A friend of mine who is 75 years old was a mason his entire adult life. His father was as well. He told me how sad it is that so much knowledge and skill has be

A friend of mine who is 75 years old was a mason his entire adult life. His father was as well. He told me how sad it is that so much knowledge and skill has been lost. He attributes a lot of that to the change in the management of the way buildings are built. It was not that long ago that master builders oversaw everything, design and construction. That has been fragmented of course. For some kinds of buildings it makes sense (e.g., skyscrapers), but for most it does not. As for masonry itself, it's in decline. When he sees new brick buildings, for example, none of them have bricks that stick out a bit over openings (doors and windows mainly) to ensure that rain water and snow melt drips away from the bricks below. As a result, the structure ages much faster than it would if it were built right. Since then, I've spent a lot of time looking at brick buildings. It's easy to spot old versus new now. I wonder how much skill and knowledge has been lost to the idea that college is the best way to learn things. I also wonder how that could be regained. Most of the people who know such things are dead, or nearly so.