Hands On ESSA

While there were hands off rallies across the US and we attended one, we also went to Hands On ESSA https://essa-art.org/events/hands-on-essa/ where I made a small paper pouch for my granddaughter from a paper toilet roll. It was a cute project and one designed better to get people making things than a whole world wall of tariffs. 

People were busy making things and learning things, welding and soldering and forging included and if one were to hope for a return of manufacture and creativity to the US and the lessening of imported things, the Eureka Springs School of the Arts has a better, and more positive path for our nation to follow. Tariffs force disruption. But introducing people to the creative capacities of their own hands and minds does as well, in a positive way. People are proud of the things they have made and have learned. Tariffs do not have such positive effects.

I sat and worked next to a friend who had never had confidence to take a class before, but will now. And to see an organization I helped to found having such an effect on the lives of so many, has it effect on me as well.

Make, fix and create...

How to walk without falling and 3 things.

December 1, 2024 I was waiting to board a flight when things went wrong…

Suddenly my face began to droop on the right side. The flight at O’Hare was beginning to load and I leaned into my wife. She guided me into a chair, telling the current occupants, “My husband is having a stroke.” By the time the flight got last call for boarding I was taken by ambulance to Resurrection hospital where my own resurrection began to take place. Making a long story short and sparing my readers the gruesome details, or at least saving them for a better day, I’ll tell the following:

After visiting my daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter for the week of Thanksgiving I was returning to Northwest Arkansas with big plans to pick up where I left off in my woodshop. My youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@MrDougStowe was approaching a threshold point at which it would begin being paid advertising revenue and I had a few fresh ideas. If the ideas made some money, that was OK. I’m not a professional YouTuber. But I planned a few things that were set on hold by newer needs… how to walk without falling and how to say a few words without mumbling, trying to put clarity back in my voice, and dealing with a constant drool.

This blog http://wisdomofhands.blogspot.com is my regular attempt to make sense of it all. And share what I continue to learn.

You may already know me as a woodworker and advocate of hand on learning.…

You may know me as a box maker, or a published furniture maker, or a teacher of either adults or kids. You may think you know more about me than I may know myself. In any case you are in the right place. I am a hands-on learner and you are possibly one as well. Read on if you like. Or read back issues. I’ve been writing regularly since 2006 and reflecting a while and have a few observations to share.

How does hands-on learning fit in the vast scheme of things, Artificial Intelligence and the rest of it all?

I’ll try to be clear. Unlike in so many things (it seems), money is not the point. There are other values.  So you can read here for free.

“Gliedganzes” is a German word made up by Friedrich Froebel, inventor of Kindergarten…

Froebel took the German word “glied” meaning “member” and the word “ganzes” meaning “whole” and put them together to mean the interconnectedness at the core of his philosophy: that we are individuals, and also members infinitely connected within the vast scheme of things: Nature, and all the whole systems including the culture of mankind. For me, the word gliedganzes means that you, and I, and everything else are deeply interconnected. It is the opposite of what the powers that be would have you believe.

Three things…

When there are two things that are in alignment, we often note and say to ourselves, “that’s a coincidence” and dismiss it from further thought. Where there are three things, more than doubling the interconnections expressed, it’s more than a coincidence… Much more. And if you are here, there are likely more than three things that connect us. 

Come back again.

 

Interconnectedness

 I had this essay published in The Hedgehog Review from the University of Virginia today.

https://hedgehogreview.com/web-features/thr/posts/cosmic-interconnectedness-coincidence-and-kindergarten

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beyond These days

There’s a lot of intelligence involved in making our own stuff. And perhaps Trump’s tariffs will have a positive effect if they help return our attention toward other matters. When I began my own journey as a maker of things in the mid 1970’s it was obvious that I and others of like labor and mind were swimming against the tides. The US was becoming a “service economy” in an “information age” and it was OK with both political parties to have our things made cheaply, disposable and abroad while landfills where we put all that stuff grew to enormous proportions.

