Monk Librarian #7

I am re-reading  "Daybook-The Journal of An Artist" by Anne Truitt and I resonate with so many of her thoughts.  Here is one about children and meals in the midst of trying to carve out studio time: 
          "I could lower my standards but in so doing would sink with them,  taking my children
            with me.  It is not necessary for us to have candlelit dinners every night.  But the ceremony
            of meals has always been important to regard.  Where else can children learn so easily
            and pleasantly,  and at such range when guests are included,  what it is to be grown-up?
            The world of children is fascinating but very personal.  The presence of adults in the full
             cry of conversation,  with opinions, interests, engagements, and responsibilities discussed,
             crisscrossed by agreements and disagreements, laced with rhetoric, is so pungent with
            variety that children can learn without harm to their self-respect that they are, for all their
            interest to themselves, on their way to larger definitions."