How I began my search for Quality

My childhood was pleasant and unassuming, growing up in Westborough, Massachusetts, with a large extended Irish Catholic family. I attended to St. John’s an all male, Catholic high school where several of my relatives were faculty members. When I first attended college the road to my future goals and dreams seemed clearly laid out for me on a straight path to personal success and happiness. After my father’s deathhowever, I felt I had lost the road map. What was once a clear and defined road, started to erode into a windingpath. This uncertainty of the future was the beginning of a new school of thought in my life and the start of the difficult lesson that life would not follow the well-defined steps that I had plotted out so neatly with my high school guidance counselor.

Obtaining my college degree became more about proving to everyone else that I was doing well, rather than preparing for what my life was going to become. During the summer, I worked as a carpenter in a small design build shop out of Charlestown, Massachusetts. Carpentry gave me a defined sense of accomplishment and a creative outlet through which I am able to solve tangible problems. It is the process of carpentry that appeals tome, the smell of the sawdust, the feel of a well sanded board and the sound of a plane are so sensory delightful. I believe that humans have a strong evolutionary bond with wood that goes back to the beginning of the age of mankind. It began when human’s first used wood to improve his chance of survival to put a roof over his head. Man’s achievement in history is directly related to his ability to manipulate wood. I think people enjoy the look and feel of wood for the same reason why fruit taste sweet. It is because both have created neurological pathways important to survival. In modern time, people have become more and more removed from that relationship. People desire to reconnect with wood because they hold the memory of our humanity.

In college I majored in English, my favorite subject, and then tried to determine the best career in the field. Teaching seemed the most logical and reliable living. It became clear to me during my student teaching that although I enjoyed my time with the students andenjoyed the subject I was teaching, the environment of school proved to be too overwhelming. Scores of students, the restraints of 45 minute classes, the repetitive lesson planning; I felt I was merely conditioning students to a daily routine instead of preparing them for their future. I felt I was given enough time to get to know and care for a student, but not enough to make a real difference. Although my heart was always in the right place, I did not feel that I had the tools to give each student the education and personal direction that they deserved. This weighed heavily on my heart. It was clear to me that it would be only a matter of time before I would emotionally shutdown. After completing my student teaching I began coaching high school crew, and found the connection with the students that I was always looking for with teaching. It felt good to be able to share my love and knowledge of rowing with a new generation and to pass on what I had learned. Coaching is nota career and in search of finding a new path to follow, I heard a siren calling.

Rebecca was my college sweetheart and closest friend, she had moved to Hawaii a year prior.

Rebecca had found a job teaching on a Marine base in Kailua on the Island of Oahu while I was student teaching. I left for Hawaii hoping to be able to step outside myself and Hawaii pushed me to reconsider my expectation and goals in life. Happiness is defined on an entirely different sense of characteristics with family and friends at its core deeply rooted in a sense of its own culture. It was where I finally allowed myself to fall in love and break down my barriers of intimacy. When you are on an Island, the ties between your own life, your environment become more visible linking between love, family, food, friends and the land are integrated in whole humanness. Hawaiians have lived for generations by creating a symbiotic relationship with the limited resources of the island. Family heirlooms were highly prized, not only for a useful purpose, but a personal story with a cultural significance. It is a steam cooker of mixed cultures, languages and values that turned my perspective of America completely upside down.

Traveling across the country with Rebecca redefined what we consider the American story. I had never explored much beyond the Northeast and had unfortunately bought into much of the polarizing cynicism about America that has become the standard in the media.

We traveled up and down the Pacific Northwest witnessing the grand scale of the parks, immense mountains, trees and expansive landscape of the American west that makes you feel heroic hiking in their shadows. We tried to search out the essence of each region making an oath to forgo all chain restaurants, hotels and cliché. We tried to focus on local restaurants meticulously researched by Rebecca, live music, local festivals, Red Sox Baseball, natural beauty and old friends. This month long trip took us to Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Washington DC Philadelphia and New York.

At the end of the trip, the miles of road had scraped away my manufactured America and replaced it with a nuanced and textured nation. Politics, media and special interest have attempted to fracture American culture leaving my generation searching for a sense a community searching to find small ways to grasp at our American roots connect yourself with one another.

I want to build furniture as the artifacts of life both the maker but also a memory to be passed on. I become upset at poorly made production furniture or cabinets because they are so easy to throw away. It is important for society and the environment, that people begin to value the objects around them for a lifetime. There is a communion with the object, maker and the material that this he or she is working with. That relationship can transcend into something much greater that continues to multiply in the enjoyment that people have living with the furniture. It is the greatest goal of my career to build something that would be an irreplaceable heirloom.

Although my education at Marist is not being used for what it was intended. I still consider my college education as intellectual capital that would be important to incorporate in a future business. An English major is a student of the human narrative. I want to create a product that has a personal narrative of its own. This narrative will start with the tree and develop in its creative process until it becomes a finished product. I want to reconnect a person with the things that surrounds them. Furniture should be a unique representation of a customer’s taste and lifestyle that are relevant and well crafted enough so that the furniture will last longer than the tree in which it was built from took to grow.

America has become a throw away society in which objects are meant for one use only before dumped into a landfill; devoid of history, grace or culture. While traveling it has become clear that this has become a detriment to American culture, the environment, and the interpersonal connection that strengthens our community. My fathers death has provided me with an opportunity to go back to school and be the change that I want from America