home...

I am home in Arkansas now after 6 days of teaching box making at Marc Adams School. It was a great 6 days spent with avid box making enthusiasts. We all learned. I invented a couple new sleds. (Not that there can be anything truly new about a sled.) One is specifically for making making mitered box joints, and the other is for making angled cross-cuts on the table saw. Both were extremely easy to make.

At the end of the 5 day class, my students had a number of boxes to illustrate what they'd learned, and I have been asked to return next year for another class. This year, my class filled during the first week of enrollment. Students from other classes kept telling me during the week that they plan to take the class next year or at least some time in the future. so, If you are interested in taking my box making class at Marc's school, please get on their mailing list and register as soon as you are allowed.

The photo above shows my happy class with some of the boxes we made during the week! Now that I'm home, I have orders to catch up on, chapters to work on, and so much to do, but it is absolutely lovely working in my own shop.

On my last morning in Indiana, I stopped to take photos of a 345 kV power line to get a better grasp of the scale of the one that SWEPCo has proposed to run 75 feet from my deck. You can gauge the scale by looking at the height of more normal power lines, buildings and cars.

In cities, folks like those in the suburbs of Indianapolis have become used to having power lines of massive scale running through neighborhoods, but here in Northwest Arkansas, where many artists and other folks have moved to share in our scenic beauty, to propose such things is wantonly destructive. I've been attempting to suggest to folks that scenic beauty and inspiration for the arts work hand in hand toward the betterment of human culture and economy. My most recent letters to the editor on this subject can be found here.

If SWEPCo and the Arkansas Public Service Commission were allowed to go through with their plans and if the route through my back yard was chosen by the Arkansas Public Service Commission, I would lose a 150 foot wide swath of forest and have one of these ugly poles located about 150 feet from my deck.

Make, fix and create...