About The Blue Scholar
The Blue Scholar is an exploration of manual labor as being something far more than a great way to make money. It is that, of course. Skilled trade careers consistently provide stable economic conditions for those who inhabit such work. But here’s the kicker:
this is the most talked about yet least interesting part of working a manual labor job.
How about work that recruits and forms my interior world? that orders the physical and social architecture around me? that has the potential to make me a better person by its dutiful practice? that places me in God’s presence such that my work becomes prayer? that will leave a legacy that is overlooked for the same reason it is celebrated: because it is largely hidden work that holds the world together?
“Perhaps most surprisingly, I often find manual work more engaging intellectually.” Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft
Blue collar work is not just the work of bodies: it is the work of whole persons.
And the work has just begun.
About Nate
Nathaniel “Nate” Marshall has a wife of eleven years and two daughters, two cats, four chickens, and is hoping for a couple goats at some point too. He is a Christian worshipping in the Anglican tradition as well as an Oblate of St. Benedict. Nate is a plumber by trade, a licensed journeyman in the American state of Georgia, and is currently working as a full-time plumbing instructor for his employer’s trade academy.
Why subscribe?
It’s a fair question.
For every writer you’ve ever loved, there was a “before time”: before you loved them, before you discovered them, before they wrote the piece that hooked you, before they had the thoughts expressed in the piece, before they had the thoughts that inspired their own thoughts, before they had the mental and moral faculties capable of feeling those thoughts out and making them their own.
That’s where I am. Somewhere in the before time. Wending my way through the thoughts of others and finding that I am thinking them myself and figuring out what to do with them.
I honestly don’t know that I have any thoughts worth reading right this second, but wouldn’t it be nice — should it be granted to me that I do say something worth reading — if we could one day look back together, point, and say, “Ah-ha! There it is. There’s the before time.”
If you subscribe, we just might have that chance. Nothing will be behind a paywall. For those that would like to pay for their subscription, I have nothing to offer but more of my thought-tinkering. As of now, everyone gets access to everything.
