New Adventure Surfacing

Tomorrow evening marks the start of my PADI Dive Master training.  I've been looking forward to this for a few months now; the holidays and, well let's get real- cold water! - have made for a difficult schedule for the three of us who will go through the program.  It's a great deal of classroom work, a great deal of swimming, even more training over fundamental diving skills, but, ultimately, a great deal of fun! 

When I started diving, I realized an opportunity for learning a new set of skills, but I also found something that I physically enjoy doing.  Being underwater and neutrally bouyant is a great feeling.  I feel my body and how it reacts to the simple, calm movements that propel me through water that, as I descend, presses against every inch of my suit and mask.  I breathe slowly, equalize my ears, and allow my body to adjust to the pressure. 

I free fall, arms spread, and watch my depth on my computer as I drift down.  I feel the thermocline.  The water temperature drops suddenly as if I'd just fallen through a transparent layer of time.  The water inside my wetsuit warms; my hands feel the cold and the bubbles from my regulator brush coldly by my face.  I notice a bit more water in my mask now and I lift my head, push the top of my mask , and blow a bit of air through my nose clearing it all. 

I've enjoyed just about every type of diving that I've done so far.  I say just about every type because I know when the opportunity comes when I'll get to dive in the ocean, it will take all of my strength to get back into some of the lakes and "low-vis" places I have dived.  When my youngest son certified in open water, we dove in a lake where it was a challenge reading a gauge six inches from my face!  I imagine with that experience I should truly be amazed to dive on a reef which has 100-200 feet of visibility! 

I'm reaching a point also where my diving can start to pay me back.  As a divemaster I can help an instructor train others and make a bit of money for my work.  But the experiences of each dive are a type of compensation for me.  The silent world is a beautiful place. 

Building Relations

Rocky Z.  A new face to me, and yet another example of how the world grows smaller.  Let's see if we can follow the seven-degrees of Kevin Bacon... my youngest daughter meets a new girl during summer volleyball camp and they become good friends...her mother is the new high school principal; her father a middle school science teacher and wrestling coach...we all become acquainted during volleyball season and help each other shuttling the girls to practices and tournaments...one day I'm talking about my chair project and her dad says "I've got a brother who does upholstery"...tonight I finalize the look and design of the leather cushions for my Morris chair with Rocky, her dad's brother.  Hey, that was less than seven, and we didn't even need Kevin Bacon!

Yup...an end in sight with my chair.  I was very much hoping to have the chair done, in the house, and me sitting in it by this coming Sunday.  Looks like that might be happening.  But in gaining a chair, we're losing one to my youngest son who's soon to be branching out on his own.  He's moving in to a house with my son-i-law's brother.  They've both done a great deal of work on a house that still needs some tender loving care, but these are the two who have the patience to do exactly that.  I'm pride of the fact that my son has done the work he has; it's just a bit sad that he hasn't asked my advice or help as much as I hoped he would.  But that's what a young man who's maturing will do; he'll take things into his own hands and get things done.

I was very much the same way; I understand it.  I'm proud of him, but can he make a chair?

The Wheat Sirens

Maybe one of the gifts of age is the experience of Kansas weather. Within the last week we've seen nearly a ninety-degree shift in temperature.  The alluring song of "early Spring" catches the ears of even the most stalwart...yes, over the past couple of days I, too,  ran, in running shorts, my "nice weather" route with Chloe (whose fur is still exceptionally thick!) and brushed away in my mind the only frequent cool gusts of the wind blowing over the lingering ice on the lake.

I know my students are hearing the song, and they're pulled completely off course.  Young men with tank tops and flip-flops hovering under last year's saggy shorts.  Young women, hoping to jump start their tans, splayed out on the benches outside the student union, their dance shorts and rolled-up t-shirts looking far too fragile with the dust-covered piles of leftover snow hidden by the sun's glare. 

Do we collapse so easily to such a sweet song whose singer is yet weeks away?  Spring is not even selling tickets yet.  I know what's going to happen, and we're all guilty of tempting the Winter fates.  February is an enigmatic month.  It's the month where we feel winter should just leave and spring should jubilantly show up (ah, some of the trees are beginning to show their buds!) with all of its grace and greenery. 

But I've gained wisdom.  I know what the Farmer's Almanac is forecasting about more snow.  I'm not rearranging my closet and filling it with warm-weather clothes just yet.  There's a blue sheen to the sunsets still...we need no groundhog in this state to remind us to keep our coats handy!

