This time, seven of us from the Shade Studios team were able to attend, although it was rare for all of us to get together at the same time to compare notes. One evening together, while we were at a bar, the topic of conversation managed to drift into woodworking when someone thought it would be fun to quiz me on wood. They looked around and noticed the wall. “What kind of wood is that?”

“Pine. Stained.”

This led to a discussion about types of wood. Seriously. I guess it’s one of those things that non-woodworkers don’t give a lot of thought to — until they do. The group asked more questions about the wall of wood such as, “why pine?”

“Because it’s rustic looking and it’s cheap.”

Someone joked, “Haha, yeah but it’s not like they picked it up at Home Depot.”

I looked at the horizontal boards and realized they were just knotty 2x6’s. “Actually, they could very well have picked them up at Home Depot. Those are just construction grade boards. Wood doesn’t have to be fancy to be decorative. Pine is fine.”

For some reason (cocktails) everyone thought that comment was hilarious and my unintentional rhyme became a catchphrase for the rest of the evening including the chorus of a sing-a-long. This was all very amusing, but I also remembered my mention of pine in last month’s newsletter regarding wood selection for projects, so let’s talk more about this under-appreciated wood species. The Toyota Camry of the forest.

Pine is fine

When furniture makers and woodworkers select wood for one of their “good” projects, pine is rarely on their shortlist. It’s considered too mundane, even boring. Or worse: cheap. I’m reminded of those taste tests where subjects prefer the more expensive wine when told the price, but select the cheaper wine in a blind taste test. If pine were a rare exotic wood species, would we crave its beauty? Yes, probably. Aesthetics are largely culturally informed.

It’s easy to overlook the beauty in the things we encounter on a regular basis. In North America, pine is one of the most ubiquitous and sustainably farmed types of lumber; the more of it we use, the more is planted. A victim of its own reputation, visually speaking.

It’s a soft, yet strong wood suitable for rough construction and framing. Studs are cheap, available, and hold our homes together, hidden behind drywall. Rough sawn boards are slapped together to make millions of pallets shipping nearly everything we’ve ever bought. Pine boards are used as shelves in dark pantries, covered in shelf liner and canned goods. Subfloors are made from pine plywood and I’ve seen plywood dancefloors. In the shop, we use pine for jigs, fixtures and workbenches.

It’s a material so versatile and so useful, that we often fail to consider its beauty. If we use it to build something decorative, we’re quick to disguise its shameful appearance with woodstains. Stains that come in names of other woods: walnut, red oak, ebony, chestnut, or cherrywood. It’s as though we desperately want it to be loftier than it is. If we’re going to use it for a “nice” furniture project, we want it to look expensive. The natural look of pine was even too boring for the wall of that downhome quirky rustic Texas dive bar.

None of this is surprising. The more common something becomes, the less value it has. I don’t know much about economics, but I’m pretty sure this is a rule or something. But does this mean we have to value its intrinsic beauty less?

The look of pine is expressed in its grain. The contrast between its dark heartwood (which gets even darker as it ages) and its lighter sapwood is striking. Some types of pine can have straight, uniform grain patterns while others are quite dramatic with swirly, wavy shapes. Some pine is noted for its knots left over from the tree’s many branches that were lopped off. Pine is one of the most visually flashy species of wood available. I spend much more time examining and selecting pine boards for furniture projects than I do maple or walnut boards which are far more consistent.

It does a disservice to try to make pine into something it’s not. (Walnut stain looks exceptionally weird.) It doesn’t need to be rare to be remarkable; it’s already doing the essential work of holding everything together. Once you start paying attention to it, you realize how much character it actually has. The knots, the contrast, the unpredictable grain, the subtle graying with age. It’s far from lacking beauty.

But most of the time, we don’t really pay attention. We walk past it, use it, and conceal it. We rely on it constantly without ever really seeing it for what it is. The more something is integrated in our lives, the more we take it for granted. None of us really noticed that “rustic” barroom wall until someone offhandedly asked the question. And then suddenly we were seeing it. Nothing changed but our attention. It’s worth taking time to refinish our perception of the pine in our lives.

And maybe not just the wood kind.

The myth of Blockbuster

Blockbuster Video is such a warm, nostalgic touchpoint for Millennials and Gen-Xers. We love to romanticize our memories of Friday night family rituals, plastic clamshell cases, the satisfying ca-chunk of a VHS tape sliding into the VCR. Even the ominous FBI warning popping up on screen. It evokes a simpler time.

