"In remaking an ax, in restoring a house, we carry the fire of the original spirit. We commit anew, plant, put our hands to touch the work of a craftsman hundreds of years gone, and then once again feeling that work, pick it up again. And therein lie renewal and hope."
—from The Same Ax, Twice.
An old farmer boasts that he has used the same ax his whole life—he's only had to replace the handle three times and the head twice. In an eclectic, insightful meditation of the powerful impulse to preserve and restore, Howard Mansfield explores the myriad ways in which we attempt to reconnect and recover the past—to use the same ax twice.
Mansfield's In the Memory House (hailed as a "wise and beautiful book" by The New York Times,) explored the complex interconnections of memory and place, showing how the loss of a sense of place in our ever more mobile society has profoundly impoverished our collective memory. Now he tracks our need to reconnect with place and memory. Moving easily between meditative reflection and compelling insights, he offers lively journalistic descriptions of some of the extraordinary people who are imaginatively, lovingly, sometimes obsessively, realizing their own visions of the restorative impulse.
Mansfield immerses himself deeply in the search for restoration. He travels with Civil War reenactors to help recreate the Battle of Antietam; he enrolls in auctioneer school to observe the endless recycling of artifacts, and he compares the process to the sterile preservation of these same objects in displays and museums; he observes the ongoing work of preserving the USS Constitution, "Old Ironsides," a ship which has been replaced over the years board by board.
The act of restoration, Mansfield concludes, whether it's rebuilding antique engines or reviving the village model of community organization, must contain an element of renewal. Rejecting the sentimentality of nostalgia and the superficiality of commercial images, Mansfield argues for an understanding of restoration that is as much concerned with the future as it is with the past, that preserves and communicates a spirit as well as a form.
REVIEWS:
"The Same Ax, Twice is filled with insight and eloquence...a memorable, readable, brilliant book on an important subject. It is a book filled with quotable wisdom."
—The New York Times Book Review
"The Same Ax, Twice is one of those quiet books that foments revolution.... Howard Mansfield has just the right combination of erudition and humor to challenge conventionally held ideas about historic preservation. Like In the Memory House, his wise 1993 exploration of the New Englander's defining relationship with the past, The Same Ax, Twice ought to be on your bookshelf along with Wendell Berry and Noel Perrin."
—William Morgan, Boston Architecture
"While our madcap economy urges us all to be consumers, Howard Mansfield urges us to be conservers—of buildings, inventions, folkways and spirit. He's drawn to the sort of people he calls 'Noahs,' who work to preserve from extinction whatever is useful, beautiful or well-made, and he is such a man himself. If you're weary of the trash and trivia that pass for culture in our day, if you suspect there's much to be learned from the past, if you long to join in mending the broken world, then here's a book that should delight you."
—Scott Russell Sanders, author of Hunting for Hope and Staying Put.
"I know I will never think about any part of the past—including my own—in quite the same way ever again. Mansfield just blew me away with this truly remarkable, engaging and yes, inspirational piece of work."
—Judson D. Hale, Sr., Editor, Yankee Magazine and The Old Farmer's Almanac.
"Mansfield's book teems with people chasing their deepest passions, with terrific stories and history seen from unlikely angles. His inquiry into the recreation and the often-doomed search for authenticity is ingenious and often profound. Skeptical, keen-eyed, and filled with wonder, he engages us from page one, and keeps us wholly attentive to his odd brand of believers."
—Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After.
"In this examination of our past, the specific and local become universal. Howard Mansfield is an essayist who is equally adept at turning a phrase and telling a story."
—Sue Hubbell, author of A Country Year and Waiting for Aphrodite.
"This study of continuity through renovation is both a lively museum of things remade and restored as well as a psychology of caring and keeping. Howard Mansfield holds our attention with radiant particulars and telling facts. Rarely has a writer made it so clear that technology is the surest strategy of the spirit."
—Guy Davenport, author of The Geography of the Imagination.
"The Jewish concept of tikkun olam, or mending a broken world, weaves through New Hampshire preservationist Howard Mansfield’s latest literary effort. But this is not your average how-to or must-do exhortation….Mansfield presents a unique perspective on the meaning of preservation…This is a book about forgetting, about memory, about the craft of renewal and the renewal of craft and of care, time, silence and purpose in an age when what is old is too easily left behind. It is a book that, every so subtly, elevates small practices of preservation and remembrance, like collecting buttons, to the nobility of mending the world.”
