I am involved as a participant in a class action lawsuit against Anthropic in which they used the text and photos in 3 of my books for machine training in violation of my copyrights. As a how-to writer, my area is the truth, for without the truth, my projects are not replicable by readers. As a two time Golden Hammer Award winner from the National Association of Home and Workshop and having spent two terms as president of the organization, I am particularly concerned with the publishing of testable truth. —Truth tested and assured in your own hands.

Why the concern with artificial intelligence when you can have the real smarts in your own hands?

Popular Woodworking has an article of mine in the current issue. Making a "Trinket Box". Of course the article tells how to make it.

Make, fix and create...

Modified finger joint.

Modified finger joint. You'll notice that the back edge of the box is thicker wood which will allow for expanding type barrel type hinges to be used. To accomplish this I make a small rabbet cut on each end of the back parts after the fingers are formed. Seven boxes are being made. After routing for the bottoms to fit the boxes will be assembled and lids will be made. The fronts and sides are uniform thickness.

Make, fix and create. You'll not regret it.

Do art when AI takes your job

 A program in Ireland can help us to understand what happens when Artificial Intelligence takes our jobs and leaves us little to hope. It paid 200 artists a basic income to do their work, relieving them of insecurity. With nationalized healthcare for all, and the guaranteed income they had little to worry about but their own creativity. Paid 325 Euros a week, the guaranteed income for artists program proved itself a resounding economic success, paying back into the economy far more than what was invested in it.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-irelands-basic-artist-income-experiment-tells-us-doug-mclennan-wq7xc/?trackingId=StTIcoXmSnOG5AyQRT2myA%3D%3D

"Ireland demonstrated something more about a ground bass: economic insecurity doesn't just force workers out, it diminishes the overall creative economy. That matters enormously right now, because we are entering a period when a lot of people across a lot of industries are about to lose their job security."

What to do when Artificial Intelligence takes your job? Create! Make beautiful and useful things.

Make, fix and create...

winter woods

This box is part of a collection that celebrates the tactile and visual experience of a walk in the woods, as the hands reach out to touch the supple, slender twigs of winter. The woods are white oak and walnut. The reeds bound in walnut and brass represent those twigs.

The value of the student's work

This afternoon I have a zoom call with fellows from the Teaching with Small Wooden Boats Alliance. It will be a question and reflection concerning who is to teach and to whom. I hope it is a useful discussion, driven in large part by the questions fellows have.

In the meantime I have a second coat of finish to apply to boxes and an additional ten made that require inlaid lids. Years ago I visualized my last years being spent in making small wooden boxes. Here I am.

Leave a legacy if you can. Remember what Otto Salomon had suggested. The value of the carpenters' work is present in the things they've crafted. The value of the student's work is in the student. I'll try for both.

Make, fix and create...

having fun

I've been having so much fun with a newly designed box that I've made more of them in a larger size. A couple days in the shop, you can make beautiful things that can last more than a lifetime.

Is it not time that we begin thinking of each other and less about ourselves. Do you see the sunrise? Do you see the thunderbird taking flight.

Tomorrow I have a practice zoom with Joe Youcha of the Teaching with Small Wooden Boats Alliance to prepare for a conversation zoom with their fellows on Friday.

While at work, I visualize a kinder, more gentile nation that's truly focused on the needs of each other.

Make, fix and create.

Hygge or Hózhó?

I woke up in the night with a feeling of warmth and contentment thinking about the Norwegian word hygge for a situation of noticeable harmony, and the similar word hózhó which means approximately the same thing in Navajo.

Perhaps the feeling was inspired by reading Tony Hillerman's books about the Navajo, and noticing a similarity between native American design and that created by Norwegian craftsmen in creating Vikingsholm in Lake Tahoe. These boxes have a native American feel that could be right at home in Norwegian design.

So rather than appropriating native American design motifs I am exercising (as a half Norwegian) my own as the patterns are universal.

The patterns are created from strips of wood offset to each other and fitted into routed grooves.

May we seek harmony in all we do. Even the worst of us can serve someone as a bad example. Like it or not, we are all in this together. So get used to it and feel blessed.

The photo below shows beams at Vikingsholm decorated with patterns that are similar to my fabrication of inlay strips.

Make, fix and create.