It was dark and rainy, and the RIT campus threatened to make my head spin when I showed up clutching my little print-out map on Thursday, March 26. I was running late, and scooted my Mary Janes across the football field length of a parking lot before turning to two kind souls for help to find Webb Auditorium, where that night's Caroline Werner Gannett Project lecture was about to take place.

Turns out, I was right on time, and it was a full house for Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair's talk "The Happy Mutant's Guide to the Modern Maker Movement." Frauenfelder and Sinclair run the magazines Make and Create, which stemmed from, among other things, a zine they started in the late 80's called bOING bOING.

The couple really got into the making and creating gig after living on a tiny island south of Hawaii with their two daughters. The family found that they enjoyed and thrived off the whole "slow living" movement: there was a jury-rigged coconut-peeler, homemade yogurt and pasta, and handmade books their daughters made for entertainment. It sounds pretty far-fetched and idealistic to some of us, who live life in the fast lane, and don't stop to think about our relationship with all the stuff surrounding us.

But the idea of slowing down and exploring that hands-on relationship is appealing, even to me, the girl who throws her hands in the air when something breaks, and reaches out (I'll admit it) to the nearest man for help.

They talked about salvaging components of, well, just about anything: broken TVs, fabric, stuff their friend Mr. Jalopy finds at junk shops and rummage sales. And they use it to make new, useful, and different items.

I looked around the auditorium at what mostly seemed like RIT students. I bet most of them had the wherewithal to come up with project like these on their own, if they wanted. Probably many of them had.

Hmmm. Maybe it's time I learn to sew.