Roy Underhill has flung open the doors to sign up students for the 2012 classes at The Woodwright’s School. As usual, there are a lot of great classes on the roster being taught by uber-talented people, including Peter Follansbee, Peter Ross, Mary May, Bill Anderson, Elia Bizzarri and Roy himself.
And then there are my classes.
In 2012 I’m teaching two classes at Roy’s shop – both on how to build The Anarchist’s Tool Chest. You’ll be able to build either the full-size chest or its slightly smaller cousin, which is designed to travel.
Though I do not have the awe-inspiring raw talent of the other instructors, I can promise at least one puppet show during the week-long class.
Visit Roy’s site for more details. My classes from Feb. 20-24 and Sept. 17-21. If for some reason the class is full, be sure to get on the waiting list. There is always some churn.
The first one is from the gift guide by Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer newspaper. You can read the whole story here. But here’s the pertinent part of the review, which is right before they start talking about what a great tool the Dremel is:
“And for advanced, hand-tool aficionados, consider Christopher Schwartz’s 2011 book, ‘The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.’ The author’s sometimes-hokey style doesn’t take away his passion — or knowledge — for tools.”
What funny here is that every single time I have been mentioned or quoted in a newspaper, they have misspelled my last name. So much for professional courtesy.
In journalism school it was policy that if you misspelled a proper noun in a piece of writing, you failed the piece. Period. no exceptions. On the first day of the second-year Newswriting class you have to interview the instructor, who is role-playing as a police officer named John Smith, who has information on a drug bust.
The whole class failed because we didn’t ask how to spell his name, which is Jon Smythe.
The second review is from Furniture & Cabinet Making magazine in Great Britain. Vanessa Austin Locke wrote a half-page piece on the book that begins with this lament: “Men and their tools. What’s a girl to say?”
Ha! The review has a happy ending – in my book, at least.
“While I tend to focus mainly on the design-based parts of the trade, this book has really inspired me to get more hands-on and I think that’s because it comes from an aesthetic angle, which is after all the point of fine craftsmanship. This book is a lovely object, would make a wonderful present and is actually a very good read.”
“Given the teeming riches of the whole earth to play with, brought to us by the modern enterprise of science and commerce, we tend to leave neglected the possibilities of our own hands and brains. It is so easy not to use them when so much is done for us. But the more we develop our own powers of doing and creating, of training our hands and our minds, the more sturdily do we set our faces against being mere ciphers and not men.
“We may not have a success that can be measured in terms of money, but we shall find our own fulfillment in terms of living.”
— The Woodworker, Chips from the Chisel, 1937, page 255
Having tools does not make you an anarchist. It’s what you do with those tools that is the proof.
I want to warn you before you read another word, this blog entry is not specifically about woodworking. I hesitate to even write it. But I feel the need to explain myself a bit, and I promise to keep it brief. I also promise that I won’t stray into these waters much in the future.
There are many flavors of anarchists out there. My flavor is Individualistic Anarchism, specifically “aesthetic anarchism.” What does that mean to me?
I intensely dislike large institutions: governments, religious institutions and large corporations. But it would be an error to say I am not political, spiritual or capitalistic. It is my belief that institutions are the cause of most problems – not the solution.
I dislike many laws – gun laws, drug laws, sex laws to name a few. But mostly I dislike how laws are used to enslave us – they favor corporations over individuals, and the continual growth of government and its encroachment on our lives.
I don’t vote. I don’t go to church. I don’t employ people – and I never will. I view rent as theft. When I buy things, I always try to buy from individuals – the maker if possible. When I have to buy something manufactured, I buy from companies that aren’t exploiters. I buy Pointer jeans from Tennessee. My jacket was made by Schott in New Jersey. My wool sweater was knit in Ireland.
But most of all, I like to make the things I need. I do all our cooking, and every night (except pizza night) I cook dinner from scratch. We buy our meat from the butchers, the Finke family. The produce? The Finkes grow some of their own; the rest I try to buy from Findlay market or Loschavios. I like to keep everything very personal.
Making furniture for yourself and others is indeed a radical act. It removes that part of your life from the continuous cycle of purchasing, consuming and repurchasing. The Morris Chair I am sitting in will be the last easy chair I’ll ever need to build. And it was my hope when I wrote “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” that once you saw that this was true, it might seep into other areas of your life, like it has into mine. You might even quit your corporate job.
Which brings up money. Isn’t it difficult to walk away from a corporate job and a steady paycheck? Yeah, it’s like trying to force yourself to dive into Lake Michigan in February. But if Lucy and I can do it, I think many families can – if they are willing to eschew debt.
Lucy works only part-time as a writer, and I have just this silly little business – no trust fund here. How do we do it? We don’t have any debt. Zero dollars – zero cents. Once I realized how much I had to work to service our mortgage, student loans and car payments, we shifted every resource to pay off everything. In May 2008 I paid off our last debt – our mortgage. And that’s when anything became possible.
“We shall find, therefore, that it is not in the realization of these ends, but in the struggle to attain them, that anarchism is of service to society.”
— Eunice Minette Schuster, “Native American Anarchism,” page 11
