good working order is like being able to spin and talk at the same time. It is like being that guy who used to appear on the Ed Sullivan spinning plates.<\/a> It is knowing how to sweat only on the side of your face that isn\u2019t facing your audience. The last time I had serious crowd-chops, was when I was working in computing at The Jackson Laboratory. Every day I fielded random questions, from people with wildly diverse needs and levels of expertise, from people who could clearly describe a problem, to those for whom triage was a guessing game:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t work\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat seems to be going wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not doing what I want it to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat did you see on your screen that first made you suspect things weren\u2019t right?\u201d These were scientific staff, mind you, who would never have accepted a description like that for a genetic manifestation.<\/p>\n

For a while teaching school seemed to be a relief from that chaos. That hope disappeared in the space of my first day in front of students. As random as working at TJL seemed, I could at least go to the bathroom whenever I wanted to, or walk slowly between assignments to catch my breath. School has no such respite. By the second week of school, after that first year, I was back in the groove, chops in place.<\/p>\n

I took my first summer off. My kids had elected to go to camp. Andrew was working full time. I sat on my porch drinking seltzer water with lemon, reading mysteries, and taking breaks to cook fine things. It was glorious. When comparing notes with a teacher who had started at EHS the same time I did, she was astounded. Not that I hadn\u2019t worked, but that I had not once sought out companionship. \u201cThat would drive me crazy, to be all alone, even for just one day.\u201d What a thing to admit! I thought.<\/p>\n

That is the crux of having crowd-chops. For some of us it takes practice and conditioning. Our natural state is solitude. I found the book A Party of One<\/a> subtitled \u201cA Loner\u2019s Manifesto.\u201d I recognized myself instantly. While I can get my crowd-chops back with a little work and practice, I\u2019ll always lose them again at the drop of a hat. I\u2019ve got strategies, now. I know not to panic when faced with a crowd that believes they have random access to me. I have patterns I can draw on to get back into the game more quickly. I can step outside myself, and watch what I\u2019m doing and saying. Even so, while I will never intentionally be in a situation where I require crowd-chops for more than a few days in a row, I will make sure I have some alone time in the crowd, to discharge and recharge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve lost my crowd-chops. Again. Two days at the Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine taught me that. Truth be told, I haven\u2019t had them for years, since well before I took up the life of a near solitary, living … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,12,17],"tags":[57,58,15,56],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-spinning","category-transitions","tag-crowds","tag-education-2","tag-language","tag-solitude"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Gnw9-6o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beeberrywoods.com\/FiberEtc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beeberrywoods.com\/FiberEtc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beeberrywoods.com\/FiberEtc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beeberrywoods.com\/FiberEtc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beeberrywoods.com\/FiberEtc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/beeberrywoods.com\/FiberEtc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400,"href":"http:\/\/beeberrywoods.com\/FiberEtc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions\/400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beeberrywoods.com\/FiberEtc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beeberrywoods.com\/FiberEtc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beeberrywoods.com\/FiberEtc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}