The Best Teaching We Do

I had a student come to my office today who, already in the fifth week of classes, was considering dropping my class along with his other classes and leaving school to find some work and make some money.  It's not the first time a student has come to do this in my years of teaching; I'm sure it will happen in the future as well.  I don't blame them.  The economy is tough and school is expensive; they feel that school just didn't provide them with what they wanted, but the prospect of an inopportune minimum wage job for this person over the next few years just makes me feel ill.  I see many former students (who left college early to find a job) at the superstores and food chains who are always friendly when they remember me, but I feel as though in some way I let them down. 

It's always difficult initiating the conversation with someone whose mind is pretty well made up, but I always try to explain that the best course of action may indeed be the one that seems the longest way around.  That's not what they want to hear.  They want to know that they're not right for school; that they're decision is the right one and things will eventually work out.  Of course, I often tell them of the students that I've had return again after having been out or school three or four years because they aren't improving their lot and finding success, but at this point they're often settled on self-apathy. 

If I could enunciate to these students how I truly feel in these moments, it would be something much like this:

“I have said that a high ideal is essential to a completely successful life. But in the realization of our aim it is quite necessary to form an ideal commensurate with our abilities. Many a man has failed in his life-work because his notions of what he ought to do were marvelously beyond his power of execution. Such a man forms so high a conception of what he would like to accomplish that he has no heart to attempt anything in earnest. . . This intense burning desire on the part of common people to become millionaires, or merchant princes, or railroad kings, or something beyond their powers and opportunities has filled our American communities with hundreds of restless, discontented, useless men.
One of the most valuable lessons for the young to learn is that it takes a great man to accomplish a great undertaking, and that both are necessarily few in one generation. If this lesson were learned and heeded half the heartache of our mature years might be avoided. Effort, and high resolve, and noble purpose are excellent qualities of character; but they can never enable a man to lift himself by the boot-straps nor accomplish the unattainable. It is at once the weakness and greatness of some to conceive what they attempt to do of so high a degree of excellence that no human power can reach it. The natural effect of this is a restless desire to accomplish something far beyond what is ordinarily attained even by surpassing talent. When such a desire has taken possession of the heart, the usual achievements of men seem poor indeed. With their broad views and far-sighted stretch of thought, it seems trivial to come down to the common affairs of every-day life. It is to them a small thing to do good and get good in the plain old common-sense way. J. Clinton Ransom, The Successful Man, 1886

Read more: http://artofmanliness.com/2009/07/20/modern-neurasthenia-curing-your-restlessness/#ixzz1EBNDdl3x

Brett McKay's Art of Manliness site is not so much a "man cave," steroid-pumping, testosterone site as it is an emphasis on what most of us, especially men, should remember about self-awareness.  Brett and his wife touch on some very interesting questions we all ought to be asking ourselves - especially now as our technology seeks to de-personalize us and make us all "friends."  This might be as political as I'll ever get in this blog, but my hope is that I live the above quote and that I'm teaching my children to do the same.  

My question to the student who's considering dropping is typically this:  What if you simply came to one more class?  Just gave it one more shot?  Would there be anything to lose in doing so?  I want them to discover that their ability may simply be to focus on finding the discipline to get up and go to class.  I've met very few students who were incapable of thinking about the work; they simplly couldn't focus on figuring out how to complete it.  In most cases these young people are wandering, looking for a quick answer when they need to realize that each moment provides an illuminating lesson. 

I often joke that I'm compulsively obsessive when it comes to projects and ideas I get in my head, but I am constantly driven to simply find success (not equivalent to money or accolades although the dollars do come in handy) in the accomplishment of the task.  For me it's the completion of a learning cycle; it connects and completes prior knowledge and reconnects me to lessons learned when I was much younger.  Without this I do feel restless.  

What's the best teaching I can do?  Define the spirit of restlessness to my students. 

2:07 a.m.

Today is my first-daughter's birthday.  She's a young woman now; she's married to an intelligent, caring young man who would do anything for her and she for him.  She manages a store and a dozen or so employees, encouraging them to be quick-thinking, customer-first salespeople.  And she's won awards for the success that her team and their store have brought the company. 

Twenty four years ago, early in the morning, I was the first one to hold her as she entered this world.  Her mother had cared well for her for the previous nine months, but for the first time, on that morning, I felt my daughter breathe.  She fit neatly in my two hands as my thumb and forefinger supported her head sprouting already a few tufts of hair.  I counted her fingers and toes, and I saw her skin grow pink as oxygen filled her lungs and spread rapidly throughout her body.  Her arms and legs, new toys to her, pushed and kicked at the air, recognizing that she was no longer held as one with her mother. 

