[extropy-chat] book: Paddling my Own Canoe by Sutherland

[Amara Graps]

To add to what I wrote before. Audrey Sutherland taught her
(4) kids self-sufficiency as much out of necessity, as out of
passing on her own value system. I enjoyed seeing a 
glimpse of the running of her household because there are 
valuable and/or confirming life lessons in this part of her world 
too. Perhaps some of you would recognize your own houses
(I did), or perhaps it would seem bizarre to you; nevertheless,
I think these words are useful and interesting.

So continuing why she went to Moloka'i alone, she says:

----
"Despite all standard advice, it does not seem foolish to come
alone. I now know how and what to do, having learned most of it
the hard way. The few competent, compatible people that I'd like
to have along are seldom available to come when I do. Alone, I am
doubly careful. At home the family knows my planned route, the
deadline for my return, and what to do if I don't meet it. I
carry signal flares for emergency; a daily sight-seeing plane
flies by a mile away.

There is another reason to come alone, besides my own need. The
children, by necessity, have been trained to self-sufficiency. We
have no television -- they read omnivorously. There have been few
other children living nearby, but there is plenty of life in the
tide pools in front of the house. I work days and often nights,
and have the car with me; the kids ride bikes or walk or run.
There are no organized playgrounds; they've learned to skin-dive
and to surf, Jock becoming "number one" in the world. We have the
list posted of twenty things every kid ought to be able to do by
age sixteen, which includes fix a meal, splice a cord (manila or
electric), change a tire, change a baby, listen to an adult with
empathy, see work to be done and do it -- that last one will take
about five years more.

But now the clan is growing up; the youngest is a teenager. I
won't know whether I've done a good job raising them until they
all reach forty or so. They I'll see how they respond to other
people and to their own children. The transition is going on.
They need the opportunity now and then to be without me, to make
their own decisions, to make their own mistakes and repair them."
---

Amara