It is rare these days to meet a shoemaker artisan. It might just give you a perspective on modern day world that is helpful to us all!

My great grandfather, Jake McFarlane, was a boot-maker in Scotland, just outside Kilsyth [near Stirling]. The barn next to the cottage by Banton Loch on the Colzium Estate, was his workshop. He made boots for all and sundry, and did his best to keep everyone in boots even amidst pretty extreme poverty conditions. It was a big deal for him the day one of his sons took him into the big city [Glasgow] to show him a boot-maker factory and the writing on the wall for the end of his boot-making days.
I couldn't help wondering if he was watching over when two of his great great grandchildren, being educated in an experimental Waldorf school for 16-19 year olds, were taken out to the Middle Eastern Bedouin nomads, to be guided in the making of a pair of shoes for themselves [an awesome rite of passage senior year requirement for every student in that school]. This is the school connected to Ruskin Mill in the Ruskin Valley in Gloucestershire, England. Ruskin Mill make their own kind of hobbitty [super-warm felted] slippers to this day!