Scrubs, carpentry, and gratuitous Faulkner link *LINK*

Re: Scrubs, carpentry, and gratuitous Faulkner lin

Frank D. in Montreal

>Thanks for the link to the Faulkner article...I teach at university and I also teach that book in one of my classes...I had a good laugh while reading it. Faulkner did a lot of carpentry and built several buildings on his own property. He did not, however, invest every detail in his books with such symbolic weight (thank god). Quite embarassing as far as literary criticism goes I must say. I do get an enormous kick out of drawing the tools on the blackboard for students who ask, though.

Hand tools and youth

Bill Houghton, rain today, Sebastopol, CA

>Yes...back when I worked for a living, I had the office toolbox. I once sent a student assistant to the box for "the eggbeater drill." She came back, unable to find it in a box about 14" long, 8" wide - and, based on other experiences I had with other students, this was related not to her gender, but to the fact that few people grow up today exposed to tools, and even fewer exposed to hand tools.

Re: Scrubs, carpentry, and gratuitous Faulkner lin

Bill Houghton, rain today, Sebastopol, CA

>But Frank, with sufficient diligence, you can find symbolism everywhere, just everywhere. Still burned vividly in my memory is my semester of hearing, in what was ostensibly a 20th-century literature course but was actually "Homage to James Joyce," that Joyce managed to invest symbolism in almost every single "the," "and," and "or" in "Ulysses." I still have the heavily annotated copy that got me through my final.

Sad passing

Jim Reed @ Tallahassee

>of skills. No more shop class in high school. Woodshops have mostly vanished and modern machine shops all use CNC controlled equipment. Food (plants and animals) is all raised on *factory farms*, clothes made in third world countries and there is a restaurant on every corner. Seems that no one needs handworking skills to live a happy life these days. I think us cabinetmaker geezers are indeed a vanishing breed.

Re: Scrubs, carpentry, and gratuitous Faulkner lin

thomd

>Yes, well Joyce was fully invested. Imagine his reading of Faulkner.

Perhaps

Jim Reed @ Tallahassee

>A high percentage of the #40 on the bay are missing their lever caps & that leads me to think that they were carried in the bottom of the carpenter's tool tote with the blade removed. If they were in the workshop, they should be found intact. Many are found with the factory grind still on the blade which leads me to think that they were carried alot more than they were used.

Around here

Bill Houghton, rain today, Sebastopol, CA

>we're starting to see a return of shop classes in the public schools - friends of mine have been hired as auto shop instructors or wood shop instructors in recent years. I'm not sure whether the required shop classes of my youth are being reinstated, or whether they're elective programs, but it's a good sign regardless.

not vanishing too quickly

Steve Kubien

>Some of us are teaching our kids these skills. Heck, I end up doing a fair bit of teaching on the sales counter at work. I had one guys who was looking for a long router bit and 8ft straight edge because he wanted to shaving a bit off the edge of a sticky door. One simple little wooden handplane later and he was happier than a pig in...well, a very happy place. Still, I know what you mean. I filled out a ballot with the paper-girl just yesterday using a pen I turned and she was floored that people could make such things.

Sad state, to be sure.

Steve Kubien

Re: Where we pitch in...

Glenn Madsen near San Francisco

>is where we can. I had a bunch of Boy Scouts building benches for the John Muir National Monument 18 months ago, enjoying the heck out of it. From sawing up the cedar with an Alaska chain saw mill to the finishing touches, it was a great activity, and 15 boys, and their dads, got exposed to a wide variety of hand tools and a few power saws.

A good volunteer gig, and well paid!

Re:Moonstruck

thomd

>Lets face it, the purpose of shop class is not to create cabinetmakers. There are obviously some classes, maybe Richard Star's, that could create self-motivated woodworkers by the bushell basket, but in general the classes came to feed industry and disappeared with industry. Now we are realizing that we can't even get a picture hung, so the shop classes are coming back.

Apparently also, the most comon famillies that are millionaires are small businesses in the manual trades. Like eavestrough instalation, those sorts of thing where you can ring the "pay me" bell with regularity. Like the plumber in Moonstruck "there are three kinds of pipe...".

Anyway, I don't feel the need to push kids into anything. I'm after a well rounded human being, I'm not sure my woodworking is an example of that. If they want to do it, my kids are more than smart enough to teach themselves. Once they learn to do that they don't need shop class or anything else.

Re: Scrubs, carpentry, and gratuitous Faulkner lin

Frank D. in Montreal

>"But Frank, with sufficient diligence, you can find symbolism everywhere, just everywhere."

That's for sure Bill; I tell my students they can find tons of symbols in road maps too. Rand and McNally were right up there with the best of them. ;)

Re: Faulkner link

David Charlesworth

>That brings back memories.

I read "As I lay dying" aged about 16, really enjoyed it despite the considerable effort, those very long sentences.

Never managed to get far with Joyce...

David

Re:Moonstruck

Greg B�tit Crown Point NY

>The trouble is, most kids don't realize that they can do such things, so they tailor what they want to do to what they think they can do.

I grew up watching my Uncle Lloyd fixing and modifying everything and anything on the farm. As a kid visiting from suburbia, I have learned to realize that this was one of my life's most important lessons. If you aren't exposed to the process of making things happen, you don't think of yourself being capable of doing it. That's the biggest hurdle we human beings have. Once we decide to proceed beyond that, the rest is just the "teach yourself" piece that we galoots know is cake.

greg

(OT)Cheat's guide to Joyce's Ulysses *LINK*

Greg B�tit Crown Point NY

>There's tons of stuff on line nowadays that cuts to the chase with Mr. Joyce. Once I did a little surfing, I ended up wading through Ulysses again, and enjoyed it a lot more than I did back when I was "studying" such things.

greg


Cheat's guide to Joyce's Ulysses