Cuyler Page wrote:

> applying a lesson once learned when a museum curator illustrated "50
> Ways to Look at a Big Mac Box".

Interesting. My stepson is vp at an architectural firm that supposedly
was hired to redesign the Big Mac, and box, which got them into having
to redesign the system that produces the Big Mac. He is a vegitarian.

> As soon as I put my favourite little stone on the display plinth, they
> all immediately looked at each other and exclaimed together "A Finger
> Stone!"   It turns out that individuals in this old 10,000 year old
> culture, like many around the world, had personal stones to finger and
> rub for comfort or to relieve stress, like "worry beads".

Works for me... always have a few stones in the pocket to play with.
Very low-tech.

> I suppose you other craftsmen(women)(persons) have had the experience
> of using a personal tool successfully for many years and then loaning
> it to someone new and it breaks in their hands.   There are some tools
> now that I just do not let anyone else use, not that they are fragile,
> but I have seen too often that phenomenon of inopportune
> breakage.   Personal tools seem to become an living extension of the
> hand and arm.   Daily, I am still using my first hammer, bought in
> 1964, and it still pulls nails.   The nice time is when there
> are people such as are on this list around to loan a tool to.   It
> comes back feeling better.

I prefer to give tools than to lend them. Much easier to keep friends
that way. Too many tools not broken but simply never returned. It does
not pay to be too attached to them, thus a stewardship connection --
here today and gone tomorrow -- to tools in work is often what I find
most needed. Sometimes you break them, and sometimes they break you.

Many many years ago I was spending time with a few well-to-do Cornell
students, upclass in a way, and we were climbing around in the Johnson
art museum on the campus at night while it was under construction -- as
a dare. In a basement area we found hidden a box of tools. The students
wanted to steal the tools. I freaked about it. To them it was nothing to
steal someone's tools. That was the end of our relationship.

My grandfather was a master finish carpenter and I have next to me here
one of his hammers that I have held onto, in many ways, and used, for
years. Other of his tools that I inherited, I got the dross of his
collection and not anything "fine" -- he sold the good tools when he
retired -- have come and gone or are in hiding -- the other day cleaning
up we found a wooden ammo box with a few odd keys & locks in it. The
hammer is, of all my hammers, my favorite. Solid metal shank with a
leather wrapped on the handle -- an early version of an Estwing? Truth,
though, is that it does not fit my hand well, being a bit thin and worn
in the leather and far too light for heavy work, though good around the
house -- and as a reminder. Using it for too long of a stetch gives my
hand the cramps. Another hammer is one that I was given when I was I
think 15 for electrical work... I have that and the pouch, screwdrivers
and pliers, that I still use on occasion. It is preservation by neglect.
I have a motley of stone hammers, but none of them with any particular
emotional weight attached.

I believe that we need to keep in mind that an attitude towards tools,
reverential or romantic or otherwise, is a reference to extensions of
our mental and physical bodies. Thus talking to them is not such a bad
way to go.

][<

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