day three

This was my third day of box making class at Marc Adams School, and we began cutting lids from bases, and are ready to install hinges. All the students are making boxes that have personalities reflecting their own decisions and course of growth. I presented a slide shows this afternoon describing how a variety of boxes are made, and each student now has a better grasp of what I am doing in the photos because they will each have had experience of their own in some of the same techniques to clarify and personalize what they see. Each photo I showed made connections within each student's personal experience. Several students have informed me that their lives and confidence in woodworking have been changed.

Education is about the process of connecting from the known to the unknown, making the leap from the concrete to the abstract. Photos from the day are above and below. As usual at Marc Adams School, I have amazing students. What you see in the photos affirms it.

Today, there was more unsettling financial news. People don't know what to do. We can find rationales for market behavior, but no clear understanding of what appears irrational economic behavior. There are answers for it all. Become more productive. Act creatively. When the bottom fell from the financial market during the latter days of the Bush Administration, I decided to use what I had available to me. I used old crappy figured woods stored in the barn to make tables and sold eleven of them, stepping from the known and predictable into the unknown and found myself supported. There is no guarantee that creative behavior will contend with difficult situations, but sitting still and allowing oneself to be resigned to failure is no solution in challenging times. We can wait for the market to return, or for leaders in DC to come to their senses, but it was through our own failures to be hands on engaged in managing our economy that got our nation into this desperate situation. Pull hands from pockets and...

Make, fix and create...