But let’s face it: Blockbuster sucked.

If you were a movie lover, it was the worst place to rent movies. Blockbuster was the Starbucks of video stores. It was convenient and everywhere, but a horrible option if you cared about anything beyond the latest Hollywood releases.

It’s easy for us to put on rose-tinted glasses and forget that the blue and yellow corporate giant was not beloved during its heyday. People tolerated Blockbuster because they dominated the video landscape and in many places they were the only option for renting movies.

I remember going to Blockbuster on Friday nights and hoping the movie I wanted wasn’t already gone. The new releases were always picked clean, leaving rows of empty plastic display cases behind. So you settled for whatever was available, which wasn’t a lot. Blockbuster had a large inventory, but little variety. Their stores (well, all large retail chains) were stocked based on planograms, corporate blueprints that dictated exactly what films to carry and where to place them on the shelves. It was basically a pre-digital merchandising algorithm.

This meant huge walls of new releases, dozens (if not more) copies of the latest Hollywood blockbusters, and limited space for older titles. Even less space for international or independent films. Blockbuster optimized demand forecasting and inventory turnover, not discovery.

They had sweetheart revenue share arrangements with Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox, and Paramount, where Blockbuster paid very little upfront for each tape and the studio received a percentage of each rental. They were incentivized to acquire 40-60 copies of a movie and to ignore small, independent productions. Blockbuster was a symbol of bland, suburban strip-mall culture: they served up palatable conformity with no reason to offer diversity to consumers.

Let’s not forget about their notorious late fees. Or the rewind fee if you forgot to “Be kind. Rewind.”

To be fair, this whole set-up was fine with most people who weren’t into movies per se, but just wanted to spend time together as a family once a week. The actual movie wasn’t that important; it was just the tentpole to gather around. Fine.

Of course, Blockbuster didn’t eliminate independent video stores. In larger cities, smaller retailers managed to survive alongside the corporate giant by offering personality, curation, and hard-to-find movies. These stores were run by movie obsessives who understood their products. The goal was discovery, not to rent forty copies of Mission Impossible.

What movie lovers actually wanted

In San Francisco, my favorite was Le Video on 9th Avenue: one of those places that had hand-written staff recommendations on little cards next to select videos. The store had a massive inventory of mostly single-copy tapes, specializing in obscure and international cinema. I would spend hours in the horror, exploitation, video nasties, and cult films sections. Movies were categorized by director and sub-genre. (Who knew there were so many nunsploitation flicks?) Many of the tapes were dubbed from dubious sources, with photocopied artwork or handwritten labels on the cases.

This was where you found movies Blockbuster would never stock in a million years: Jess Franco’s exploitation oddities such as Ilsa, the Wicked Warden, Ken Russell’s controversial The Devils, and Ruggero Deodato’s notorious Cannibal Holocaust. The people behind the counter were cinephiles who were knowledgeable and genuinely excited to talk with me about schlock cinema or early ‘80s Italian horror.

Blockbuster optimized for corporate shareholders. Le Video optimized for consumer curiosity.

Enshittification and the strange afterlife of corporate brands

By the late 90s, I don’t recall anyone raving about what a joy it was to pick up a movie at Blockbuster. It was more common to hear people complain about the experience. The bigger the company grew, the worse their product and service became. Today, we call this “enshittification”.

While the process of enshittification accurately describes Blockbuster and plenty of other products and companies, what intrigues me is how we begin to romanticize corporate giants years later. Our hearts flutter with nostalgia for the screech of dial-up internet and AOL’s “You’ve got mail!”, but we forget how obnoxiously aggressive they were with those free installation CDs and how having an @aol.com email address eventually became a punchline. Few people today remember its competitors Prodigy and Compuserve. The second largest video rental chain was Hollywood Video, which offered a somewhat better experience than Blockbuster, but today it’s almost forgotten — let alone being a brand that inspires warm fuzzies among millennials.

Blockbuster wasn’t the best video store and it was hardly the most interesting one. It was simply the biggest. That’s why we remember Blockbuster instead of the hundreds of smaller stores that actually cared about movies. The corporate giant became the logo for an entire cultural moment, even if the real magic of movie discovery was happening elsewhere, in cool little video stores run by movie lovers where you could stumble across films by Abel Ferrara, Lucio Fulci, or Dario Argento.

