Blessed are the rule breakers. (long musing re leaders and followers)

Good stuff there, Arch. I agree with everything you said and don't have anything to add.

Now go figure that.

Here are some tasty nuggets that I love. (note to plagirarism police - all quotes duly attributed to the person that put their thoughts into succint language. I am not sure to whom the original thoughts belonged.)

******************************* All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.

Adlai Stevenson

******************************

People would rather be wrong than be different.

Henry Jacobsen

********************************

Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

*********************************

When all think alike, then no one is thinking.

Walter Lippman

*********************************

Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.

Alan Keightley

*********************************

Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.

Charles Kuralt

*********************************

People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things.

R. Buckminster Fuller

********************************

++ and arguably the best ++

Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.

Eric Hoffer

*********************************

Thanks, Arch. I am raising my coffee cup toasting my total agreement with you.

Robert

My favorite:

"You can tell the pioneers by the arrows in their back"

Not sure who said it but it sure rings true at times

Bill W

Or as we used to say when the brass called us the spearhead," even in metaphor, the GI gets the shaft. "

Heresy! Anathema! Strike down such reactionary thoughts!*G*

Leif

Then there's always what they say about the lead dog ...

Well, slow this morning, so I'll drop a couple of ideas.

First, it's only design convention you have to deal with. If we keep calling things "rules" or "laws" which are merely convention, and saying that any rule is made to be broken, how are we going to teach them what a real rule is? A rule arises of necessity and serves a purpose. It's not for conformity that we have traffic rules, it's for safety. In the shop there is no more important safety rule ....

Imaginative turners? Odds on they ended up with what is new to us by sheer accident. In any case, they can never make something out of nothing. Whatever they do is from their experience - vicarious or personal. Problem with defying convention, once again, is that certain proportions or patterns appear to be genetically implanted as favorable, which is why they're so popular. Makes it a hard thing to deviate from them.

Of course the mind and mouth can try to overcome any reality, so with some advertising, some intimidation - if you can't see the beauty, you're a cretin - and a lot of luck, the thing might sell. Of course, it helps if your avant-garde artist closely follows the stereotype of the avant-garde artist in his dress, lack of deportment and self-control, or so it seems. Seems you still have to conform to be a non-conformist.

I suppose I'm no different than most turners. I see what appeals to me, except for ... and make something similar which incorporates my idea. Along the way I may ask "what if" a few times, and the next thing you know I have six or seven variations. Don't have to tell you that there's only one favorite and three or four that don't work at all, do I? Been there?

Now, if I'm lucky, someone buys one of the pieces, a couple friends get similar, and pretty soon I'm "the guy who makes X," in conversation. Hey, I'll take it, I'll make it, but this week was really the time for Y in my heart. It's flattering for people to come seek out pieces similar to what they bought before, but what I love are those who have a dozen or more which look nothing like each other. One family came to a regular show with a nice PowerPoint presentation on the laptop featuring their house, selected music, and views of their display turnings. Most of which are things I don't do any more.

Of course, this year the last one graduates, and I can push on to the truly outrageous, because I don't have to sell them to pay tuition and books....

Hi George. Thanks for keeping my sinking dredge afloat one more day. :) I probably wasn't careful enough with the meaning of 'rule'. I meant "rule" as "guide for conduct", an "accepted procedure", a "custom or habit", a "regulating principle" "a usually valid generalization": Webster.

I think of imaginative turners as those rare people among us who can recognize there might be a pearl hidden in an accident. They follow up on unexpected outcomes that result from an unacceptable procedure or departure from convention. Once in a blue moon something "new to us" comes out of this and it's not just by chance.

There is no better example than yourself. Some of your methods and thinking about wood and how to turn it seem (to me) not to run with the herd, but they work and if they happened by accident, you followed up.

We may not always be comfortable with your posts George, but you keep us on track and deserve our thanks. This ng isn't just about comfort.

Turn to Safety, Arch Fortiter

snip

When I was teaching lost wax casting of jewelry, a student would occassionally break all the rules of casting and do something that "couldn't be done". I called such a student a Bumble Bee. A bumble bee's wings just couldn't provice enough lift to get it's body off the ground - and yet they fly.

Turns out we were applying the wrong rules of aerodynamics to the bumble bee. When high speed cameras allowed us to see HOW their wings actually were working, rather than the way we assumed they were working, their ability to fly was no longer confounding..

So when I had a bumble bee student we'd go through exactly what he or she did to produce the "impossible" and try to repeat it. Sometimes it was just a "the stars were right" thing that we couldn't reproduce. But sometimes the key to why it worked was found - and included in the handouts for subsequent classes. It might never be used by anyone again, but, as a teacher, my job was to make the possibilities available to my students. What they did with that info was up to them.

Having people who test the bounds is what keeps things growing, expanding, and interesting. But Gerry Knox Bennett still puts my teeth on edge and sometimes gets me to say out loud "what a waste of wood, and talent!"

charlie b