—New Age magazine.
"This beautiful, haunting work about people laboring to keep history's spring flowing is highly recommended...."
— Library Journal
"A cross between Tony Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic and James M. Lindgren's Preserving Historic New England, this volume delightfully investigates Americans' penchant for fixing up old stuff ... Our fixation with restoration, [Mansfield] concludes, has meaning beyond the idle fascination of rich folks with nothing better to do than fix up old trunks and sleigh beds. Rather, as his subtitle suggests, we find renewal in our reclaiming of objects from the past. 'The best restorations,' writes Mansfield, 'are truly restorative.' Reading this book is equally so."
—Publishers Weekly
"Howard Mansfield celebrates those who prefer to repair and restore things rather than destroy them or throw them away....[There are] gems of perception and wisdom ... His deadly accurate parody of the 6 o'clock TV news, for example, is a brilliant portrait of the shallow, sensationalistic mentality that coarsens the sensibilities of viewers.... Mansfield champions restoration as a way to help repair a troubled world. Recalling the teachings of 16th century Jewish Kabbalist Isaac Luria, Mansfield likens restorations, rightly done and done for the right reasons, to what Luria called Tikkun: mending the broken world by rituals, prayers, and moral actions. Mansfield suggests that we can also apply this spiritual principle to the material world of nature and objects."
—The Christian Science Monitor
"A lyrical and lively examination of the human instinct to preserve what's best in life—a favorite old tool, a cherished building, our sense of community—told mostly through stories of fascinating Americans who have integrated pieces of the past into the present and future."
—Utne Reader
From The Same Ax, Twice:
Back when I went to school, there was an administrator, a vice-president of something or other, who was given to rough-hewn statements, the kind of homilies that were meant to show his populist stuff. He was particularly set on tearing down the wooden houses on campus. They just weren't practical.
We said: They can be repaired. There are wooden houses that have stood for hundreds of years. And all buildings, no matter the material, need repair and renewal.
He said: I know a farmer who says he has had the same ax his whole life—he only changed the handle three times and the head two times. Does he have the same ax?
I did not have a good reply then. But in the twenty years since, talking with preservationists, carpenters, and architects, I have come to realize that so many controversies about saving and rebuilding are to be found in this one old joke. The debates about the restoration of the Parthenon or about the vinyl siding your neighbor has put on his 1789 cape come down to this one question: Do we have the same ax? I would answer with two riddles…
—From the IntroductionOne man at the engine show had built a small scene around a barrel of water. A hired man works a hand pump to fill the barrel, but it never fills. A pump continuously takes away the water, leaving this machine-driven man at his task eternally.
In the Tao there is this story. A learned master, famous throughout the kingdom for his scholarship, was out for a walk in the country with his disciples. They came upon an old man toiling to water his garden. With great effort, but little result, he was hauling jars of water from the well. The learned master told him he should use a shadoof, a long pole weighted at one end to automatically dip a water bucket at the other end like a see-saw. With a shadoof he could irrigate a hundred gardens with less effort than he used now.
The old gardener gave the master an angry look, then laughed. His teacher had taught him that "ingenious contrivances" were the work of a "scheming mind" and impaired "pure simplicity." "When this pure simplicity is impaired, the spirit becomes unsettled, and the unsettled spirit is not the proper residence of the Tao." He knew of this water-moving "contrivance" but he would be "ashamed to use it." The learned master was humbled into silence. The gardener's simplicity, he said later, was vast and complete.
Here in this one Vermont field is a legion of men ready to rush forward to lift water dozens of different ways, with pumps, water hammers, and water ramps.
This inventiveness is our glory and defeat. This is the one trick we know, the way we've created one kind of wealth, created plentitude, but lost fullness.
"Discontent is the first necessity of progress," said Thomas Edison. "Show me a thoroughly satisfied man, and I will show you a failure."
At the antique engine show they played a game with the tractors. Each competitor drove around with a bag on his head. A blind race. They had to drive to a specific spot. No peripheral vision. A fun game, or a damning image if you think about it.