A shim, Shims, Let me discourse on shims. I have one in the pocket of my corduroy coat as I write this. It has a beautiful knot. It’s rough. Pine? Fir? Spruce?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I found the shim on the part-time\nconstruction job I started a couple of weeks ago. Shims are\neverywhere on the work site. I hear the word shim <\/em>in the air\nall the time. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n What a great word! It’s one of those\nrare words that sounds like what it is. Like whisper<\/em>. Or glue<\/em>.\nDonnybrook<\/em>. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’ve had shims in my life for years,\nbut exclusively for leveling a table or chair to write in a coffee\nshop or dive bar. I used shims in my classrooms, too, to level\nspeaker stands, books shelves, desks, amps, computer monitors,\nstudents. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The shim on a construction site does a\nlot more than level. It neatly and discreetly fills in gaps caused by\nhuman mis-measurement or machine errors. Humans and machines making\nmistakes! And slender, sloped slices of wood fill the gap. Shims\nsolidify, tighten. They wedge. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n This recent shim fired up my\nimagination. I now realize I could have taught a one-period writing\nworkshop around shims, just hand them out to students, slivers be\ndamned! and have them respond to the following prompts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Where do you need a shim in you life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take this shim with you….where will\nyou use it to help something?<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is your shim made of?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Describe a time you acted as a shim for\nsomething or someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Where do we need a shim in American\nlife? What would it be made of?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Write the first sentence of a mystery\nwhere a shim was the murder weapon. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Complete this sentence, A shim a day\nkeeps the _______ \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A shim, Shims, Let me discourse on shims. I have one in the pocket of my corduroy coat as I write this. It has a beautiful knot. It’s rough. Pine? Fir? Spruce? I found the shim on the part-time construction job I started a couple of weeks ago. Shims are everywhere on the work site. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,28],"tags":[6,1017,1016],"class_list":["post-5130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-writing","tag-matt-love","tag-shim-writing","tag-shims","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5130"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5135,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5130\/revisions\/5135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}