There’s something fun about the idea of a gazillionaire taking up the DIY craze by doing such things as organic gardening and making his own cigar box banjos. He explores the many benefits of knowing how to build things, modify things, and create things out of the odds and ends most people toss out for the trash collector.
It’s clear from the introduction that boingboing founder Mark Frauenfelder never read The Sex Life of Cannibals, a wonderful book about what a living hell the islands along the equator are. Mark and his wife decide to move with their two small children to one of those little horror stories in order to change their lives. They lasted five months, which is longer than I would have lasted.
It’s odd that an internet supergenius fails to do the basic research of Googling a number of things throughout Made by Hand. The idea that he would move somewhere without checking it out is just baffling. He is also surprised by the details of most of the projects he undertakes, but hey, learning is half the fun.
Once back in the real world, he lands a job as the editor of a magazine I have never heard of called Make-which seems to be a collection of Do It Yourself stories and projects. Mark becomes obsessed with DIY and learns such things as how to pull a Godshot of espresso, build a chicken coop, brew his own kombucha tea, and wrangle bees. He learns that success is better with a good deal of failure along the way to teach you right from wrong.
It’s hard to read about Mark’s many hobbies without thinking back on my own DIY days. I was not a yuppie pretending to be a mountain man like Mark, I was a poor kid with a house and car in constant need of repair and no one else around to do the repairing. I followed the path of many DIYers before me, as soon as I could afford to pay someone else do it, I paid someone else to do it.
During my own DIY evangelist days I had grand visions of the whole country being Self Sufficient and everyone having a garden and a compost heap and a bee hive. My father in law told me that he didn’t want any of that stuff, so where did he fit in my grand scheme of things? I instantly went for a Dictatorship and told him I’d make him have a garden. Now that I am older and a bit lazier myself, I understand his point of view a bit better.
Of course, you don’t have to be young and rich like Mark to become a DIYer, but it helps. Whenever he takes up one of his new hobbies he has the time and money to run out and buy whatever he needs. He tweaks his $500 coffee maker with an $85 after market PID kit so he can make near perfect espresso. When he decides to whittle his days away making spoons, he has no problem buying a $50 set of tools to whittle with. He runs down to Home Depot whenever he needs anything. To be fair, he does make a point of using as much of the scrap material he has laying around the house as he can.
Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World
As Made by Hand draws to a close Mark talks about unschooling and how public schools are getting worse all the time, I have to admit that I hated public school and I can’t see that being imprison for 12 years did much for me then or now. On the other hand, my nephew gave up school around the sixth grade and he has spent the rest of his life watching NASCAR racing and doing the occasional bit of work as a security guard. Like Mark, I am not so sure about having zero formal education, but I know if I had had that option, I would have never gone to public school.
I enjoyed Made by Hand, but somewhere along the way I pretty much lost interest in Mark’s effort to raise bees, make banjos, and build bookshelves using his iPhone level app. I like the idea that mistakes are more important to learning than instant success. I also like the fact that Mark hooks up with a wide array of support groups for each of his many hobbies. Maybe that is part of my problem, I might read a book about a subject, but I would never take that next step that Mark takes of talking to the author to get more advice or joining a local group of like minded individuals. Maybe I am a bit of a wanna be moutain man after all.
