When Things Get Broken
My granddaughter Lucy and I have been working a day each week at the Thousand Villages home office in Akron, PA (1), lately helping inspect, photograph, and catalog new products the organization buys from artisans from various places in the world. Last week I handled a tiny nativity scene from Peru, the characters of which are nestled inside a three-inch, hollowed-out gourd. The figures, ranging in size from ⅓ to ¾ inch, include Mary, Joseph, a lone wiseman (2), a lamb, and the baby Jesus. Choosing a piece of cardboard as a backdrop for a photograph, I positioned the tiny creche on a table. In the second it took to position my phone-camera, the cardboard fell forward, pushing the gourd off the table and sending it bouncing across the floor. The gourd landed undamaged, but Mary, the wiseman, and the baby Jesus all broke out, their tiny, flat forms scattered abroad. For the next hour or so I worked to glue the figures back into their rightful places and found the task to...
