Category Archives: Art

The strange reality of getting what you want

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I’ve wanted a library, lab, and studio since I knew what those three things were. In fact, one of my earliest verifiable geek memories comes from when I was about seven and I discovered a chemistry set in the Sears toy catalog. To this day, I remember being heartbroken for about thirty minutes when I got the, “You’ll shoot your eye out,” response to asking for one.

Thirty-three years later, I find myself in the enviable position of now having a library, lab, and studio. And, just like that, I have to figure out what to do with them.

I don’t know about everyone else, but I find it easy to dream. I think about things all the time, from the small and inconsequential to the massive and grandiose. So, it has been easy for me to daydream about what it would be like to have places to do things I’ve always wanted to do.

Now I have them, and it’s like my mind is blank.

That’s not entirely fair. I know what I want to do, but how do I pick? Seriously, there’s only one of me, only twenty-four hours in a day, and I have a wife and a farm. How do I decide what to do with these new-found assets in such a way that the rest of my life doesn’t come crashing down?

I’m thankful I can even write about having such a problem, but it still seems daunting for the moment. I’d better get back to the lab. Time’s a’wasting.

DLH

Make STEM into STEAM to bring the soul back into the modern world

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Jerry Isdale has an interesting write-up over at the Adafruit weblog where he makes the case for adding art back into the mix of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs. I heartily agree.

To me, one of the things that the rush toward STEM in the last seventy or so years has brought us is that the soul has been ripped out of the things we have discovered and created. This fact as a variety of evidences, from the exile of philosophy and faith from the scientific mind to the idea that artistically inclined people are not engineering material.

I think returning art (making STEM into STEAM) to the sterile environment we have created could go a long way toward returning us to a holistic state. What do you think?

DLH