Hi everyone,
Thank you for welcoming me and for all your interesting (and funny) responses! I will happily share the finished thesis with the community; I would be very interested to hear everyone's thoughts (--though that it is still a long ways away!). I am also curious to notice in many responses--here and elsewhere, as well as in my own personal experience--how often an interest in model-making is related to childhood, and how integral the image of the father seems to be in the mind of the model-maker. I received my own first model kit from my father and I have cherished that memory ever since; that is almost certainly why I continue. Sometimes I think of modeling almost like a memory-palace, bringing back memories? I wonder if you all have any thoughts on ship-modeling as a tradition or right of passage passed between fathers and sons—what it might mean, or what to make of it?
Jackson