On boomerangs and boomeranging (my final guest blog posts at Man Made DIY)
My last two guest blog posts are up at Man Made DIY; the first is on making your own boomerangs from scarps of cardboard (if you're looking at this blog, you've probably already got the skinny on that). The other post is entirely new and starts to get at what I really like about teaching and DIY.
In a nutshell, the cheap toy-store boomerang encompasses the core sadness of "growing up," and highlights what we envy in the "childlike wonder" of children: As we mature, we begin to reflexively doubt that neat things are real, or really as neat as they seem, and start to assume that most of the time most things just aren't going to work as advertised. This is our default setting as Americans: Don't believe the hype. So, if you take a room full of people who are savvy and jaded and know enough not to believe the hype, then give them a ruler and a marker and a pair of scissors and show them how to quickly make a working boomerang out of something they were going to cram in the recycle bin, they become luminous; they've just made something awesome out of trash, and it clearly dawns on them that there are a whole lot of other things they could make, too. They could remake the world.
Check 'em out. Thanks!
