Guzzi Again

Surly sent me a link to a write up on this beautiful Moto Guzzi. This thing is slicker than snot on a doorknob and ain't but one thing slicker than that. Not sure why I've got the Jones as bad as I do for one of these but I sure do. The Moto Guzzi Museum looks like it would be a nice destination if a guy was touring Italy in the Lake Como region. If I ever go back, I'm heading up that way - been working on my Italian just in case.

And if I buy that Guzzi, I'm going to get me a pair of these Gasolina boots. They might be a little overkill riding around on a 125 Rapido but at only $189.00, they're a hell of a deal.

I really need to get busy and get something finished up for the street. It's time to scratch that motorcycle itch.

Took Thursday off to man the pumps, supposed to rain today and tomorrow as well. Compared to what those poor people in the south have gone through, a little water in the basement is nothing more than a little inconvenience. My heart goes out to them. I can't imagine what it would be like to lose everything. While that would be bad enough, the loss of life that has accompanied the storms is real the pisser.

The last time there was a tornado outbreak like this was in 1974. I remember that one. It destroyed much of Monticello, Indiana, including the Redman Lodge where we used to go every summer for the Putt/Bohannon reunion. My grandmother lived only about six blocks from there. Fortunately, she and the rest of my relatives were spared any real damage. My cousin in Brandenburg, Kentucky wasn't so fortunate. She was killed when that tornado destroyed her beauty shop and much of the downtown area. Mother Nature can be a cruel mistress.

Again, my heart goes out to them.

Aerator

Trusses!

Hot Damn!

The Not Quite

Royal Wedding

Making good progress on the aerator job. I got the dethatcher hung on the back of it and it goes up and down pretty much like I planned it. As they used to say on the A Team: "I love it when a plan comes together". We fixed a few other things this week, like always. A couple more broken desks in that endless parade, a tamper for the baseball team, and an old Jon boat I welded up during Open Shop. Hoping to get started on a couple of my own things soon while the boys are steppin' and fetchin' trying to get some of their required work done.

The barn is back in the schedule for the Building Trades class. They got a couple of the trusses set yesterday in between the raindrops. The weather's been terrible for outside construction projects and we've got more rain forecast for today. If it keeps up, I'm going to be manning the pumps down the basement. Installing the sump pump is definitely on the "to do" list for this summer. Only had water down there twice before but that's about three times too many. I've got the pump and the sump, just haven't been real eager to bust a hole in the basement floor. With these old houses, you never know what you're going to run into.

I talked to one of the IT people on embedding a couple of instructional videos on Moodle. It looks like all of us here will be required to put our lessons on Moodle next year. If I'm going to be forced to do that, I'd like it to be somewhat useful. Since the majority of our time is spent welding, I'm not sure of the value of putting up something like "welding a tee joint in the vertical position with an E-6011 electrode" is going to be. If the kid is too sick to come to school, not much point in putting welding assignments up for him to do at home. Plus, I'd rather his dad wasn't doing the welding for him at home, if he actually had access to a machine. I was talking to the Building Trades Instructor at lunch and he's kind of at a loss also as to what he's going to do. The trouble with this one size fits all approach to education is that it usually never fits anyone well. Hopefully, someone, somewhere, can show me the light. The IT guy is supposed to get back to me and I can get started on it over summer vacation. I'm sure it won't be the top priority but I just want "My Man Mitch" to know that I actually do school things on my own time.

So there's the latest. Good news on the project front, maybe bad news on the water front, and Moodle has become my new sword of Damoclese. And in this case, it really could be worse, it could be raining.

Better Days Are Coming

Magnolia Blossom

Two of my magnolia trees are of age to blossom out. The one was really pretty this year. I did have another tree get it's first blossom this year. It should be a real pretty tree in the next couple of years. I've got 5 or 6 of them planted, all different varieties. The peach and apple trees will be blooming next. They're always a treat. I'm a big fan of trees and if you're going to have trees, they might as well do something productive, besides the obvious things of shade and the whole respiration process they do so well. In fact, I was wondering the other day while mowing how many trees I would have to have to be carbon neutral as far as the lawn mower goes? Not that I really give a hoot about being carbon neutral. I'm more interested in having a windbreak, shade, beauty and fruit. Plus I'm just naturally cheap. Most things that conserve energy also conserve dollars. The CO2 + trees = Oxygen thing is just a bonus. I'm still curious though.

Looks like more rain in the forecast the next couple of days. Hopefully it will ease up so I can start working up the garden. I've got lots of things planned for this summer outside and I'd like to get going on a few of them. I've got lots to do, period, but it's always that way. Chickens will be here soon, so I need to get that going. I picked up the stuff to wire up the apple grinder, so I can finish that up. I've got a couple of photography projects I want to do. Now that my cold has about run it's course and the chest thing is healing up, maybe the nice weather will get me going.

