on the other hand

Yesterday I mentioned a program on NPR in which they were talking about puzzles and the brain. The idea has been that by remaining active in crossword puzzles, the tragic effects of Alzheimer's and dementia in old age could be prevented. The research says this is not the case. As much as we would like these simple things to work, they don't. During the program a listener emailed a comment that when he was stumped on the New York Times crossword puzzle, he would switch his pencil to his left hand and thus get a whole new view and relationship to it, seemingly engaging the more creative side of his brain, and finding solutions that had been beyond his grasp. The radio host read the comment on the air and quickly changed the subject, completely rejecting and ignoring what was to me the most interesting part of the program.

And so it is with the hands. They touch everything, and yet we ignore them and give them little mind and no credit.

My friend at Make Magazine, Dale Dougherty posted a story about the relationship between dropouts and gaming here. The current drop out rate in California for black children is 37%. Oakland has a drop out rate of 40%. Gaming is an important part of the problem. Kids need to be doing real things instead that call for relationships with actual instruction in relationships with real people. Without those, we are failing to engage our children in real culture. Gaming is great for quietly engaging the whiny child, but a poor framework from which to encourage his or her growth as a human being. It engages the natural hand/eye/mind learning system in ways that traditional teaching and traditional human relationships with non-gamers most often do not, and is thus addictive and destructive of real social relationships that unfold at a much slower and more gentle pace. Those are considered boring to a child addicted to the fast pace of computer gaming and the intense concentration required.

One thing that researchers, academics, educators and lay people do not even come close to understanding is the integral relationship between the hands, eyes and the mind. That is one of the challenges I face here in this blog. We take our hands for granted while they do ten hundred thousand things each day. But we will not become the best we can be as human beings, teachers, parents, or citizens, until we begin to re-frame our mental grasp of every aspect of our humanity with the hands included as essential framework in our intellectual understanding. Until we have fully grasped the hands in their full impact on human development, society and culture, we will be playing foolish mind games that can be destructive of our lives and our children's futures. Make, fix, create.

Today I'll be working in my own shop, finishing small cabinets, and writing captions and text.

the flip side...

I take making things pretty seriously. Nearly all human culture emerged through our relationship with our hands. The idea promoted in this blog is to make things of useful beauty that nourish character and intelligence.

But, last night I began reading Amy Sedaris' new book, Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People and I laughed until I could hardly catch my breath. Her 8 pages of stretching and preparatory exercises for crafting near the center of the book are almost too much for a serious craftsman to bear.


Amy's book won't make you a better craftsman, but it is creative, funny and fun. Nearly all of the poorly crafted objects in it would be natural targets for ridicule if they were seriously done. The book is a great reminder of the power that comes from not taking ourselves so seriously. If a person once got started making, even if it was disgusting crappola like that shown in the book, the process might lead to something more. If you are making something for the first time without ever taking time to develop skill, even the things in Amy's book might seem beyond you. But take time to get started and do believe that in time your work will get better and more creative. Being a mindless maker would be a thousand times better than living the life of mindless consumer. Make, fix, create. Be thrifty, be wise.

Today in the Clear Spring School wood shop, students in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd grades made wooden Christmas trees. "I don't want to sand it," I heard from two children."OK, here is your choice. You can either sand it and do your best or hurry through and get finished before the other children and then sit around bored." I'm tough, but I can get away with it because they love wood shop.

On NPR this afternoon, they were discussing the use of puzzles to sustain mental acuity. There is no clear evidence that it works. A listener contacted the program via email and noted that when stuck on a crossword puzzle, he would switch hands, and approaching the puzzle left handed would bring breakthroughs that weren't available when he held the pencil in his right hand. Unfortunately that note fell on deaf ears and the programmers quickly jumped to less relevant questions of their own. I thought for just a second they were on the edge of something important. But there are things that people just don't understand about the hands and why they are relevant to mental processing. They are not even receptive to discuss the concept. Someday soon, perhaps.

physiological effects of verbal abuse

The Neuroscience of Bullying describes the physiological effects of bullying. In case you are one of those few who have not felt the effects of bullying or who may think that teen bullying is normal and should be tolerated, it would be useful to note that it has real, measurable, damaging effects like depression, anxiety, lowered immune response and even suicide. At Clear Spring School, conflict resolution and how we get along with each other and resolve differences is our most important area of educational engagement, and the world that we see in the nightly news is one which disregards that which we at Clear Spring School take very seriously.

