IF WALLS COULD TALK, Week of October 13, 2016

by Katie Ouilette

WALLS and faithful readers, are we to be glad or frightened? Why the question? Well, I’ve just read much of a subject in National Geographic about what science is doing now. Then, my mind has been on a swing from the days I was in school and what was happening then and, heaven forbid, what is being discovered for the future. Well, maybe my mind is swinging into the long-long ago and happenings that took place as glaciers tore up the world and places have been created. Why do I know some of these things? Not from my schooldays, but from living in the midst of where changes took place. What’s more, even the recent Hurricane Matthew that swept through Florida’scoastal area and north have changed the world, a bit, as we learned it in school. No doubt about it, faithful readers, we have known so much change about so many things in our lifetime.

How many of you know about Herkimer diamond? Well, they’ve been called diamonds for centuries, but they really are not real diamonds, like one buys, unless, of course, you are in the market for what is known as a Herkimer diamond. Actually, I recently read an advertisement for jewelry made with Herkimer Diamonds. Somehow, I believe that those diamonds, big and small, were, maybe, made into what we used to call ‘jet’ necklaces, earrings, rings and bracelets. Yes, one day, when we were living next to Herkimer, New York, the man who owned the antique store in the downtown called to me, as he had something for me. Wow! That he did! He gave me a rock that had the largest Herkimer diamond in it that I had ever imagined. What’s more, another Herkimer diamond, though smaller, accompanied it. He said he was going out of business and he wanted that Herkimer diamond to be mine, because I had done so much since moving to Little Falls, New York. Yes, we used to take our grandchildren to where Herkimer diamond ‘rocks’ were often found and they probably still have their ‘collections’….though the diamonds were tiny. Yes, WALLS and faithful readers, those diamonds were a result of the glacier’s slow movement through the part of our world which is now upstate New York.

Last Sunday, television told us about robots that will do what many folks do now. What an enlightening but frightening program. Yes, we already have driver-less automobiles and, Sunday night, we found that those developments are only ‘the tip of what is ahead in a few decades’.

Yes, faithful readers, WALLS will enlighten you in another column soon. The minds of our youth are working for us and our world. However, we must know where we’ve been to know where we are going.