Lift Up Your Hearts!

We ventured further last weekend, driving to Clermont and the General James. A. Van Fleet State Trail.  Porter was all for doing the whole 30 miles from one end to the other, but I voted for going in stages.  This time we biked about a third of the way, 19+ miles, from the Mabel Trailhead to the Bay Lake Trailhead and back.

The Van Fleet Trail is straight and flat, and apparently popular with those who want to race and time their biking, so it is well marked in miles and tenths, much more reliably than any other trail we've been on.  Thus I was able to check the calibration of my odometer, and was pleased that it appears to be off by less than half a percent.

That's the subtitle of a Wired article by Edward Tufte.  My brother sent me the link.  I prefer to believe he didn't know I was in the middle of working on a PowerPoint presentation of pictures from our recent trip to Europe.

Tufte is not speaking primarily about education, but he makes this perceptive observation: 

Particularly disturbing is the adoption of the PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools. Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials. Elementary school PowerPoint exercises (as seen in teacher guides and in student work posted on the Internet) typically consist of 10 to 20 words and a piece of clip art on each slide in a presentation of three to six slides -a total of perhaps 80 words (15 seconds of silent reading) for a week of work. Students would be better off if the schools simply closed down on those days and everyone went to the Exploratorium or wrote an illustrated essay explaining something.

When our children were in high school, long before classroom computer use became pervasive, they were sometimes asked to "report on" books by making posters about them.  This was in honors, "gifted," or Advanced Placement classes, mind you!  Being artistically-minded, the girls enjoyed these projects, but they took up a lot of time and their educational value—except possibly in graphic arts—was essentially nil.

Speaking from experience, it's much easier and more fun to find clipart, arrange graphics, tweak colors, choose backgrounds, and play with shapes and shading than it is to craft text—and I happen to love writing.  How much more so to a student who is still struggling with the art of putting his thoughts down on paper! The making of an attractive presentation of written and visual information is not a bad skill to learn, but any teacher who frequently allows students to get away with Internet research instead of library visits, and low-content, high-graphic PowerPoint presentations instead of well-written, detailed, highly verbal reports, is wasting their time and taxpayers' money.

That said, I'll get back to my own PowerPoint work.  :)  To me, it's computer-based scrapbooking, and I want to get our trip pictures into a form that's easy to appreciate.  Some people prefer to read an illustrated story—the blog version is for them.  A few (very few) people will want to see every picture we took—all 900+ of them—minus the really awful ones.  Most, however, will appreciate the PowerPoint version, condensed, edited, and spruced up with some music and a few graphic effects.  At least I hope so—that's why I'm creating it.

One of our nephews is a Boy Scout.

From what little I know of it, I'm even less impressed with today's program.  It's politically correct, oriented towards modern society, relevant to today's girls—and therefore boring as all get out.  At least to me.  (They still make great cookies, though, and Boy Scout popcorn doesn't even come close.)

For all I know, the Boy Scout program has changed, too.  But my heart is encouraged by knowing one troop that is still in the business of helping boys grow into men.  And even more so to see the video-game, text-message, iPod, virtual reality generation rising to physical, organizational, and social challenges.  I applaud the leaders who provide necessary support and guidance while giving the Scouts much of the responsibility for running the troop.

They leave this week for Philmont, the apex of Boy Scout adventuring.  What they are doing "on the way" exhausts me just thinking of it, including hiking up and down the Grand Canyon's Bright Angel Trail.  During their two weeks at Philmont the boys themselves chose the most rigorous program available to them, which includes over 80 miles of hiking and lots of camping and other intensive activities.

We were exhausted after our return from Switzerland, and our trip was a lot shorter and easier than Janet's will be, so I'm sure she'll appreciate your prayers.  She has four flights, ground transportation between two airports in New York, long wait times, and about 24 hours of travel—if all goes well—to look forward to.  Good thing she's younger than we are.  :)

Last year's small garden yielded only half a dozen tomatoes, some chives, and a good supply of basil, largely because it got no water during a critical dry spell when we were attending to a much more important affair:  Noah's birth.

Basil, chives, hot pepper, and cilantro 

Tomatos and marigolds 

Peppers—obviously not the sweet green peppers the label said they were!  Any ideas?  They're not hot, but do have a noticeable bite.

Bougainvilla

The May 21, 2007 issue of Computerworld has an interview with Amory B. Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute.  Talk about RETHINKING—who would have thought industry had a good use for slush?

