Cob: experience is overrated -- an eight-year-old with a cookbook could do this stuff!

[Donna Strow]

This is great.  It's a lot like my considered reply to everyone should have
been.  Let me use this occasion to share some of my culminating thoughts.

Many of the plugs for experience are for collective experience, which
includes case histories conveyed verbally.

Many people truly do learn better by doing, atleast 2 that I've heard from.
There's no reason for me not to believe them.  There's no reason for them
not to believe me.

I love the replies I got about being an inventor and an expiramenter.  If
there's no case history available about (my fave example) papier mache roofs
coated with cement soaked rags (burlap, yes, thankyou, Taylor P.) how much
sweat off my back would it be to make a doghouse with such a roof just to
try it out.  I won't deny the value of this to myself, to the scouts, to
anybody.  But if  someone else has already tried it I might not want to
bother.  For example, someone used a cement plaster on a cob structure; it
fell off; I won't try it!

And if someone filmed their well-known and verified physics or chemistry
expirament I'm not gonna be one of the kids who votes to do it in the
classroom anyway.  But that does *not* make me silly, just different from
the person who said it.

And if Goshawk's lines below don't express the rest of my conclusions, then
they must have slipped my mind.


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-coblist at deatech.com [mailto:owner-coblist at deatech.com]On
Behalf Of goshawk at gnat.net
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 1:48 AM
To: coblist at deatech.com
Cc: pnewberry at hfhi.org
Subject: Re: Cob: experience is overrated -- an eight-year-old with a
cookbook could do this stuff!


Oh lord: I suppose I should  speak on this issue at least a bit. In terms of
experience,
I have paid money to learn to build, and I have built.
If you think the answer is yes or no,
be happy in your knowing and walk away.
The rest of us, the unknowing, will seek further.

When I started, I had well... more experience than some.
Less experience than others.
But this experience spoken of had to do with stick homes,
homes, approved, stamped, funded by big banks or fannie mae.
homes that leave it to beaver would live in.

But moving right along I found the internet.
I found that there was more,  than  stick houses.
and for a small, or large price
I could too could learn the mysteries of cob
Of earth the thing of which I walked every day.

I paid my money, I spend my time.
There was fun and friendship
sharing dreams, but still I had to pay.
To share our dreams
with myt fellow builders.

Could I have learned this task on my own
via book or net.
but nothing like the mud
and the straw
that has built houses past in time.

I spent my money, gained the  confidence
however one spreads the cost
could I have learned with less
or by just reading books
or try a dog house in my backyard.

Yea I could have if I did.
but I didn't
and I have thought back  on this.
why did I go and was it worth it
to spend my money, to gain my confidence.

We live in a capitialistic society,
the free hand of Mr. Adam Smith.
We eat, we build  with permission
of society, our brothers
who tell us about stick homes, but nothing else.

When I came back I thought,
hey, I can share this love, this joy
This dream,
to build this house
Without the bank, without the sticks

I tried to bring in groups,
to mix the mud, to fill the bags.
but when I added up the cost,
it was not so good as I had to supervise,
to boss.

Then there was the food
God did I cook some good food
and the sleeping arangements
and the personalities
with made  up  minds to not get along.

So in the end it was the balance
that turned even my FREE offer
off.
and I withdrew within
hell with them all.

so yea you can learn it on your own,
so yea you can learn by paying money,
so yea you will sweat
and in the end
the suburbs will still be around.

In the end  we will still have the zoning police
that say
the house can not be pink with polk-a-dots
nor with mud
and straw.

Still those outside the norm will stuggle
to find ideas, to make it
to pay the bills
IP
intellectual property

Or just to eat,
to not have the state take my land
to feed my baby
No it's no so simple
as yes or no

In the end,
Love the land,
and if you can
share the knowlege
but don't begrudge path of others.

Pat Newberry
www.gypsyfarm.com








On 10 Aug 2003 at 13:29, otherfish wrote:

> To Donna & all,
>
> Recently Donna wrote:
> <<
>  ..........there isn't much more to be said for experience in Natural
> Building!!  The workshop consisted of classes and practica.  The classes
> were instructive but the practica were monotinous and hardly at all
> instructive...................experience is overrated and all they really
> need to do is take their class notes home and build their own barns!
> >>
>
> I feel compelled to comment:
> While in concept, a negation of the value of experience could be accurate,
> there is in fact something to be said for the act of learning.  Cob is
> relatively simple and it does not take long to learn the BASICS.  Hovever
> there is more to a cob building than just mixing and stacking the mud.
The
> many variables to be taken into account can only be learned by doing so in
> many different situations.   As in so many things, the more you build with
> cob the better at it you will become.  A correlary is also true: a little
> knowledge mixed with overconfidence is potentially dangerous.
>
> I've been designing and building in one form or another for over 50 years,
> and in many ways, I'm just truly beginnig to understand the implications
of
> what I do.  In my youthful arrogance, I thought I was the hottest thing
> going.  Then in time came the daunting realization that making even the
> first decision of a project defines and limits the final outcome.  The act
> of putting pencil to paper or pick to the ground can go a zillion
different
> directions - but the truly limiting factor is what's between your ears.
>
> Before I learned cob, a pile of dirt just looked like a pile of dirt.  Now
I
> see a building.  But to get there requires a lot of different processes to
> happen in some fairly specific orders.  To make that pile into a building
> that is truly what it COULD be is a blending discipline, knowledge, skill
> and art.
>
> There is a reason the apprentice / journeyman / master path came to be so
> long ago.  And a reason it still exists if one is truthful about it.
There
> is so much to learn and the nuances of it all are HUGE.  Impatince
hinders.
>
> I've worked cobbing next to people who were totally cluless and their work
> had to be removed lest it compromise the wall.......while others got it
> right away, but even then, those quick folks still had lots to learn.  The
> traditional ways of building with non industrial products - that is to
say,
> Natural Building, have been lost to us.  Pre industrial builders stood on
> the work of those who came before.  Their understanding of their materials
> and methods were learned from having been done over and over and over,
till
> only those ways that truly worked survived to be used.  This in many ways
is
> where we find ourselves as the lovers and fools of our devotion.  To be a
> natural builder in this time means to be a learner, inventor and teacher
and
> all at the same time.  Yet at the same time, there are so many principals
of
> building that hold true from the hard won past that to learn them is
> essential.
>
> john fordice
>
>
>