Our fathead president Bush is leaving office, not even close to in time, which would have been before he took office, and he's leaving us with the biggest mess any least-talented son-of-a-former not-as-bad-in retrospect previous prez could even dream up in a post-alcoholic haze. Concerning the state of the economy, as Paul Krugman says, yikes.
But, disasters are also calamities, well, obviously, but also opportunities, and it's timely for our president elect to create a new cabinet position, the Tinker Secretary for Re-using American Trash.
There was once a non-profit in a west coast university city on the bay called The Tinker's Workshop. There was a collection of spare parts and nearly usable items, and kids learned to build their own bicycles out of broken ones, and they loved it. They also learned other useful skills, like fixing their mom's toasters, and repairing broken furniture, and filling holes in walls, and mixing new paint from discarded partially filled cans to paint their homes, and paint, as everyone knows, preserves wood.
There was even a road kill project, where kids tanned the hides of the befallen and sewed stuff. Maybe that one's a little impractical, but those kids learned a thing or two.
Our children probably need to learn to bake beans and toss a green salad from edible weeds growing on public land, to feed moms when she comes home from her double shift at wal-mart. There isn't going to be a lot of spare cash to buy new crap, but in this great land there is no shortage of broken crap. And one man's trash is ...?
A blogger once reminded me that in Cuba they still drive '57 DeSotas. Now, that was from the days when Detroit built cars to last, with great fin designs et al, but still, Cubans have to fashion spare parts, and that's a tinker's skill.
So, I think it's timely to bring back retired tinkers, inventors, builders, cabinet makers, knitters, sewers, and all those trades that are necessary to make homes out of lean-to's and discarded packing cases.
We need our president elect to create a new cabinet position - Tinker Secretary. I nominate some retired tinker, or inventor, who knows loads of other tinkers and inventors, and who has great organizational skills (or can buy them) and who'll give our retired tradespersons a chance to teach kids skills before they're forever lost.
We have saddled our younger generation with our bills galore, let's at least leave them some of our skills galore?