{"id":5897,"date":"2012-04-30T08:20:41","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T12:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=5897"},"modified":"2012-04-30T08:59:54","modified_gmt":"2012-04-30T12:59:54","slug":"work-of-the-eye-the-hand-the-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2012\/04\/30\/work-of-the-eye-the-hand-the-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Work of the eye, the hand, the mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This morning, we begin a two-week exploration of people in the North Country who still pursue what we’re calling traditional work.<\/p>\n

The truth is, I’m still not quite sure what “traditional work” means.\u00a0 We’ll talk with a blacksmith, a clock repairer, a taxidermist, and on and on.<\/p>\n

All of these are practical arts that have their roots somewhere before the industrial revolution, before automation and standardization got together and gave birth to mass production.<\/p>\n

In a fuzzy sort of way, I think of this as work — once a deep part of the human experience — that unified the eye, the hand, and the mind.\u00a0 It was practical labor, for the most part, but also creative.<\/p>\n

The artisans I’ve interviewed all talk about their process as an exploration.\u00a0 They take risks.\u00a0 They’re not making widgets, after all.<\/p>\n

My feelings about this kind of abor is complicated by the fact that it’s a club I can’t join.\u00a0 I have always had what I call “stupid hands.”<\/p>\n

My father could do anything with his hands, from milking a cow to repairing the PTO on a tractor to stringing a barbwire fence.\u00a0 He had an instinct for it. \u00a0 I get befuddled trying to turn on a vacuum cleaner.<\/p>\n

(My one distinctly uncool hand-eye skill is that I can type like a house on fire.)<\/p>\n

Which is why I think it’s so remarkable that many of the folks we’ll be profiling over the next couple of weeks are self-taught.\u00a0 They’ve revived and mastered arts that were fading away, or already consigned to dusty old books.<\/p>\n

There is, in fact, a healthy tradition in New York of reviving traditional arts.<\/p>\n

The Byrdcliffe Colony near Woostock was established in 1902, with an eye toward resisting the uniformity and tedium and ugliness that often comes with industrialization.<\/p>\n

A century and more later, some of us are still swimming against the tide.<\/p>\n

I suppose it’s an open question how much this kind of work actually contributes to our modern economy here in the North Country.<\/p>\n

How many of our neighbors make part of their living with a pottery wheel or by making lumber in their barn or by rebuilding antique clocks?\u00a0 Maybe more than we think.<\/p>\n

Whatever the dollar value, it’s heartening, especially to those like myself who can only admire, that so many people in our small towns take up these traditional labors.<\/p>\n

There is a rootedness in it that lies beyond romanticism.\u00a0 It is a form of memory that is muscular and practical and beautiful all at the same time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning, we begin a two-week exploration of people in the North Country who still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[10,6280,23],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5897"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5899,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5897\/revisions\/5899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}