Boxes with legs

With only a few making days before Xmas, I've been making a series of veneered boxes with legs. The woods used are oak and walnut, to be more beautiful when sanded and finished with clear coats of Danish oil.

Make, fix and create...

Where does the mind go when the hand is at work?

This is from my Wisdom of the Hands blog post of 1/3/2009

Things move in patterns and waves. As you stand on the beach each wave will seem just like another. And yet each is distinct. It brings in new things. There is a renewal of interest in self-sufficiency and do it yourself that seems to be arising in many age groups. In a way, the renewed wave of self-sufficiency is misnamed. It is about doing things ourselves, most often with others in mind. There at the heart of self-sufficiency, is the idea that something can be shared or offered in service to others. Scrapwood Bob is reading Build Your Own Earth Oven, Simple Sourdough Bread; Perfect Loaves https://amzn.to/48ERQ8r by Kiko Denzer and Hannah Field. He plans to use scrap wood from the woodshop as his source of fuel. What fun! Reduce the growing pile of scrap and make bread at the same time. 

There are two things that happen when we are creatively engaged in the making of things, making a meal, building an oven, or finely crafting an object from wood. On the one hand we shape the material present in our own lives to new form and we change the shape our own souls. We serve others through the things we make and we stretch ourselves in confidence and competency, moving from complacency to active participants in creation. 

Early educators warned that we take on a mechanical nature through the repetition of acts. We do something and develop skill in the doing and then as the skill takes root in the hand, its function becomes automatic, no longer requiring the attention of the mind and thereby losing its educational value in shaping character and thought. I am curious about this. And ask, "What happens when we are fully aware of the implications of our actions?" What would happen if our schools became not just places where our children were to learn, but places in which they might serve as well, seeing the actions of their hands providing benefit to others? 

I have this idea that when use use both the power of the trained hand to create, and the power of the mind to connect active hands-on service to higher thoughts and principles, the object made might become more powerful in its beauty, transmitting an energy that provides greater nourishment than would be found in objects thoughtlessly made or grown. For this to happen requires training of both the hand and mind. As we learn skill in the hands and the attention of the mind is no longer required for the success of its actions, what do we do with the mind? As it becomes free to wander, where does it go? What do we choose for its pasture? We can choose greater creativity, asking the question "what's next?" Or we can contemplate greater direction and more meaningful life. 

We can fantasize our own success. Or we can choose to indulge in fears and suspicions of each other. There is clearly a choice between dark indulgences and longing for better things, either for ourselves or others. And yet, there is a third choice, the Zen choice. 

What if one were to choose to be fully present. Rather than allowing the mind to wander from the moment as though no moment mattered, what if we chose to pay greater attention to each grasp of the hand in kneading the dough, or each pass of the plane shaving an edge of a plank as though such things were so real and so important there is no reason for escape? 

There is an idea in Zen that it is about freedom, but perhaps freedom is not about escape. So, these are just questions, about where we are led by our quest for self-sufficiency, about the baking of bread and the nurturing of human culture.

An example

Charles H. Hamm had asked that schools become creative laboratories and the MakerEd newsletter has asked folks to share their maker spaces with other readers.  The Kalani High School offers just what Hamm might have had in mind: 

https://open.substack.com/pub/makered/p/the-makerspaces-at-kalani-high-school 

I would, however, have a few basic woodworking tools.

Make, fix and create...

the ways we learn

Clear Spring School received one of the first grants from Rhizonium Foundation, awarded by Chris Schwarz of the Lost Press, member of their board. He said about the grant:

 

“As an Arkansas boy and a woodworker, I have long admired the work of The Clear Spring School. Your approach to teaching whole people – both the head and the hands – will help build future generations who are both capable and thoughtful. I am honored to support you as an enthusiastic fan, a philanthropist, and as a board member of Rhizomium.”

 Chris and I became followers of each other when we were co-jurors at the Northeast Woodworkers Association Showcase. I am combing my old blog for meaningful quotes and found this that I quote entire.

The ways and means of learning... 

One of the interesting things the wood shop at Clear Spring School has accomplished has been to offer an alternate means to learn. Activity, is important, not as mindless distraction, but as active expression of learning. As they say, "use it or lose it." Those things that you have used or have use for are easily cataloged in the brain, more quickly and easily retrieved in memory for reuse because they are connected in the sequential train of experience.

In a normal classroom, during a lecture, it is necessary for the mind to wander. You hear ideas expressed by the teacher, and then have to anchor that information to a catalog structured of previously known and accepted information or circumstance. This requires the attention to be withdrawn from the lecture for seconds or minutes as information is processed in internal dialog, and questions are formed in the mind when things don't fit. You may, if you are normal, find your attention being recalled to the lecture, after the teacher's train of thought has left the station and is miles down the track. 

When that happens, it is difficult for most students to catch up. They are abandoned on the classroom sideline to wander in their thoughts and useless fantasy. Please don't take my word for this. Observe yourself. Pay attention to the wanderings of your own mind as you reflect on information that is presented and as you fit it into your own life and experience. 

One of the subjects I discuss with my students in the wood shop is how we learn. If our students are to become actively engaged, self-motivated, lifelong learners, it is important that they become engaged in observing their own learning styles, that they become conscious of the workings of their own minds as they process information, and that they begin to control and better utilize available material and experience. 

The choice is whether they become masters of their own learning, knowing how to best take in and utilize the wide range of information available to accomplish their goals, or that they be left at the wayside of learning in idle fantasy and useless chatter. When we started the Wisdom of the Hands program at Clear Spring School, I knew that I was clueless about education. But I did, as a craftsman, know a bit about myself from observation of my own lifelong learning. If I want to learn something, I throw myself into waters over my head, where I either sink or swim. Acknowledging the dangers of sounding colloquial, through trial and error, where there is a will there is a way, and where there is a use, things will be learned and remembered. —Wisdom of Hands blog, October 29, 2007.

22 days

People ask about hand tool woodworking, and there's no better way to start, even as adults, than with some of the projects featured in my book, The Guide to Woodworking with Kids: Craft projects to Develop the lifelong Skills of Young Makers. It features a number of box making designs that can be crafted with simple joinery and can of course lead to other things. 

Your creative imagination deserves an starting point and simple is good. We now have 22 creative days yet to pass before Xmas. You can, of course, spend your time shopping, or better spend it developing skills and gifts to others. Featured in the photo is a pencil box I made for my own use, and as a demonstration box for the kids at the Clear Spring School.

Make, fix and create...

AI won't replace me (I hope)

How to AI proof your life and of those in your community? Andrew Yang who had been a presidential candidate has predicted that AI will erase 40 million jobs. It may make google more responsive but may take away jobs done over the phone where artificial voices will replace your own, and over the highways with automated trucks driving to your door. AI will better serve the sales of stuff to us, but leaving us no way to afford to buy it. Even farming, nursing and manufacturing can go toward AI controlled robotics.

One sure way to insure success in your own life and in your own community will be to demand that things be locally made and grown by members of your own community, or even by yourselves. It's what we'll have to do when things come to that point anyway. What will you do when you've no work? I recommend the crafts. Get started.

Today I'm gluing veneered panels in finger-jointed boxes, making them ready for lids to be cut loose from sides and veneered. Ain't nothing AI about it and I could be replaced, but won't be. Yet.

Are worried bout your work not measuring up to machine standards. Are you reticent to even try? Henry, a friend's 6-year-old grandson has this carefully crafted message for you. It is OK to make mistakes.

Make, fix and create...