You advocate using, of all things, slush to cool data centers. Can you explain that? We recently did a design for a high-tech facility in a temperate climate that was originally going to have over 20,000 tons of chillers, and by the time we got through, the number was zero.

We found we could meet about 70% of the load with the coolness or dryness of the outside air using either air-side or water-side economizers, depending on the time of year. The rest [came from] a mountain of slush sprayed out of snow-making machines into a hole in the ground on a few cold nights and used to provide 32-degree Fahrenheit meltwater all year.

Twenty thousand tons of chillers originally planned; zero used.  They use snow-making machines to generate the slush; perhaps the next step should be finding a way to use the mountains of snow urban areas are always struggling to dispose of in the winter.

The July issue of Reader's Digest has an advice column called "Ask Laskas."  Here is the first question:

Q,  It was my idea to have a family reunion, and I called my younger sister.  She loved the idea and then, without consulting me, ran with it.  The next thing I knew, the party was planned down to the napkins.  I asked why she didn't include me.   She said if I don't like it, I don't have to come.  I'm fuming.  Should I stay away or go?

A. Oh, go and have a good time, secure in the knowledge that you had a great idea.  Getting credit is nice, but a united family is worth a little swallowed pride.  The next time you have a brainstorm, however, think twice before you share it with Sis, who seems to be suffering from younger sibling syndrome.

Each family has its own Thanksgiving traditions.  Friendly swordfighting is part of ours.  Here Noah and Jonathan demonstrate their eagerness to carry on the custom.

Every once in a while the Orlando Sentinel publishes a comics survey, in which they ask readers to rate the comics they read and suggest new ones for the paper to run.  Not a bad idea.  I've been considering revamping the Morning Coffee section of my Sursum Corda home page.  Since I know that several of you visit it regularly, it seems only fair to get your input.  In fact, one person already suggested a new comic—which was the inspiration for this post.

So...what do you like?  Not like?  Do you use any of the other links on the page besides the comics?  What else would you like to see?

Round Ireland with a Fridge, by Tony Hawks (St. Martin's Press, New York, 2000)

In 247 pages, Tony Hawks amply demonstrates both the dangers of excessive alcohol consumption and the truth of Don Aslett's assertion that those who make their paths and projects public are likely to find an abundance of help coming their way.  Awakening one morning after a night of partying, he found a note by the side of his bed:  "I hereby bet Tony Hawks the sum of One Hundred Pounds that he cannot hitch-hike around the circumference of Ireland, with a fridge, within one calendar month."  Although his friend graciously offered to release him from the bet, Tony took it on as a challenge.

Tony won the bet, though it didn't even cover the cost of the fridge he bought to take with him.  In the process he saw Ireland as no tourist ever has, and discovered that it is actually easier to hitch-hike with a kitchen appliance than without one.

It's not a profound book, and certainly not a perfect one.  There are few sexual references and some language I don't care to hear, as well as a whole lot of drinking—but it's far too funny to be offensive.

I believe Janet lent me this book before she went to Japan, which means the reading process took me me more than 20 times as long as it took Tony to make his circuit of Ireland.  Once begun, however, Round Ireland with a Fridge is actually a fast read and a fun one.

Yesterday we thought we'd do a few short stretches of trail to cover the northernmost portions of the Cross-Seminole Trail and the Seminole Wekiva Trail.  We thought it would be shorter than it turned out to be, and before we were done I was regretting not having been more generous with the sunblock, but we managed to avoid sunburn anyway, despite the unshaded nature of much of our ride.

Then straight south for a while, crossing Lake Mary Blvd. on the new overpass, and taking the tunnel under Greenwood Blvd.  This trail will eventually connect to the section of the Cross Seminole Trail we traversed two weeks ago, but for now ends abruptly at Green Way Blvd.

We reversed course back to St. Peter's, from which we crossd over I-4 on the pedestrian bridge that connects to the Seminole Wekiva Trail.  We've done the route south of the overpass many times, but our goal today was to get to the northern end, which actually involves going more west than north.  After reaching the Markham Trailhead, we turned back and took a detour to Sylvan Lake Park, where we walked to the fishing pier and saw a bird that may have been an eagle—or maybe an osprey.

