Archaelogy of Conversation

 One can dig up a variety of items or research a topic that can help one piece together what life and a society was about. Even in a short time frame like 30 yrs a culture can turn over and forget quickly what was once important. So I have come to a moment that now puzzles me. I was talking with a woman today who was manning an information booth at our library. It was funded by a local hospital and was handing out literature about having family dinner time. The actress Jamie Lee Curtis among  others have done public service announcements on this topic. You can Google this area , there is a large body of research on this simple but important social topic. The basic message..........sitting down to have family dinners is important to develop everything from language skills to being less prone to drug abuse. It appears from talking with the nurse manning the table that this simple function has become a lost American art. Busy lives etc has caused a large decline in this once common ritual of American and for that matter developed world life.  Fascinating. And as I think more about it  , I seem to remember a richer more complex conversational life. I have commented on this topic in the past. Honestly I had better conversations in my Junior and Senior yrs in a place called Maple  Hill High School than I often have now. I have begun to genuinely feel that a certain beauty has slowly left my life. Decent conversation , a talk that makes me think anew or gains me a new in site into a problem. Now it seems to have spilled over into society that numerous studies from universities from Yale to Syracuse  have researched the topic in depth.  What this research might not show is I think some people really miss those now more rare moments. Dinner with ones parents or conversations in high school.. And I must say there were people once in my life that I had strong differences with THAT I LOVED. Uncles , aunts , cousins , friends. I truly wish I could take my tools of archaeology and   rediscover lost conversation. It would shine a light on what was and the difficult road my country is now on. I realize this is one of the blogs I write which will receive little attention compared with several others I have posted the last couple of years. Sometimes one blogs because one needs to say something to feel better and I now do.