1. Made a couple of interesting observations from the background literature for my most current research project. A couple of interesting additional questions that I may not be able to answer with my research, but which certainly should be asked, perhaps in a "future directions" section of the paper.

2. I'm still digesting this. Key quotation:

"The craftsman’s habitual deference is not toward the New, but toward the distinction between the Right Way and the Wrong Way. However narrow in its application, this is a rare appearance in contemporary life—a disinterested, articulable, and publicly affirmable idea of the good."

Yes. I think there is some kernel in there of what I try to say when I wave my (virtual) hands around on this blog and emote about the Goodness of doing something with one's hands...how it is a part of being a whole person, of having some kind of a bulwark against the ephemeral, of fighting against the consumerist tendency to always uncritically embrace the New, rather than incorporate the best elements of the New in with the Old.

The whole essay is here (N. B. :.pdf file). It's quite long. I think it will be weekend reading for me.

I don't know. "Making stuff" is so ingrained a part of me - it's a part of my SOUL, I would even argue, and I dearly hope that when I wind up in that Other Dimension someday, that there will be a role for those of us who loved to create - that there's some kind of transubstantial workshop there, where you can be at one and at peace with your tools and your craft. Because as nice as the Heavenly Choir (as described by Dante in his Paradiso) sounds, I'm really much more at home working with my hands than I am singing...

So I like reading about the philosophy of making stuff, and the importance of it, and where it fits in to our society...even when it promises to be a quite difficult article that I probably won't understand upon first and second readings.