piggies...

Yesterday my wife and I went to Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, AR to see the temporary exhibit from the American Folk Art Museum. It was a lovely thing to see works by anonymous craftsmen placed in a setting in which they are celebrated as "art." And it would be my preference that instead of becoming fixated on art as a thing separated from common, everyday life, that we simply return to our roots, crafting useful beauty to inhabit all things. Every human culture around the world and throughout history was made worthy of celebration and remembrance when the efforts of the common man were dedicated to the making of beautiful and useful things. The following quote fits the objects we found in the museum:

"Things men have made with wakened hands, and put soft life into are awake through years with transferred touch, and go on glowing for long years. And for this reason, some old things are lovely warm still with the life of forgotten men who made them." -- D.H. Lawrence

An interesting point is that when men and women make useful beauty, they are crafting or recrafting themselves in useful and beautiful human form.

Arriving home from the museum and a movie, we found 12 incredible lively feral piglets in our trap. We had been observing them on the game camera for days, and had seen them scurry away several times as we drove by. A neighbor grabbed piglets by their back legs, put them in a crate and hauled them away to be raised in captivity and tamed for bacon.

If left in the wild, these would have been a danger to the entire local ecosystem. At this point, and between friends and neighbors we've trapped 18 hogs and killed an additional 9 in the forest surrounding our house. Catching 12 piglets and safely removing them from the wild has been the high point in our unexpected adventure.

 Yesterday was a big day at ESSA, too. We had 40 blacksmiths from all over Arkansas come to make tools for the blacksmithing studio.

Make, fix, create, and offer to others the likelihood of loving to learn likewise.