Americans, in general, have an unyielding faith in our collective ability to fix it. Fix any­thing. Fix everything. The topic of repair is an interesting one. In fact, it’s almost a novelty. Our planned-obsolescence, toss-don’t-fix society is severely lacking in repairmen. High school shop classes were by and large shuttered in the 1990s. Liability risks for schools were reduced, and the small class sizes man­dated by industrial arts were done away with. We are all to be information workers … [Read More...] about Considering Shop Class as Soulcraft

“Of late years, however, a kind of revival has been going on, as a protest against the conviction that, with all our modern mechanical achievements, comforts, and luxuries, life is growing "uglier every day," as Mr. [William] Morris puts it. Even our painters are driven to rely rather on the accidental beauty which, like a struggling ray through a London fog, sometimes illumes and transfigures the sordid commonplace of everyday life. We cannot, however, live on sensational effects without … [Read More...] about A Kind of Revival . . .