…………… you draw!
Thanks. I learned it back in college.”

“It’s about time he ……………… smoking.”

“I know. I’ve talked to him so many times, but he wouldn’t listen.”

The Man With Two Wives (An Aesop Fable)
A long time ago, there was a man who had two wives. He was middle-aged. His first wife, who he had married many years ago, was the same age as him. His second wife was much younger.One night, when the man was with his younger wife, she ran her hands through his hair. As she did this, she noticed several gray hairs.“You’re getting so old!” she exclaimed. “Let me pluck out your gray hairs.”
“No, I don’t want you to pluck out my hairs!” the man answered.
“But I’m young. I don’t want people to see me with you if you have gray hair. I’ll be embarrassed for people to see me with a very old husband. When people see us together, they’ll think that you’re my father!”And so the man finally agreed, and his young wife plucked out all his gray hairs. She started doing this every time she saw her husband. If she noticed any gray hairs, she plucked them out.One night, when the man was with his older wife, she, too, noticed his gray hairs. But his older wife was very pleased to see it because she, too, was starting to go gray.
“Can I please pluck out your black hairs? I want you to have gray hair!” she said.
“No, I don’t want you to pluck out my hairs!” the man answered.
“But my hair is going gray,” she said. “And if you have black hair and I have gray hair, I will look too old to be your wife. When people see us together, they’ll think that I’m your mother!”So the man reluctantly agreed, and his older wife started to pluck out his black hairs. Every time she saw him, she plucked out his black hairs.After a few months, the man was bald.
The moral of the story: If you give in to everyone, you will have nothing left.

The Arts and Crafts Movement in the United States was responsible for sweeping changes in attitudes toward the decorative arts then considered the minor or household arts. Its focus on decorative arts helped induce museums and private collectors to begin collecting furniture, glass, ceramics, metalwork, and textiles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The fact that artisans, who were looked on as mechanics or skilled workers in the eighteenth century, are frequently considered artists today is directly attributable to the Arts and Crafts Movement of the nineteenth century. The importance now placed on attractive and harmonious home decoration can also be traced to this period, when Victorian interior arrangements were revised to admit greater light and more freely flowing spaces.

The Arts and Crafts Movement reacted against mechanized processes that threatened handcrafts and resulted in cheapened, monotonous merchandise. Founded in the late nineteenth century by British social critics John Ruskin and William Morris, the movement revered craft as a form of art. In a rapidly industrializing society, most Victorians agreed that art was an essential moral ingredient in the home environment, and in many middle and working-class homes craft was the only form of art. Ruskin and his followers criticized not only the degradation of artisans reduced to machine operators but also the impending loss of daily contact with handcrafted objects, fashioned with pride, integrity, and attention to beauty.

In the United States as well as in Great Britain, reformers extolled the virtues of handcrafted objects: simple, straightforward design; solid materials of good quality; and sound, enduring construction techniques. These criteria were interpreted in a variety of styles, ranging from rational and geometric to romantic or naturalistic. Whether abstract, stylized, or realistically treated, the consistent theme in virtually all Arts and Crafts design is nature.

The Arts and Crafts Movement was much more than a particular style; it was a philosophy of domestic life. Proponents believed that if simple design, high-quality materials, and honest construction were realized in the home and its appointments, then the occupants would enjoy moral and therapeutic effects. For both artisan and consumer, the Arts and Crafts doctrine was seen as a magical force against the undesirable effects of industrialization.