Paul
It is a business context. This was received via David Savage's subscription list.
It's not from a magazine, it is essentially David's "e-letter".I would have expected the magazine's editor to clean up David's prose if indeed it was a magazine piece. The writing failure here is the editor's and not David's, in my opinion.
It's not the grammar or spelling which bothers me, it's the fact that I had to read it three times and I'm still not quite sure what he was saying... I've read my share of philosophers and academics, so parsing dense text is in my repetoire, even if it's not something I do every day. This was incomplete, unclear, scattered, and jumpy. It's almost as if the first half of a rambling conversation/observation was recorded for posterity, but the followup questions and clarifications weren't. Normally, DS's newsletters are not this disjointed, so I wonder whether he simply had to dash this off and we got what would normally be a first draft...
It came to pass...
"Curiosity is the ultimate power tool." - Roy Underhill
The road IS the destination.
To be clear, I'm not jumping on him for not worshiping LN. I'm dinging him for a confusing, garbled piece. I've been subscribing to him for some time, and before I subscribed I bopped around his site some, followed his links, etc. As best I could ascertain, Mr Savage is both a fine craftsman AND an excellent mentor/instructor, at least based on the work of some of his students. And his responses to the few questions I've emailed him have been both courteous and informative.
As for the matter of arrogance, I think that's largely a perception based on a difference in teaching style. Most, if not all, of the European "masters" who are in the public realm teaching come from a "guild/crafts" system where the student is the product, not the customer. It's the master's time and money that are being expended on the student. Those who've served in the military likely clearly understand the difference in approach to physical training between a drill instructor, and the personal trainer down at the gym. One encourages you, the other tells you in no uncertain terms what to do.
It came to pass...
"Curiosity is the ultimate power tool." - Roy Underhill
The road IS the destination.
I'm curious who the american is. We seem to like our instruction from foreigners. (charlesworth, sellers, klausz, odate, cosman, wearing...)
i use we loosely. i have only bought more than one piece of media with charlesworth and don/larry.
I assumed they meant RC, but forgot he was Canadian, eh?
Woodworking is terrific for keeping in shape, but it's also a deadly serious killing system...
Most canadians that I know are proud enough of being from Canada that they'd chew you out if you called them an american.
I totally forgot he was a Canadian. So I guess I meant American in the generic way....fighting words for most of us Canadians.
Paul
David, if you are arrogant, I have totally missed it. Having yet to meet you in person, my impressions are based upon watching your DVDs several different times. You seemed like a decent chap, but I guess I better go watch them again, as it is conceivable I was focused too much upon the skill and content . . . . . . . Glad you are back to good health. Slainte mhaith, Patrick
I thought Canadians was a hockey team. I didn't know RC was Canadian; like I said he turned me off so quick I didn't find out much more about him. Sorry to offend any Canadians; what do I know, I'm a Texan so the US is there between us
But yeah, you guessed it, I was trying to be diplomatic lol.
So to get all this straight, RC is Canadian eh, and we're agreed to blame David Charlesworth for the Stamp Act of the mid 17th century.
Last edited by Keith Outten; 11-14-2013 at 9:42 AM.