A swerve and a myth

Hello and welcome to Hungry Woodworker, a humanistic exploration of woodworking, purpose, and making a living. I’m Taliesin and one thing I do when not working is write; some of which gets edited into essays and shared every other Thursday. Thank you for being here.

Today's newsletter is just a few updates! After editing the essay I'd written for the newsletter, I decided it needs more work. I'll either shape it into some semblance of worthiness or scrap it. My dad's saying about lumber applies to writing as well, I suppose—it's all firewood until proven otherwise.

Project update: Last week we renovated our youngest child's closet. Both kids have small closets that were mostly used to store everything but clothes (which is why I made them dressers). Last year I built a simple desk and put some shelves into our oldest child's closet, transforming it into a space that he felt was more befitting of his age (it didn't feel so childish anymore, he told me).

Naturally the younger child wanted the same.

She got a couple of bookcases along with a desk and wall shelves. Josiah, my begrudging partner, helped install the hanging shelves; there was a little too much grumbling and complaining from him though, which will be going into this year's performance review.

On the opposite end of the attitude spectrum, my child was more than happy to help out with some light sanding in the shop.

The desk area has already been put to lots of good use—as a faux office (I heard her tapping away in there one morning and walked in to see her looking at a book and typing furiously on the broken keyboard the kids use as a "computer"), a space to read and draw, and a beauty parlor (i.e., a place for Josiah to paint the kids' nails).

Recent random thought update: I've been thinking about how messed up it is that we elevate certain individuals to grand heights, imbuing them with qualities they might possess but that don't negate their foibles and flaws even if we choose to ignore those.

We see this all the time—years ago we had some friends who bought a Tesla and confidently told us that the buying experience would be totally different from normal car-buying experiences (you know, hours upon hours of negotiating alternated with waiting). The husband said to me, "Well, Elon Musk is such a genius and just doing things so differently." They were shocked that picking up the car and dealing with the final paperwork took hours upon hours. Apparently Musk's genius didn't translate into a superior car-buying experience. (One could argue it also hasn't translated into a superior social media experience either.)

This is just a piddly example in a sea of them. And then I read this: "Ancient Greeks and Romans did not share our idealization of isolated geniuses, working alone to think through the knottiest problems."

It's from Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve: How the World Became Modern.

Greenblatt wrote about how it was the conversation, the relationships that mattered, the thinking through ideas in collaboration with others. I'm not one to say that the ancients got it all right (clearly they didn't, as the collapses of their civilizations bore out), but I liked the idea of that notion.

"The discussion itself is what most matters, the fact that we can reason together easily, with a blend of wit and seriousness, never descending into gossip or slander and always allowing room for alternative views," Greenblatt wrote.

He shared this quote from Cicero: "The one who engages in conversation should not debar others from participating in it, as if he were entering upon a private monopoly; but, as in other things, so in a general conversation he should think it not unfair for each to have his turn."

How much more courage and internal strength of character would we have to possess to embody these qualities in our current culture? To be able to hear others out, even when we disagree with them, to contest their ideas with our own and still part as friends?

And how much healthier would we be if we stopped elevating other people above ourselves, stopped praying to their supposed "genius" or "leadership" and realized that their only power flows through us? They are nothing without us. And on their best days, they are as flawed as any other person.

Okay, that's all my updates. I hope your next few weeks find you with more than a few moments with a good book and ample help on your projects! ❤️