Common Knowledge and Thankfulness

Someone posted a picture of a woman standing beside a clothes line.  She had quite a lot of clothing on there and by the clothes were swaying, it was clearly a windy day. The interesting part is that she had placed a 2x4 against the clothes line, to help keep it in place. If you've never been exposed to a clothes line, wind was always a big problem. Unless your lines were really tight (and most of them rarely were), wind could cause a lot of problems. Putting the board against the line would prevent some of the worst of it though.

As I looked at this picture, I kind of marveled at the resourcefulness of the woman for putting the 2x4 against her line. I also realized my grandmothers never did this. I'm not sure how common the board thing was, but clearly not enough to have reached them.

And this is one of the many reasons I love the internet. Common knowledge is so wonderfully at our fingertips now. I've written before about how great it is to have YouTube videos about every bit of knitting/crocheting ever. It was also helpful during my recent bout with health issues to be able to read about the things people had experienced during this process. It's like being able to talk to hundreds of people all at once.

I think I really wanted to talk about this today because I've been really down about the online experience of late. There have been a lot of people getting attacked by mobs of trolls. Some people have received death and rape threats. Most terrifying, some people have had their real life information published, so that those who hate them know where they life, their phone numbers, everything. The internet can be terrifying because there are people who want nothing more than to make it terrifying for everyone else.

Happily, they're not the only people out there. I am deeply thankful to the myriad of strangers who have made my life a better place over the years. They have shared their stories, their skills, their wisdom, and their humor. Reading a hysterectomy blog helped me to get through the process. Reading people's various stories about what they loved the most about old cartoons filled me with happiness for hours. And I would have basically precious to no crafting skills without the blogs, videos, and online discussions.

So to all the people out there who are pushing some good into the world, thank you. What you have done has made a lot of difference in my life. Thank you so much.