In the meantime, a couple of my articles on educational sloyd have been republished in the Woodwork Magazine CD which accompanies sale of their annual issue and is available now on news stands and in book stores.

Woodwork was my all time favorite wood working magazine, as it allowed a story-telling engagement of writers while so many other woodworking magazines have a nothing-but-the-steps, how-to mentality, keeping personal expression at the minimum. But storytelling is what engages us deeply and emotionally in the subject, and the earliest issues of Fine Woodworking did that with zest. Now, though I write for that magazine, I still long for the more personal touch which editors no longer allow.

On the other hand, there is no shortage of personal interest in the magazine Wooden Boat. In the current issue, Nov/Dec 2010, Bill Schwicker describes his own journey in the construction of his second hand-crafted wooden sharpie to grace the cover of Wooden Boat. It is a shaggy dog story, including Bill's black lab, Molly and the story wanders far off course, which is where I wish woodworking magazines would lead us on occasion, reminding us that what we do in the woodshop is really about the full breadth and scope of life itself. Schwicker's article also offers a touch of philosophy including this quote from Ernest Hemingway:

There are some things that cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things, and because it takes a man's life to know them, the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.

When was the last time you read a quote from Ernest Hemingway in a woodworking magazine? In this day and age, his quote would have to be cut in half to be allowed on your tweet deck. Do Hemingway's  quotes no longer belong to us? We could all learn a few things from Wooden Boat. Bill's sharpie and Molly are shown in the photo above. A sharpie has three positions to step a mast... far forward in a cat-ketch rig with the mizzen behind, and then a more central position for use with a single sail.

One thing you learn about life is that no man is an island unto himself, and that no single thing exists in and of itself. Things are connected, one to the other, and while we divide knowledge into disciplines and courses of study to simplify and narrow the scope of what teachers impart to students and to make the broad fields of knowledge manageable for convenient delivery as packets of information, all measured and approved, we all suffer from the disconnection we impart. The world is a seamless canvas upon which we are either placed as objects, or upon which we make our mark, and that mark is most significant and distinct when it is drawn with passion that comes from the emotional engagement in full breadth of it, and with a knowing of the whole thing.

For some, more conditioned to tweets and no longer accustomed to discourse as humans once were, to read this long blog post would be a form of self-inflicted verbal abuse, having physiological effect. But there can be a quickening and slowing of the paces of the heart as we are drawn into meanders, set courses on the by road, and fall into stories told askance. To lives one's life in those places where the wind catches and fills your mizzen is the path of craftsmanship. Make, fix, create.

Today in the CSS woodshop, students worked on woodturning, and several students became interested in working with wire and pliers making steel chain and jewelry. My friend who made the contribution of jewelry tools would have been pleased to have seen the response.

today in the css wood shop

My 4th, 5th and 6th grade students worked on our toy car project, gluing loose wheels, sanding rough edges and making sure they reflect some level of quality work. They would have preferred to just do inventive work of their own inspiration, but there are days when you just have to buckle down and just work. I had to be the tough task master.

After school I saw a student from years past who is currently being home schooled. He asked if there was some way he could arrange to be in wood shop. I am very pleased that the idea of wood shop still excites him.

This afternoon, the high school students worked on the lathe and began work in jewelry making, using tools given to the school by a friend who is dying of lung cancer. And on a much sadder note, our development director at Clear Spring School passed away last night from a long bout with lung cancer. He was a true champion of progressive education and we all mourn his passing.

Life, after all, is shorter than we want it to be in most cases. It is made shorter still by hurrying through at breakneck speed. One of the surest ways to sustain it is to take note of the passage of time in our own hands as we shape, fix, make and create things of useful beauty to share with those we do love. There are times when we makers become so deeply engaged in the work at hand, that time stands still. "Aren't you coming to bed?" It's called flow, or being in the "zone." "No, please, not yet, I'm having too much fun." And what seemed like moments were really hours as we cook, make, create, fix, nourish and sustain.

if you grow up by the highway...

