Which of your skills will die with you?

Author

Ray Doraisamy
March 04, 2026

Skills, like languages, are often tied to places.

It's hard to see this now, in our global world.

Driving seems the same everywhere, does it not?

Yet drive offroad, or drive in Portland, Oregon, then drive in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. All different skills.

Jones was the last person to speak Eyak fluently. She had held that melancholy distinction since her sister's death in the early 90s. Her passing means that nobody in the world can effortlessly distinguish a demex'ch (a soft, rotten spot in the ice) from a demex'ch'lda'luw (a large, treacherous hole in the ice). It means that siniik'adach'uuch' - the vertical groove between the nose and upper lip, literally a "nose crumple" - has fled the minds of the living.

I wonder about the skill of knee-sliding through mangrove swamps. It was taught to me in Sedeli, Johor Bahru, Malaysia.

I never saw people do this deep inland.

Did people in other mangroves all over the world do this? Or was it something about what lived there?

I don't know.

I don't know how many people still do it.

Maybe you heard about the last lamplighter of London. People still live who remember him. How much of a skill was that?

The city of Grenoble began to establish itself as a center for glove-making during the Middle Ages. Its location—in the middle of the mountains of southeastern France, where many farmers raised goats—gave the city easy access to kidskin.
France’s federation of traditional glovemakers has only seven members, and Strazzeri is the only one who works with kidskin—a material that Grenoble was once famous for. “The fabric is soft, robust, flexible, and sturdy,” he says. “I just love working with my hands, with kidskin.”

Mohammad Ghalib sits in the corner space of a book shop, barely a couple of square yards large, that was offered to him by a late friend years ago, as he couldn’t afford it on his own. He is the only “katib,” or calligrapher, left in the celebrated Urdu Bazaar of Old Delhi, witnessing his art form dying before his eyes.

He found several manufacturers willing to make him a form, but none were a perfect sphere and they were often riddled with plateaus, something that would make the next step in the process even more challenging (more on that in a second). Not satisfied, Bellerby eventually partnered with a Formula 1 fabricator to make molds of various sizes, from an 8-inch mini desk globe to the massive 4-footer like the one commissioned by the Italian client. Bellerby started out by using plaster of paris in the molds (a material used historically in globemaking, but thanks to technological advancements, is less commonly used today), but through much trial and error he now favors resin and composite, which are more likely to stand the test of time.

There are coves and groves I was once a part of. Ways of moving in them. Gone, foundations to malls and condominiums.

Which skill will be needed one day?

This is harder to say.

I do know one of my skills is plumbing the past for tools that will serve my children.

To understand the past, you need familiarity with the skills they needed to live.