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From the M&T Daily Dispatch: 

O Leatherman! My Leatherman! Our work for the day is done,We’ve weather’d every wiring task, the plumbing work is won,A board was sawn, rope cut and gone, a lunchtime orange peeled cleanly,While twin screwdrivers do their task, and knife blade sharpened keenly;                     But O pliers! pliers! pliers!                            O the most useful tool, I say,                                  But the bottle opener will be employed                                          At...

A couple months ago, I decided to hang up my hat. Next fall, I’m not coming back to the classroom after fifteen years of educating, entertaining, managing, having my ego lovingly skewered by, and occasionally being driven to the precipice of insanity by young people in America.  It’s been a really hard decision. It’s also one I discerned—as with many really hard decisions I’ve made in the last few years—in the woodshop. The hard-nosed operations of sawing, planing, scribing, and truing have offered me a space to figure what’s really going on in my life, what’s important to me, and how to be a better dad and husband. To open up some distance on things before discerning what to do...

From the M&T Daily Dispatch: 

As a kid, I fondly remember my grandfather bringing me and my little brother to the garage on the back corner of his property. We knew this place as simply, “The Building.” It was an uninsulated and unlit steel structure with a high ceiling, a gravel floor, and it seemed to go on forever in all directions. Part of the sense of size had to do with The Building’s contents – rows and rows of fascinating mechanical contrivances, tools, engines, and even whole vehicles in various states of disassembly. There was an early Ford truck cab in one corner (which we loved to climb into) surrounded by all the mechanical guts of the vehicle, as if it had been turned...

From the M&T Daily Dispatch: 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch: 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch: 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch: 

The back-to-the-land movement (as well as more recent offshoots such as the farm-to-table trend in dining) seeks to short-circuit the elaborate industrial complex that produces most of our consumable and durable goods these days. Proponents of the philosophy point to the loss of skill that is evident in the average person for basic tasks; to the health and environmental effects of large-scale industrialization; and to the sociological harm that comes of being dependent on technologies that are beyond the control or comprehension of most individuals. This dependence becomes crippling when a technological or supply-chain disruption renders us incapable of executing those basic tasks that we have turned over to mechanization. Even as we enjoy the benefits and ease that these...