John Leeke stated:

"If I could understand it all in one big idea..."

Thomas Friedman (New York Times) recently stated, in an article about the
"bailout" that we needed to get back to a nation of people who "made
things". 

Simeon Warren (Dean of the American College of the Building Arts couldn't
agree more. In a letter he recently drafted to Friedman (with multiple
signatures including my own) he states:

".. we miss the most fundamental solutions which are already here. There is
a growing movement that understands that we need to be smart and ask the
question "what works and what do we know". I will give you one answer: We
need to build houses of quality that last for hundreds of years and not just
twenty. We need to preserve the buildings we have and conserve the materials
within them. An old wooden window which can be restored is greener than a
new energy efficient window that will need to be thrown away in twenty years
time."

My personal feeling is we have become a desensitized nation of people who no
longer understand value. We buy things instead of make them or barter for
them. We use money that is no longer based on anything of value. We have
become so disconnected from the worlds of "finance" and "governance" that we
don't have the ability to make real judgments of value. Anybody who thinks
we aren't a nation based on "faith" hasn't been paying attention. 

Is it really any wonder why communities like PTN and the Timber Framers
Guild are so attractive? They're places where people who still believe in
the value of being able to make things gather and share.

Rudy

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