Well, the weather is good but I'm staying in and tying steelhead flies. Trying to stay away from the weeks of back-logged grading I have to do and it is never pleasant on the water when hours of grading has to be done. It has been a nice Thanksgiving but one with an upset stomach and I guess it is karma catching up with me.
First off, I built a dubbing brush machine using the plans from willfishforwork.com and it works great. However, rather than making a "beat up old one" I bought maple and purple heart for the wooden parts of the machine. It works great, but after adding up the costs I would have been better off spending the money to purchase the commercial spinning dub machine because I spent 50% of that cost and made something that is less than 10% as good (can't get the right size channel). Since I finished the machine on Thanksgiving day I understand part of my stomach ache is more than just the normal Thanksgiving feast.
So, it is Saturday night, I'm just farting around tying up some flies and enjoying the heater and the television, when I opened up an email account that I don't normally use (and the one attached to this blog) and was shocked to get a note from Don Ordes. He was cordial and polite. I was shocked that my mindless ranting in an earlier post was read by anyone other than my one subscriber (Thanks Gini). I reread my post and realized that although I was trying to make a case for the "old ways", or what I hoped they were, I actually was criticizing another human being, and not some mindless corporation (although people are now considered corporations, it isn't the same).
Don was nice enough to post a reply on this blog and I recommend that you read it. As this is a two-posts-a-month blog I hadn't read his post until tonight. Yes, I didn't do my research. Yes, I was railing "against the man" and the fact that the world was not working for me the way I thought it should. However, picking on an individual trying to make a living in the world, without ever corresponding with or researching in detail was wrong. I thought I was picking on a corporation, forgetting that it was a one person corporation, and a human being that deserves the same respect that I demand from others.
I should have known that something was karmicly about to bite me in the butt when a day or two after the original post I asked the best tyer and fisherman on the north coast (in my opinion) who also (he and Don, not me) makes a living through fly fishing. I asked if he knew of the technique and he said yes, and told me nice things about it. When I told him that I couldn't find any information about it online except through a video, my local guru stated "more power to him." At that point I realized that I was off base and thought "crap, I can't take back my ranting".
In my younger days I would try to come up with some excuse to explain my actions. Fortunatly, I've grown up. I screwed up. I owe Don Ordes an apology and this is my public apology for posting against his right to distribute his technique in any manner that he sees fit. In fact, he does give it away for free as he freely allows others to teach his technique and has demonstrated it for years. The fact that he gave his first two CD's away for free to all really makes me an blank-head and a dumb-butt. I also apologize for implying that the information on his CD is not worth the price. With a little more research I found several public postings from commercial tyers who are discovering new and better ways to use the technique, as the technique is not static but is evolving. I'm sure I can write several more paragraphs about my stupidity. Okay, I was an ass. I can only hope that my actions fall into the old "act like a donkey once: Okay; do it again and you are a donkey" (please insert "ass" for "donkey").
Don Ordes, I screwed up and was wrong to print my post. Opinions are fine and expressing them are fine, but unresearched accusations are not (I thought they were opinions, but in re-reading I see my former words as accusatory). I did not mean to make it personal, just a rant -- and it came out as a personal attack on you. Please accept my apology for not doing the minimum of research for I would have come up with a much different conclusion -- a positive one. You have contributed good karma to the flyfishing community for almost a decade and nobody ever has yelled at authors for writing fly tying books after showing their techniques at shows , so why should the modern equivalent of CD be a different situation. It isn't.
BTW: I am not receiving any endorsements or products for this post and have not received anything from Don Ordes except a cordial personal email and his blog comment to the post.
As I like to say, I may be wrong. Well, in this case, I was wrong. It has led to embarassment and a stomach ache. Embarassment and stomache aches do go away. I just have to keep my stupidity away because that seems to hang on for a long time.
I can see a lot of wind blown flies heading for my face until I earn back my karma. I'll make sure that I wear eye protection at all times when on the water, and take some pepto for the stomach. I hope that I'll someday meet Don in person and wish him well.
Good luck all,
Shane
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