I've been blessed to have been able to repeat that same kind of morning with each of my children.  Each with his and her own nuance of cry and kick, but the morning when our first child was born is locked in a separate room of my memory.  It's the room where both my wife and I go when our children celebrate a "birthday." For us it's the moment when we looked at each other that very early morning and held "our" child.  Each of our kids have brought us closer to each other, but that morning we learned that love was something that we could truly hold. 

My Valentine

My Valentine has been my best companion for twenty-five years!

We met on a Sunday...in church...she an angel...I, a bit of a devil, and I still don't like beingapart from her if I can help it.

Even in the badlands we get along pretty well.  

Let's get our bikes tuned up, dear, we've got miles of great riding ahead!

Taming DustDevils and Idle Hands

Okay...I've missed a day or two.  I never signed a contract on this blog; just a commitment to myself to see my way to 50 by commenting on the odd thoughts and ditties that cross my mind on any given day. I could say the devil made me miss, but that would be inaccurate.  I just don't live on the computer.  Mea culpa!

But I've not been idle.  Idle hands make the devil's work, but I've kept myself busy these past few days. (Devils may be a theme tonight!)  My chair project is now three leather cushions short of being complete.

I put my second coat of stain/finish on last night after my daughter's bowling match, and this morning I applied a first coat of carnuba wax.  When I wiped it down after twenty minutes, the shine began to appear.  I'll put another coat on tomorrow and buff it well with a sheepskin pad.  It's elbow grease that finally makes wood look good. 

Here's the left arm showing the quartersawn look of the oak.  I call this the "grandchildren seat." I don't have any, yet, but when I do these arms will be perfect for little behinds to sit on and look through books.  I told my son and his girlfriend that it could easily hold six little behinds - she said that sounded good to her.  (I wish you could have seen the look on my son's face!)  I'll be satisfied to wait and see what begins to unfold in that later chapter of life...but I'll be ready.

Of course we were out of school on Wednesday this past week, and I received the scarf from my sister.  This picture doesn't do it the right justice.  It's a beautiful scarf with smaller grey heather flecks throughout. 

What's most amazing about wool is how it holds the air within its fibers.  This is not a tightly woven scarf like a melton or merino; this stretches some, and in doing so the small pockets of air warm from one's body and provide the heat.  When I wore it Thursday, a cold wind (-13 degrees air temp-devilishly cold) didn't penetrate to my neck.  Good wool and good technique are the keys to a great scarf.  Thanks, again, Boppy!

Today found me with a little time in the shop and a couple of pen kits.  I had ordered some materials to make a friend a pen he was wanting, so I (as is typical) ordered a couple of redundant kits.  Since my oldest daughter's birthday is coming up, I figured she needed a small pre-birthday gift.

Like my mother she's a nut for black and white decor.  I made her one similar to this one.  This one's for Scott, a great musician and good friend.  I love working on the lathe with this material.  It looks like marble, but it's actually just a plastic resin.  It turns well, makes a nice finish, and is very, very durable.  But I don't like being too far away from wood.  I had been wanting to make myself a pen for carrying around in my coat, so I came up with this one.

The wood on this one is Osage Orange; otherwise known to Kansans as Hedge.  A hard, knotty, and tough wood that will turn a deep, golden orange after a few weeks of handling and journal writing.  Penmaking is the devil in me; I can never have enough neat looking pens. 

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And what a way to end the weekend - watching my son's team, the Newman Jets, overcome an eighteen-point halftime deficit to defeat the number one team in their conference by three points!  Talk about taming the dustdevil! With a minute sixteen left, down by five points, the team found a way to win against a very talented team.  But I would have to point out that every team they've played has been talented.  I've just become too accustomed to watching our team to realize that they, too, have great talent and, even more so, a great sense of being a cohesive team.  Having overcome injuries to a couple of key players, they are finding a winning momentum.  A father (with a devilish smile on his face) can only be proud!

Happines...Is a Warm Scarf

Conjugate the verb to knit.  I knit.  I knitted.  I have knitted.  You knit.  You knitted.  You have knitted. He knits...well, the rest is redundant.  To knit: a regular verb, but it's a flexible word.  When I broke my collar bone in seventh grade, the doctor did not have to set it; he said it would "knit" itself.  My mother is a knitter as well as my aunt.  It was an odd image in my seventh-grade mind that my bones were performing the same activity as my mother and aunt.  Watching them knit was always like imagining them as spiders...nice spiders who would regularly pull a length of yarn from a skein nestled in a bag covered in a tapestry print that opened like a canvas deck chair, point two sticks at each other, and magically produce a length of sock, scarf, or sweater with the twist of fingers in a coordinated, magical sign language. 