If you grow up at the side of the highway, you assume that highway speed is normal and desireable, despite the exhaust smoke and obvious dangers involved. Last night at my small show at Lux Weaving Studio, a visitor asked, how do you have patience for such work?  Our sense of time is a thing conditioned by our engagement in it. We have patience for some things and not others and I have no patience for waiting in line to buy the latest hot object on Black Friday, and I have no patience for urban traffic where you wait at lights and then lurch forward at breakneck speeds in order to save the time you wasted at the light.

These days, Americans routinely hurl along on fossil fuels at speeds unattainable by kings and queens in earlier times. Our computers can thrust words and concepts into minds on other continents at nearly the speed of light, and we have conditioned ourselves toward impatience with all the simple skilled standard processes that served as the foundation of human culture. There is danger in all this, as we lose patience with simpler things. The remedy is to take direct action to slow down and savor the direct acquisition of skill. There is no other path. Cook, make, plant, fix, create, become mindful and enjoy. Conviviality demands simple tools that allow for our own creative resistance to uniformity. To take time into one's own hands offers rewards unperceived by those who are driven by the machinations of industrial society toward an ever faster pace.

I am grateful to live in a creative community where the arts are nourished by appreciation. We have no stop light to mechanically control the relationships we have with each other, and to share what we do with friends is a wonderful thing.

I was pleased that my piece of sculpture, Dancing Noguchi met with favor at my small show at Lux Weaving Studio. And while I haven't sold it yet, I received enough encouragement to proceed with more sculptural experimentation. Dancing Noguchi is shown in the photo above.

forgive me, this is long and deep...

As we watch conservative Republicans at war with science on the subject of global warming, which they deny, "creation science" which they support, and while they have widely expressed a bias against the scientific community and academic expertise, one can wonder how they can get away with it? Are we such a nation of ignorant sheep? The following is from socialist writer Ivan Illich in Tools for Conviviality:

... above all, political discussion is stunned by a delusion about science. This term has come to mean an institutional enterprise rather than a personal activity, the solving of puzzles rather than the unpredictably creative activity of individual people. Science is now used to label a spectral production agency which turns out better knowledge just as medicine produces better health. The damage done by this misunderstanding about the nature of knowledge is even more fundamental than the damage done to the conceptions of health, education, or mobility by their identification with institutional outputs. False expectations of better health corrupt society, but they do so in only one particular sense. They foster a declining concern with healthful environments, healthy life styles, and competence in the personal care of one's neighbor. Deceptions about health are circumstantial. The institutionalization of knowledge leads to a more general and degrading delusion. It makes people dependent on having their knowledge produced for them. It leads to a paralysis of the moral and political imagination.

When education is no longer hands-on, students have little to grasp. When the hands-on exploration of materials through crafts, and further extensions of hands-on learning through scientific experimentation are removed from schooling, we construct a disconnect between the layman and the scientist, allowing political forces to manipulate public opinion to conform to evil machinations. Very sadly, what we see in the political community these days is the result of an educational intent expressed in the design of our institutions: Use schooling to shape students to become blind consumers who can be manipulated to do as told by a ruling class that cares little or nothing for the planet nor for the health of its creatures.

Ivan Illich, despite being a self-avowed socialist had a pretty clear view of what has been happening in America and world culture in the post Reagan anti-intellectual political climate. What he did not suggest was a craftsman's understanding of the role that the hands can play in putting society back on the right path. Make, fix, create, heal and grow.

In the photo at left, you can see the walnut pegs for the Greene and Greene styled cabinets as they are turning black from the ebonizing solution. The are cut to length, sanded, and ready for installation in the doors of the finished cabinets.

Today I am preparing for an exhibit and sale of my work at Lux Weaving Studio, 18 White Street, Eureka Springs, beginning at 5 PM.

