Handmade Matters

I bought a new fork yesterday, with a groovy 20% off coupon, and having lived without one for an entire season, I am thrilled to have it. It was made in India, "to S&J's exacting standards" and I felt bad about that, but you just can't find handmade tools every day. The hay fork on the left in this photo cost almost the same when I got it a couple of years ago. It is so handmade it thrills me and I keep it in my kitchen so I can look at it often.

It was made by Virgil Courtright, esteemed local craftsman, and is a marvel of the traditional. It has a number (I got #4) and was made from the white oak that used to be in Daniel's booth, the Daniel who was rumored to have a pit in his booth where he hid his un-wristbanded friends. So legends go at the Fair. It is, if you didn't notice, made from one piece of wood, one branch. You won't find this type of tool just anywhere. Not even at Down to Earth. I got it at the Tuesday Market, where Virgil sold for a short time before he retired from selling. I did not take a lot of time to deliberate that purchase. It was one of those things that I knew I would not see again. It is, along with my handmade CAT trailer, one of my most treasured possessions.

Handmade traditional crafts with the person's fingerprints on them, with a story, with a history, those are the things I want. I like the specific use of the hay fork. You don't stick it in the ground. I use it mostly to move leaf piles around. I'd love to have more tools like it, but traditional handmade crafts like this are increasingly rare. That is why we are called right now to fight so hard for the places we can sell these painstakingly made and finished items: Saturday Market and the Oregon Country Fair. Things are changing, and it isn't just about 3-D printers and that new pen that draws in three dimensions...it's a big issue of economics and labor.

Lots of craftspeople find themselves unable to keep up with the demand for their amazing products, and they have to make a choice: sell what they can make, but still keep making it all, or hire out some of the work. As soon as they hire out, they quickly arrive at the tempting point when they become a manager and no longer make their work. It beckons, "the next level," and all the good business advice would tell them to take that step. One thing people rarely do is just quit retailing at the hand-crafted marketplace when they are making this transition.

They have a lot of rationalizations they use as they move further and further from the guidelines. I've been there. They need the money, they find a loophole in the terminology, they keep secrets, and eventually they have to lie. It's a rough road, and it isn't simple. One of the hardest things is to have the integrity to step aside from the easy opportunity, the community they love, and to admit that they no longer are hand-crafting the items they bring to sell.

This is in the air right now, and it will take commitment to change the erosion that this transition has brought, particularly to the OCF. Another of the Fair legends is that everyone has a scam. It's cynical, but I've had mine, and you probably have had yours. It's easy to take advantage of the yes, yes, yes culture.

I have a few typing chores to do today but this is the typing that has been calling me. I want to discuss things that are flying around in my atmosphere but are hard to discuss, and a blog really isn't a discussion, is it? I don't want to write a rant.

I've ranted before about the difference between pointing out what is wrong (in your opinion) and not engaging in finding a solution. I still do that, of course, but less often than I did in my younger years. That is because the complaint often makes no change, and the situation grates more, and the next complaint is "Why don't they do something about that?" Operating word: they.

There is no they in most of the things I've complained about. There might be a person involved, but there is a huge distance between their actions and my complaint. Mostly if you want things to get better in this world, you yourself have to engage in a productive process to find a solution. If you can fully engage, with others of the same and different opinions, often you can find an elegant solution. That almost never happens with a complaint, even a written one, even a heartfelt one, a necessary one. The complaint has to be followed up with some productive action by someone, and why not by people who really care about it? Why not you?

If you are shy or busy or not a people person or not really sure how to go about the process to the solution, well, so will be most of the people who end up in the fix-it room. Everyone is going to bring their flawed self to the process. We will all have to work around whatever obstructions come up, and if they are you, still just complaining, we will have to work around you. Maybe you could bring some tools with you. I figured I was pretty good at taking minutes, so I got myself on the newly created Scribe Tribe. I was still in complaint mode, and got insulted and quit one group, (sorry) but then decided it was also part of the solution to refuse to get insulted or offended. Just set that aside, as it most likely was not intended. That has served me very well. Now I'm also on the Craft Committee, and thus unfortunately a target. Nobody really hates the Scribes, but lots of people don't like the committees and the crews, and some are viewed as particularly evil. Can thinking people really be that thoughtless about volunteers?

Volunteering with my various organizations completely changed my complaining process. I found that there were some fantastic people involved already, people I really enjoy and want to work with. Gradually I understood how things were done, who did them, and why they took so long sometimes. As I found out more details about the problems, I almost never thought of them as simple things that could be easily fixed. I like to be efficient and to get things done just as much as any busy person, but sometimes changing things too rapidly just makes them worse in some other unforeseen way. It's good to try to foresee these things, and that usually takes a group, a group of people who think in different ways and bring their different perspectives and ideas to the table, and take the needed time.

Having been attacked and criticized a time or two, I found out just how much harder it is to engage in the solution afterwards. I won't want to help you just because your distress is great...if you get it all over me. I will first want to get away from you. If you come kindly and allow me space to respond kindly, we will get somewhere so much quicker. This is true everywhere from the DVM to the corner store to the fenceline where the neighbor has let the blackberries go. Anger is not a good social lubricant.

And sarcasm rarely helps either. It creates defensiveness and confusion. Any kind of negative start creates a longer road to the solution. Think about that next time you just need to bitch about something. Do you really want to make things better? There are usually lots of options if that is the case.

So, this new fork I just bought needs a bit of finishing still. Part of the handle needs some rasping and sanding. I'm not taking it back though. I got that 20% discount, so DTE already took their loss. I will take the rasp I got from my Dad and some sandpaper and fix it myself. That will be satisfying, and now I'm kind of glad I didn't look them all over and get the best one. I picked the one with the prettiest wood. Somebody somewhere chose that wood and if they were getting paid to be a craftsperson and finish that tool the way it deserved to be, it would have cost twice as much. Because that is the complicated economic reality we live in.

I wish I could buy all my tools and all my things from craftspeople. Most I can. It makes my life feel rich, and I recommend it. Less plastic, more real. Fully finished.

Oops, my friendly UPS delivery person just did me a favor and brought my stuff early enough to work on it today. Guess my typing is done for now and I will engage in some craftsmanship. Hope this weather holds for one more day! See you Saturday.