I’ve been suffering a great deal of envy as of late along with some mild feelings of relief. I’ve been watching the reconstruction of the 800 year old Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on the internet and BBC since it burned down and it’s famous spire ruined five years ago . Representatives of a historical guild in France quoted to the press shortly after …
“We have the savoir faire in France to renovate Notre Dame either as it was or with innovation; the real difficulty is the main d’oeuvre, the workers. We don’t have enough young trained people to respond to the demand because manual work is undervalued. But if you learn one of these trades it’s a passport for life.”
Have you ever been good at something , I mean really good at something ? Even if you only thought you were good at it you’d understand that it’s a great feeling . I used to build masonry walls and arches of brick and stone in both new construction and restorations of old and even historical buildings. It was a skill hard earned and though my older hands no longer work like they used to because of it and I’d be glad to go back in time and do it all over again . I had an interest in what I did and took every chance to learn it’s history and methods from the past and even now I can reach behind me and pluck from the shelf a book or two that I used to gain some of that knowledge. Like Building Construction Before Mechanization published by the The Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Or my I.C.S. Reference Library on Brickwork Terra-Cotta and Tiling, Masonry, Carpentry and Roofing printed in 1908 that guided me through the rebuilding and restorations of many old buildings . I could see what I did every day it and touch it and knew it had a purpose … and I loved it .
I came to believe I was likely the end of an era and to some extent that may be so but the Notre Dame cathedral sacrificed itself in order to bring something back to life . A stone masonry school in Croatia offered it’s time , knowledge, skill along with it’s students to the project . A stone cutter from Australia went to help as did an American familiar with ancient carpentry skills and during those five years of restoration countless young people acquired the interest to learn those old skills and completed worthy apprenticeships towards putting an 800 year old building back together exactly as it was originally built all those centuries ago.
I’m relieved the world still has young people with that amount of heart . I’m envious it wasn’t me up on that scaffolding to help bring that building back to another timeless life.
