[TheForge] TheForge Digest, Vol 213, Issue 2

[lp.brown at verizon.net]

    On Friday, April 26, 2024 at 05:06:17 PM EDT, lp.brown at verizon.net <lp.brown at verizon.net> wrote:   

  Andy,What you say is true. I did the web site for Northeast Blacksmiths for years until people starting asking for a more interactive site with more going on. I tried to explain that pretty much all the content on the site was generated by me, including all the picture in the meet history. I pointed out that with two meets a year you don't generate much, they wanted dynamic, I stepped down. I did the NJBA web site for many years starting the site. The same few sent me pictures. I took over the NJBA newsletter from Bruce and did it for too many years, handed it back to Bruce who gave it up again. Now I'm trying to find time to do it.When I was younger I worked one job, ran a side business, ran two web sites and did four newsletters a year. I have no idea how I did all that and my family still remembered me.Now I'm lucky to cut the grass  ;-)I took over Chairman for NJBA for a bit and dropped it. It's not a job I want in any way, but no one has stepped up to take it. It's not a lot of work, but it reminds me of how few actually do anything any more which disgusts me. Many hands make light work, but now days the hands are under their butts as someone else should do it and pay for it. they all tell you ideas but don't back them upSorry for the ranting answer. I don't want NJBA to go down the tube but me, Bruce and Marshall mainly do not make an organization. Anyway I finished the newsletter and sent it to Bruce to search for major errors, so it should be posted soonWe're getting too old for this( not the work as much as the frustration)
Larry Brown
    On Sunday, April 21, 2024 at 02:48:13 AM EDT, Andrew Vida <impublius at gmail.com> wrote:   

 The so-called "social media" communications channel I like to call
"anti-social media".

As for learning on youtube, it's valid... to a point.  But there is no real
substitute for working in the presence of capable hands that can provide
instant feedback with real world in-your-face material effect.  I think
this becomes particularly significant where safety issues are concerned.
Certain errors can be costly... like sticking galvanized pipe into your
forge.


The internet has been very much a mixed blessing.  I still prefer this
mailing list to media more real-time in nature, but it is clear that the
rest of the world mostly disagrees.

Bruce basically slaved at the NJBA newsletter for many years and made very
good work of it and nobody helped.  His quip about nobody even helping to
find a new bank is well taken.  I see this in political issues all the
time.  It seems clear people like to talk a lot, but are less fond of
doing, content to leave actual work to others.  I see endless talk of
"reclaiming liberty" and the like, yet any time I query someone about their
ideas on how to actually DO it, I get crickets and all manner of seemingly
psychotic non-sequitur responses.

In conversations with Bruce and Marshall, it seems NJBA activity is not
what it once was, which is a great shame in my eyes.  Then again, I also
take well the point that people are largely overwhelmed with life in a far
broader way than they were 30 years ago, and that all appears to be getting
worse by the day.  I'm wondering how things are with other groups like BAM
(and where in blazes is that anvil??).  I find it such a pity that
circumstances of life have come to so sad a pass that people find
themselves unable to pursue their free-time passions; that those passions
have lapsed largely away due to the deleterious effects of stress and worry.

I'm mostly done with the expansion of our house here in WV.  My intention
is to build a lean-to onto the foundation wall in the back and set up shop
there, get 100 or so tons of coal, and keep going what I am able of my
smithing.  But as with the rest of us, I'm getting no younger.  I'm slowly
becoming an old fart, though not as old or as farty as Bruce, HAR HAR HAR...

I'm very glad that at least a few familiar names are still on this list.
It does my heart much good.

And Steve, I still have that silicon loaf you sent me 200K years ago.

-Andy in Elkview