An essay in the New York Times by David Brooks alerts readers to the "Junkification of American Life." He doesn't mention the role that crafts can play in altering our American culture, but I wish he had. The junk he's discussing is not of the hand-crafted stuff you can find on Etsy, but instead the diet of empty calories we find on our phones, in our choice of foods and in overly shallow relationships with each other.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/05/opinion/entertainment-junk-psychology.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ik4.Y1GA.ZQGFRevK-i1-&smid=url-share
In my shop I've been working on wooden hinges to be used in making small wooden reliquaries, these not for holding samples of Arkansas woods, but that folks might use in housing and celebrating things of great value to them. You may think of them as shrines that folks can use to cherish and celebrate precious things. The chapel shape will alert to what one might find inside.
But the real value is not in the finished product, or even in their use, but in the shaping of myself... my refinement of self into higher form. In simple terms, it's about the value we discover in our own aspirations.
Otto Salomon had noted that the value of the carpenter's work is in the objects the carpenter makes, but the value of the student's work is in the student. One should never think that carpenters are not learning and growing for they are students themselves. In the ideal life, learning, making, growing and offering value to others must be affirmed as a thing with no seams between.
Yes, I'm sitting on the porch with my dog Rosie, with the flat screen of my laptop staring me in the face. I'm also looking up to see the beauty of the world staring me in the face. I'm preaching (forgive me), just as one might from inside a reliquary of wood. Position yourself if possible to live in the real world that exists beyond your own head.
Make, fix and create.
