The New Year
By
Tim Pace
Posted: 2020-03-15T19:44:00Z
The President’s Turn
The new year is upon us, and what a year it is going to be! We are planning to make this the most productive year ever. A great deal of thought has gone into our scheduling and what we desire to accomplish as a club.
Our Program Director has made every effort to schedule events that will meet the needs, as stated in our yearly survey. Some of the demonstrations will be more complicated than others. But that’s how we learn. We want to be a teaching club and I believe that we are headed in the right direction.
With every effort that the Executive Team has put forth, it stands that we cannot do it all. You, the member, must do your part in the learning process. If you don’t put forth any effort, then you are only cutting yourself short of the benefits offered to you. I understand that there different levels of skill among our members but that’s because some have tried to progress and others are content to stay where you are. If you don’t at least try to improve, then you will usually get “stuck” doing the same old thing over and over.
Take the President's Challenge for example. The challenge is designed to get you to try something new. It is all a part of the learning process. We are all in this together to learn so you should not feel intimidated about entering your piece in with the more experienced turners. How easy it is to forget that they too were at the same level as you at one time. We have tried to make our meetings to be a safe place to make a mistake. It is ok if you don’t quite measure up to someone who is more experienced than you. Take the experience and grow in this beautiful craft we are all a part of. There is an old anecdote that I like to use when faced with a challenge and I would like to share it with you. “I had rather shoot for the stars and hit the moon than to shoot at nothing and hit that every time.”
Another case in point will be this month's demonstration on segmented turning by our own Jim Bridges. We have all seen his work and I believe we can all say that it is outstanding for sure. I have never turned a segmented piece but that won't keep me from learning. There are other aspects to segmented turning that I want to understand. Not to mention that it will be a pleasure to see Jim's presentation. He is good at teaching and I want to learn how to present as well as he does.
We have to get over the notion that others are making light of our work. Show and Tell is designed to make suggestions and comments so that we can learn to do better. It's one of the best teaching tools we have. Any comments made are to be constructive rather than critical. And always remember that what is said is simply a suggestion. We are not to here to ridicule or to make light of another's work but learn. Until next month...