"I do think it is not a bad thing to have someone out there, standing firm and taking the heat, if necessary."
GeorgeP:
If I understand YOU correctly, this may be the thing that upsets me most, certainly about Tom MacWood. Are you implying that anyone thinks he's out there standing firm and taking heat?? Taking heat from whom? You must mean only taking heat from me for not using the very thing he's good at by getting much more involved in the entire process than he has or does.
"It may well be that if Tom M were to "get involved" with a restoration, it might not only change his perspective, it might also give ammunition to those who oppose his pointed criticism. Would it not be difficult to objectively evaluate changes in some noted classic course, if one were to have taken part in a "restoration" of the OSU Scarlet course and it did not go as well as hoped?"
George, I can scarcely believe you're saying that! Change his perspective, give ammunition to those who oppose his pointed criticism??? And would that make it difficult to evaluate changes in some noted classic course??--and lastly if one were to have taken part in a restoration of a course and it didn't go as well as hoped??
My God, if anyone wants to really get something done, they have to get involved in all phases and sometimes that involves taking a ton of heat for long periods of time and also taking the risk that things might not turn out as well as you hoped for!
That's just life! Sometimes you have to take some knocks to get something good accomplished. When I look back at all the things that happened to me in the last five years of our restoration and that of some others
I wonder if it was all really worth it--but I believe it was.
Restoration, good and great restorations to me is an approximately 3-4 step process of approximately co-equal importance;
1. Really good research that contributes mightily to a good restoration plan.
2. Seeing that a good restoration plan gets done accurately reflecting that research---usually within committees where there's a ton of heat and strain anyway a good restoration architect and those who are on board with him take a lot of heat.
3. Presenting that good restoration plan to your entire membership is where the real heat comes. This starts out always as an adverserial confrontation and you have to spend a ton of time and energy winning them over with logic, facts, experience etc. This ain't easy and in some clubs friends are lost and relationships hurt in here.
4. Once it's approved taking the time and effort to make sure that good plan gets done correctly. There're a ton of details, timing, analysis in this part.
If you're lucky most of what you wanted and hoped for gets on the ground but it's never everything you wanted and hoped for. Are you really saying not getting everything you hoped for compromises one's ability to be critical of architecture and restorations in the future? That, my friend, is precisely the reason we can all learn from the mistakes of those that went before us because they can collaborate with us and tell us what they did right, what they did wrong and what they would've done differently.
That's the most valuable of all and no one could do that if they didn't get involved in all of it and take some heat and just kept trying to do the best they could.
Tom MacWood seems to me to be stuck in that first step both actually and intellectually. It's a step he's very good at, but he'd be even better at it, in my opinion, if he'd get involved in the other steps and he'd be a whole lot more effective too with the very thing he must be ultimately trying to do, preserve and restore great old architecture. That's what I'm trying to do.
If this website and the best contributors to it really do think the best thing they could ever do is to just sit on their computers wherever they are and crow critically about others who are trying to get the right things done, the things they themselves believe in, then I've completely misjudged the use and potential of this website.
If some on this site think they should just sit on here and criticize because if they actually got out there and into those 3-4 steps and got their lilly white gloves dirty and compromised their credibilty because of that then I really have miscalculated this place and see no real constructive purpose to be here and fight for the things I care about which are really good restorations of the great architecture still out there or that which can be brought back again.