Nov 2022 from Lynne and Troy - common ground and clay tablets

Lynne did leaves for Ellen's birthday mailing and Troy did uncials. I'm pretty sure Ellen likes kraft paper as much as I do. It was imprinted on her from an early age because I was quite fond of making things out of kraft paper. There were a bunch of snowflake ornaments that I finally discarded this year. I don't think anyone will miss them. I discarded the tree, too. 

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And another thing about labeling things using the terms *art* and *artist* - and my apologies if I keep saying the same thing over and over -- but, it makes me happy that it is a conversation that tends to generate many different perspectives, but it also generates a significant amount of tolerance between people - tolerance for respecting those differences. 

Many of *the arts* find common ground between people - even people who are from wildly different backgrounds. So, that's a good thing.

An old memory just jumped to the forefront of my mind. It's one of those random tidbits of information  that stuck in my head even though I've long since forgotten the origin. I learned that our brains are born with all kinds of *abilities* - things that work and accomplish stuff and direct us towards functioning. I guess we could even call them instincts - since they are things that develop on their own. But there is one ability that we are not born with - reading. 

Maybe everyone already knows that. And maybe I've heard that before - but somehow it didn't really sink in until quite recently. It made me wonder what it would be like to live in a world without reading. I guess I did know the part of the evolution of writing where the origin of writing things down centered around record keeping. I know I've written about the oldest *book* in the special collection at the U of Iowa. It is a Babylonian clay tablet -- and it is a receipt for goat.

I can't find my photo of the clay tablet. Maybe Chuck can find it in his archive -- I know he is the one who took the photo.