Today, my daughter Miranda posted, Why I Ask People What They Make in response to Debbie Chacra’s article, “Why I Am Not A Maker.”

At one point, Miranda says,

I agree that Chacra is not a maker, that her role as an educator is just as important as that of makers, but I don’t see need to construct a dichotomy between making and teaching.

I reject the dichotomy between making and teaching, so I shared Taylor Mali on "What Teachers Make" as part of my response.

Chacra says,

Walk through a museum. Look around a city. Almost all the artifacts that we value as a society were made by or at the order of men.

Is what we see in a museum or walking around a city how we determine which artifacts are valued? I run my fingers over the scarf that Miranda made for me for Christmas. That is what I value. I think back to the wonderful dinner my wife made the other night. There are no artifacts left of that, but it is what I valued. A fleeting smile is not an artifact stored in a museum, but is of great value. What do I make? Sometimes, I make people smile.

Of course, that points out other false dichotomies and constructs of Chacra. Making isn’t a male dominated activity set against female dominated caregiving. Caregiving is part of making. Making people smile. Making people comfortable. Making people think. Men can create feelings and women can create objects

Miranda looks at another aspect of maker culture, the relationship between making and consuming.

“The rise of the Maker Movement shouldn’t be simplified down to a glorification of consumerism…
In an age of unprecedented industrialization, globalization, and consumerism, the divide between creators and consumers has never been greater.

It is easy to create a dichotomy between the makers and the consumers. Yet I think that is also a false divide. Isn’t the maker of knitted scarves a consumer of yarn?

To me, a more useful dichotomy might be between those who seek quality and those who settle for lower quality mass produced items. And here, I should also not that mass production does not necessarily mean low quality.

This, then leads us to the question of what is quality? To that, I refer my readers to Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Perhaps Miranda appreciate red-winged blackbirds a little better now.