Mongrel Drivel

Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years, by Elizabeth Wayland Barber, W. W. Norton, New York, 1994. One key player in our transition from the Paleolithic (hunter-gatherer) age to the Neolithic (sedentary farming) age is hardly mentioned by writers and researchers. Shortly after we settled down to became horticulturalists, we discovered that our newly domesticated animals…

To me, writing is merely a tool, like a saw or paintbrush. An artist would not call herself a painter because she uses a brush, nor would a boat builder be a sawyer because he cuts wood. The same applies to storytellers, who might use puppetry, theater, motion pictures, writing, oral tellings, music, or photography…