Porter is ever adventurous, and I follow.  Accordingly, we veered off the trail on onto Markham Woods Road, thence to Lake Mary Blvd., intersecting the trail again at Panera Bread.  Perhaps Porter was less adventurous than hungry.  We enjoyed a chicken tomesto sandwich from Panera accompanied by a Vinnie del Rocco from the nearby Planet Smoothie, then somewhat stiffly remounted our steeds and returned over the bridge to St. Peter's.

I'm mailing a package to France, and as always it amused me to check out the "prohibited" list.  You are not allowed to send any of the following:

Arms, ammunition. Cigarette lighters using butane gas. Feeding bottles. Funeral urns. Goods bearing false marks of French manufacture or origin. Imitation pearls containing lead salts and any articles of jewelry made with pearls of this type. Measuring instruments marked in units not complying with French law. Perishable infectious biological substances except as noted in Restrictions below. Perishable noninfectious biological substances except as noted under Restriction below. Radioactive materials. Saccharine in tablets or packets. Live plants and animals. Arms and weapons. Human remains.

In honor of Flag Day, I give a salute not only to our own flag, but also to those of our ancestors (so far discovered).

If I'd known how big a project book cataloguing would be, I'm not sure I would have had the courage to start, but now that it's done, I'm quite pleased with it.  There's a link to it here, and on the sidebar, and on the Sursum Corda home page.  I'm not yet ready to leave it open to any and all web crawlers, so there's a small amount of security associated with it.  Family members can get in the same way you access the Family News page.  If you're a friend who happens to want to browse in this library, please e-mail me, and I'll be happy to open the door to you.

The effort ended up taking over a month of pretty steady, hard work.  I made much of that for myself, I'll admit.  If I had been content with the content the software downloaded from the Internet, it would have gone much faster.  But I wanted the information to be correct and reasonably complete, though even so I ignored many of the less important data fields, such as cover price.  Even more time-consuming, I insisted on having a cover photo for each book, which required a lot of scanning, because most of our books are too old to have their cover photos online.  No, it's not necessary, but it looks nice!  I know how much I appreciate being able to browse books visually, as well as by title, so I'm assuming others do, too.

The last room to be done was my office; I had saved the hardest for last.  On the one hand, there are more modern books here, so I could use the barcode scanner more effectively.  On the other hand, there are more old books, too—just plain more books!  I offer some statistics below for your amusement.  They are only approximate, because sometimes I let one entry do for an entire series of books, but they're interesting nonetheless.

• Total number of books: about 1800


• Number of books in my office: nearly 900


• Top 10 authors: George MacDonald (77), C. S. Lewis (49), Patrick O'Brian (22), Charles Schultz (22), Dorothy Sayers (21), Arthur Ransome (19), Miss Read (Dora Jessie Saint) (18), Robert Athearn (16 - all in one set of American history books), John Montroll (15), Isaac Asimov (14)


• No, we haven't read all the books.  Some, like cookbooks, aren't meant to be read through.  Many, many others came our way when my father moved from his big house, and I mean to get to them, someday...

Why did I do this?  The most important reason is that a book isn't of any use if it stays on a shelf.  There's no point in having a book if you don't read it (or at least plan to), and you can't read it if you can't find it.

Moreover, we have a great treasure here, and would like others to be able to share our bounty.  That's why the list is online—so others can browse and borrow.  The Book Collector software comes with the ability to keep track of books lent out, which has heretofore been a problem for me.

Some people might recognize books of theirs that made their way into our collection, and say, "Aha!  So that's where my book is!"  Stranger things have happened.  I once lent two books to Person A, and never got them back.  I told you (see above) I have a problem with keeping track of what I've lent to whom. By the time I got around to asking, it was so much later Person A had no idea where the books were, so I wrote them off.  Not without some sorrow, but I try not to lend any books I wouldn't be willing to give away, if needed—for just such occasions.  Much later, a dear friend, Person B, died, and I was one of the people who helped sort through her books.  Lo and behold, there were my two missing books!  I knew they were mine because of the inscriptions, and of course I was given them back.  But no one could at that point explain how they had ended up where they did, and it's still a mystery.  Okay, I will give in to a trifling vanity and reveal Person A, because it's amusing to be able to say I lent books to R.C. Sproul.  I also once gave a dime to a Rockefeller who needed change for a pay phone. :)

With a nod to hurricane season, which began in the middle of my efforts, all this documentation should help if we ever need to file an insurance claim.  Not that any of our books are worth much, in an insurance-company sense, but if they express disbelief that we really had 1800 books, I can reply, "Yes, sir, we did—I counted them."  Not that I want to lose a one of them, after all this work

You'll see a better video almost anywhere else, but here is a bit of natsukashi for our expatriot Floridians!

