Rejoining the human race by hand

As you know, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the undoing of things—of a nation, of delusions, of life itself. I’ve been reading Hospicing and then Outgrowing Modernity, and making book reports about them. I’ve been making protest signs. I’ve been making sandwiches.

You know what all of that has in common? Making.

It turns out, that when the world, the nation, your life as you’ve known it is getting destroyed in important, anxiety-producing, and potentially liberating, ways—making things is a vital practice. Getting off our screens and making things with our bodies is a form of refusal, it is a way of saying no to the algorithm and a way of saying yes to our own imaginations. It is also a way of connecting with others, whether in parallel play (like my dear Wendy MacNaughton’s art school for grown-ups), or as nerdy gifts between friends (my dear Vanessa Valenti is always making me the best gifts with my own words on them, like the below, that she made for my birthday and sent all the way across the country!), or even with ghosts (like my dear Christie George recently wrote about here.)

I was reminded of this last Sunday when I attended a gathering at Girls Garage, a Berekely-based nonprofit that has meant so much to me and my family. Founded in 2013 by builder Emily Pilloton-Lam, it is a design and construction school for girls and gender-expansive youth ages 9-18. Maya, my older daughter, has learned how to use a chopsaw and a level and a bevel there since she turned 9 (she’s now 12) and our younger daughter, Stella, has just this year gotten to be old enough to attend and is already a super fan.

This is actually a painting of a level that Maya made.

But, of course, it’s not really about the tools; it’s about the power. Emily says that she wants to create a little oasis where girls and gender-nonconforming kids walk in and know that they are in a safe, joy-filled place where there are no stupid questions. She wants them to feel that deep sense of safety, so that when they go out in the world, they can fiercely ask for what they need, and know that they deserve respect—whether in a classroom, a wood shop, or a boardroom—just like anyone else. Here’s a TED talk she gave on this and more that is really 12-minutes of YES, PLEASE and AMEN!

Last Sunday, actor Nick Offerman and builder and local mom Lee Buchanan, co-authors of the new book for kids, Little Woodchucks: Offerman Woodshop’s Guide to Tools and Tomfoolery, came through to talk with Emily about making, resistance, and community. My daughters, and a crew of other girls and gender non-conforming youth, actually built the stage set that they sat on for this conversation by hand. Even the chairs. And yes, the “woodchucks” on the mantle (more on that later).

They spoke humbly and eloquently about the ways in which times like these can make us feel distanced from other people, particularly those who read different news sources than we do, but also distanced from our own pleasure and power. On the one hand, it can seem frivolous and naive to focus on the making of a fake fireplace when the world is burning. On the other hand, if the making of that fake fireplace is in the company of other safe and joyful tween girls who are stretching their ideas of what they are capable of doing with their own two hands, and in community, well then it becomes a beautiful counterpoint to…well…the Epstein files and everything they represent, to militarization, to fascism. In this place, Girls Garage, girls are stretching, learning, building, and communing. They are interesting and interested. They are fully and inviolately human.

Which reminds me of one of so many Wendell Berry quotations that I love (Offerman and I have an adoration for Berry in common):

One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener’s own body. The garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.

Substitute “garden” for a variety of other things of course. Using our own bodies towards the resourcing of ourselves, the delight of our communities, is a way of staying human. It is the opposite of conspicuous consumption and coercion. It reunites us with our own agency and lets us make good on our innate desire to share and rejoice in the hidden enoughness of this hurting place we call a nation.

Offerman and Buchanan met with the youth builders before they did the fireside chat. Our Stella was invited to explain the “woodchucks” they made on the mantle, one of the first projects in the book itself. Apparently she informed him that her woodchuck was named Nick Offerman and that he could take it home if he wanted to. He sent along a photo of the uncanny resemblance.

I hope that makes you laugh. I’ll take a world built by overconfident 9-year-old girls any day over a world run by delusional 79-year old men.

Donate to Girls Garage here. Buy the book here. And for Goddess sake, make something today—a loaf of bread, a silly little drawing, a bouquet, a haiku. I promise it will make you feel more human and more connected.