From the Better Half of Our House

Here is a post from Maureen's blog about one of our turkeys. It was quite a surprise the first morning. Now it's getting mildly irritating to climb on the roof to "help" Dinner down. Dinner is the name of the turkey as given by Brad.

Any similar turkey tales?

P.S. Trey, How does Dinner compare to turkeys in your area?

The Last Two Saturdays

The last two Saturdays I traveled to Tulare to help continue the friendship building involved in building a wooden boat. Good friend Tim started us on this journey and Greg, Doug and I have been wandering along for a few years. Now that Tim is retired, he decided the boat should be finished in our lifetimes. The boat is a 13'8" Catspaw Dinghy for rowing or sailing. I don't have actual photos yet, but it looks surprisingly like the first picture.


From Pixdaus

The vertical pieces of wood will remain with the boat upon completion, but the horizontal pieces are used to form the vertical ribs and will not remain with the boat. These two Saturdays I helped place the first garboard plank and cut, steam mold and shape the second garboard plank into place for fastening. Garboard what? It is the first plank laid next to the keel, one on each side. This second picture has a few planks attached on each side, but you get the idea.


From the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program website

What the pictures don't show is what it takes to get the cedar planks to fit tight and correctly, or to be "fair." Planks are not just standard sized lumber, but are shaped with a saw, beveled with saw and plane, then steamed and bent--in what seems to be about five different directions. Depending on where the plank is to go, it can be bowed and twisted after being steamed to help bend the wood to lay flat on the ribs.

It was a good day, and certainly beat looking at a computer monitor figuring grades.

My Goal. . .

"My goal is to someday be the person my dog thinks I am." - Author Unknown

More truth in this than most of us want to admit.

From Raandy Pina. Thank you for the reminder of what is important.

What a Surprise?

Let's start with a shot of some homemade catsup. I'm not much a a catsup guy. Mustard is more to my liking, but I will use this.


Last week the Navy announced it was relieving the commander of his duty on the USS Memphis, a nuclear submarine. It seems there has been some cheating by the crew, encouraged by the officers, on tests the crews take to qualify for operating the sub. This is the AP story in the Minneapolis StarTribune.

Reminds me more than a bit of the Atlanta schools test doctoring trouble; this article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution describes that situation.

I am not condoning either choice to cheat, but what would lead normally honest people to do something they usually wouldn't? A few lines and a quote from the Navy article caught my eye and started me thinking.

"They say sailors know how to handle the nuclear technology, but commanders competing with one another to show proficiency have made tests so difficult — and so detached from the skills sailors actually need — that crew members sometimes bend the rules."

'"They've expected more and more paperwork, with higher levels of compliance, and over time those expectations diverged from what people are actually doing," said Brownfield, who is now researching nuclear sustainability as a graduate student at Columbia University. "In the nuclear department, the test became so difficult it really had no bearing on what people were doing on a daily basis."'

So it is not just education that has lost touch with the real world. The tests were "so difficult. . .and so detached" that they had "no bearing on what people were doing on a daily basis." What are we doing? Shouldn't someone throw up a red flag and change the direction we are moving?

But we don't and aren't, and the problems keep multiplying.

A New Idea

Found on "Lloyd's Blog."

Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

New York Times Op Ed By Warren E. Buffet
August 14, 2011
"…Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot.…"

Here is the entire story in the NY Times.

Knife Project, Part 2

In March I started this knife project to refurbish a knife I received from my father. It's a Robeson Shuredge #20 he got from an uncle. This is the beginning and what I wrote in March.

I bored out some olive and walnut wood I had to make the rough handle and glued it to the knife tang. This is the result of that.



I then cut away the wood and roughed out the handle with a bandsaw.






I don't have any pictures yet, but I have started filing with a rasp and file to further refine the shape of the handle. I hope to find a bench sander to further shape the handle or I will use a belt sander I have.

