Fred Parker on sat 28 apr 07
Amen to that!
Regardless how accomplished a potter (or anyone, for that matter) might
be, coarse communication makes it more difficult for others to see it AND
it also "suggests" much about the communicator -- much that probably isn't
true.
Many, MANY years ago during my career I was attempting to help a very
frustrated electrical engineer in my office write a technical report for a
study he had completed for a client. He was a strong engineer, but hated
to write -- and wasn't very good at it. Nor did he really appreciate the
fact that I had been assigned to help him through it. His idea of
communicating with his (nontechnical) client was to begin with several
calculus equations expressing his findings, explain their derivation and
be done with it. The client was a corporate executive with a background
in finance. He wasn't going to understand a shred of the technical
explanation the engineer wanted to provide.
I was pushing him to "explain" in words his manager-client could
understand. At the height of exasperation he finally had to let it all go
and tell me what he really thought:
"You want to know the difference between you and me?" he asked, clearly
agitated. Before I could answer, he told me. "The REAL difference is,
you communicate in words and I communicate in numbers." He said it like
words were evil.
Then, he delivered the coup de grace: "The problem is, EVERYBODY knows
numbers is facts and words is bullshit!"
It was a long-assed assignment...
Fred Parker
On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 21:31:14 -0500, Vince Pitelka
wrote:
>
>Drawing and writing are very valuable tools for developing and
communicating
>ideas, worthy of the expenditure of considerable time to develop both.
Any
>potter will benefit greatly by drawing pots (and other things) and by
>writing about pots (and other things).
>- Vince
>
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