In the meantime, that would allow our rich classes to move into gated communities and be safer from the rabble of urban life. Since they were farther away in the vast fields of America we’d let the large farmers do their own thing as small operators were gradually removed from the land. And we had the tax codes to help. The Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United ruling was designed to assure that the under classes might be kept under control by the political mighty while the rich grew richer. They might have chosen instead to empower us to create.

I would like us to return our attention towards the smarts you get by making things yourself and at the very least, having things made by others in your own communities… the glorious by-product of community growth. Even when making mistakes, large or small, and then admitting them and going to plan B, you’re learning and thus making the world a better place. 

You don’t even have to be all that cerebral to see it. When an artisan goes to work, shaping materials into more useful forms, they learn to do things faster, better and smarter as skill creeps into their own hands and minds. They become proud of the things they have made and want to show them to others, not only because they may have value but also use. The making of useful beauty ought to be the clarion call of our times. And if we were to value the rightly made things, we would better value the artisans and their labors, seeing in them the growth of our communities and economic success. For even if you never are required to lift a finger in your own behalf you are indebted to those who have made the many things that occupy your own life and give it greater meaning. Would it not be best to have supported your own community instead of just your own fat ass.

The idea that we’ll have our things made cheaply in by people in China, doesn’t make much sense when we know that we could have an impact on our own neighborhoods and ourselves by making beautiful things and when we begin to think beyond dollars and return to common sense.

It’s not about the money, folks. The real value is in each other, and in our communities and environment. When we act local as though we each matter, tariffs or no tariffs, Trump or no Trump, we begin to take economic matters into our own hands. 

Make, fix and create...

 

Uninhabited islands

Just in case any one of us were to move to an uninhabited island in the Indian ocean, and it being thence no longer uninhabited there's a 10 percent tariff on anything we would sell to folks back home in the good old United States.  God bless us. We'll get by. And not be moving to an uninhabited island any time soon.

Being that I'm going nowhere to sell my stuff, just mainly making it and writing about it we'll get by as the stock market craters and our leadership in the world ends.

When you make things yourself, things needed for your neighbors and friends, more than dollars and cents are involved. There lies the rub. Politicos from both parties claimed we were to be a "service economy" in an "information age," and no skills would be required but those of flipping burgers for each other. In the meantime, when you make a thing beautiful, or useful or both, and share it with others, you've developed skills of hand and mind. You've become smarter. That's then reflected in the communities we share with each other which we build ourselves.

And that is a somewhat hidden value. You have to make something to understand the pride involved. Money or no money. The results are there in your own hands and mind and you need no tariffs or "information age" to understand it.

One of my readers asked for an inside view of my jewelry box. So here it is. The side compartments are fitted with jewelry hangers as well as the box inside the top.

Make, fix and create...

Doing and making do.

As of today we're being hit with tariffs that will likely raise the prices on everything we buy or choose to live without. In the meantime, there is no better time to learn to make the things we need. 

In my woodshop I'm finishing a few things that are made to last a century or more, reducing our yearly investment in them. And we hope they'll be useful to users past the time generally allotted for things from the big box store that are making their way to landfills.  

When we make things for ourselves, we are also learning and growing ourselves. When we make things, whether a box, the table it sits on, or dinner, we're shaping the space around us and the neighborhoods in which we live. We thereby become better neighbors and better friends.

We may pay a bit more for hand crafted things that last and build the communities in which we live. Wisdom can come through the making of beautiful and useful things.

Not a bad deal. '

I learned yesterday about an article about making Legos that I wrote being published in Make Magazine, and an essay that I wrote that will be in The Hedgehog Review from the University of Virginia. I'll let you know when these are available for your viewing.

Make, fix and create...

Making round tenons on Shopsmith

This video is about using the Veritas tenoner and my 1948 model 10 E  Shopsmith to make round tenoned parts.

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Making half lapped dividers

This video is about making half lapped dividers for jewelry box drawers.

Make, fix and create...