getting crosswise and better for it

The huge container ship, "Ever Given" blocking the Suez Canal interests me. As a young man I'd worked as an inspector on dredges in the White River in Arkansas and in the Mississippi River, moving material to enable navigation. So I'm somewhat familiar with such things.

The Ever Given carries 20,000 containers, each full of stuff being shipped from China to destinations in Europe or the US. 

This article in the New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/03/27/world/suez-canal-stuck-ship contrasts the huge ship with the tiny village nearby, where folks live without all the stuff considered necessary in modern life. The village, "Manshiyet Rugola" whose name translates as "Little Village of Manhood" offers an interesting vantage point on a drama that's captured the world's attention. For many years folks in the small village watched huge container ships full of stuff float by without stopping. Now with one of the ships stopped dead in its tracks and as the world wonders how long the stoppage of shipping will last, we and they have an opportunity to compare and contrast before the world and its attentions move on.

In a "Little Village of Manhood," folks would, care for each other, learn skill and develop character by doing things in service to each other, and if that big ship, filled way beyond the top with 20,000 containers of consumer stuff, was to remain crosswise in the canal we here without it would figure out ways of becoming little villages of humanity for each other. At a slower pace, we might find time for each other. We would know that when we ask a neighbor to make something for us, the real product is not the thing being crafted, it is the intelligence and character of its maker. 

We would find true prosperity in which insad of value trickling down from the top, it would trickle up toward the top and be built on a firm foundation, the character of our nation.

Make, fix, create and assist others in learning likewise.