My favorite month, October, is delivering on all its promises: a wealth of sunshine, a king's ransom of golden foliage--first green ash and now willow and cottonwood, an assortment of blues to humble my watercolor palette--cobalt skies, cerulean flashes of western bluebirds, indigo nights made luminous with Milky Way, Orion, and frequent auroras shimmering to the north. Occasional blasts of winter encourage us to luxuriate in remaining autumn warmth but prod us to finish late-season chores. Thus, blush-red crab apples are pickled, green tomatoes are ripening in nests of newspaper, and a winter's-worth of wood is sawed, split and stacked. Yet to do: replace a broken zipper on insulated coveralls, pick acorns and store them in the fridge in moist vermiculite, buy, haul, and stack straw, pump out the buried mainline, clean both barns, repair the frost-heaved, stock-water cistern, and get some fencing done before ground freezes.
Additionally, we have assumed a new pasture management challenge: prairie dogs. Daughter Katrina, home for a change of venue after spending several years in Santa Fe, first saw a small colony on range land adjoining ours. Initially, I thought the rodents were an unwelcome novelty. After contacting the adjacent landowner and several other neighbors, I realized that, until now, we have been lucky. For several years, folks east and south of us have been battling the burgeoning burrowers with bombs, bait, and bullets. Thus far, only two active holes are on our land, each one undermining a post on our east boundary fence. We are taking steps to thwart any further expansion--of population and territory!
Though post holes and rodent holes are my current focus, I've spent scattered hours framing a stack of long-ignored paintings and drawings. That task brought heightened understanding of challenges faced by math teachers. I recall Troy, a cherished colleague, saying that fractions are often a black hole for students, even for some of his sharpest calculus students. Recent experience in buying Plexiglas to fit my pictures clarified his point and several others. The advertised price for Plexi was $.03 per square inch. I needed eight pieces, each unique in size and measured in inches, such as 8 & 5/8" by 15 & 7/16". The job presented a veritable minefield of problems. In order to generate an invoice, the area of each rectangle needed to be calculated. That demanded recall of rudimentary geometry. Before such math memory could be easily used, however, those pesky fractions needed to be converted into decimals. An experienced clerk drew my novice into a back workroom to explain the process and help him with the conversions, the length-times-width calculations, and the multiplication of square inch areas times three cents to arrive at per-piece prices. Black hole, indeed! Their collaborative calculating in that back room took an hour. I ran errands here and there and arrived back at the store before cutting of the pieces began.
Gut instinct and experience teaching basic linear perspective to junior high students warned me that accurate ruler-reading for precise cuts might present an additional hurdle. When my young clerk emerged from the cutting room, I asked to borrow a tape measure, explaining that frames already had been cut very precisely, that I lived a long way out of town, and that I did not want to make a return trip if my Plexiglas purchases did not fit. Five of the eight pieces were significantly off and had to be re-cut. I didn't expect thanks for teaching that 5/8" is not the same as 9/16" or 11/16", but before I left, my clerk understood the difference and why it matters. I give him credit; he was justifiably frustrated, but never resorted to tears or rudeness, at least not while in my presence. What occurred after my departure is best left to imagination.
To teachers everywhere, I proclaim, "I've got your back!" I checked all calculations, checked all dimensions of cut pieces, and re-checked the twice-cut dimensions before I paid. Had labor been charged, surely compensation for me was justified.
Additionally, we have assumed a new pasture management challenge: prairie dogs. Daughter Katrina, home for a change of venue after spending several years in Santa Fe, first saw a small colony on range land adjoining ours. Initially, I thought the rodents were an unwelcome novelty. After contacting the adjacent landowner and several other neighbors, I realized that, until now, we have been lucky. For several years, folks east and south of us have been battling the burgeoning burrowers with bombs, bait, and bullets. Thus far, only two active holes are on our land, each one undermining a post on our east boundary fence. We are taking steps to thwart any further expansion--of population and territory!
Though post holes and rodent holes are my current focus, I've spent scattered hours framing a stack of long-ignored paintings and drawings. That task brought heightened understanding of challenges faced by math teachers. I recall Troy, a cherished colleague, saying that fractions are often a black hole for students, even for some of his sharpest calculus students. Recent experience in buying Plexiglas to fit my pictures clarified his point and several others. The advertised price for Plexi was $.03 per square inch. I needed eight pieces, each unique in size and measured in inches, such as 8 & 5/8" by 15 & 7/16". The job presented a veritable minefield of problems. In order to generate an invoice, the area of each rectangle needed to be calculated. That demanded recall of rudimentary geometry. Before such math memory could be easily used, however, those pesky fractions needed to be converted into decimals. An experienced clerk drew my novice into a back workroom to explain the process and help him with the conversions, the length-times-width calculations, and the multiplication of square inch areas times three cents to arrive at per-piece prices. Black hole, indeed! Their collaborative calculating in that back room took an hour. I ran errands here and there and arrived back at the store before cutting of the pieces began.
Gut instinct and experience teaching basic linear perspective to junior high students warned me that accurate ruler-reading for precise cuts might present an additional hurdle. When my young clerk emerged from the cutting room, I asked to borrow a tape measure, explaining that frames already had been cut very precisely, that I lived a long way out of town, and that I did not want to make a return trip if my Plexiglas purchases did not fit. Five of the eight pieces were significantly off and had to be re-cut. I didn't expect thanks for teaching that 5/8" is not the same as 9/16" or 11/16", but before I left, my clerk understood the difference and why it matters. I give him credit; he was justifiably frustrated, but never resorted to tears or rudeness, at least not while in my presence. What occurred after my departure is best left to imagination.
To teachers everywhere, I proclaim, "I've got your back!" I checked all calculations, checked all dimensions of cut pieces, and re-checked the twice-cut dimensions before I paid. Had labor been charged, surely compensation for me was justified.
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