Endings and Beginnings

This is my last blog for this class.  Wow.  I mean, I could post my entire 15-page paper as a blog, but I doubt anyone would want to read it all.  Anyway, here are my closing thoughts on Crawford's closing thoughts. 

Crawford's ideas about solidarity versus self-reliance seem to paralell my paper topic, balancing community with time alone.  Since Crawford is coming from a different perspective than I am, he doesn't talk about it in terms of community, but that is essentially what he is getting at.  In Crawford's world of motorcycle maintenance, community is essential.  Even though he may be the only mechanic working in his shop, he depends on other mechanics for information that he himself does not yet know.  On the other hand, he does not rely solely on other people to do his job; much of what he does is determined by what he can discover for himself.  This practice of discovery in turn gives him something to contribute to the community of mechanics to which he belongs.  As someone said during my presentation on Monday (I think it was David Janzen, but I have a hard time remembering who is who if they don't eat at the Clearing) you have to spend time on your own figuring out who you are so you have someone to be when you're in community.  Or as Crawford puts it, "Only a fellow journeyman is entitiled to say, 'nicely done'."  Even though Crawford has been occasionally difficult to relate to, his overall ideas are interesting and seem to relate to the rest of the class.  It's too bad I didn't understand so many of his motorcycle references, but by the last chapter, his example left me wondering how he ever got the cobalt drill bit out of the motorcycle.  I guess I'll never know unless I ask a mechanic.