where have all the artisans gone

So where have all the artisans gone, I am wondering this morning as my kitchen floor gets rescued from a leaking geyser, hopefully they are not all inside the yellow pages.

Unfortunately there are these troubling moments when you are just useless in your circumstance, and I generally feel this way when things begin to break. When I need a mechanic, a plumber, an electrician or a builder because it's a reality (and a network) that I have lost on entering the professional class of white collar work. I think the real problem is that I am not at that point yet when I can call one number from the contacts list, other than my father, in these situations for help.

I need a conduit who will put me in touch with the 'world of the artisan', and that conduit is certainly not the yellow pages.

The difference between 'then' and 'now' is that artisans, craftsmen and tradesmen are no longer celebrated in our geography and by our society, it's not necessarily frowned upon but it's certainly not celebrated and these people don't enjoy the same status as their white collar colleagues until things go wrong.

A generation or two of artisans has been lost, and still we continue to merrily click away, wondering why we are constantly confronted by fly-by-nights and crap quality when we employ these skills.

When I was growing up, my guidance teacher once asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I smugly replied, "Millionaire playboy," she never countered by saying, "What about a carpenter?" She just then left me to my own devices like many of my generation who had the same lofty aspirations.

Not that I blame guidance teachers for these shortcomings, that would be to convenient and she also taught religious instruction, so you can just imagine how much blame could be apportioned when the chips are down. No, I blame myself ever so slightly because I come from a Construction Management background so I should have this network at my disposal but I have just lost touch with that industry and now I am dusting off my copy of the yellow pages because it's easier than clicking through it online.