Class is over

It’s hard to describe changing lives and being changed. I taught my first foundational course in 1989. I developed it and copied nothing. No one helped me and it unfolded a strategy from a craftsman’s perspective. So I’ve done this course for well over two decades with 5,500 people.

Tonight felt settled, very settled. The chairside table is the last part of my Foundational Course and nine days of pure woodworking. We laughed of course, watched each other work from time to time, and it seemed, well, somehow clean, unique, exact and innocent that few things I know of could replicate our immersed sharing. Over the past ten days or so we have come to know one another. I’m here with everyone each day all day long and not brought in for an odd lecture here and there like a guru. I spend time listening and and some times I interject and others I watch to see what they do to resolve the issue themselves. struggling is harmless but then there are times when a hand pulls us up. The banter goes back and forth and we laugh a lot, share a lot and encourage one another as needed. I like to draw when I am in the class. It takes no concentration and I can keep connected with the sounds and the questions that ensure things are right. I’m afraid we are only able to hold four more of these nine-day Foundationals this year.

In two weeks I will hold a two-day Discovering Woodworking course and I look forward to that. We’ll hold two of these this year.