I got a good start on the aerator/dethatcher project yesterday. I'll start tacking things together today. I should be at the point I'll know for sure if my engineering efforts are going to pan out by tomorrow at the latest. If things look good, it'll be done by the end of the week or first of next week. Of course every time I say that, something else shows up - sort of like this project did - and my schedule goes all to hell. That's OK, though. Better days are coming.

Busy Week, Again

It seems like all of them have been pretty busy lately. I had something going on every night - gym on Monday, Open Shop on Tuesday, retirement seminar on Wednesday, meeting with the superintendent and gym on Thursday. All that on top of a cold I've been nursing for the last week. Glad I've got today off. The retirement seminar was put on by the state pension group. I picked up on a couple of new things plus they recommend having a face to face meeting two years prior to retirement. That's me - I think I can swing getting out a few years early. The way things are going and the way my mental health is responding, I probably should, whether I can afford it or not. I'm not exactly the most positive of employees any more. That's liable to get worse on Monday night after the school board meets. Depending on what the superintendent's recommendation is, I might lose a couple of days off my contract. I understand the reasoning for it but they haven't been giving us much to be happy about lately.

The job itself has been going well, however. We fixed and patched a few things this week and because the weather has been so crappy, the boys haven't gone into full-blown laziness yet. The fact that progress reports came out this week probably helped as well. We cut an earring/piercing thing off a young lady. It wasn't in the lobe of the ear but in the part right in front of the ear canal. First one of those I've done. We put some pieces of channel on the side of a trailer - kind of like stake pockets but for tie-downs. One of the maintenance guys brought in an aerator and a dethatcher that he wants us to marry. I spent a little time on the mechanics seat with my coffee cup staring at it and I think I've got it figured out. It needs to be adjustable so he can use either the aerator or the dethatcher independently of each other. We'll start on that Monday. I sharpened up a big Forstner bit for the guy in the woodshop. Nothing too scientific, just a little judicious filing. The boys finished up the cart for the new TIG welder except we forgot to make provisions for hanging the cables up. No biggy, but that's not like me to forget something like that. Too much on my mind right now. I took a couple of pictures of the projects but for some reason the computer won't read the camera card this morning. A photo of a piece of 5" channel welded to the side of an old rusty trailer isn't that glamorous anyway.

The weather today looks like 40's and rain so I won't get much done outside but I've got plenty to keep me busy inside. Tomorrow looks better. I need to mow, of course I need to fix the mower first. I got the front yard cut the other day and when I went to get the thing started to cut the back, I managed to burn the starter out of it. It's eight years old and this is only the second thing that has gone wrong that I had to spend any money on so I guess that's pretty good, actually.

Have a good Easter and enjoy some time with family and friends.

Educational Philosophy, Part 2

I saw this quote at Cay Broendum's blog:

I kissed my first girl and smoked my first cigarette on the same day.

I haven't had time for tobacco since.

-Arturo Toscanini

How you going to argue with logic like that?

I wish it were possible to go back in time and see what made men like Toscanini, Elbert Hubbard, Glenn Curtis, Thomas Edison, and countless other creative people tick. What kind of education did they receive? What kind of driving force was behind Buckminster Fuller? He didn't worry about the ISTEP test or the SAT. What drove George Washington Carver or Luther Burbank to succeed? Is there greatness in all of us? Did they succeed in spite of their education or because of it? Bill Gates is spreading a lot of money around to improve education but is money the answer?

There have always been great men and women, I suppose. Many come from terrible circumstances but rise above it and others have it on a silver platter and end up in the gutter. My buddy Kevin and I were talking after school the other day rehashing our Italy trip and talking about wanting to learn more about some of the people and places we came across. I mentioned that schools leave so much out and he responded with words to the effect that there's just so much out there and we're the exceptions in that we're always hungry for more. Three out of the four of us who traveled together have been burning through books related to our trip since we came home. I'm not sure about the fourth because she's in Spain learning Spanish and traveling all over learning more.

Maybe that "everything is interesting" idea is the answer. There's very little I don't find interesting and certainly those I traveled with think the same way. We all have different interests, but yet we all are interested in the same things, if that makes any sense. I'm really disheartened by what's occurring now in mainstream education. However, I'm encouraged by some of the alternatives that are coming along. If I wasn't such an old fart. I'd seriously consider starting a charter school. For a dollar a year, I'll be able to rent a space from my school corporation and they'll have to maintain it once all the new laws get passed. I can see it now - like a Montessori school only with power tools. "Everything is interesting and we can build anything." I'm thinking those Brightworks guys are on to something.

