While cleaning my den recently I came across this old wood plane, purchased for a pittance on a tool auction years ago, and now used in my den as a decoration.  Looking at it, I wondered how many previous owners had also handled this tool?  How had they used it?  Had it also been a decoration for them, or was it a tool used every day?  Had it been used in a cabinetmaker’s shop?  In a coffin maker’s shop?  Had it been a trusted tool handed down from father to an apprenticing son?  Had it been replaced by a shiny new power tool?  If so, did technology trump artistic and aesthetic form?

This last question stuck in my head.  It seems that everything is now faster, more instant, electronic.  Everything now has powder coating, plastic handles, and power cords.  We don’t stop, though, at electric power alone.  Some tools now even come with lasers to aid in sighting the cut line.

Living in an analog world is now frowned upon.  We see it in so many ways.

For instance, my family is preparing several of my grandmother’s possessions for sale at auction, as she downsizes from a five bedroom home to a small apartment.  One of the numerous intriguing items I’ve come across is an old Victrola record player, which must be cranked before the music is played from the thick, waxy records.  As I look at it and the records, I wonder if any of these songs are available in my favorite online music store?  Will the next generation of music lovers ever know these songs or the somewhat tinny sound of the giant conical speaker when they plug in their “ear buds”?  With my mp3 player and the hundreds of songs it holds and plays at my demand, I wonder how high would a stack of old 45s be if I had all of those songs in that format?

Looking through a different lens, I’m a chemist by trade and training.  For over seven years I’ve had the privilege of working for a small company dedicated to preserving Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), an holistic system of medicine at risk of becoming a lost art, were it not for a few dedicated souls working diligently to preserve it, not the least of which is my boss.  We utilize high technology in our laboratory to determine the quality of our raw materials and finished products, and we also utilize arguably low-tech manufacturing practices, in order to replicate the traditional processing techniques used for generations in the Chinese medicine system.  All of this stands in stark contrast to our modern western system of medicine, where we typically seek instant relief of our symptoms but sometimes forget to treat the cause.  It all forms an interesting mix of centuries-old  tradition and appropriate technology, and the whole thing is run by a guy I like and respect.

Of course, nowhere is the change from manual to power, analog to digital, more evident than in the field of photography.  There are entire companies built on the digital photography industry, and entire companies shifting from film to digital.  Likewise, entire industries are now needing to retool if they are to survive this transition.  Kodachrome film, for instance, is being phased out, prompting many who celebrate film photography to remove their hat and pay their respects to a film widely recognized for its superiority, but soon to be a nostalgic touch point from a bygone era as we move to digital image acquisition, processing and display.  Even the image at the top of this post, my old wood plane, has never seen print, going directly from an electronic image sensor to solid state memory to a server and now to your monitor.

And speaking of that wood plane in the image, has it been replaced with a shiny new power tool?  How has woodworking changed?  In many ways it has changed greatly, and in other ways, not at all.  In the era of CNC lathes and power drills, there are still folks like Robby Pedersen, who runs a working museum that builds furniture using techniques from the 1800s.  My mother, a tour guide, told me about him after one of her contacts in the tourism industry presented her with some literature.  And then there is Roy Underhill, who just published a new book on woodworking, starting from the beginning, in the forest felling  a tree.  For more on planes, especially hand planes, made the old fashioned way, check out Philly Planes, a british maker of planes that seem more like art pieces than tools.

All of these examples demonstrate someone exerting a resistive force, standing up for something of value against a rising tide of change.  In most of these cases, we see a blending of new and old techniques, while many around us would urge abandoning the latter.  Do you know of something worth preserving, something worth standing up for against a rising tide of change?  Click the comments link, under the post title, to the right, and tell it!

In With the Old, In With the New is a post from: shannonehlers.com

“Cadillac Ranch” is a humorous little song about a farmer converting his barn into a honkytonk and saving the family farm with the proceeds.  This was on the “Whatcha Gonna Do With a Cowboy” CD and is also on the “American Cowboy”  boxed set of CDs.

I’m sitting here remembering all the wonderful evenings spent listening to Chris LeDoux live, from tiny little dive bars with a couple hundred people squeezed inside to sold-out stadiums, he was always a gracious, entertaining, and authentic presence.  I saw him a couple of times in Sloan, Iowa, the closest he ever got to my little hometown.  I trekked down to the American Royal rodeo in Kansas City with one of my best friends in the world “to catch the Chris show” and I watched him at one of his later appearances at a casino show held outdoors – it was so hot with the late June sun soaking into the asphalt parking lot and this was a rare appearance where he didn’t headline the show.

The neat thing about Chris LeDoux was that he related almost instantly to people just by the way he lived his life.  He wasn’t simply a good artist, he was also a good man and it showed and people respected that.  But boy, was it fun to be at a show!  Depending on the song, his music could make you laugh or cry, but mostly you were just so thankful to be alive in that particular moment.  It was a palpable feeling shared with all of the folks there, a sort of mini-woodstock for non-hippies and without the mud or the cold pork and beans.

I remember one time shaking his hand after a show in Des Moines, Iowa.  You could sense in him a person who was less than comfortable as his gyrating, booming stage persona, but who was certainly true to what the message of his music and his life were all about.

Chris passed away in 2005 and it seems like just yesterday I read that news.  At the time it didn’t really hit me, I guess mostly because I didn’t let it hit me.  I just kept playing the music, putting off in my own mind the need to think about life after the rodeo legend turned hit musician.

With the vast amount of music he produced, it wouldn’t be hard to convince yourself he wasn’t gone by simply playing through his discography start to finish because it would take so long.

During his musical career, like his rodeo career, he was more than prolific, laying it all on the line and always giving fans something to cheer about.  It was a real shame that he died in his 50′s, and we won’t see another like him.  Music is usually my therapy in trying times and my tonic during good times and Chris Ledoux is one reason why.  Here’s to his memory and to his music.

“Sit tall in the saddle, hold your head up high, keep your eyes fixed where the trail meets the sky and live like you ain’t afraid to die, and don’t be scared just enjoy your ride.”  -from the song The Ride on the album Horsepower by Chris LeDoux

Missing Chris is a post from: shannonehlers.com

No, this time I just want to plug a long-time favorite band of mine, a group I grew up listening to. In the late 1970s I was about four feet tall and singing along with my cousin Tim a.k.a. Levi, on songs like “Clementine”, “The Old Double Diamond”, and “Buckskin Lady”. He performed with the cowboy group The Starlite Ramblers. The recordings were on 33 rpm records (I’m going to confuse the youngsters with this reference).

In the ’70s, Tim was a singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Thirty years later, he’s all of that still, and you can now get all the original music in digital versions, as well as some more up-to-date tunes as well.

At that time, they were providing the antidote to disco music. If you have an extra twelve bucks, and you’d like to hear legitimate western music, I cannot say it loudly enough – go to their web site, buy a CD and give it a listen. By the way, you can try before you buy – they have mp3 samples of most songs.

Lord I was born a ramblin’ man is a post from: shannonehlers.com