Today in the woodshop

There are advantages to being a self-employed craftsman, teacher and writer in that I am always shifting between various layers of interest, being called to change locations, or tasks at hand. As a piece of work progresses in the woodshop it goes through stages, each calling for a different skill. When I begin a piece, I select the best wood which usually involves digging through stacks of lumber and evaluating the qualities of each board and what it can be used for. Then I begin the task of cutting parts to rough size, jointing and planing them to prepare them for cutting to final dimension. Each step is well rehearsed, but not without some head scratching and decision making. Sometimes I have to adjust my plans to meet the circumstances of tools and materials. And so, each day, each hour, and each minute are a balance between the known and unknown, creating both a sense of comfort, and continuously expanding interest.

In yesterday's post, I had quoted Bob Barsanti's article, that "Parents, coaches, and teachers need to work as craftsmen and artisans, not as millworkers on the night shift," and the idea of craftsman as a metaphor for teachers at work, or children at learning and growth, serves well. An experienced teacher in a classroom might see some similarities between the crafting of young lives and what I am doing in the woodshop. Every board must come to its perfect use, and with teaching kids, none can be discarded as scrap. So perhaps an even better metaphor would be that of goldsmith rather than woodworker. While institutionalized education may not recognize or value all the qualities inherent in the materials, the goldsmith of children, knowing the precious qualities of his or her materials would let no filings go to waste.

There is a problem built into the system through which we train kids. Regimentation. Just as it kills spirit on the factory floor, it can do the same in the teaching of kids. In my wood shop, I can shift gears as easily as shifting the body, taking breaks in position, but also breaks in mind and mindfulness. I can feel inspired to write some newly shuffled thought and make the quick trip to my desk, putting sanding aside, to jot down a note on the blog, while the sanding task I had abandoned waits patiently for my return that comes with renewed interest and vigor.

Today, I'll be sanding doors and preparing the hangers for the insides of a cabinet. I will also put contrasting wood pegs in the corners of the bridle joint doors to add a greater touch of Greene and Greene design. A craftsman's life is filled with little things, that take little or no time at all, but that add up to finished work, step-by-step. And I feel that the metaphor of craftsmanship holds the key to many wonderful things that are lacking in today's distracted culture. Make, fix, create,  sow(plant), sew, nurture, care, and care for. The artist may work to make something different, the craftsman works to make things better. Not a bad way to make a life.

In the meantime, Roy Underhill is hosting his 30th season of the Woodwright's Shop on PBS, and has included a segment on Sloyd. I have the pleasure knowing that  my own articles on Educational Sloyd in Woodwork Magazine and writings about Sloyd in this blog have awakened a renewed interest in sloyd in the broader woodworking community. Roy's program "Who Wrote the Book of Sloyd" is described as follows:

"Sloyd, the late 19th-century Swedish system of learning woodworking was intended to develop skilled, industrious and morally upstanding citizens. We’ll give it a try, and hope it’s not too late for us!"

It will be the 7th episode in the current season, and Roy will surely awaken an even wider range of TV viewers to woodworking education. No wonder Republicans feel threatened by PBS and want to cut funding. First we restore a sense of the dignity of all labor, and in the slippery slope of feeble minds, the next thing we're talking about is socialism or worse.

As you can see in the photo above, you can see my progress in adding Greene and Greene styled pegs to lock the bridle joint doors. The pegs are functional in that they add to the great strength of the joint, but are decorative in that they are not required. The walnut square pegs will  be ebonized to turn black before they are glued into place in keeping with the Greene and Greene style.

adult bullying in schools

As you can see, I am making progress on my tool cabinet and have been designing the interior to provide secure places for various tools. I have far too many hand tools in my collection to hold them all in a small cabinet, but will just get a nice selection together inside.

As I worked in the shop I listened to a program on NPR about bullying in schools. That is a hot topic these days, with the problems being acknowledged as widespread and extremely harmful.  But most are talking about peer on peer bullying. There are adult forms  of bullying that are sanctioned by our school systems and that have devastating effect to children's feelings of self-worth and dignity. It is a topic schools will rarely discuss, and adult bullies often are allowed to stay on the job for years. It can be too disruptive to fire them mid year, even if an administrator cared about the situation. And still another form of bullying is that of our school wide failure to acknowledge and encourage the full range of human intelligences. It is often thought that shop classes are for dummies. And in our failure to acknowledge the intelligences involved, we inflict nearly irreparable harm to kids on both sides of the academic divide. It is not a happy set of circumstances. But make, fix, create. There are interpersonal challenges that we overcome when we discover our own creative alignment  with the universe.

a telling tale

"The Classroom is not a Factory" from Education Week. is by a teacher, Bob Barsanti, who had been a factory worker first and noted the depressing similarities as follows.

