Beautiful Books and Pinning

An early Beautiful Book, with addition of poetry.

My latest infatuation? Pinterest! With only a few weeks membership, I need to go there daily and scroll through images and pin, Pin, PIN! To any visual person, it's a feast.

I discovered several art pieces from my blog had already been "pinned." Pinterest is a virtual scrapbook, a visual bookmark. There are links back where the image originated. You can pin photos or YouTube videos.

It reminds me of Beautiful Books. My 5th grade teacher gave us a project at the start of the school year--to begin collecting beautiful pictures from magazines and glue them in a notebook. When the year was up, she told us we had created A Beautiful Book. Whenever we got sad or discouraged, we could open our Beautiful Book and look at all the lovely pictures and realize the world was still a beautiful place. Later, I expanded that theme by rolling typing paper into an old manual typewriter, adding poetry to suit each image, attaching the images, and collecting them in office report covers with sliding metal prongs. Very old school!

For those not born into the 24/7 Electronic Age--with only 3 national TV channels, morning and evening newspapers, weekly and monthly magazines, and ever-present books—we might regard today's fantastic and varied riches almost as magic. I know I do.

We grew up watching “Star Trek” re-runs and thought it was science-fiction. But many gadgets created for that show have reached our time.

When I first got an e-reader with Wi-Fi, I was hopelessly in love. Having only a very dumb, pay-as-you-go cell phone, the Kindle Fire was a wonder to me.

Recently in the grocery store, I saw a very young child sitting in a cart, swiping a tablet, playing a game effortlessly. This kind of magic is already in his life. Makes you wonder what new developments he'll see in his lifetime.

And yet, with all this technology at our fingertips, we are still driven to create things with our hands. We need to touch and feel and share. Look at all the artists and crafters blogging, filming YouTube tutorials, and Pinning their favorites or own recent works.

“Fascinating!” as Spock would say.