Jackson and Terkel

Both Jackson and Terkel put work as life, but depending on the situation, work could be work and true enjoyment could be within a certain kind of work. Though work can be enjoyed in its own way, Jackson discusses the idea of leisure time and how true enjoy is obtained during leisure times. Both of the author implemented the concept of work is bad and more leisure time is good through stories and people's experiences with work and leisure time. In Terkels text, he presents many working individuals, both who despise work, mainly factory jobs, and those who have incorporated their jobs with something they enjoyed, like the waitress.

Jackson text discusses the concept of flow, a form of pleasure resulting from a merging of action and experience. This idea of flow, as Jackson describes, occur during times of challenge, but not quite to the point that one collapse under its pressure. Jackson also writes about the idea of craft and art, and how flow can be interrupted because of the stress caused by labor and demand to achieve social status within the home. Jackson also touches on the history of leisure time and art in the household in the early 20 century. During this time leisure time begins to extend and the men of the houses, as Jackson implies, begin to craft and expand the DIY concept of do it yourself. As for terkel, he presents various characters in his text in attempts to explain the bad of work. His text is presented in a way that would confuse readers, in a way that they don't know whether to take the text as an informative source or a persuasive story about work.

Jackson presented in various paragraph where he discusses the aspects of craft. On the first page of the book, he talks about Glynn, and how Glynn could create canoes on his leisure time and not his work time. The idea that work is separated from art is present in multiple parts of the test. On page 265, Jackson talks about a working man who lacks time, trying to find financial stability, and thus forcing him to lose the "little power" he has in life. The craft that Jackson discusses (DIY) are developing within the home and that this human/object is meaningful in understanding DIY and how the concept revolves around the object of creations. In another paragraph on page 272, he also implies that the experience, not the symbolic, meaning that brings true rewards, and these rewards provide the amateurs the hope and emotions to continue their creating.

What interest me about this reading and the other readings is that, they both talk about the concept of manufacturing and assembly workers. This idea of becoming robots and losing the artistic side of humans is quite evident in these readings. The idea of do it yourself and the idea of using power tools cross in the aspect that Jackson somewhere considers even power tools artistic and crafty, just as the other readings did. They all belief that an increase in work time lessen ones opportunity to express their enjoyment, due to lack of leisure time. And in all these reading they give you a sense that the work developed by these DIY artists are not purely made for profit and not even their symbolic meaning, but more towards their accomplishment of the project and the experiences gained.

The things that interest me about the readings are the idea that the art is not mainly symbolic, but mainly objective, meaning that art is just an object of passion? Also, there were statements that the object is not merely to obtain money, but where do we put the professionals who do do their work intended for sell? In terkel text he briefly discuss the idea of class and how art varies within class, thus do society view art through the eyes of the bigger class and disregard the opinion of those within the smaller class?