If you look closely there is a hole towards the end of the handle. I measured and drilled out the wood to match a hole in the tang. I hope to place a brass rivet through the hole to anchor the handle more to the tang. I'm curious if I really need the brass. Could I use a contrasting dowel of walnut? What are your thoughts?

I just finished this book, Growing a Farmer by Kurt Timmermeister. In typical fashion I read between work, fun and other time constraints. It didn't help that I left the book at home when I traveled North for a week. In the end it was one of those books that was always gnawing at brain cells in the back of my mind.

From the first I'll say I liked the book enormously. I liked the subject which was the 20 year journey of a man from a pastry chef to a restaurant owner to a landowner to a farmer, dairyman, once a week food preparer and host for family style cookhouse dinners. He doesn't shy from the mud and muck of being a farmer, nor the mistakes he made. But they are presented in a matter-of-fact way without preachiness.

Timmermeister is where he is because of choices he made and makes, and by the skills he learned along the way. He writes about how his failures shaped where the farm is today. Subjects such as the move from producing raw milk to cheese making are laid out. He explains what happens along the path to making cheese in a way that allows the reader to get most or all of the picture. Timmermeister further explains that this works for him and may not for others. Everyone has to find their own journey and farm in their own way.

More than anything the tone of "This is where I started and here is where I am, it works for me, but you need to find you own way," without judging is what I liked. Timmermeister would plant ideas in my head that I would ruminate about for days as his three dairy cows would their feed. I was prompted to think, "If it were me, what would I do?" Good books will do that.

I would recommend this to anyone considering going into small scale farming, people wanting to get "back to the land," or anyone that eats.

Another New Year Begins

Today starts another school year, or more precisely the students begin their new year today. The staff has been working most of the summer and has been back at school since Monday. After all the years of starting in early August it still seems strange to be beginning this early.

For me it will be a year to remember. Our last child is starting their last year of mandated public education. The pictures that started with one little boy and Dad off for the first day of school, grew to four and Dad, including the year there was a Garver child at each and all of the schools in town, has dwindled to one sophisticated looking young lady and a man trying to imitate Santa Claus. Next year I will be by myself again.

This year begins without another friend that death has claimed. A friend and a great teacher that thought of children and what was best for them. As a student and later as a colleague he always made me want to be better. Vaya con Dios, Chuy.

It seems apparent at this time that this year could be a humbling year also. I am teaching five different classes this year. One I have taught for many years, three I am teaching for only the second time and one I taught decades ago. I haven't spent as much time preparing as I should have, but I wonder how much could I have spent given this schedule. In the back of my mind I was wondering if the the hammer of change would fall as it did last year when I was asked to change all my classes three days before school started. Change seems to be the theme these last few years and there have been many. Much more will come.

Education is changing and I question why and if the changes are helping. As I looked at the staff as we were being told our test scores from last year rose again, I pondered what was the true cause of the higher scores. Are we working harder, are the students buying into the concepts and premises of testing more, are each of the new programs helping? Probably a combination of all of the above. But it could also be just students being better test takers. And are the students being educated in a way that will help them later in life? I had a conversation with one of our sons this summer while working. He graduated 7th in his class of about 200 and just completed his first year of college. He was critical of the education he received and the biggest point was that thinking outside the box was not encouraged. Following the interpretations as presented was the norm. He continued by saying reasoning and adapting to new situations was not very acceptable, but that is what even he can see will help him in life. I'm not trying to beat the "change the testing" drum, but I wonder if the pendulum is even slowing down yet?

Whatever happens will happen. The new procedures laid out for us will be implemented and some will fade by the end of the year from system overload. An older teacher drew a cartoon of a travel trailer with a conveyor moving stuff into the trailer. He reminded us that for everything new started, something old must be stopped. Not everyone has heard the concept or agrees.

Today I with great hope start a new year and a new segment of my life. I expect to not "use my coaching voice" to my leaders in a public meeting. I am expecting to enjoy being with students. They are the reason I became a teacher.