In September, when the owner shook my hand and gave me a thank-you letter, I thought I had done my last millwork.

Silly me. Many of the current reforms in education aim to turn the schoolhouse into that plastic-products factory. Our machines are not hydraulic, but they are mechanical; textbooks, curricular frameworks, and approved book lists are the same from Swampscott to San Francisco. The machinery heats and molds our children, then stamps, bags, and packages them to a professional uniformity. The SAT and its related bubble tests perform quality control. Once a year, I check the green Scantron sheets and see that our students are missing a few points on pronoun agreement. I adjust the machine accordingly.

For our students, the factory floor is a dangerous place to grow up. As the books and tests we use become more refined and ubiquitous, our students become more reduced and uniform. The textbook they memorize at age 16 is out of date by the time they are 20. The answers they recite in their senior year become trivia questions before they finish college. Our plastic students will be with us for a long time: My swizzle sticks still exist, but they fill a landfill or float in a Texas-sized island of plastic. They don't accomplish anything.

However, for a superintendent or any other politician, the school-as-mill has an attractive whistle to it. They can measure what goes on in a young lady's head, put a number to it, and pronounce it fit or foul. They can control what the kids learn, what the teachers instruct, and how big the "Mission Accomplished" banner will be when the test scores are posted. When the problem is framed in terms of millions of children and billions of dollars, the solution is going to look like the Lawrence, Mass., textile mills. Success will come in one-ton rolls of gray cloth—at a cost.

That's not the job I signed up for. --- Bob Barsanti

Today I work in my personal wood shop assembling and arranging the interiors of small cabinets for my book. I'll spend some time writing captions and a bit more getting ready for a weekend show of my work, and hoping that between us, we can make schools more humane and responsive to the real human beings, our children, to whom we trust our futures. Make, fix, create, sow, sew, nurture, grow and thus enjoy a purposefilled life.

Bob Barsanti concludes his article with the following:

Multiple-choice tests and national standards go a long way toward ensuring that every student has the minimum of skills and knowledge. Testing ensures that every student stands on the same floor. But, to reach the sky, students need to be challenged and developed individually. Parents, coaches, and teachers need to work as craftsmen and artisans, not as millworkers on the night shift.

what works and why...

I started this blog in October 2006, and have written steadily ever since. Even though I tend to repeat myself, there is often a fresh set of readers with new eyes on the material, and the hands are so central to the human intellect, emotional framework and creative expression, that there is no dead end to the story.

As a craftsman, I learned that no maker is a world unto himself. Without encouragement within community and family, there are likely no arts or crafts developed of any quality and significance. And so, one can say, arts, crafts, makers, artists and craftsmen arise within a broad culture having chosen to nourish and sustain human creativity.

Quality education arises in the same way. In the article inthe Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Clear Spring School, "EUREKA SPRINGS Private school fosters diverse learning styles," Phyllis Poe mentioned that Clear Spring School might not be right for everyone. Why would that be? Highly regimented classroom learning standard for public schooling is not for everyone either, is it? But are there factors within a child that make Clear Spring School not the right choice?

So what are the factors that make a child right for a Clear Spring learning environment? It is a question hard to address without examining the whole of the Clear Spring School learning culture, which is what I'll attempt to do briefly below.

Today in the school wood shop, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade students were to continue to make toy cars, but each left with a toy cat pull toy instead. Some made toys to donate, and others got so engrossed in making and decorating their cats the time passed without making additional toys to give away. There is so much pressure for kids to grow up too fast, and it was interesting watching each child walk to the van pulling a toy cat on a string as though they were toddlers. Is there something wrong with that, or is there something wrong with kids being pushed to grow up too quickly and too soon. Some would say yes to one question or the other.

