a man and his tools...

I went to a house out by the lake yesterday to pick up some tools. The wife had had called about tools that her husband would no longer need. He's at that age where a bad knee and faulty balance from an ear infection make it difficult for him to work or to walk. I did not know what kinds of tools to expect. My hopes were for a few woodworking tools, but the collection contained many assorted wrenches and very few tools for woodworking. C clamps, however are a welcome addition to any shop. He had tried to get his son-in-law to take tools, but none of it was of interest to him.

My apprentice Greg loaded small hand tools in the truck as the gentleman would assess whether or not they would ever be useful to him again, "Do you want this?" he would ask. And while many of the tools would not be useful to me, (I've got more than enough) I offered to put what I took in the hands of those who will put them to use.

It is amazing how much of a man's soul is invested in the tools that he's used, and that he owns, even though they've been collected on shelves in a crowded garage and not touched in years. He looked carefully for a hammer that had been his dad's as he sorted through tool boxes and placed wrenches in my hands.

Tools are a reflection of our power to control our environment. They can be the means through which we can create beauty. They can connect us with our ancestors in ways that make them present as memories and potentialities in our own lives. Tools are symbols of our human empowerment. They can become clutter. They can become useless to us as we age. And yet, to see one's own life arrive at that point in which they may be no longer necessary to us can be a sad thing.

That is why we each must make a great effort to put tools into the hands of kids. Tools can be an expression of human cultural immortality when they are passed along with knowledge of their use into the hands and minds of kids. I'm sad for the son-in-law who seemed to have missed something that could have been passed along to his own kids. Wrenches that their grandfather might have used to work on an old Volkswagen would have been good for cultivating a bit of lefty loosey, righty tighty understanding of the way our universe is assembled and give them a sense of their own potential.

The following video is a teaser about a documentary film to be made about famous Swedish carver Wille Sundqvist by his son Jogge.




You can support the making of this film at Kickstarter.com.

Make, fix and create...