today

Members of the ESSA board of directors will join with me in making wooden boxes, and while the method is simple, the results are satisfying. I found an interesting article by Booker T. Washington inspired by my search for information about the opposition to manual arts training from parents of the poor. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/industrial-education-for-the-negro/

Let me say to you that all honest work is honorable work. If the labor is manual, and seems common, you will have all the more chance to be thinking of other things, or of work that is higher and brings better pay, and to work out in your minds better and higher duties and responsibilities for yourselves, and for thinking of ways by which you can help others as well as yourselves, and bring them up to your own higher level.—Booker T. Washington

Labor is made boring by being resentful of your part in it, and in it we can always find cause for joy. Washington noted the difference between "working," in which we find joy, and "being worked" in which there is cause for resentment and despair.

Yesterday's staff class was a joy, just as I expect today's class for board members will be. The photo shows the box design we made yesterday and will be making today.

Make, fix and create... assist others in finding the joy in living and learning likewise.