One of the reasons parents choose a school like Clear Spring is that we tend to offer greater shelter to childhood, that it can be cherished longer and that each child's unique nature be nurtured and protected. When it is said that Clear Spring School is not right for everyone, what is meant is that we can't fix or rectify all the world's educational problems. Children develop attitudes in public education due to a variety of factors that may make them a poor fit for Clear Spring School. Too much pressure, too many students, too little time for recess, too little appreciation of the value of diversity, too little time for conflict resolution will have their effects. Some parents bring their kids to Clear Spring School after they have met failing situations in public schooling, in the hopes that we can fix what ails them. Sometimes, with enough parental support, we can. But the students that seem to thrive within the Clear Spring School culture seem to be those who have deeply engaged parents, willing to put a lot on the line toward their children's success.

"What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon it destroys our democracy." -John Dewey

In the photo above, I've added hinge strips to the elm cabinet to shift the pivot point of the door hinges to allow them to clear the exposed finger joints on the sides.You will see how this works in the finished cabinets.

suggestion for tonight's dinner

SMAKLIG MÅLTID! Or Bon Appetite! if you are french and not svensk

Hasselback Potatoes With Rosemary
What you need: potatoes (medium sized), breadcrumbs, fresh rosemary, butter and sea salt.
1. Preheat the oven to 425°F
2. Peel and wash the potatoes.
3. Slice into the potatoes about 1/5 inch apart. Do not cut completely through! Top each potato with a small knob of butter and bake them in the oven for about 25 minutes.
4. Remove from the oven, and sprinkle each potato with breadcrumbs, sea salt and some rosemary (rosemary is untraditional, so if you want to stay true to the original recipe, just leave it out).. Again top each potato with a small knob of butter.
5. Bake for another 25-35 minutes (depending on the size of the potatoes) or until golden on the outside and soft on the inside. You can also turn the oven to broil for the last 5 minutes of cooking to get an extra crispy outside.

This recipe came from Kalle Bergman, food writer for the Huffington Post. Besides being Swedish, it tasted great.

Today in the wood shop, students turned wood. Two made gavels, some made candle stick holders, and others finished the boxes they have been working on. I am headed for my own woodshop to clean and arrange and to assemble and finish the Greene and Greene styled cabinets.

Woodturning at CSS

Today several of my high school students worked on the lathe making various things. Clayton wanted to make a small ball bat which he says is to whack his older brother on the leg. Others practiced their skills with far less malicious intent. Samantha advised that there is a significant difference between karma and revenge. When you take matters into your own hands, like with a small ball bat, it's revenge and not karma. The small ball bat is not exactly the Clear Spring way to solve problems, but perhaps with a bit of skill demonstrated, big brother will back off without the need for whacking, and the ball bat is no more dangerous than other things an older brother might pick up.

I saved a .pdf file of the article about Clear Spring School from yesterday's Democrat-Gazette. You can download it Here,"EUREKA SPRINGS Private school fosters diverse learning styles."

One of the things not mentioned in the article is the CSS focus on conflict resolution, and skills in interpersonal relationships are probably the most important skills that children can learn in school. We routinely drop everything to help children learn how to get along with each other and resolve their differences, with justice and peace.

Becoming eager learners

Clear Spring second-grader Alena Guillory makes a box during shop class Wednesday afternoon. The Eureka Springs school encourages hands-on experiences instead of just reading about subjects.
Photo by Michael Woods

Clear Spring School is featured today in an article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Below is a video of a blind woodworker in Canada who says, "You got two eyes, I've got ten.".

Besides housecleaning with my new floor mop extender in use for the first time, attending an afternoon arts and craft show and thus visiting friends, I extended my friendly competition with the Chinese this afternoon, by applying Danish oil finish to boxes. In addition, I have been sanding my latest cabinets to prepare for assembly. You can get a preview glimpse of the tongue and groove Greene and Greene inspired doors in the photo below.

"The Woodcarver" From Chuang Tsu

Parker Palmer, suggests this poem as an allegory for teaching.

Khing, the master carver, made a bell stand
Of precious wood. When it was finished,
All who saw it were astounded. They said it must be
The work of spirits.
The Prince of Lai said to the master carver
"What is your secret?"