What we’re really nostalgic for

When we start to feel nostalgic about corporate brands, it’s worth pausing to ask what we’re really remembering. The nostalgia we feel isn’t really about Blockbuster at all. It’s about Friday nights, the anticipation of picking out a movie, and the ritual of bringing home a physical thing to watch with friends or family. Blockbuster just happened to be the place where millions of those memories occurred. Will we someday feel a similar sentimental affection for Netflix?

Blockbuster didn’t become nostalgic because it was good. It became nostalgic because it was everywhere.

The Urge to Add More

A while back, I made a garden bench which turned out to be a good example of the challenge of finding simplicity, something I’ve talked about in length over the years on my YouTube channel and in Notes from the Shop, my monthly newsletter.

I’m on a continual quest to find simplicity in my woodworking projects and, well, life in general. As humans we seem to be hardwired to approach any new creative pursuit from a place of complexity; by default we want to overcomplicate things.

When it comes to woodworking, I value simplicity as a goal because I believe simpler designs are usually more aesthetically pleasing, and fewer components typically lead to sturdier, more robust projects. Simplifying involves sharp reductive thinking, a process we naturally resist when we consider building, which is an additive process.

When we start woodworking, we learn a lot of techniques really fast and we want to show them off in every project. I can almost always identify a woodworker who’s about a year into the craft by the amount of ornamentation they add to their projects. A small side table adorned with a roman ogee profile along the top, fluted grooves along the legs, maybe even some inlay strips on a curvy skirted edge. This frankendesign might even contain three or four different species of wood because exotic hardwood looks sooo cool!

I’m not trying to throw shade at any woodworker; we’ve all been here before. In fact, after decades of woodworking, I still need to reel myself in all the time. There’s something irresistible about wanting to color with every crayon in the box.

What Haiku Demands

One way I explore simplicity is by writing haiku poems, which I pair with original photographs. I’m drawn to how this form of art demands particular focus and rejects the unnecessary. Haiku even helps me improve my essay writing, where I always struggle with wanting to say too much.

While traditional Japanese haiku is focused on describing nature or the seasons, I’ve adopted a more liberal approach to include topics pertaining to life’s moments. I like the challenge of haiku because of its (typically) 17 syllable format. Usually the first and third lines contain five syllables and the middle line has seven.

So the parameters of construction are defined and constrained. The craft lies in starting with a broad idea and paring it down to reveal its essence. I might spend an hour manipulating three lines, eliminating all superfluous words and articles in order to express a single concise emotion. I love how a poem evolves as I work the language. It usually ends up as a completely different poem from how it began.

Here’s an example.

Momentary life
Shadow underlies beauty
Existence absence

So the idea began with the fleeting nature of life represented by the brief existence of a poppy. But as I explored this and played with the language, I realised that maybe beauty exists BECAUSE it can be lost. In fact, the original haiku I wrote is now lost, having become the Theseus Ship of haiku.

The constraints of the 17 syllable format forced me to find the essence and emotional undercurrent. I eliminated all articles (a secondary challenge) and placed a single verb directly in the middle. And since nothing connects the last two words, I was able to make them sound similar, yet hold opposite meanings. “Existence absence” imparts a different feeling than “the absence of existence” yet they are two sides of the same coin.

Designing Within Constraints

This is the same process we can use when designing or building woodworking projects. So to get back to my garden bench, I begin by considering the parameters of function:

1. I want a casual bench to nestle into a secluded part of my garden. It’s not intended for spending hours on, only a few minutes at a time to relax and enjoy the springtime blooms and listen to birds.

2. It needs to be sturdy enough to withstand the elements for, say, a decade without maintenance.

3. Since this is for Woodworking for Mere Mortals, I want it to be affordable, approachable, and easy to build with a limited set of power tools.

As wisdom suggests, form follows function, so now I can begin to design something based on those three constraints. So I start to narrow those three things down.

First, the secluded area is small and the bench will most likely only contain one butt at a time, but a single person bench is weird, so I’ll design it for two cozy people. Since it’s only going to be used for short periods, a back support isn’t necessary. This simplifies the design and appeals to function #3 — making it a suitable project for beginning woodworkers to tackle.

Secondly, durability is perhaps the biggest consideration for any outdoor project. To meet this function, I need to account for the effects of water. This means reducing areas that might accumulate moisture and concealing as much end grain as possible. To ensure maximum weather protection, I will paint the bench with exterior latex house paint. (Side note: love the look of natural wood? Great. Just be prepared to refinish it every year or two. Weather is unforgiving on wood.)

