vi200908 Hope Rope: Synergetic hopeful  

  He ponders the small things he does each day and asks he does them. A change in a website, a search of his database for a certain image of a Mini Etching Press with a carrying case, a search for its current owner – small things are like strands in a rope. 412 Words

Inspired by a Mini Etching Press

As I began my day, sitting at the desk and opening files to read them on screen, thinking about having placed the Mini Etching Press in Etsy as I told Tom Kughler I would, I wondered who bought the one which had the chest with it.

The woman in Canada? Yes, I think so. Tom said he had an order for another one. My mind wandered to other things. There is a hint of smoke in the air – California is burning – and we have a major fire burning in Central Washington. God said, “a fire next time.”

But it was not God – it was humankind.

Is this how the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper? Schools – the last hope for the USA and some other countries in the world – are closed or reduced because of the virus. Americans haven’t been able to rid the cancer in Washington DC, rending the nation comatose.

My best friend’s wife is undergoing surgery today – a mastectomy.

What keeps me going? I think of one little detail – like finding who owns that beautiful little press with the carrying case and linking this to the Etsy page. I think of the video I put up yesterday which I made years ago when a woman in Florida ordered a DIY kit and I sent her a ready-to-print plate, and the print, and ink.

She said she had a demo coming up fast and needed help, and, boy, did I send it! Could it happen again? I hope so.

Little things like this are like the strands in a rope. Single fiber is joined, twisted around another fiber and the combination of the two is stronger than either one is if alone. I think someone said this is the demonstration of synergy.

Add another fiber, and another and another until you have a piece of twine. Add more strands of twine, twist, and twist and then one has a rope. Every small gesture I make, every video minute, every post in Facebook, is a strand in my rope of hope. My Hope Rope.