Tinker

October 2023

Fall break with COVID. The dryer quit. Still healing myself, I repaired the dryer for $15 and some insights from The Repair Clinic. The Repair Clinic has great videos. There is a non-linked address below. I don't follow the videos exactly, but that is part of the fun. There wasn't any need to take apart the entire dryer as shown in the video. I just worked through a small hole in the back vent area. Much simpler. From start to finish it only took about 10 min. Excluding going to pick up the part. Trible's for the win. Trible's having the correct part in stock was the lynchpin for the success and timeliness. Thanks, Trible's. Unlike Star Trek, there is no trouble with Trible's.

The ease in willingness to deconstruct is a blessing. The fortitude and grit to put said item back together in a working fashion is confidence-inflating and wholly gratifying. Every human should experience appliance repairs from the inside out.

I am grateful for my family of makers.

I learned to be fearless of/with broken things as a young learner. My mom and dad both encouraged me and held on tight when I would take things apart to see how they worked.

Around 4th grade, I held a glass thermometer to a hairdryer to see how hot it would go. I never could really read those old glass thermometers. I thought if the temp went high enough I could surely see and read it correctly. It exploded. It sounded like a gunshot. My mom was not impressed. She just said unlock the bathroom door. Then she said get out. It was perhaps the only time I was not required to clean up my own mess. I am not sure if it had mercury in it or not.

I took apart anything broken and some things that worked. Car parts, hairdryers, curling irons, and a digital alarm clock to name a few. The last one was out of my pre-teen league of knowledge. All of my deconstruction and reconstructions were pre-Youtube. Pre-internet for that matter. The satisfaction of making something broken come alive again is better than a sugar-caffeine high for a preteen.

Art is like that. I like creating a space for people to take a risk and solve for themselves. Ceramics and Sculpture classes offer the same type of problem-solving as repairing appliances. I am always surprised that people don't get that teaching art IS teaching PROBLEM-SOLVING. It is so fun to see students solve how to create a moving robot junk dog sculpture from an oscillating fan and assorted junk. It is gratifying to walk alongside clay students as they figure out how to do a Mocha Diffusion surface technique even though it takes them 20 tries. They get knocked down, and get up again. The art classroom is a safe space to learn from mistakes.

The process is greater than the product. The process. Tinkering. The unfettered tinkering is what teaches people how to fix dryers and really anything they want to fix.

Tinker on . . .

https://www.repairclinic.com/PartDetail/Idler-Pulley/DC93-00634A/4455850