Lastly, since it will be a painted project, I can keep costs down by using inexpensive construction grade 2x4 studs. These will also make it hefty and stable. And using just 2x4s allows me to design a project that only requires crosscuts. No rip cuts necessary. It can be made with just a miter saw or a circular saw. No tablesaw needed.

So this is a good start in defining a project that’s affordable, durable, and easy to make. But that’s not necessarily a recipe for simplicity.

With the parameters set — seventeen syllables of woodworking— I began designing the seat.

My first thought was to use just four boards side by side, face up with spaces between them. That’s about as basic as it gets. But is it simple? Maybe if I connected them with a dowel. But how would I drill a reasonably straight hole all the way through the 3 ½” width of each board? You could do this with a drill press, but expecting people to have a drill press is not very beginner-friendly.

I could cap off the ends of the boards with endcaps, but how could I attach them with their faces up? Especially in a beginner-friendly way. Plus, they would be a weak point and would most likely break off if you sat on them. I could attach them with their edges up, but it would look odd unless I also attached some to the front and rear of the seat. Sort of like a skirt.

Then there’s the challenge of attaching the legs and making them sturdy. Plus, they would probably look bulky compared to the seat.

So this whole idea was flawed and unworkable.

A better solution was to tip the studs on their edges. This would still promote airflow and water drainage, while reducing horizontal surface space. This also makes it look like a traditional slatted park bench.

I still liked the idea of joining the boards with dowels to make the seat. So orienting the studs this way makes it easy to drill holes through the faces of the boards that dowels can slide through. This also allows for screws to be driven in from the underside to secure them. This also hides the screws and keeps them away from water to help reduce rusting. Now I can easily cap off the ends of each board with shorter boards making for fewer exposed end grain surfaces.

Now it was the important matter of making legs to support the heavy seat. Four single 2x4s on their ends are more than adequate to hold the downward force; it’s the side-to-side racking that needs to be addressed. This was where I spent the most time on the design, starting with the most convoluted ideas.

I thought it would be cool to have the legs attached to the dowels somehow. This led to a series of problems. First, the end grain would be blatantly exposed to god, rain and everything else. Plus, how would I attach the “cutaway” parts of the slat? More dowels? Screw them into the legs with pocket holes? I could cut a notch into a slat for the leg to fit into. That’s definitely not simple.

The deeper I considered this line of thinking, the more complicated it became. The solution to one problem required modifying something else. Plus, when it came down to it, the front-facing 2x4 legs just looked odd.

So then I thought the legs would look cool if they were set into notches. It’s a sleek design. And it would certainly give it side to side strength.

Then I faced the problem of the dowel. Would I position it at the seam? I would have to either make the notch shallower or raise the dowel higher. Plus this seems weak if the bench racked front and backwards.

But all of this violates my third parameter: the project needs to be beginner friendly without a lot of tools. Making those notches would not be simple and would definitely require more than a miter saw.

I kept reminding myself to find simplicity. This may be a trade-off with style, but I felt like function was a little more weighted in this case. Nobody wants to have a bench crash when they sit down!

The key was to turn the bench over and consider it mainly from this angle. What if I added a frame for the legs to attach to?

By still using 2x4s on their edges, you can easily bore wide holes halfway through with a forstner bit. Then you could use 3” screws to attach it to the underside. It’s a simple method that doesn’t require 6” screws, plus with the screws in those holes, they are more protected from water. If you wanted, you could even plug those holes with dowels.

Then, with this T-frame in place, it’s a simple matter of screwing the legs into place. As an added benefit, the legs can be set back from the edge a little, making them less obtrusive and a bit more elegant. This system is super sturdy, and the legs look better with their edges toward the front rather than their faces.

Deciding Where to Make Compromises

Ultimately, I came up with a design that functions well and is easy to build with inexpensive materials. It’s a bench that is stable in all directions and will last for a long time.

Of course, the biggest compromise is its form. Aesthetically, the leg assembly looks a little chunky, but when the bench is upright it doesn’t bother me.

Some people will worry that the end grain of the legs will soak up water and rot. While this is true, it’s a compromise. By sealing them with exterior latex paint, I’m extending their lifespan, but remember, one of my goals was to build a bench to last about a decade without any maintenance. This will absolutely last that long—probably longer. I’m not interested in making an heirloom piece using 2x4 studs.

