Subject: Re: *Real* fire (was: Demo)

From: TOMBGUARD <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Aug 1996 20:21:09 CST

Michael Spencer <[email-masked]> writes:

Snip
>
>I'm gonna have to think about this for a while. I really wouldn't have
>believed that anyone smart enough to be ambulatory could mistake heat
>and fire. A friend who's been in multimedia since before it was an
>article of commerce says that pretty soon pretty much all experience
>will be mediated by digital doo-doo and analog experiences (that's
>where real things bump into other real things and change them ;-) will
>be the privelege of a tiny elite.
>
>- Mike

I think that this touches on an important subject.  At the historical
site that I volunteer at we get the same questions.  Is that real food
you are cooking, is that a real fire, etc?  I think that this modern
generation has been handed so many things that we forget were they
come from originally, even to the extent of real food in some cases. 
Some people just go out and buy the things they need already prepared. 
Some have seen the movies of the foundries pouring molten metal, but
that was in the movies and besides, that was about the industrial
revolution.

I think that along with advancing the art of blacksmithing and
history, we have, in a sense, a duty to insure that this is set
straight.

Robert

  Robert H. Neidlinger                      [email-masked]
  "The Tomb Guard"                          [email-masked]

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From: Russell McCrackin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Aug 1996 22:52:05 -0700 (PDT)

At 12:02 AM 8/11/96 -0400, you wrote:
>Amen to that.  One of the odd things I experience quite often at the living
>history museum I demonstrate at is when people (of any age) ask me " you're
>not really making something are you?" or, " is that a real tool (or whatever)
>you're TRYING to make?".  Assuming these comments aren't reflective of my
>smithing skills (!) it's sad to think that these folks don't realize that
>this isn't Disneyland or a video game, and that they are not being conned for
>once.  Sometimes I just want to grab these people by their polyester lapels,
>and scream at them to turn off the idiot box and do something, anything,
>REAL!
>
>apologies for unloading.
>
>Eric
>
And when they ask, "What do you burn in your forge?" and you tell them, "Coal,"
they say, "But there really isn't any more coal is there?  So what do you use
instead?"

Rusty

Get it hot and hit it hard.

Never use force, get a bigger hammer.
 [email-masked]

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From: Russell McCrackin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 1996 19:29:35 -0700 (PDT)

>
>I have just yesterday kind of come out of semi retirement re:
>blacksmithing and demonstrated at a folklife festival.  One of the
>onlookers asked a mildly stupid question which I dispatched readily but
>it reminded me of my apprenticeship at the Farmers' Museum in
>Cooperstown NY about 22 years ago.  I was at the back forge looking down
>a piece that I had just straightened when I made a quick move to put it
>back into the fire.  A woman in the front of the shop had just come in
>and she screamed and apparently was very startled .  Her explanation was
>that she thought that I was a statue! 
>
>Paul McMahon
>[email-masked]
>
>
Hi Paul - was wondering,  just how long did you spend looking down the piece?
I sometimes spend quite a bit of time just admiring something I have made/done.

Rusty

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 22:46:35 -0400

In a message dated 96-08-12 07:03:43 EDT, you write:

>recent generations have developed a TV mentality; they can't 
>separate reality from theatrics.  Their perspectives are very passive 
>from always being a spectator to the "idiot box".  It's amazing ... and 
>frightening.
>
>D.C. Hufford

Right on David!  The lack of mechanical understanding in the current
generation entering the work force is a huge problem to industry.  The things
that we learned growing up by our curiousity leading to our exploration of
how things work seems to be a lost art, or at least a lost interest.
 Educators say that it is a natural change that we are going thru, as we
switch from the mechanical to the electronic age.  Some how I don't buy that
explanation as I sit here at my PC pondering mechanical situations and
problems.  I used to think that I didn't like TV because I didn't grow up
watching it, but now I know that I don't like it because at best it is an
insult to ones intellegence and a huge waste of the human mind and the joy of
 first hand experiences that life offers if only we partisipate in it.
Mike Schermerhorn

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From: Bradley Sanders <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 08:02:13 -0400

"Educators" are hiding their brains in the sand. We can't pass from a
mechanical to an electronics age. Have you ever seen an electronic fulcrum,
or an electronic gear? The electronics can only control that which is
inherently mechanical. Of course, maybe they're planting their brains;
hoping that they can grow the ability to levitate....

                                                Bradley

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From: [email-masked] (MR WILLIAM A HOCHELLA)
Date: Sat, 17 Aug 1996 22:21:18, -0500

To All,
Thank you for my turn at the soap box an the subject of "educators".
I am in a running battle with the local school district about 
"appropriate" education for my son who has tested a light year ahead 
of the best of the kids in the district. 
The majority of his teachers are pretty good which actually surprises 
me. When I was back in high school the goof-offs who wanted to go to 
college and party prior to getting pregnant or packing it off to Viet 
Nam always looked for the loosest admissions policies at "state 
teachers colleges". I now live in fear of how many of those people 
made it to the public payrolls.

Sorry, but it touched a nerve,

Hochewa