becoming an agent of change.

Yesterday I worked with a team of volunteers to further develop our ESSA wood shop and prepare for spring and summer classes. volunteers assembled a planer and a small jointer, began installing shelving in the storage room, assembled the tool holders I'd begun making for the bench room, assembled pegboard panes and together we removed the cutterhead from a jointer and installed a Byrd Shelix cutterhead. The jointer is now just a bit noisier than it had been so I'll have to open the back and adjust the motor mount. I am grateful to have such skilled help. The phrase "many hands make light work," applies. And we each, I think, had fun working together on something we love.

I ask again if we are a capitalist nation. Perhaps so. And perhaps we live in a greedy world if viewed at large.  But my own town of Eureka Springs is a pocket of delightful resistance and perhaps yours is as well. If we begin measuring the value of what folks do for free in the attempt to be of use to each other, we may gain another view of humanity, in which people are to be trusted and to be empowered. Perhaps you are lucky to live in a town like ours. If not, I congratulate you for the work at hand. It is a wonderful thing to be an agent of change.

Today I have work to do in preparing for the next week's classes at the Clear Spring School.

In the drawing above, I am attempting to describe the relationship between the development of craftsmanship, and the development of the craftsman. There is an effect from that on the development of community.

Make, fix, and create. Assist others in learning likewise.