the interconnectedness of all things.

The secrets of the wood wide web is an interesting article in the New Yorker that describes study of the interrelationship between trees in the forest, supported by a network consisting of a subsoil fungi through which they exchange nutrients and information. We tend to look at things as discrete and individual, but in reality, things are not. You cannot learn to do woodworking for example without learning something about tools, and you cannot do woodworking without knowing something about wood, and without having something to make, which then draws you into the milieu of human culture and consciousness.

So while schools tend to treat individual students as discrete objects to be measured and filled, or filled then measured,  as though they bottles on a conveyor belt in the bottling plant, the reality of a child's life (or an adult's life) is that it is intertwined with the whole of planetary existence and that planetary existence is intertwined in the existence of the cosmos.

I read a wonderful book by a Swedish author, Fredrik Backman. A Man Called Ove tells the story of a curmudgeon through a series of flashbacks that help the reader understand this man, his history, his character and his milieu. My readers may particularly enjoy it in that Ove is one of those who takes particular delight in fixing things that he can fix and fighting those he deems responsible for that which he cannot. But I'll not take away the reader's delight in discovering this book.

Today I continue getting ready for a week of box making at the Eureka Springs School of the Arts. The class will be held in the Clear Spring School wood shop. The box shown above is similar to the ones that my students and I will make.

Make, fix, create, and demonstrate for others the necessity of learning likewise.