Khing replied, "I am only a workman:
I have no secret. There is only this:
When I began to think about the work you commanded
I guarded my spirit, did not expend it
on trifles, that were not to the point.
I fasted in order to set
My heart at rest.
After three days fasting,
I had forgotten praise or criticism.
After seven days
I had forgotten my body
With all its limbs.

"By this time all thought of your Highness
And of the court had faded away.
All that might distract me from the work
Had vanished.
I was collected in the single thought
Of the bell-stand.

"Then I went to the forest
To see the trees in their own natural state.
When the right tree appeared before my eyes,
The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.
All I had to do was to put forth my hand
And begin.

"If I had not met this particular tree
There would have been
No bell stand at all.

"What happened?
My own collected thoughts
Encountered the hidden potential in the wood:
From this live encounter came the work
Which you ascribe to the spirits."

Simple, elegant... most of the work was on self, then with the self in control and alignment, the work begins. The results are ascribed to the spirits, and the teacher's job is to bring forth that which is unique.

black friday

Last night consumers were tent camping in front of stores to be first in line to get the best deals on holiday shopping. On what is called Black Friday, stores are hoping to turn the corner from losses to profits, as a large percentage of their earnings come after Thanksgiving sales for the Christmas holidays. As much as I love consumer confidence and the gradual restoration of economy, I am personally disinclined to fight the madness of holiday shopping.

In some home work shops, mothers and fathers are busy making things for their kids. Which scenario offers the most growth? Shopping or making? Which behavior sets the best example for kids? "I want that!" or "I can make that!"

The average time Americans shop during the holiday shopping season is 20 hours. Some shop more and some less. But did you know you can make some pretty cool things in less than 20 hours and avoid mall time entirely? You have 29 making days to go until Christmas. If you feel inclined to help the economy, buy tools. Top of the charts in this year's buying guide for the 6 to 12 year old is an iPad selling at a whopping discounted price of $458.00 today only. On the other hand, (literally) a great buy for kids is the 10 oz. Little Pro Claw Hammer American made by Vaughan and Bushnell and shown in the photo above. Unlike all the consumer electronics products on the market this holiday shopping season, it will last a lifetime.

I could be replaced...

This morning, I've been working with SketchUp, illustrating a small cabinet in 3-D. To take a break, I climbed under the kitchen sink and replaced the faucet, which had been leaking. Then I went out on the tractor to grade the road until I was driven in wet and cold from freezing rain.

This year, we are staying in Eureka Springs for Thanksgiving and we will be sharing the meal with friends. For the last hour, I chopped onions, and other ingredients to our contributions to the shared repast. I also did dishes. If it weren't for the plumbing, tractor driving, and computer graphics I could be replaced by a food processor and dish washer. But what joy would that be?

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers and friends...

My latest cabinet and SketchUp illustration are shown above.

one day early...

Happy Thanksgiving. Today I get to work in my wood shop surrounded by my tools,  and with the knowledge to put them to use making things, which with care could last generations. I have an amazing amount to be thankful for, so I am starting my celebration one day early, and a day in the woodshop is celebration. You, my readers and friends, I add to my long list of things to be thankful for.

Yesterday was a great day in the school wood shop... more to be thankful for. Nick informed me that he wanted to turn a ball on the lathe. I told him, I don't think you have the skill and concentration for that yet. He proved me wrong. I gave him instruction, and he did it. I asked him, "Can you do it again without my directions?" "Yes!"  I doubt there are many educators in the US who would understand the full range of things that took place in that class or why they would be of such great value. The value is no in making a ball. You can buy one already turned in the Walmart craft supply section for 79¢. But can you shop for such concentration of eye, body,  mind and aesthetic discernment? Can you place a value on arising to meet a challenge, and proving your teacher wrong in his assessment of your skill and concentration?

The last two years, as some of my long time readers will recall, we went to New York to share Thanksgiving with my daughter and friends. Among remarkable memories was watching our friend Jane ride off in a New York taxi with a full cooked 20 lb. turkey braced in her lap as we traveled half the length of Manhattan. So this Thanksgiving will be a close to home one shared with friends at a more local level. You can read about our last couple thanksgivings by typing thanksgiving in the search block at upper left. The photo above is from two years ago in the Poconos.

