ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
We live in a world where things are mostly made for us by computers or machines. It's often faster, almost always cheaper. Why, then, do so many people still feel the drive to make things by hand? That question is at the heart of Sam Dingman's podcast. It's called The Analogs, from NPR member station KJZZ. The show is a collection of profiles about people who make things by hand. I spoke with Dingman earlier this week and I asked him where this fascination came from.
SAM DINGMAN, BYLINE: Well, I grew up in my mother's house, where pretty much everything was made by hand. She made the tables that we sat at. She made our coffee mugs, cabinets, couches. She's also an analog photographer. She works in the wet darkroom and is very insistent about that being the best way to make photographs. And she had this saying - I always want to be able to see the mark of the hand.
SCHMITZ: I like that - the mark of the hand. Everything is unique when someone makes something.
DINGMAN: Right? It's got a ring to it. If she can't see what she calls the mark of the hand, she is not pleased.
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CLAUDIA SMIGROD: I like when something looks like it was made by hand because that's, to me, what making things is.
SCHMITZ: (Laughter) So I can guess that your mom is not a fan of AI.
DINGMAN: (Laughter) No. I think part of this project for me was wanting to understand why she's so passionate about this.
SCHMITZ: The first person that you profile in this series is a man named Duane Jensen. He fixes typewriters in his garage, and that's something he's been doing since the 1980s. And he really sacrificed a lot in his dedication to this craft. Here's a clip.
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DINGMAN: You're hooked up to an oxygen machine here.
DUANE JENSEN: Yeah.
DINGMAN: Does that make it difficult?
JENSEN: No. Well, yeah - mobility, and I have COPD, so I have trouble breathing. That came about about seven years ago. So this business was part of the factor I have COPD 'cause I had a shop 20 years ago without ventilation, and a lack of center fumes deteriorated my lungs. It did chemical burns. That's why my lungs are not working.
SCHMITZ: Wow. Duane has sacrificed quite a bit for what he does. What drives people like Duane, who, you know, are pursuing this passion of making things or fixing things with their hands?
DINGMAN: Well, you know, I have to say, Rob, I mean, Duane was the first conversation I had for this series, and it very quickly established this theme that ended up really recurring throughout. It's not a quaint pursuit. There's something existential about it. In Duane's case, he started fixing these typewriters to escape from an abusive household when he was just a teenager. He needed to get out of the house, which meant he needed a job. He found a job doing this, and it gave him this measure of control over his life. And now it's like this thing that gave him freedom also threatens to end his life. And that's a pretty powerful thing to sit with somebody and have them express to you. These really aren't trivial pursuits.
SCHMITZ: These are such emotional stories. I'm almost scared to ask with regards to Duane - is he still alive?
DINGMAN: He's not, Rob. I learned recently that Duane passed away. You know, I don't know the specifics of his passing. I had been in touch with him late last year, and he had told me he was in poor health. I'm very haunted, I suppose, by the last line that he says to me in that episode, you know? Toss a typewriter into my coffin with me and some Rush records. I mean, it seems to me that, in a fairly literal sense, he really gave his life to this work.
SCHMITZ: All of these people that you profile seem to be driven by, you know, almost a desire to live with this sense of nostalgia. You know, what have these conversations taught you about this human sense of nostalgia?
DINGMAN: So in the first episode of the second season of The Analogs, we meet another subject whose name is actually also Duane - it's Duane Roen. He's an ASU professor - former ASU professor. And he spends hours and hours every day refurbishing these old hand tools.
SCHMITZ: OK.
DINGMAN: And he tells me that this work is explicitly all about nostalgia for him.
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DUANE ROEN: I've got a lot of nostalgia (laughter) for everything, and nostalgia for things that I did 10 minutes ago, even.
DINGMAN: Duane opens a drawer and pulls out an old pair of pliers.
ROEN: When I was a kid, we did fencing. This is the exact same kind of fencing pliers that my dad owned and that we, as kids, used every day.
DINGMAN: So if I'm hearing you right, Duane, at least part of the reason that it feels good to hold onto these things is the story they contain.
ROEN: When I work on these tools, when I use these tools, when I look at these tools, it reminds me of my dad. It reminds me of my Grandpa Roen.
DINGMAN: So, Rob, the thing about Duane is that he grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, and he has this profound reverence for his father and his grandfather who maintained that farm for generations. He can actually barely speak about the farm without crying, and that is partly because when Duane was in, I think it's eighth grade, there was a fire. Duane almost died in this fire, and the family lost the farm. And as you hear him say in the piece, after that...
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ROEN: And we went to town, and my whole world changed.
DINGMAN: And the way that he says, we went to town, you can just - it's like his spirit falls a little bit. And so this whole adult life of refurbishing these tools, for Duane, has been about reconciling these parts of himself that don't really fit together - this forced push towards modernity and this deep connection to a past that was kind of taken away. And for me, that is what feels so significant about these stories. It's people wrestling with the most contradictory parts of themselves by creating these physical objects that contain all of those contradictions.
SCHMITZ: That is Sam Dingman. He's the host of the podcast The Analogs from NPR member station KJZZ. Sam, thank you.
DINGMAN: Thank you, Rob.
(SOUNDBITE OF FROOK'S "MANHATTANITE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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