The language of knitting is simple:  knit and purl, cast on and cast off.  With these basic incantations the knitter spells the hands into movement.  I've never known a knitter to watch his or her hands while involved in the work of knitting.  My mother knitted while watching soap operas; my aunt would knit while talking to others.  My sister knits to relax. 

When children are born in our family, or when people marry into the family, they receive a knitted Christmas sock made by my aunt.  Each sock is unique, and each has the owner's name knitted clearly around the sock's top.  We are a well-knitted family; bones that have cracked, knit, healed, become stronger.  My sock, now nearly fifty years old, has held pounds of toys, candy, fruit, and its single strand of yarn has held up all this time.

So when my sister, who also knits like a possessed woman in a fairy tale, wonders why I ask her for a hand-knitted scarf for my birthday, I tell her I'd simply like a scarf.  What she doesn't know is that each time I wrap that around my neck and tuck my ears and nose in the wool, I feel that each strand will continue to hold me up, that the knitting has truly healed and made the bond stronger. 

One For The Boys

I've always been a fan of the underdog.  There's just something about overcoming the Goliath that stands in ones path that's inspiring.  Perhaps it's due to the fact that, while growing up with classes both ahead and behind mine that won most of the time, my friends and I weren't so lucky with coming out ahead.  But we won, eventually; we stayed together as a class, and although we weren't the greatest, we conquered a few giants along the way. 

Tonight I watched my son's basketball team overcome one of the giants that had come to town.  Confident in its 8-0 league record (actually the team is still in a probationary period, but that doesn't mean it doesn't count to the players) the players were unusually more vocal with the pre-game posturing and banter that goes along with competitive athletics.  They had come to "eat" up the home team.  The metaphor, as my son spoke to me of the gibes back and forth in the hallway prior to the game, lost little in my imagination.  I saw Cronus chewing up and swallowing his children - his pride rampant now,  vicious and selfish. 

But pride does consume, and tonight Goliath, like a trapped coyote gnawing its own leg to release itself, became hobbled with self-confidence which had fed upon itself.  The underdogs, in no way unprepared for battle, patiently waited for Goliath's weaknesses to show themselves.  They were, as the adage goes, "in the hunt" throughout the game, and it was only too late that Goliath found himself having to hurry.  In hurrying he made mistakes; that's when the underdogs struck!

So tonight my hat is tipped to the team that finds its way to win - Chip, Keaton, Will, Eric, Justin, Tommy, Tyler, Kyle, Mason, Chris, Luke and Luke!  You're finding a rhythm that's making great time!

At Home This Year

I'm missing friends this first full weekend of February.  For the past ten years I've been setting up my trade shop at the Kansas Muzzleloader's Association annual convention - at first in Great Bend, for a while in Hutchinson, and, for the first time, in Topeka.  My interest in living history has never waned - I'll return to convention and events at some point, but my appreciation for my family and some family events is primary this year. 

I have three more opportunities to watch my son play basketball, and I'm not going to miss any moment of those games.  It was pure pleasure to watch my niece perform in her play and to attend her birthday party today.  And I had the chance to spend the evening with my nephew - now a lawyer and a fiance to a soon-to-be deputy district attorney- to celebrate his birthday.  I don't feel I've missed much by not attending convention this year. 

Besides, I didn't abandon my friends at the convention...I made some benches for them to raffle and help keep the organization going. 

I have been making these "traveling" benches for a while now.  They're simply made; it's just a bit of sweat equity.  With a drawknife, spokeshave, tapered reamer and cutter, and plane, the bench top is planed and the legs are friction fit and can be tapped out easily so the bench breaks down for easy hauling.  I believe the above benches are numbers 32 and 33. 

Just Off Broadway Talent

What a busy day! But what a wonderful evening watching my niece in a performance of "Annie!"  A group of middle school students made the musical alive once more on the stage; it was well executed, very well timed, the music (by some very mature-sounding voices) never dragged, it was on pitch, and everyone smiled as they sang.  What fun these students had! 

These kids should feel extremely proud; this performance outdid many high school and college-level performances.  And one special performance made the evening for me - way to go C!  You go girl! You were great!