I wish you all the best. The aromas that arise from the kitchen on Thanksgiving day are to be treasured. The wisdom of hands expressed through the preparation of food to be shared with friends is about as good as it gets.

one size does not fit all...

Anyone with a body knows that  all bodies are not the same. And yet, tools lose conviviality when they don't fit, the hand, the arm, or the height.

Every time I mop the floor with our sponge mop, I argue with it, that it doesn't fit. Sponge mops are made for women of a height of 5 ft. 6 in. or so, and a 6 foot man is too tall to find comfort in the use of the tool. I have to bend over too far, and having googled and found no extenders available I made one myself. It is turned on the lathe with a 4 inch end sized to fit tightly in the inside of the mop handle, and with the remaining 10 inches extending its length.  I used J-B Weld inside the metal tube to secure the wood extension in place, and now, for the first time ever, I can stand up to my full height as I do my part of the weekly housecleaning. The handle extender is so simple I'm surprised they don't sell them at Walmart.

Beside the discomfort of bending over, there is a study described in Scientific American ...and Posture's Effect on Testosterone that sheds light on the relationship between male posture and development of the male hormone testosterone. Not only is being bent over a mop considered "unmanly" by some, it is also a posture that extends unmanliness throughout your life, through its effects on your hormonal balance. Mopping while extended to your full height may have beneficial effects while being bent over in subservience to the mop will not.

At one time, tools were made to fit the person using them. An example in the drawing above comes from Rudolph Drillis' article "Folklore and Biomechanics, Human Factors, October 1963. It makes me wonder, how often things are designed for the convenience of the manufacturer or the convenience of the shipper, and not the ease of actual use by the intended user.  Believe me, many things are made to sell to you without the actual you in mind. Rudolph J. Drillis had done an interesting study of ergonomics involving the peasants of Latvia that resulted in illustrations like the one above. There is a relationship between conviviality and our tools. Are tools shaped to fit, allowing us to convey a sense of joy through work, or are they awkward to the body distorting both the body and attitude as work is done? It is said that a poor craftsman blames his tools. Perhaps that is true. A craftsman may have the wherewithal to fix what is wrong with his (or her) tools and thus become an even better craftsman, or in this case, a more proficient floor mopper.

fixing shoes...

A reader, Randall, sent a nice essay about fixing shoes, Save Your Soles, by Barry Boyce.

“It is one of the perverse virtues of advanced civilization to have transcended repair and renewal.”

Entropy teaches us that things will break. And break and break and break. Falling apart, coming undone, deteriorating—this is indeed the lot of anything that comes into existence, and in particular of things produced by the human hand.

Fixing is not the same as making in the first place, but demonstrates (when successful) a power to forestall the inevitable. When unsuccessful, it still represents an active rather than compliant and dependent relationship to the objects that inhabit our lives. Your choice is to be either compliant toward consumer culture, or to rise up against it by fixing things that break and making things that last generations.

nursing things along

Despite how some feel that old things must be pushed aside for the new, there is some satisfaction to be derived from fixing, assisting or making do. Yesterday, I mulched leaves with the old lawn mower that just keeps running even though the wheels are nearly worn out. And then in the afternoon, I continued my friendly competition with the Chinese by attacking the worn out bearing of my 1/2 sheet Porter Cable sander with oil. The thing would no longer run at full speed, which indicated a crucial bearing was seizing in its rotation. A couple squirts of oil sent it merrily into action. And I derived satisfaction from not spending the money on new equipment.  "Why don't I buy a new lawnmower? Why I don't buy a new sander, too!" I could, you know. But there is some satisfaction in knowing that a bit of oil placed just so, extends my power over the inner workings of the device.  Temporary, yes, but isn't a new mower or sander, temporary at best? If I can extend the working life of the sander by 20% I have delayed its disposal and replacement, and also saved money, energy and materials. The small sense of control we gain from fixing and making do extends to nearly every other thing.

Can you help me to explain these things to others? Make, create, fix, sew, sow, Teach, teach by example, and help others to engage in the full scope of their humanity.