Bedtime for the Baby Anarchists –
Though I’ve taught at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking for almost a decade, I’ve never been there after dark. It’s a bit like running into a familiar school teacher in an unfamiliar place, like the grocery store.
When I teach at MASW, I like to eat lunch in the young forest behind the school, but tonight I was tripping, fumbling and crunching across that familiar ground trying to find my students so I could make sure they didn’t poop in Marc’s lake.
I found some tents in the clearing, but they were deserted. That’s spooky. I looked out over the surrounding corn fields that were lit up by the Super Blood Moon and thought: This is going to be a weird week.
For the next five days I’m leading a class of 18 young aspiring woodworkers in a class officially called “Hand Tool Immersion,” but which I affectionately call “The Baby Anarchists.” We’ll be fixing up hand tools and building a tool chest. While that doesn’t sound extraordinary, it is.
Marc Adams graciously agreed to slash the tuition for the students to make it affordable for young woodworkers. He donated the materials for the tool chests we’ll be building. And he is allowing all the students to camp in the forest behind his house and school (I think 14 or 15 are back there now).
About 100 readers of this blog have donated tools and cash so that all of these students will end up a kit of tools they need to seriously get started in woodworking.
And woodworking friends – Raney Nelson, John Hoffman, Brian Clites, Tim Henriksen, Justin Leib – are donating their time to help the students get individual instruction.
Now we just have to feed this crew, so I’ll find out if Domino’s pizza delivers out here (just kidding; this is Papa John’s territory).
I’ll be posting photos of this class all week here and in Instagram under the #babyanarchists hashtag. I hope you’ll follow along here and on Instagram because a lot of you out there made this class possible. And I am deeply in your debt.
— Christopher Schwarz