Card-Carrying Member

Getting my hair cut by my wife - Having my wife cut my hair has to be the most relaxing experience I enjoy.  It's truly sad that I only need my hair trimmed every three or four weeks because if I could I would have her cut my hair every day.  Now not to sound too creepy, but there's just something very, very soothing about my wife's hands running through my hair...I can literally fall asleep when she's cutting my hair. 

Getting fitted for a suit - Every man should experience being fitted for a suit at least once in his life.  There's too much off-the-shelf, fast-food mentality for buying clothing.  There's little quality, and very few sales "associates" even know how to say hello let alone know their product.  Shoe stores are the worst - just try finding a foot fitting/measuring scale or someone who knows how to use one.  Know your size and how to fit yourself or walk around with sore feet.  Now for clothes there are a few holdouts.  Recently I got a great deal on a couple of suits from a well-known men's clothing retailer, and I visited the store for my fitting.  (Of course, most of their clothing needs to be fitted to the individual; it's nothing like the experience of having a bespoke suit made - something that is on my bucket list.) Being fitted is still an experience that makes one feel as if he's suddenly got the full attention of the "tailor."  The fitting area is intimate; tucked away from the rows of dovetailed ties and Egyptian cotton shirts, the accoutrements are simple:  mirrors, measuring tapes, soap-like slivers of marking chalk, and cuff templates.  It's suddenly you and the tailor; someone who knows exactly how you want the suit to look on you.  Yup, with a few tugs, some pins, the tailor adjusts sleeves on the arms, adjusts the back and legs of the trousers; suddenly the look of your posture changes...you see the suit for the first time.  If I could just get my hair cut...

Getting my AARP card in the mail...sucks.

A Day Off?...I Think Not!

Why do driveways seem so much larger when I'm scraping snow from them?

That was the question of the day for me.  Where it shouldn't have drifted in my mother's driveway - it did.  So Nancy and I tag-teamed her driveway this morning...later this afternoon I finally tackled ours as well as the walk which has a southeast face and had received an abundance of drifting snow!  But I cleared everything off that needed it; the rest shall melt as it wants. 

Since we were off (again) today, I was able to spend a bit more time in the shop. 

Roughing out the mortises and tenons for the back of the Morris Chair project.  The tenons above just need a bit more chisel work and they'll be ready.

Ah, the work of the chisel.  (Yes, I have it clamped for those who will understand why!) there is just nothing quite as enjoyable as cleaning out a mortice with a sharp chisel.  The wood just shaves away in paper-like pieces for an exacting fit. 

A bit closer look at the work.  I sharpen each chisel on two different Japanese water stones - 2000 and 5000 grits.  They must be wet, and the movement is a figure-eight.  One can feel the bevel, and then it just becomes a fluid movement...very relaxing and very important if one wants to make the clean up work to be effortless. 

So yesterday and today offered a great opportunity to complete the chair base.  Everything mortise and tenoned...the arms are glued, screwed, and pinned with some bloodwood dowels.

Once I apply the finish these pins will add a nice bit of nuance to the chair and highlight the joints. 

So after an afternoon of chisels and glue I get the back, which will swivel on arbor vitae dowels, gets glued after some initial sanding.  I hate this part of a project: I'm so close to being done with the build that I want to hurry it.  This is when it's a good time to call it a day and let things relax.  The chair will be better for it, and I'll like the final project more when I have a chance to review what steps I went through today and what needs to happen next.  Luckily, I have a helper with this.

So good to have an inspector on site who can not only watch the work, but also constantly approve of my excellent work!  She's ready for a jaunt in the snow!  I guess it's back to the work of teaching tomorrow!

Cold Nights Redux

Largest winter storm that I can remember in a while.

Best winter storm...1971 March.  We had gone to church that morning, and for some reason my mother decided to drive (we lived a block from the church and usually walked).  During Sunday School it began snowing lightly; an hour later when church began, the snow fell heavily.  By the time we left church and drove home, our Pontiac station wagon got high centered in the driveway!  We were out of school for three days - unheard of in my memory.

My dad had been working that Sunday and had to stay with an employee in Wichita for two days.  My sisters and I enjoyed the "hill" of snow that the bulldozer pushed to the middle of the block from both intersections.  It appeared an immense hill for play; I'm sure it was only eight to ten feet tall.  Mom made cinnamon rolls, and Mrs. White at the end of the block had a baby at her house - the ambulance became stuck and the medics had to walk to the house.

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Updates on the projects tomorrow!