There are other creative ways this could be more elegant such as slimming down the cross members or adding some tapers to the legs, but I didn’t want to compromise my goal of building this with just a miter saw, and I didn’t want to use any dimensional lumber.

Simplifying Life

But the main feature of this bench, and why I call it the Springtime Garden Bench, is its bright paint. I wanted it to provide a dramatic, unexpected splash of color and a dash of whimsy to the garden. And that’s what people notice and comment on, not the leg assembly. It’s a simple expression of happiness in 17 syllables.

Look, It’s easy to write a poem using too many adjectives, too many ideas, and too many words. And it’s easy to start a woodworking project with too many boards, too many router profiles, and too many components. Addition always feels productive. Our culture teaches us to want more, and that simplicity is a sign of a lack of effort…or even a failure to grow.

Craftsmanship is never about how much you can add, but learning what to remove. A haiku doesn’t try to explain life, and a bench doesn’t need to be more than a place to rest. Over time, its paint will fade. The wood will move and rot. Eventually it will return to the garden it sits in.

Maybe we can approach a lot of things in seventeen syllables, or a few humble 2x4s.

I just returned from the Sundance Film Festival where I watched a lot of movies, ate poorly, and barely got any sleep. After 45 years in Park City, Utah, Robert Redford’s beloved indie film festival is moving to Boulder, Colorado next year. A lot of people are sad to see the change, but I really think the event outgrew the little mountain town — and about half of the locals I talked to were glad to see it go.

This was only my second year to attend, so I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other on the matter, but I’m optimistic. It was definitely more crowded this year and somewhat difficult to get around, especially in sub-freezing temperatures. As I’ve mentioned before, the best part isn’t the movies (although that is fun), but rather networking and meeting a bunch of interesting people. “It’s all about the friends we made along the way.”

I did catch some really good movies though. Look for Josephine to make a splash later this year. It’s a very heavy and emotional film shot here in San Francisco and it won the award for best feature at Sundance. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I loved Buddy, about a 90s children’s show with a killer unicorn mascot. If you ever wondered if Barney the Purple Dinosaur had an evil side (who hasn’t?) well this film explores that. It’s hilarious.

Also, I went snowmobiling.

So about a month ago I was invited to attend this “influencer” (lol do they even know me?) snowmobile thing. It’s something I’ve never done in my life, and my first reaction was to politely decline because it felt out of my comfort zone. But I forced that feeling away, since I’m trying to make “yes” my default response to almost any opportunity these days. I went surfing a year ago for the first time despite my fear and hesitation, and ended up thoroughly enjoying the experience. So I told myself that if I survived that, there’s a good possibility I would live to tell the tale of snowmobiling.

And then they sent me a waiver to sign, which made it very clear: “You may die”.

Wait, what? What was I getting myself into? I signed the thing and sent it back to the organizer, writing, “Um, just to be clear, I’ve never been on a snowmobile in my life. I know nothing about anything”.

She replied, “No worries, we are all in this together!” which wasn’t exactly the assurance I was hoping for.

Zero degrees and the threat of tipping over

On the day of the event, our group of about 15 people showed up early in the morning to check in at this little building where a bunch of Sony cameras were spread out for each of us to choose one with which to shoot “content” (ugh). I picked the smallest one that would fit into my coat pocket.

Oh, and it was 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Pretty sure that’s like minus a thousand Celsius. Zero F. Literally so cold it’s not even an actual number.

The people who run this observed that we were all ill-prepared and took pity on us. “Okay, first thing we need to do is get you all properly dressed.” We were each given a bulky snowsuit, a balaclava, goggles, and a helmet. After being properly outfitted, not an inch of bare skin was exposed, but it also made me look way more badass than I am. Additionally, they gave us these hand warmer packets which were amazing! I put one in each glove.

We all got into a bus, which took us to a ski slope, where we rode a gondola to the top of a mountain, where we walked to a sort-of snowmobile parking lot. When I actually saw the size of these machines, my anxiety began to rise even higher than it already was.

The guy in charge was Lance. (I don’t know if that was his name, but he seemed like a Lance.) He wrangled us all together to teach us how to pilot these intimidating snow machines of death. The “lesson” was basically a 60 second explanation delivered faster than my brain could process.

“Okay, you press the throttle with your thumb to go forward and let it off to slow down. There’s a brake on the left handle, but don’t use it because you will fishtail. You can either stand or sit, but you need to lean over when you turn. If you tip over, keep your knees close to the body so they don’t get crushed. We will all laugh at you. Wildly wave both arms if you need help. Okay, got it? Let’s have some fun!”

