Re: An Original Idea

Anyone else as sensitive? I'm not. I don't seem to have a strong urge toward personal ownership. I even consider children to belong to themselves and God, rather than to parents.

Tina

I think your example of the student copying the teacher is a good example of why people worry about sharing. Worry about "copyright". I think what people really fear is that someone else is going to take their idea and surpass them with it. It would be my fear.

As for the girl in your class. There are people who can copy what someones hands are doing very quickly. Usually these people are NOT able to integrate that knowledge and build on it.

Tina (who has never been able to learn by rote)

Yes, the person in question is one of the more highly skilled technicians I have ever seen, but unfortunately she isn't very good at coming up with designs that aren't direct copies of other peoples' work and ideas. While the rest of us were struggling to get the techniques down to put in our bag of tricks, she was shamelessly copying. She even would video tape the teacher right over her shoulder (to the point of interfering not only with the rest of the class's ability to see and getting in the teacher's way) without even asking if she could tape the class. Finally the teacher had enough and told her to put the camcorder away. And she had so many pieces she brought to class to try and sell, she had to have a dolly. Very strange individual.

On Sat, 5 Jul 2003 20:01:24 -0400, Christina Peterson wrote (in message ):

That tempts me to ask you to send all you beads to me, in the spirit of ridding you of unwanted ownership. :-)

Children belong to all of us, and none of us. They are their own selves, and the rest of us are tasked to help them grow strong and healthy until they can go and do on their own. I am "Auntie Kath" in innumerable children's lives, but I don't consider them as something to be owned.

It's a little harder with DD (and P/T D, to a slightly lesser extent). I don't own her, but I feel an extremely strong compulsion to care for her and protect her. I look out for all people, of course, but it's not the same as the punch in the stomach, metallic taste of fear in your mouth kind of thing that it is on the few occasions when DD was in danger. I became the Mama Grizzly Bear at that moment.

Possessions? Naah. There are things that would hurt me if they suddenly disappeared - a wooden jewelry box my Opa made when I was small, the sole picture of me before I was of school age, the last afghan my dear MIL made before she passed on.

Years ago, our home was robbed while I was working late and DH was taking DD home from Day Care. (She was an infant at the time) The thieves stole almost everything of value, and a lot of non-valuable stuff too. You know the only thing that bothered me was that the thieves beat my dog with a curtain rod to keep him from bothering them. At the time, Buckie was fourteen, blind, rotund and moved at about one mile an hour.

When I think about Buckie, I'd have happily traded all that stuff to have kept him safe. The ones you love are what matters, not "stuff."

Kathy N-V

I'm with you. For me, the aim is not to hoard, accumulate and poses, but to keep the energy flowing in more and more fruitful and creative directions.

Which means Make It, Love It, Release It, Go On To Whatever's Next. Trouble is, the dominant culture runs in the opposite direction. Makes it hard on people who want to be more un-attached.

Deirdre

No, no....you've misread it...I'm sensitive to the use of someone else's ideas for profit. Ownership of the product has nothing to do with it.

What bothers me ....someone profiting from the ideas of others. That's all...nothing else. Nothing hidden. I keep my practice beads because it isn't right to sell them.

The Use of Foul Language in Written Communication: The Tiny Rumblings of the Ineffectual and Stunted Thinker. The Inability to Think Beyond The Obivious and The Crude. ~~~Henry A. Byrne

I think what's meant by ownership in this instance (and please correct me if I'm off base here, poster that Laurie quoted) is that a lack of a strong urge toward personal ownership pretty much says that you do something, you put it out in the world and what happens to it happens. That it doesn't matter so much about someone (anyone) profiting from it.

That's the way I feel, too. Funny thing is that I *do* often get testy when someone implies, infers or demands that I get militant about one of *my* ideas or processes being appropriated. I find that kind of attitude offensive. LOL! I guess it's just a comfort level with one's life and artistic/creative flow.

It seems like the core of the beadmaking community, the diehard pioneer beadmakers, do it for the art of it; the pure love of and furtherment of beads. I'm glad they felt that way, and have always been so willing to share and teach what they've learned, or we would still know as little about beadmaking as they did in 1983. Hopefully, with people sharing their new discoveries about techniques and style, as artists have for centuries, our students can in 20 years be as grateful to our advances as we are toward those who made it possible for us to be where we are now.

See it, do it, improve on it.

Or we could all just go back to poking holes in shells and seeds. Actually, someone had to have thought of that first, and that person has the sole artistic rights to that design.