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Grandmother Project I: Story Older than You?

The Grandmother Project
Scientists can describe the problems of overpopulation, threats like climate change, stray nuclear weapons, and recombinant toxic chemicals.

But what do we do about it?

Paul Ehrlich in a recent Portland lecture suggested asking social scientists to contribute their understanding of human behavior. Perhaps, he proposed, it's time for a massive study of human behavior similar to the natural sciences' "Milleneum Project."

The few social scientists I've met were smart people, and acute observers, but somewhat limited in their social interactions and global predictive abilities. To predict - and provoke - actual human behavior, arguably, advertisers might be better.

Or grandmothers. I like grandmothers.

Do you have a grandmother who'd be willing to share her perspective on human behavior?

Do you know a social scientist who'd be interested in working on a "milleneum project" to understand human behavior well enough to avert immenent disaster?

Do you have a question that, in your experience, tends to get a Grandma talking about interesting, relevant, and insightful stories?

Are you a grandmother, or grandfather, who has ideas about what it would take to avert the above-mentioned disasters, or a surprising suggestion as to why we're looking in the wrong direction altogether?

I'm opening a call for submissions to "The Grandmother Project." Submissions can be emailed to Gramma2000@gmail.com.

The stories (or links to them) will be published here, and also on other websites as partnerships become available. E.g. www.ErnieAndErica.info/Grandma_Project

Yours sincerely,

Erica Wisner

granddaughter of Granma Enid McCaffery Ritter and Gran'Mary Coolidge Campbell.

Author's note:
I began studying permaculture a few years before moving in with my paternal grandmother Enid Ritter. Living with her and caring for her, I learned a lot about my own... cultural heritage is the wrong word. I gained a little perspective into how our family has related to land, and to socio-political problems like the Great Depression, WWII, and the Chemical/Cancer Age.

I began to cherish those stories and memories that get passed down from before we were born.

I began to hope that by collecting stories - of how things were done, of the kind of memories that scar for life, or are cherished even after death - we might build a better understanding of how to live in the present day, and to hope for a future as bright as our past.

Oldest Memories:
My oldest second-hand memories:

My great-great-grandmother Anne McCaffery, a homesteader in Wisconsin, swore skunk grease made the best boot-polish. (via Enid M Ritter)

My great-great-grandmother Granny Cole was against women's sufferage, saying "any woman who couldn't tell her man how to vote, wasn't worth her salt." (via Eleanor C Ritter)

The last suviving Civil War veteran, moving slowly along in the memorial day parade in Stanley, WI, made a point to stop and tell Enid's orphaned cousin how pretty she was, "growing up to look just like your mother."

Do you have an "oldest memory" that's older than you?




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