Reverse Sunday Dread
returning to a favorite
Summertime. Busy. Everyone visits Maine in the summer. Fall is steadily approaching. School starts up in a few weeks…
August is a full month of instruction. Stick chairs last week, again this week, and then a rocking chair class in Boston at the end of the month.
I read heavily while teaching as it helps with quiet and focus. I recently completed a couple books. (A Carpenter’s Life by Mark Ellison…fun, a recognizable-yet-unrelatable read about his career working on New York’s most stylish residences. Plenty of great stories and surprises. Among them - The home owner rips out and throws away the just-installed toilets because the tradespeople used them!!! Along with other highs and lows.
And Kosti Ruohomaa by Deanna Bonner-Ganter on the life and career of the renowned Maine photographer.)
With those two complete, I picked up an old favorite. David Savage’s The Intelligent Hand. The book is in a consistent rotation and one I return to every few years. It’s an incredible read, written by Mr. Savage while he battled cancer. He is brutally honest about the work and shares freely about his philosophy and about his career. I pick up something new every time I read it. Written for anyone interested in furniture making beyond the “how-to”; it delves into the spirit of it. Spirit is not easily captured in a book, especially woodworking, and Mr. Savage does it beautifully.
Also, with each read, I try to understand the furniture. I attempt to better understand Mr. Savage’s fantastical designs. I fear I’m no closer. There is no fault in this nor am I troubled by it. I appreciate the beauty of the furniture. It seems that there must be a key that unlocks the furniture language. I just know that I’m missing something…
But understanding the furniture is not a requirement for enjoying the book. If anything, the mystery of it makes me pick up the book again and again.
With this reading, an early section caught my attention. Mr. Savage is discussing some of the reasons that students seek out furniture making instruction in his Devon, England wood shop.
Like our students, there was a time in my life when I was pretty stressed with the work I was doing. The Sunday Night Blues were a feature of that period, the fear of what lay before me from Monday morning for another week. The Blues would start about 5 pm on Sunday and go on all evening and into the night. If you get the blues, this may be for you.
Or maybe not. This is not for everyone. I know that you have to feed the family…(p.9)
I know those Blues. Mine formed sometime after church, around 1pm most Sundays, as my mind started to turn towards the week ahead. There was no shaking them or distracting myself from it.
These days, I do my best to stay out of the shop on Sundays. To keep a full day of rest. It is not easy. The opposite now occurs compared to those early career Blues. My mind turns towards the shop and the week ahead, but instead of the Blues, an excitement forms (well, most of the time it forms…there are still times I wish the weekend extended a few more days).
Those Blues, as they did for many of the students who made their way towards Devon, eventually helped point me towards a furniture program and a life in woodworking.
And while I wanted nothing more than to dodge them during those early years, I’m oddly thankful for them today.