You can't see the bright orange flame on the video, but those of you who've experienced this stunning sight before can lean on your imaginations a bit.

Today's Frazz:

Janet wasn't the only one of our children who made musical instruments.  This is a Heatherin, or rather the Heatherin, the only one in existence, and I'm not sure if it actually exists anymore other than in photographs.  Heather made it when she was nine.

Our router seems to be acting erratically again.  Last time the problem was the power supply, and I have a spare one to try now if necessary, though it's hard to believe this one would fail after just three months.  (Then again, I said that about our car battery recently.)

It's fine at the moment, but in the past 12 hours has twice done strange things like allowing just one half of a telephone "conversation," or allowing e-mail to be received and sent but not allowing web access.  To be on the safe side, I've set up the system to ring my cell phone if it doesn't establish contact via the regular phone.

Tropical Storm Barry brought us a night's worth of good, soaking rain, our first significant rain in many months and much needed.  The forecast was for rain all Saturday, too, but the radar looked reasonably clear in the morning so we paid another visit to Leu Gardens.

Later, despite a still-iffy forecast and a high wind and tornado watch, we biked the last leg of the West Orange Trail, from the Bo An Buddhist Center to Apopka and across the new bridge over Route 441.  We didn't have high expectations of a trail that goes through some of the more run-down parts of Apopka, but there was very little city biking and much of the trail was shaded by an oak canopy.  The sky was overcast and kept threatening to break into storm (courtesy of Tropical Storm Barry), but we stayed dry and enjoyed the relative coolness.  The headwind on the way back was sometimes hard to fight, however!

Before I write about today's bike ride, I have to clear the backlog and tell you about last weekend's.

We parked at the Black Hammock Trailhead near 417 in Winter Springs, and headed east towards Oviedo.  The map shows the completed trail ending in the center of town, but the trail maps are often out of date and we were hoping more had been finished.  In that we were disappointed, as the trail ended without so much as a "Trail's End" sign.  After casting about for a continuation, we turned back, passed our starting point, and took the trail westward.

The trail has a couple of incomplete places in that direction, but thanks to our recent off-road adventure, we were not intimidated but plowed right through them.  Note that this was a mere week after we had unanimously determined to stick to paved bike paths....  But at least these were relatively short interludes with most of the trail paved.

The trail ends at Layer Elementary School (I thought I knew all the elementary schools in Seminole County; this must be new).  Before reaching the end, however, we passed through Central Winds Park and took time to park our bikes and enjoy the nature trail.  I can't pass a playground these days without thinking how much the grandkids woud enjoy it.

It was another good 18-mile ride, even though I discovered that either my body or my bike had not yet fully recovered from the previous week's exhaustion.  Riding, even on the flat, was a lot harder than it had been.  Maybe there's sand in the works....

I think I would have been fine if I'd just gone home and rested.  But there was a lot to do to prepare for having Memorial Day guests.  The worst was a long shopping trip that turned out to be a bit longer than planned.  After buying some plants at Home Depot, I decided to take them home before going to the grocery store, so they wouldn't bake in the hot car for so long.  (If it's not safe for kids and pets, it can't be good for plants, either.)

Click.

Click.

Yes, the car is in park.

Click, click, click. 

We just got a new battery in December!

Click.

Call Porter.

Oops.  He's outside pressure-washing the pool area and can't hear the phone.  Call his cell phone.  Intelligent man that he is, he doesn't wear his phone when near the pool and spraying high-velocity water around.  Call a neighbor, hoping she will yell over the fence and get his attention.  Not surprising, she's not home on a Saturday afternoon.

I could call AAA, but they usually take forever to arrive.  I'm only about a half hour's walk from home, so that's what I do.  It's a nice walk.

Porter sets aside the pressure washer long enough to come with me to Home Depot.  Yes, we have jumper cables.  Yes, we know how to use them.  Yes, our other car has its battery so deeply buried in the engine you can't attach jumper cables to it!

We go home, taking the suffering little plants with us.  Our neighbors have returned!  He has a truck wtih an accessible battery.  We all head back to Home Depot and the car jumps easily.

Drive to Batteries Plus, where they replace the battery for free, since they were the ones who sold it to us just five months ago.