{"id":6353,"date":"2022-06-06T11:27:03","date_gmt":"2022-06-06T15:27:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/?page_id=6353"},"modified":"2022-11-23T09:26:45","modified_gmt":"2022-11-23T14:26:45","slug":"about-david-walbert","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/about-david-walbert\/","title":{"rendered":"About David Walbert"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>If a man in 1780 raised wheat in the spring, corn in the summer, sheared his sheep, worked a couple of days framing a new barn, cut sawlogs in the woods, and then built a table and a set of chairs from the lumber\u2014what would he have called himself? Farmer, joiner, woodsman? Sheep raiser, chairmaker, or builder? Very often the country furniture maker was all of these. At a time when most occupational titles were conferred posthumously, most likely by a clerk who felt obliged to &#8220;put down something,&#8221; the label probably identified only what the man happened to be doing at the moment he died. It seems more sensible, then, to rank him for what he was\u2014a man. <cite>Aldren A. Watson, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/4460339-country-furniture\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Country Furniture<\/a><\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>At present I am a guy building furniture out of his garage, almost entirely with hand tools. This is more than a hobby and not yet a profession. Elsewhere I have called myself &#8220;The Neighborhood Joiner,&#8221; which more describes what I&#8217;d like to be than what I am at present: the local guy people go to when they need something made out of wood. That&#8217;s a vision from the eighteenth century, not the twenty-first. I&#8217;m okay with that. <\/p>\n<p>I also tell stories. One of these I have spun into a novel, which I like to think of \u2014 also anachronistically \u2014 as &#8220;an adventure for all ages&#8221;: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.piratepantherprincess.com\"><i>The Pirate Panther Princess<\/i><\/a>, published in December 2022.  <\/p>\n<p>By training I&#8217;m a historian, a background that informs my woodworking (and pretty much everything else). Before that I trained and briefly worked as a theoretical physicist (no joke). I am also an avid gardener and a curious baker, and I homeschooled my daughter in math, science, and the arts through 12th grade. I&#8217;ve done some teaching and a lot of writing. Much of that writing is archived on this website, including pieces formerly published at <i>The New Agrarian<\/i> and <i>The Rooted Cook<\/i>. Most of my writing on raising backyard poultry and historical gastronomy is still around here somewhere.<\/p>\n<p>At present this is a woodworker&#8217;s blog, then, it is not a woodwork<em>ing<\/em> blog. I am notoriously bad about sticking to the point: I make no promises.   <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right; font-style: italic\">\u2014David Walbert, June 2022<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If a man in 1780 raised wheat in the spring, corn in the summer, sheared his sheep, worked a couple of days framing a new barn, cut sawlogs in the woods, and then built a table and a set of chairs from the lumber\u2014what would he have called himself? Farmer, joiner, woodsman? Sheep raiser, chairmaker, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"spay_email":""},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P8I1ci-1Et","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6353"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6353"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6484,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6353\/revisions\/6484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}