Opinion : Needles, blades, women of steel and the wisdom of societies

     Thanks to the wonder of the Internet, my grandpa’s little farm – which has been in years gone by a place to raise corn, watermelon and even pigs – is now also a library.

     From my room – or even my front porch – I can have access to thousands of books from any continent, any era.

     It all began with the little book in my hand.

     In memory of D.C. Weideman, his family donated a collection of paperback classics to the Vinton library. I have been reading some of those. First it was “David Copperfield,” the novel that also serves as a bit of a biography of Charles Dickens. Now, it’s “A tale of two cities.”

     (By the way, the next time you hear someone say “the best of times, the worst of times.” tell them that the opening words of “Tale of Two Cities” are only the beginning of a very long sentence. Dickens was not saying, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” No. Not at all. What he was saying was: The era about which I am writing (Britain and France, 1775) is an era when people are very fond of hyperbole; they refer to everything about which they speak only in “superlatives.”)

     “Tale” is a tale (to say the obvious) but it’s a historical story, too. It’s a fictional account of France in the horrible years that led to the French Revolutio n in 1789, and how those events also affected people across the English Channel.

     Dickens wrote early and often about La Guillotine, the famously French method of execution.

     He also wrote about knitting, particularly about women who loved to knit.

     In fact, they loved knitting so much that they took their knitting with them while they watched the executions taking place.

     This is not a fictional idea of Dickens; the women of France really did take their knitting when they went to watch heads roll. (Although there was, actually, a sack, for the catching of heads.)

    The ladies of the Prayer Shawl Ministry, needles in hand at the library this morning, found that fact amusing. So did Virginia Holsten, the librarian who usually has her needles busy while she listens to the Vinton City Council meetings on Thursday nights.

   Me, I too found it funny.

     I am not a fast reader. It took me months to get through “David Copperfield.” And I am less than halfway through “Tale.”

    But I think Dickens would want it that way. He wrote that book in 1859 –152 years ago. And in his book, we can find references to authors who wrote 152 years before Dickens was born. His books are a connection to a time that we cannot even begin to imagine. 

     In a society where more people know about the latest nonsense coming from the mouth of Charlie Sheen or William Shatner, I am afraid our society is not nearly as wise as we were when Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare were the people we looked to for entertainment and words of humor.

    The question for today is this: Are we less wise as a society because millions of us prefer the shallow attempts of humor of Charlie Sheen over the insightful irony and thoughtful satire of Charles Dickens? Or do most Americans prefer Charlie Sheen to Charles Darwin and William Shatner over William Shakespeare because we – despite our technology – are simply much less wise than we used to be?

    Maybe we need a Dickens Day here in the U.S.: A day to read Dickens and to ask ourselves: What was Dickens saying to his readers in 1859 about the lessons of the French Revolution for other nations, other times? And do any of those lessons apply to our society now?

    But I am afraid we won't be asking those questions until the knitting women of our society are gathering to witness the awful results of lessons unlearned.