the moral implications of craftsmanship...

I mention this again because it seems that a writer for the American Crafts Council has noticed the same thing and written an article about it. Making Morality. It might be a scary notion for some religious conservatives to think that children might actually learn morality through craftsmanship in schooling rather than by being preached to. But it was something the ancient Jews acknowledged and that Martin Luther professed.

Craftsmanship as a moral force was at the heart of Educational Sloyd and in the minds of those educators given the responsibility to change young men and women into craftsmen and skilled makers of useful beauty. Beauty itself presents a moral dilemma. Are we not transformed ourselves as we engage in a creative process?

We have been taking notice of the transformation of community that has come with exercising our collective strength against AEP/SWEPCO's plans to build a power line through our community. And we are incensed at the failure of national environmental organization to come to our assistance earlier in the game. This article, Blurred Lines  explains just a bit of where these groups are coming from, and the place my own organization has played in the ongoing saga. It seems that these national organizations like most who are actually detached from the land and view it only in the abstract, have become distorted in their thinking.

I found myself in a conflict with Sierra Club Arkansas over their endorsement of a 600 mile extra high voltage power line across the state. Their endorsement was announced even before the Environmental Impact Statement was released, and came because come hell or high water, they want to move wind power across the state to keep East Coasters from having to make our national seashore ugly from wind turbines. But the solar and battery power advancement is speeding along much faster than anticipated and much faster than power companies can reckon with. And the ugly power lines that major corporations are proposing will not be needed to meet a reduced demand that has been predicted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

There are moral dimensions to craftsmanship. We are suffering now from wood shops having been stricken from our schools.

Make, fix and create...