Whoa, whoa, whoa there snowboy, let’s back up to the “tipping over” part! I feel like you kinda glossed over that bit! I was beginning to second-guess my decision to sign that waiver a month ago.

I got on the machine, turned it on, and could feel its power. There was no turning back, and within a few minutes, we were puttering up this snowy trail, single file, at the breakneck speed of about 12 MPH. Sometimes 14. This was easy! After about a ten minute ride, we ended up at this big race track of sorts with moguls, tight turns, and fast straightaways. This is where the real action would take place and where we were supposed to shoot lifestyle photos and video with our Sony branded products.

Okay, so a camera has tiny buttons and dials. How exactly was I supposed to operate it with bulky gloves? Everything…and I mean everything…is inconvenient in these conditions. I kept wondering what would happen if I needed to pee. Someone asked if there was a restroom, and Lance (wait, was this the same dude who gave me my surfing lesson?) laughed and spread his arms to the wilderness. “There’s a hundred acres of bathroom!”

In order to use my camera, I could only remove my gloves for about a minute before my fingers froze up. The thought of removing twenty layers of clothing and exposing myself to arctic conditions in order to pee made me shudder.

At any rate, I managed to shoot some pics and video, but more importantly, it only took a few minutes before I felt confident enough to open up the throttle and unleash the beast. I leaned into turns just like Lance taught us and I never tipped over or had the need to wildly wave my arms for help. It was an absolute blast. 10/10. Highly recommend.

And although I got more comfortable with my driving, the sound and rumbling beneath me was a constant reminder of the machine’s power. I sensed that it demanded respect. I was in control, but the snowmobile would definitely have the final word if I didn’t remain diligent.

What impressed me most wasn’t how dangerous it felt at first, but how quickly fear gave way to focus. Once I understood the basics and trusted the process enough to move forward, everything else kind of faded away. The cold didn’t seem as brutal and my anxieties no longer dominated my thoughts.

Saying Yes before you feel ready

I’ve found that some of the best things in life start before you feel confident. Maybe just one step beyond blind ignorance. You learn just enough to move forward, you pay attention, and you respect the process. Confidence tends to arrive later, usually when you’re already in motion.

What I keep noticing lately is how often the things that end up mattering start this way. Not with a big plan, but with a slightly nervous, “sure, why not”. Film festivals, movie reviews, snowmobiles, surfboards, and making woodburned art I never expected to make. My fears and anxieties were never completely erased. I just stopped letting them be in charge.

Growth isn’t always apparent right away. Sometimes you feel it as a low rumble beneath you asking you to simply not tip over. But it tends to usually begin the same way: by choosing curiosity over hesitation and trusting yourself enough to start.

Basically, snowmobiling is just woodworking, but with less sawdust. I have no idea what that means, but it amuses me so I’ll end this essay with it lol.

There’s a human energy flowing through Green Apple’s narrow passageways, rickety staircases and stacks of books. Like a funky local cafe, it’s not so much a location as it is a place. A location is somewhere you have to go, like a hospital or a grocery store, or somewhere you go without attaching any special meaning, say, Starbucks. A place is somewhere you want to go. You can grab a bite at Olive Garden or go to that cute little Italian place with the single page menu printed out every night. You get the idea.

From location to place

Green Apple has a magazine section featuring small, independent and local publications. Printed versions of major newspapers and magazines may be on life-support, but niche magazines are blossoming. Why? Because they have a soul. You sense that these are put together by passionate people who have something to share with the world. It’s almost radical. These internet-age periodicals are typically ad-free, exquisitely designed and beautifully bound items meant to be savored and collected. They might only be published quarterly or semi-annually and readers are happy to support their missions by paying $20 or more per issue.

Even more hyper-local is the selection of handmade zines: publications that are decidedly low-fi, often hand written (literally), hand illustrated, photocopied, and stapled together. They might have a circulation of 30. I’m willing to pay $8 for a 10 page zine, even after reading it for free in the store, because it represents a physical expression from a singular person (or a small group) contributing something meaningful into a world fueled by consumption and intangible digital assets.

