Introduction speech

Joseph Reagle

Meta

Purpose & Thesis

Purpose: share “one distinguishing quality of yourself that makes you distinctive” to give an insight into who I am.
Thesis: this aluminum dorodango exemplifies my geeky enthusiasm for craft.

Memory palace

I throw a BALL in my window.
It lands in pot of DUMPLINGS made of DIRT.
Japanese professor who’s cooking is FUMING but won’t K.O. me.
I said let’s go to living room and watch YouTube and MythBusters.
We then head to garage to try ourselves, where MATTHEW is CRAWLING under his FORD.

Outline

Entrance

I don’t think any single attribute makes me distinctive, but this ball represents something essential about me.
[Toss to someone and say “pass it around”.]
This aluminum dorodango exemplifies my geeky enthusiasm for craft.

1. What is a dorodango?

Japanese for “dirt dumpling”;
a traditional children’s pastime.
Re-popularized by Fumio Kayo, a professor of developmental psychology.
- {he’s fuming, but won’t Knock [me] Out}
- He learned of children making mud balls in preschool.
- He not only studied how children learned and collaborated to make them,
- but become an enthusiast and developed a scale of for the balls’ luster.

2. Enthusiasm

Of course, you can see mine is aluminum.
- It’s not as fragile as a dirt one and is easier to share.
I love this because I learned of it by way of others’ enthusiasm; shared enthusiasms are the best.
Lots of Youtubers have videos about dorodango,
including those cutting the aluminum balls in half.
There’s also a Mythbusters episode where they tested the saying, “you can’t polish a turd.”
- They did succeed in making animal scat dorodango.

3. Craft

While I hope to make a great mud dumpling one day,
the aluminum, too, speaks to my love of craft.
In Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class As Soulcraft
- {using a mat to craw under a Ford in shop class}
he writes that, unlike office work which can be abstract and subject to politics, craft means:

the user holds himself responsible to external reality, and opens himself to being schooled by it. (Crawford 2009, p. 60)

4. Insight

If the dumpling is lumpy, it’s lumpy;
if I round and smooth it, I get that satisfaction that is real, independent of anything external.

Exit

That’s why it speaks to me and for who I am.
Thank you for listening.
Please toss my ball back!