4H on Paper

Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

— Unknown




May, 2009

Recently took a morning training to become a 4H leader. I'm not going to be doing much except having my name show up on a piece of paper and to teach some fiber-related stuff at the kids' school this fall. Living in the city I didn't know I could ever be involved in 4H.

There were about eight or nine of us there. Some were 18 or so who'd spent their youth as 4Hers. Some were parents. Some were teachers.

When I was a kid growing up in an upper-middle-class suburb and riding horses, there was always a sense that 4H was a little below us. This training was such an eye-opener for me. The kids who were there taking the training were capable already of running cattle farms or teaching younger kids to ride. I felt all this shame well up realizing I'd essentially looked down on these people. Crazy ideas that get put in the head when one is young and I don't even know how those ideas got in there. A good thing to recognize and to remedy.

I truly missed out. 4H is so inclusive and so supportive of not only achievement but of the person.

There's a lot of information that gets circulated to 4H leaders about events going on in Maine and New England. I signed up to receive this by snail mail. I already have received huge envelopes of information I don't really need. This is going to cost them something--email is so much cheaper....