Coffee with Gail

I've ordered a Kindle.  It should arrive today.  On this same day I've opened a book published in 1858  which my husband bought me to use in my production of Tea With ZaZa. It's old, small in size ornamented with a man, rifle over his shoulder walking off into snowy woods followed by what looks like golden retriever.  The book, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, is titled The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, Every man his Own Boswell.  As I thumb through the detailed descriptions of life over 150 years ago, I'm struck by what seems a truism, though perhaps not, that one must have had a certain level of wealth, independence to  chronicle life by hand in such detail. 

 

Today I blog, email, post to FB details with ease though certainly my scribblings, cybernetic or not, cannot be compared to a Holmes or a Boswell.  But I am struck this late in the morning as I  neaten up the house how blessed I am by the gift of time to choose to sit at the computer and write my thoughts here.  If I had been in my 60's, of a working class background, decades ago, I would probably not be doing this.  To be a woman or man of letters required leisure, leisure bought with financial independence.

I shall keep my 1858 book out on a side table along side my Kindle to remind me from whence we've traveled and the future to which we rush headlong with enthusiasm and trepidation....