Handwriting: When cultural expectation becomes art

Those of you who are of a certain age will remember having to learn to write in cursive in the second or third grade. We just called it “handwriting” when I was a kid. Some children struggled with learning to make those weird loopy letters that all connected while others embraced its inherent fussiness. To me, the capital Q looked like a 2, and I wondered why the lowercase m had three humps instead of the two I was familiar with from my experience with “printing”. That’s what we called writing with disconnected block letters like sans-serif fonts. I thought printing was for little kids and handwriting was for big kids. As an adult, I write in block letters, all caps. It’s a clear and effective means of hand written communication. But let’s be real, I rarely need to write anything by hand these days other than an occasional note to myself.

Thankfully, sometime in the past couple decades, we stopped teaching kids cursive. This is a sensitive subject to some people who lament the swift demise of a common skill within the course of a generation, and view this as yet another example of the degradation of culture.

Handwriting has moved from a borderline useful skill to a niche interest. I can’t imagine any rationale for expecting today’s children to learn and become graded on their proficiency at a font-based art form. When I was a kid, we literally had a category on our report cards called “penmanship” in which we were judged on our artistic prowess. Even a well-written essay or book report could be graded lower if the letterforms weren’t up to snuff. I felt bad for kids who were dinged for their poor fine motor skills.

Cursive writing, as it’s scrawled by most people, is notoriously difficult to read, to the point where we usually compliment the rare individual who has “beautiful handwriting.” Oddly, the more an individual’s handwriting is praised for its swirling, flowing style, the more difficult it often is to decipher. In practice, both good and bad cursive tend to slow the reader down. If the purpose of written language is to communicate ideas, cursive works against that goal, offering only a marginal benefit to the writer who lifts their pen slightly less than when forming block letters.

Ostensibly, this form of script writing began for practical reasons; a quill filled with ink wrote smoother and was less likely to leave blobs if you kept it in contact with the paper or parchment. This even extended into the 20th century with steel dip pens that also benefited from less frequent lifting from the paper. Cursive wasn’t as potentially messy as block lettering.

Knowing how to form 26 capital block letters has served me fine for my adult life. However, there’s a growing community of people who spend a lot of time learning and sharing their cursive writing skills. Handwriting has shifted from cultural requirement to art, whether in the form of journal writing, calligraphy, or even graffiti. And it’s more beautiful than ever. Cursive writing used to be a location, now it’s a place.

When function disappears

When the usefulness of something is reduced, the thing doesn’t just vanish; it becomes more scrutinized and refined by practitioners. Art lives in this space. No one needs a painting or a poem in order to function in daily life. People still draw by hand, carve wood with chisels, write long essays, and make movies “nobody asked for”, because art does not require justification for its existence. When a skill stops being practical it begins to exist simply as a way of being human.

What technology (really) makes possible

Whenever technology revolutionizes something, we see a rebirth of interest in the “old ways’‘ by very passionate people. Film photography and traditional darkroom printing is seeing a resurgence and there are even groups of ham radio enthusiasts keeping Morse code alive.

In the early 20th century, power tools revolutionized woodworking. What had been done by hand for millenia became faster, cheaper, and increasingly accessible. Tools that once belonged only in professional shops eventually found their way into garages and basements, transforming woodworking from a necessity into a hobby.

There is no longer any need to rip a board with a hand saw, hand cut joints, or flatten a board with a plane — and yet hand tool skills are being practiced today by a large, growing number of passionate people who are producing handmade furniture just as beautiful as anything in the past. Perhaps even better in some cases because these projects aren’t made out of necessity, but out of the joy of craftsmanship.

We are now well into the digital age of woodworking. CNC (computer controlled) machines and laser cutters are becoming affordable and have moved from production shops into home workshops and yet, “traditional” power tool woodworking is more popular than ever.

Perhaps the biggest revolution knocking at the door is AI and robotic woodworking, which will further reduce the need for direct human involvement. We will have the capacity to design and build exquisite, perfect furniture with very little physical effort. And what does this mean for the hobbyist woodworker? Will it destroy the hobby and everything people love about it? Not in the least! It means that there will be more types of woodworking available for people to practice, not less.

Some people will love having a robot cut and assemble their projects. Some old-timers will passionately cling to their CNCs, and continue sanding, gluing and clamping by hand. And probably more people than ever will find personal fulfillment in building projects with chisels and draw knives.

As technology accelerates, it becomes tempting to measure everything by speed, output, and usefulness, or to grow horrified that we are losing something in the process. Instead, we choose unnecessary acts of making not out of nostalgia, but because they remind us who we are. Our studios and workshops are Places.