Educational Philosophy

Traveling Pirate posted a comment the other day about education in Finland. Seems they still value vocational education highly. Actually, they seem to value education in general quite highly. I also received an e-mail from the Chicago Tinkering School the next day. And as these things often go, it had a link to Brightworks, a new school opening in San Francisco. As this was the first I had heard of Brightworks, I clicked on the link and checked it out. On the bottom of their home page are two statements that certainly fit in with my educational philosophy: everything is interesting, we can build anything.

Those two statements seem to be a great foundation on which to build a school. Everything is interesting - somethings are just more interesting than others. And of course our interests are colored by our experiences and how we're introduced to a subject. I've noticed over the years that many high school kids are very close-minded. If it's not exactly what they're interested in on that day, it really doesn't matter what you do, they don't want to hear about it. They limit their learning experiences and end up graduating high school knowing very little about anything.

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you'll know why I identify with the "we can build anything" statement. Because we can. And have. The State of Indiana is currently busy writing laws that are designed to improve public education. The reality is that they are dismantling public education. Instead of focusing legislative reform on removing the impediments to learning, they have decided that it's the union's fault that kids aren't learning. Rather than me rehashing the stupidity of what's going on, let's take a moment and present another scenario.

The little tykes go off to school and they are just tickled to death. They do the original cut and paste, they draw, they sing songs, they do the ABC's, and they learn because everything is interesting. As they age and work through the grades, they continue to be exposed to anything that is interesting. That should be easy, everything is interesting. They also continue to build things. They go from gluing cotton ball clouds on construction paper to woodworking, metalworking, photography, bookbinding, leatherworking, gardening, fishing, hiking, you name it -just keep throwing it at them so they are exposed to a variety of stimuli and they are using their developing skills to build things. Any thing. When they graduate from high school they will have been exposed to all kinds of things by pursuing what interested them and what interested their teachers. They will have developed the skills to build all types of things because they built all types of things. They will have used their math concepts, learned some electronics, woodworking, welding, machining, etc., and since they didn't learn these skills and concepts in isolation, they can apply them wherever they fit or as need arises.

The damned concept is so simple, anyone should be able to grasp it. When you're out fishing, you don't have to talk about fish. When you're out hiking, you can talk about geology but you don't have to. Everything is interesting. So let's discuss it. And let's build something to go along with it. Let's build lots and lots of things. Everything is interesting. If you can build anything, you have to know about everything. Really simple. Done properly, it could go a long way to mitigate the effects of poverty, race and other impediments to educational success.

I'm really glad to see there is some movement in the right direction. I'm not sure if Brightworks will be the answer but it's definitely going in the right direction. Finland has been kicking our ass for awhile now and instead of squaring off against them and seeing what we can do to get on top, we look at the thing least likely to make it better and go with that.

So the answers to improving education are out there, it just requires some decent leadership to implement. The state legislature is absolutely clueless as to what they're doing., so they're no help. Instead, just keep the level of interest up and the kids will damn near teach themselves. Blow up all the computers in the buildings unless they are being used as a tool such as part of a CNC milling program. Get the kids outside as much as possible. And put some creative people in charge. People that are interested in everything and can build anything. I know they're out there. Hell, that describes most of my friends and family.

Miss Lube Rack

Photo From Here:

Those dudes from the '50's had it goin' on.

The Wisdom of the Hands blog had the following:

Indicating the rich, warm patina of a tremendous plank table in his kitchen, he (Odate) mentioned the idea of the “user’s finish”—the fact that no piece is really complete until, 50, 100, or 300 years down the road, the thousands of users’ hands handling a piece have given it the true finish, one that the maker could not give when the piece was assembled. It speaks of the present-day craftsman imbuing his or her work with their intention and sense of social responsibility, and projecting that skill and care towards the future, where further generations will be able to feel the woodworker’s spirit with them still.

While the quote is talking about woodworking, the same thing happens with metal. Brass and copper develop a nice patina but where it is constantly being touched it shines up and the sharp corners become nicely rounded. That's when it develops the real beauty. Kinda like Miss Lube Rack - nicely rounded. We all need to feed the creative beast within. As Mr. Stowe says: make, fix and create.

The Golden Gloves tourney is over so I'll have a little more time to work on things now. Hoping to get after a couple of the motorcycle projects real soon. The chest/back thing is still giving me some grief but I could ride a motorcycle. I've been longing to get back on a bicycle now that the weather's turning nice and the gas prices have gone up. One way or the other, I need to be commuting on two wheels.